The Operations Council, IT Executives Council and Controllers Council recently held a panel discussion titled, How to Build a Resilient Quote-to-Cash Process, sponsored by Workiro.

Our subject matter experts were Jason Ross, Enterprise Solutions Strategist at Workiro and Chris Muir, Vice President of Sales at Workiro.

Following are key takeaways to this discussion. If you are interested in learning more, view the full webinar archive video here.

Structured Data vs. Unstructured Data

There’s structured data and structured systems. Roughly about 20% of a companies data will be in structured systems, which are things like your customer records, sales opportunities, product libraries, your ERP system, certainly the general ledger, and your chart of accounts. But lots of things in structured data, in databases and in systems, whether they are a new cloud system like NetSuite or whether they’re an old system, they are structured. But the other thing to bear in mind is that there is also 80% of that data that lives outside of those systems in unstructured format, stuff that can’t be displayed in fields or in tables. Therefore, you can’t generally report on them, even if you’ve got some of the rest reporting in the world, and it holds a lot of key information, particularly if there’s knowledge in it. So, an email, as an example, could hold a customer promise in it that’s sitting somewhere, buried in a folder somewhere, or in an inbox, or scattered into a SharePoint folder, or something like that. None of these tools that you’re generally using are talking with each side of this line. Quote-to-cash is the biggest example of where when you don’t bridge this gap, you can end up with quite a lot of pain.

McKinsey found that companies with optimized QTC processes grow their ARR up to 4x faster than peers. So this isn’t just a technical inconvenience — it’s a revenue blocker.

The QTC Process

When we talk about quote-to-cash, I won’t go through all of these, but we are generally talking about the production of some form of quotation, whether you need configuration or just a pricing sheet or a pricing list, all the way through to potentially contract, negotiation, approval, both internally and externally. And those things generally happen in your CRM. Those business processes happen in your CRM Salesforce in the example that we’re using today. Once that gets approved or in Salesforce terminology closed one, then that’s where the things start to get thrown over the fence or not.

And on the right-hand side here, you’ve then got your ERP or your execution and the delivery of that order fulfillment to be able to run the billing, generate your invoices, recognize the revenue, and potentially, if you’re in a subscription business, you’d start your renewal process, but maybe you don’t. So that’s the process that we’re talking about when we talk about quote-to-cash, that is a high-level version of that process, and you’ll see here, there are a few places where this really is systematic.

Key Challenges

It’s obvious that where you have manual data entry and duplication, you find teams entering the same information across different systems and multiple systems. But it’s just obviously waste time and clearly introduces the possibility for errors. And there’s lots of ways to get around that, but it’s certainly a problem.

That leads on to delayed processes and inefficiency. So, when we’re not automating workflows or making things streamlined, then certain things will fall through the cracks and productivity will be hit. Then you get to the point of poor visibility reporting because of those problems. So, when you don’t have a centralized real-time view of data, then making informed decisions becomes difficult and often becomes reactive rather than strategic.

And together these challenges slow down operations, frustrate teams, they limit growth potential and have an impact on credibility both internally and externally. Workiro comes in to solve those problems by automating and orchestrating and empowering teams to focus on the high impact work again.

Solutions

For the structured data, which is your Quote-to-Cash process, your data in Salesforce and data in NetSuite, or your choice of what those tools are, many businesses choose to use point-to-point integration. For instance, go on Salesforce marketplace and see if there’s an integration with NetSuite. Or they’ll rely on a manual data export to a CSV file and someone in their IT team or tech team or ops team will manually upload it to the other system and then they’ll deal with those on a regular basis if anything goes wrong.

The unstructured content,  the emails, the files and all that, everything that goes with those stories and probably the contract, can see where this all sort of starts to tie together is often stored in things like SharePoint or Dropbox or stuck in inboxes or in a signing app over there that you’ve no idea whether someone signed it or not that’s been sent by a salesperson who’s now gone on holiday or a shared drive somewhere on your server. The problem with all of this is that those tools aren’t necessarily connected with each other or require a great amount of IT admin to bring them together.

What’s really needed here is a unified layer that bridges all of those structured and unstructured stories together. Learn more about the solutions in our webinar.

Building an AI Foundation

Having the foundations of your quote-to-cash process is great, but it’s not innovative in the future, particularly with the technology that’s out there today. Businesses that will thrive out there over the next few years will be the ones who’ve done all this foundational work like you’ve seen today, but the ones that can really start to leverage AI. There is a huge wave of AI-enabled platforms, co-pilots and automations that are arriving daily. But if you’ve got your structured and unstructured data organized, connected and in context, turning on AI is literally something you can do in a flash. This is where the magic happens. The future of work isn’t a desktop; it’s an AI command center.

Key Takeaway: Integrations and automations are strategic enablers—unlocking value, reducing manual work, and driving customer delight with secure, scalable, and user-friendly solutions.

To learn more about Quote-to-Cash, watch the full webinar here.

ABOUT THE SPONSOR:

Workiro is an award-winning, intelligent document management system that combines email capture, e-signatures, seamless collaboration, and one intuitive platform designed for businesses that work closely with customers and third parties. Workiro ensures that all interactions, approvals, and documents are automatically saved and classified, eliminating manual effort and reducing risk. Learn more here: https://www.workiro.com/workiro-home