Every organization aims to achieve success in their sales configurator implementation projects and hopes to transform their CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) or eCommerce processes. However, it’s all too easy to stumble into common pitfalls and get your promising initiative off the rails. So, what are the classic ways to sabotage your implementation project and ensure epic failure? Here’s what to do if you want to turn your potential success story into a cautionary tale.
1. Never talk to sales—or gather user feedback, for that matter
To ensure that your configurator falls short of user expectations and suffers from low adoption rates, prevent your Engineering team from communicating with Sales, Marketing, or even the customer. After all, why would they need input from those who will actually use the configurator?
If they have to interact, don’t worry—professionals in these departments usually speak different languages. As long as your engineers use technical jargon, there won’t be any meaningful dialogue or understanding of requirements or priorities.
For an even greater impact, ignore user feedback throughout the project. Skip the user interviews, surveys, and usability testing and rely only on theoretical models and assumptions. Who needs to invest time in understanding user needs and pain points when you can just guess what they want?
2. Include every odd edge case—polish to perfection
Ensure that every rare scenario you have ever encountered is a necessary requirement for the initial release of your sales configurator. Continue to aim for perfection at 110% in the beginning phase, accounting for even the most hypothetical situations that might arise in the distant future. Why settle for a functional configurator when you can strive for the perfect one?
This relentless pursuit of perfection and expanding scope will indefinitely delay your project. By the time you are ready to launch, if that day ever comes, market conditions may have changed and your configurator might have gone out of date. You will deplete resources and morale as the project’s goals keep shifting, and will end up with an ongoing project instead of a practical tool.
3. Overcomplicate the first release—more is more
There is a fine line between being overcomplicated and being innovative. For a configurator to be overcomplicated and overwhelm users with its complexity, it must be consistently loaded with every imaginable feature and setting.
If you continuously polish your configurator and add more features and simulations, you will ultimately create a never-ending refinement loop that pushes the release date further away. Not only that, your configurator will transform from a practical tool into a frustratingly difficult product that still will not be ready for prime time.
4. Skip training and support—they will figure it out
For a never-ending sales configurator implementation, start building from scratch. Use your own custom system, such as a detailed Excel model, a complex C# framework, or even your own programming language. This will significantly extend timelines and create a reliance on the original engineer for future maintenance.
After development, launch the tool without any guidance or support resources, expecting users to navigate it on their own as they struggle with frequent errors and inefficiencies. The lack of user support will make the configurator frustrating and reduce its perceived value.
5. Flashy features over functionality—demand high skills
A flashy configurator is a frustrating configurator. To produce such a tool, you should focus on high-tech features rather than core functionalities that users actually need. The more advanced options and complex input fields you add, the more expertise it will require to operate.
Users will undoubtedly find themselves overwhelmed and confused by the lack of essential features and the complexity of the tool. A configurator that prioritizes style over substance and demands advanced skills will quickly become a burden rather than a benefit, and lead to poor adoption and dissatisfaction.
6. Skip the pilot phase—go big or go home
If you skip the pilot phase and dive straight into a full-scale launch, you will magnify any issues and amplify implementation chaos. So, avoid testing prototypes altogether and dismiss them as soon as you find a bug.
By refusing to test and overlooking potential issues, you may launch a configurator full of errors and fraught with problems. These issues will become more challenging to resolve after a broad rollout, and potentially cause the entire project to falter.
7. Invent your isolated infrastructure—ignore integration
If you have decided that the cloud is “unsafe” or “untrustworthy,” the only thing you can do is to host the configurator on your own servers. This way, you can micromanage its performance and overburden your IT team.
Avoiding cloud solutions and neglecting integration needs will create performance bottlenecks and cause your systems to be out of sync. This will lead to data silos, inefficiencies, and a fragmented user experience that hinders productivity and complicates workflows.
8. Set it and forget it—do not continue to improve
The closer you get to releasing your configurator, the more you can delay by perfecting and reorganizing every detail or rule. You can even address outdated and unresolved issues from the distant past, just in case they might come back. It’s a surefire way for your configurator to never get past its release date.
There will be no need for continuous improvement if you focus on pre-release perfection forever. Even if you make it past the release date and the configurator goes live, do not plan for ongoing improvements or adjustments based on user feedback. This way, the configurator will not evolve with user expectations and, over time, it will lose its shine and become obsolete.
If this seems like a recipe for disaster to you, consider approaching it differently. Follow these guidelines for effectively implementing your sales configurator.
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