Quote your most complex products in minutes, on the platform that owns the order
ServiceNow CPQ gives your sales team the whole quoting path, running on the same platform as the order and the delivery work.
- 01Product models
- 02Guided configuration
- 03Pricing
- 04Discount and approval rules
- 05The quote document
- 06Handover to the order
A seller configures even a two-hundred-option product and knows it can actually be built, prices it, and clears the approval in one screen. The accepted quote then becomes the order without anyone retyping it.
Whether you run Salesforce, SAP or a spreadsheet only three people understand, this is the version where quoting, ordering and delivery run from one set of rules.
Guided quoting your whole sales team can use
ServiceNow CPQ holds your product options, compatibility rules, price lists, discount logic and approval thresholds in one model. A seller answers questions about what the customer needs, sees only valid choices, and produces a correctly priced, approved offer in minutes. Configure, Price, Quote, usually shortened to CPQ, is that whole path from first option to accepted order.
Model the product once
Options, attributes, dependencies, compatibility rules and bundles live in one place instead of several spreadsheets and several people's heads.
Guided configuration
Walks the seller through valid choices and refuses invalid combinations at the point of selection, while the seller is still with the customer.
Pricing and approvals apply automatically
Price lists, discount chains and approval thresholds apply automatically, and every decision is recorded.
Subscriptions, renewals and ramped pricing
Handled in the same model, so a multi-year deal is quoted once rather than assembled by hand.
The quote becomes structured order data
The order, the parts list, the provisioning task, the service visit or the delivery project is created from the quote itself, so what the customer signed and what operations receives are the same record.
ServiceNow describes CPQ as a high-performance configuration engine designed for complex product models and real-time guided configuration.
Source: ServiceNow
Every channel quotes from the same rules.
All channels read one model, so a pricing change or a new compatibility rule is made once and applies everywhere the same day.
Bring us the product nobody wants to quote and we will walk it through with you, rule by rule, before anything goes near a design.
What changes when quoting runs where the order lives
When quoting runs on the same platform as the order, commercial leadership gets a level of control it rarely has today. Discounts stay inside agreed limits, knowing how to sell a product stops depending on a few specialists, and every offer, approval and exception is on record where the order and delivery teams can see it.
Margin is protected by design
Discount limits and approval thresholds are part of the model, so a deal outside policy reaches the right approver before the customer sees it, not after. The deal desk stops checking routine quotes and spends its time on the exceptions that need judgment.
Quoting stops depending on specialists
When product and pricing rules live in a shared model rather than in a few people's heads, a new seller or a partner can quote a complex product correctly, and a specialist who leaves does not take the quoting process with them.
Commercial decisions become visible
Every configuration, price, discount and approval is recorded against the quote, so sales operations and finance can see which discounts are being given, where approvals slow deals down, and which rules need to change.
A product configurator and CPQ are two different things
Product configurator
Answers one question.
Is this combination allowed?
CPQ
Answers that, then prices it, applies your discount and approval rules, produces the offer, and hands the accepted version to the order.
German buyers already separate the ideas, and the market has precise words for each:
The practical test is the path rather than the product.
If the time goes into the whole path from valid to priced to approved to ordered, that is CPQ, and that is where the return is.
Related: decide how the commercial process should work first → Business Process Consulting and Design.
You do not have to replace your CRM, or your ERP
CPQ runs alongside the systems you already have.
SAP keeps
The product master and the engineering variant logic, where it holds them.
ServiceNow holds the commercial layer
The sales-facing configuration, the price, the discount and approval rules, and the quote.
No new customers, no new features, but existing customers keep their licenses, can add users and renew, and no end-of-life date has been set. Its successor is a rebuild, not an upgrade, so if you are rebuilding anyway, that is the moment to decide where quoting belongs.
Next to the order is a strong answer.
The configuration engine runs as a connected layer above the CRM, reached over an authenticated connection. Prices are read from ServiceNow, and the quote is created and held in ServiceNow, so the commercial record stays on the platform.
Related: the ERP and product master connection → ServiceNow Integrations.
The quote that becomes the order
When quoting and order management run on the same platform, an accepted quote is never exported, reformatted or retyped. Its configuration, its price, its discounts and its approvals travel with it, and the work that fulfills it is created from it. It is the clearest example of what one platform buys you.
Configuration, price and approvals
Travels intact, never retyped
The platform makes it possible, the process makes it work, and a handful of answers get you there.
We settle those with you in a workshop, then the software enforces what you agreed.
CPQ owns the configuration, the price and the quote; Sales CRM owns the opportunity, the order and what happens after acceptance.
Related: what happens after acceptance → ServiceNow Sales CRM. The work the order creates → Customer Service Management, Field Service Management and Strategic Portfolio Management.
What AI does in quoting, once the rules are right
Now Assist for CPQ works through the quote with the seller. It validates commercial changes against your discount and approval rules, so anything above a threshold enters the approval workflow rather than going out quietly. Consolidated summaries of a quote and its line items close the gap between reading a quote and understanding it.
Now Assist for CPQ
Logik AI
Administrators can also describe a pricing or product rule in plain language and have Logik AI turn it into a rule.
A sales representative reviews and approves each step before the agent moves on to the next, so the seller stays in control of what the customer receives.
These features run on your product catalog and your pricing rules, so we build the catalog, the rules and the thresholds first, then switch Now Assist on.
AI features are entitlement-gated across the Foundation, Advanced and Prime tiers and vary by region. We validate your tier and region first, so the design only uses what your instance can actually run.
Related: govern the AI you switch on → AI Control Tower.
Your product model is the project
CPQ does not remove complexity. It moves complexity into a structured model, and that model is where the value sits, so building it properly is the cornerstone of the project.
Understand what makes quoting hard here
Model your hardest product end to end
Build the pricing and discount rules with their approval thresholds
Connect the quote to the order
Test with real deals rather than sample data
Extend to more product lines and channels
Complex discount chains and nested bundles are where a design either holds or does not, and proving it there turns the rest of the catalog into a known quantity.
Enabling the deal desk and the sellers is part of the work rather than an afterthought, because a model people do not trust gets bypassed, and a bypassed model is the main failure mode for CPQ.
The accepted quote lands in systems we also build
Quoting projects succeed or fail at the seams: the product model, the approval logic, and the handover into the order. That is the work we do.
We build the receiving end too
Order management, customer service, field service and project operations, on the same platform. So when we model your products and design your approval flow, we already know what that end needs from the quote.
Every rule is traceable to a test
We model products and pricing before we build anything, and every rule is traceable to a test.
We know the engine underneath
The configuration engine ServiceNow acquired for CPQ in April 2025, because we have modeled, built and tested on it. That is the rigor we bring to your pricing logic.
Built for multi-entity commercial processes
Groups running several operating companies on one commercial process, and service providers quoting projects that run to a hundred line items or more. That complexity is what our design work is built around.
Our independence is written into our contracts
We document the recommended system of record and the integration boundary for each capability, including where another product is the better answer for you.
Senior practitioners, start to finish
The senior practitioners who model your hardest product bring decades of commercial and platform experience, and they are the same people you work with from first workshop through go-live.
Bring us the deal nobody wants to quote
Take your most awkward product and walk us through how it gets quoted today. We map the rules, show you where they actually live, and show you what that product looks like once the model does the work.
Guided selling
The seller is walked through valid choices rather than trusted to remember the rules.
Product configurator
Checks whether a chosen combination of options is allowed, and nothing more.
Configuration engine
The part of CPQ that checks which options can be combined. It runs as a connected layer above the CRM, while the price and the quote stay in ServiceNow.
Bill of materials
The list of parts and services a configured product needs.
Ramped pricing
A price that changes over the life of a contract, for example as volumes or users grow.
Deal desk
The internal team that reviews and approves non-standard pricing, discounts and terms before a quote goes out.
Product master
The system of record for product data, often SAP; the authoritative definition of what exists and how it varies.
System of record
The one system that owns a given piece of data, the account, the product, the price, the quote or the order, so everyone reads the same version.
Variant configuration
The engineering logic, usually in the ERP, that defines which product variants are valid and how they are built. SAP calls this variant configuration.
The questions buyers ask us.
What is ServiceNow CPQ?
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ServiceNow CPQ is the Configure, Price, Quote capability on the ServiceNow platform. It holds your product options and rules, guides a seller to a valid configuration, applies pricing, discounting and approval rules, produces the offer, and passes the accepted quote into the order. It runs on the same platform as customer service, field service, order management and project delivery, so the work that fulfills the order is created where that work happens.
Do we have to replace Salesforce to use ServiceNow CPQ?
›
No. ServiceNow documents a Salesforce integration, and the quoting experience can run without Salesforce CPQ. Salesforce CPQ reached end of sale in March 2025: new customers can no longer buy it, existing customers keep their licenses and remain supported, and no end-of-life date has been announced. Moving to the Salesforce successor is a rebuild rather than an upgrade, because the pricing engine and data model differ. What does need deciding early is which system is the system of record for the account, the product, the price, the quote and the order.
Is ServiceNow CPQ native to the platform?
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Partly, and the distinction is worth getting right before a security review. ServiceNow markets CPQ as built natively on its platform, and at the level that matters to a seller that holds true: the quoting experience runs inside ServiceNow, on the same platform as the order, the service case and the delivery work. The configuration engine is the nuance. It runs as a connected layer above the CRM, reached over authenticated interfaces, while prices are read from ServiceNow and the quote is created and held in ServiceNow. We plan against the real architecture for the release you deploy, so your architecture and security reviewers see the accurate picture in the first conversation, not after the design is signed off.
What is the difference between a product configurator and CPQ?
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A product configurator checks whether a chosen combination of options is valid. CPQ does that, then prices it, applies discount and approval rules, produces the offer document and hands the accepted version to the order process. German buyers often separate these as Produktkonfiguration and Angebotskonfiguration. If validity is your only problem, a configurator may be enough. If the path from valid to priced to approved to ordered is the problem, that is CPQ.
Can we use it without ServiceNow Sales CRM?
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Yes. CPQ can run as the configuration and quoting engine alongside a third-party CRM, an ecommerce front end or a custom application, as well as inside ServiceNow Sales CRM. The strongest case is still where ServiceNow owns the order and the delivery work, because the accepted quote then lands where the work happens. A full Sales CRM program is not a prerequisite.
How long does it take to model our products?
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It depends almost entirely on how much genuine variation your products carry, and on how good your product and pricing data is today. So we model your hardest product first, end to end, including nested bundles and complex discount chains. That gives you a real figure for the rest of the catalog, grounded in your own products rather than a published range that fits nobody.
When do we not need CPQ?
›
When your product set is small and pricing is fixed. When quoting is already fast enough and nobody is waiting on a specialist. When there is no real break between the accepted quote and the order. And when the effort of building a structured product model would cost more than the complexity it removes. If you have no ServiceNow footprint and a straightforward configuration problem, a purpose-built configurator may be the better answer, and we will say so.
What happens if SAP owns our product master and variant configuration?
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This is the most common architecture in German manufacturing, and it needs settling before anything is configured. Our starting position is that SAP keeps the product master and the engineering variant logic, because that is where it belongs and where it is maintained. ServiceNow then holds the commercial layer: the sales-facing configuration, the price, the discount and approval rules, and the quote. The design work is defining exactly which attributes cross the boundary, in which direction, and what happens when the product master changes mid-quote. We settle that in writing with your ERP owner before any rule gets built, because a quoting engine reading a stale product model is worse than a spreadsheet.