Interview: How CPQ vendor Experlogix is evolving with new investment, Dynamics 365 mixed reality use cases

Mixed reality product visualization and CPQ demonstrated at MBAS 2019

Experlogix, maker of configure, price, quote (CPQ) solutions, has enjoyed some notable successes in the last year, from a featured mixed reality demo on the keynote stage at June's Microsoft Business Applications Summit to a majority investment by Featheringill Capital. At the same time, the company is expanding its global presence and adding marquee clients alongside Microsoft.

MSDW spoke with Experlogix president Christian Stepien to learn more about the company's efforts in the Microsoft space. He discussed how the recent funding, the company's first, will benefit their product development and strategic planning. The company has thrived over the years by exercising restraint, Stepien explained, both in terms of its finances and its disciplined approach to R&D investments.

If the company has acted conservatively until now, Stepien believes it has served them well. He discusses the future of CPQ technology as offerings like Dynamics 365 Product Visualize emerge, as well the company's Microsoft channel presence and why the company has succeeded while facing much larger competitors in the space.

MSDW: How will the recent investment by Featheringill Capital change the company?  

Christian Stepien: We've been organically growing since the beginning. So we've been limited by the cash coming in and it's always been a conservatively run organization [in terms of financials]. By going with Featheringill we now have this much stronger financial foundation that will support us, ensure our longevity, and accelerate growth.

They're going to help us with our back office procedures, more stringent financial controls, possibly some M&A to help accelerate the growth of the company. So it's a very positive step.

Tell us about the importance of being part of the mixed reality demonstration with Dynamics 365 Product Visualize and Mailbu Boats at the keynote of MBAS 2019.

We were really excited about that. We've been working hard with Microsoft for the last 2 months, it came together very fast. The Product Visualize product has come together extremely fast. We were talking with the HoloLens team late last year about mixed reality experiences for customers coming into their dealerships to actually configure a boat or a truck and see it in space. So this is the first manifestation of that where we've actually built an integration between Experlogix, the system the sales rep is using, and the mixed reality, which is putting it in front of the customer's eyes in real space to really experience it.

It's a more interactive experience. We built our own IP for 2D visualization last year. We have customers using that for some applications and that's built into our software. But the mixed reality was something that we partnered with Microsoft on.

For mixed reality applications like Product Visualize, I think it will take some time and there will be a little bit of a learning curve. The MBAS event was the very first presentation of this capability and we're going to work with Microsoft on the roadmap for where we can go from here, how it can be exposed out to partners and more marketing to get people excited about it. Microsoft really wants to promote this technology and CPQ is a great way to do it. It's a perfect use case for it.

What are the company's product development priorities going forward?

We're looking into AI capabilities, machine learning. We take most of our development cues from our customers and what they are asking us for. A lot of the feature enhancements that we do are very targeted toward customers that need [specific features].

That's one of the pillars of our success. We've built a product that is really targeted to what the customers really want. We don't just come up with new features because we think it's cool. We do some of that, but we listen to customer feedback, take feedback from user groups and conferences, and that determines our roadmap.

The other thing that we certainly do is stay in lockstep with Microsoft and make sure we are compatible with every product in the Dynamics product line, all the way from Portals through CE, through Finance and Operations, Business Central, mobile scenarios, offline with the Outlook client. So that there is a Microsoft opportunity out there we'll have a solution for it.

What are you hearing from customers now that has changed from a year or two back?

Everyone is out there is thinking cloud now, whereas even a couple years ago it still might have been 50/50 on-prem. The biggest momentum we see is in the transition. Financially it is great as we build up more of these recurring revenue projects, it helps the company. When we started with Microsoft, we were primarily on-prem and as Microsoft has gone to the cloud we've stayed in lock step with them.

We've been extremely committed to Microsoft. It's been our core focus. We've watched over the years as other CPQs come and go from the space. It's really interesting to see. I think we're committed and doing what customers want. And our software works and people really enjoy it. Another advantage is how easy it is to implement our software compared to a lot of alternative CPQ systems. So we've had people that have converted from various CPQs to Experlogix and they always remark how much faster our solution was put in place.

Another trend we're seeing is that we're certainly going much more global. We have projects now, big projects, all over the world. We have a project in Japan with Toyota Material Handling. We're working with Microsoft Consulting Services on that, they're going to be implementing in [various APAC countries] and will roll it out globally. That is a gigantic project for us and Microsoft. We just did Lexmark, a full conversion over from Google Apps and now they're on Microsoft technology. Some of our largest customers like PACCAR, maker of Kenworth trucks, that have gone live are now running 100 percent of their orders through the system. They've turned their own systems off and are now using Experlogix in their dealerships. That's a complex piece of equipment. We'll be going into Paccar Australia later this year. So it's really an exciting time.