Gartner defines customer management and experience solutions as part of business support systems (BSS) solutions for CSPs, and as commercial off-the-shelf software solutions that address CSPs’ all customer-facing operational requirements. This includes managing customer channels, customer information, incidents, products, pricing, quotes and offers, order and partner management. CM&X solutions often work together with revenue management and monetization solutions as part of a complete BSS stack.
Gartner defines configure, price and quote (CPQ) applications as software that enables sales organizations to automate and optimize the creation of quotes and capture of orders. A CPQ application is a sales tool that captures the new goods and services a customer wants to buy or the changes a customer wants to make to existing goods and services. While generally focused on assisted sales channels, CPQ capabilities such as product configuration and pricing must be shared with the self-service commerce channel. The new purchases and changes must be priced and a binding contract must be formed with the customer before sending an order to downstream fulfillment systems.