Just as it is difficult to see the entire forest when you are lost in the trees, making sure every step of a sales relationship is followed and enforced can be difficult when you are struggling to keep up with day-to-day tasks.

Quote-to-cash processes can provide a trail of bedcrumbs that helps lead a sales team through the forest to the clearing—or goals—at the other end.

Quote-to-cash processes is a catch-all term for all of the business processes used in selling a product or service to a customer — from the opening offer to collecting the final payment.

Software systems, such as Kenandy, that automate quote-to-cash process typically include tools for configuring the initial offer, determining the price, offering a quote, handling the negotiating process, developing invoices, fulfilling orders, receiving payment and ensuring that appropriate renewal renegotiations take place. The technology behind quote-to-cash software is driving a $570-million-dollar industry, that has been demonstrating a 20 percent growth rate year over that is expected to continue until at least 2020.

Each of these steps are designed to help sales teams focus on their daily tasks without losing track of the bigger picture.

In this editorial from SupplyChainBrain, Rajat Bhargav and Dave Shidler of Oracle, cite increases in total revenue of up 10 to 15 percent, increase in sales per customer of 10 to 15 percent, increases in cross sales and up sales revenue by 20 to 35 percent, sales cycle times increasing by 25 to 50 percent, reductions in order processing errors of 20 to 30 percent, and a reduction in cycle time of roughly 10 percent for organizations that adopt quote-to-cash processes.

Here are five ways quote-to-cash solutions can help streamline your business processes:

1. Ensure Project Goals are Met – Often customer orders will require a business to ensure that many specific and often unique needs are met. Quote-to-cash systems can help with this challenge by giving the sales team a way to track each of these needs by giving them access to templates to make sure each promise made to the customer is tracked and enforced. This in turn helps to make sure that nothing critical slips through the cracks and helps improve customer satisfaction and overall approval.

2. Speed Up Proposals — Quote-to-cash tools also make it easy for companies to create proposal templates to ensure that sales teams are able to rapidly gain access to the appropriate product, pricing, and benefit information that can be then quickly assembled and provided to prospective buyers. This can help create faster turnaround times and reduce the time to final payout.

3. Improve Contract Negotiations — Many quote-to-cash systems give customers access to a library of contract templates containing approved language, usage guidelines, and even pre-approved alternative language that they can leverage for their contracts. Other features include intelligent wizards that will guide users through contract creation process and flag contracts that do not fit with approved guidelines. This guarantees that nothing gets lost in the contract-creation process and that all of the key provisions are contained in the final draft.

4. Dynamic Contract Adjustments — Quote-to-cash systems also allow users to automate the steps necessary to update contracts and ensure that as they are reaching their expiration date, sales teams are notified and can begin taking actions to ensure the relationship is maintained or renewed.

5. Settlement Processing — Resolving the transaction is just as important as any other phase in the quote-to-cash process. By giving users tools to create correct and accurate invoices, quote-to-cash systems can help companies improve the process of going from initial order to cash cycle and improve the overall customer experience. Additionally, quote-to-cash solutions can also help track key customer information to ensure that proper follow-ups are made to bring about new relationships with existing customers.

Long story short, quote to cash give companies an easy way to automate a large number of their most important processes to ensure that nothing critical gets lost among the ongoing challenges of driving a sales-focused operation. These solutions provide a powerful guide to keep you from losing your way as within the daily wilderness of modern business.