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Andrea Bowmen | B2B Commerce Practice Lead | ATG Consulting

ATG Cognizant: A Global Leader in Streamlining Quote to Cash Processes

Every business has two major focal points in its everyday operations: One is to constantly look out for business opportunities, and the second is to fulfill those opportunities with the utmost focus and efficiency. Once the opportunity is found, the process of Quote to Cash necessitates lots of customer-centered coordination and activity from every department in the business.

Each department has to work effectively to convince the customer that the best attention and service is being provided to them. In competitive times like today, following a traditional Quote to Cash business model could lead to many inefficiencies. Any lapse could cost businesses significantly.

To thrive in the contemporary business spectrum, integrating and streamlining the Quote to Cash process is a must. For organisations, an efficient Quote to Cash technology solution is no longer an option but a necessity to survive.

Providing contemporary cloud-based Quote to Cash solutions to corporations to transform and manage their customer and revenue technology platforms is Advanced Technology Group (ATG), a Cognizant Company.

The core specializations of ATG are in implementing CLM and SPQ, CPQ, and Billing systems. Today, it is in a unique position as a recognized global thought leader in Quote to Cash, with the top implementation position with three leading providers of cloud or platform-based CPQ and Billing Solutions. The company provides unique and differentiated value to its clients, ISV partners, and GSI partners.

In an exclusive interview with Insights Success, ATG’s Andrea Bowman, the Salesforce Commerce Practice Lead, discussed details of the company’s services, values, and accomplishments.

Below are the excerpts from the interview:

Please brief our audience about your company, its USPs, and how you help your clients achieve their eCommerce solutions needs.

ATG is a Cognizant company. It is a leader in Quote to Cash solution services to both commercial and large enterprise brands, bringing contemporary, boutique-style consulting to a global marketplace.

The company provides guidance and execution across our clients’ most complex and vital business processes. Our comprehensive CRM, CPQ, CLM, SPM, Commerce, and Billing expertise creates game-changing efficiency and advantages for our clients.

We are among Salesforce’s most sought-after implementers of both B2B Commerce on Lightning and B2B Classic, utilizing our proprietary Atlas Framework® to deliver successful projects on time and on budget.

Companies have long been adopting ‘As-a-Service’ cloud applications across the entire Quote to Cash workflow to increase agility in their operations. Yet many approaches these deployments like point solutions, making costly mistakes, and slowing time-to-value.

We help CIOs balance technology investments with supporting people and process initiatives to ensure successful implementations. Our deep domain experience with cloud application implementations spans the entire ATG Monetization Ecosystem®.

What are the core values upon which your company is built?

Our culture is the character and personality of our company. It’s part of what makes ATG unique and is the sum of our values, beliefs, traditions, interactions, behaviors, and attitudes.

We are a people-first company. We invest in and nurture long-term relationships with our clients and associates. We encourage diversity and respect the individual. In addition, we are flexible, easy to work with and do the right thing. We believe in the exponential power of collective wisdom and skills. We foster cohesive teams. We strive to deliver value every day. We recognize excellence and celebrate success.

Moreover, at ATG, we fully engage and approach each day with optimism, passion, and humility. ATG regularly looks for new and innovative ways of solving problems. Our company values courage, creativity, and resourcefulness. We promote continuous learning within the organisation and are committed to continuous growth, development, and application of knowledge. We are stewards of our company and communities. Last but not least, we build trust and credibility in everything we do.

Tell us more about your company’s offerings and the aspects that make it stand out in the competitive market.

ATG mainly provides services in the below categories.

A] Advisory Services

Quote to Cash Vision & Strategy Solutions

ATG provides a full range of Quote to Cash vision and strategy solutions to help mid-and large enterprise clients compete in today’s rapidly evolving service industries.

Whether your company is just starting to explore its monetization options or has completed exhaustive due diligence and needs expert affirmation, we can help. ATG has the experience and the know-how to help guide your company through the important decisions required to stay competitive in today’s business landscape.

ATG is also a trusted strategy resource for M&A Investors and the Quote to Cash Vendor community in general. Our deep knowledge of the Quote to Cash landscape and storied telecom heritage gives us a unique perspective on managing customers and revenue in subscription and usage-based environments.

B] Implementation Services

ATG has always had a passion for developing reusable content to accelerate successful outcomes for our clients and to fuel the growth of our business. With the emergence of the Solution Center approach, the need for training, tools, and methodology was enhanced. ATG now benefits from over 20 years of dedicated focus on building proprietary tools and intellectual property (IP) to support our reputation as a Quote to Cash thought leader and premium implementation partner.

The cornerstone of our IP is our Atlas Framework®, which is a suite of implementation methodology, training, and tools that reliably enables on-time and on-budget delivery of cloud-based CPQCLMSPMCommerce, and Billing solutions. ATG has leveraged the Atlas Framework® to enable hundreds of production Go-Lives in the last 18 months.

C] Application Support Services

ATG’s Application Support Services offering provides a contingent workforce solution that helps businesses scale IT and technical support resources to meet a variety of needs in a short amount of time.

Being an experienced leader, share your opinion on how the adoption of modern technologies like AI and ML has impacted the salesforce solution space and how is your company is riding the tech wave?

In my opinion, AI has changed the way that businesses interact with their customers. They now expect a completely seamless experience. Salesforce was on the right track with Customer360 but the introduction of AI and ML has taken this to the next level.

These technologies made way for increased automation, analytics, and insights from customers based on past interactions. They also allow the site/system to be more proactive instead of reactive to customer needs. Together, they help in predicting the best products, suggesting additional searches, or support resources to allow customers to find answers without the help of customer service reps.

What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into providing eCommerce solutions?

It’s obviously very important to have an understanding of the commerce space and to focus on the customer’s journey, but don’t stop there. To create a solution that will be successful for the business as a whole, we must look at their entire Monetization Ecosystem™. Commerce is not a siloed domain. There are many implications, both upstream and downstream, that must be taken into account. Our focus may be on commerce, but we need to ensure that the entire business’s people, processes, and technologies are aligned.

How do you envision scaling your company’s operations and offerings in 2022 and beyond?

As Salesforce has been expanded their offerings within the Commerce Cloud space – our team has spent a lot of time and effort scaling up in their new products (OMS, B2B2C, etc.) We are also working to grow our relationships with other partners within our ecosystem (Stripe, Logik.io, etc.)

In terms of scaling our team, Our ‘AIM Higher’ training program offers a very talented pool of resources to grow our team when the time is right. The 12-week training program includes a week specifically for Experience Cloud/Commerce, which has allowed the resources that have joined our practice to hit the ground running.

Our team has also been dedicating a lot of time and energy to developing IP and accelerators to help support future projects. This includes Commerce-specific tools to be included within our Atlas™ methodology and a repository of custom components that allows us to decrease development time when creating customizations on a project.

We have such a talented team, it has been awesome to see our senior resources step into leadership positions. We will continue to prioritize team development and growth opportunities. (We had 4 developers move into the SA role this year.)

The Passionate Leader

Andrea Bowmen is the SF Commerce Practice Lead at ATG Cognizant. She started her career with ATG Cognizant as a member of the inaugural Aim Higher training program, after graduating with Business Management and Marketing degrees from the University of Montana. Upon completion of AIM Higher, Andrea continued her education on the Salesforce platform and spends the majority of her time consulting as a Solution Architect.

Additionally, Andrea has also worked as an Implementation Consultant, Business Analyst, and Software Engineer on multiple B2B Commerce implementations. In addition to her role for ATG Cognizant, Andrea works to create reusable solutions and training to scale up the ATG Cognizant Commerce practice. Her passion lies in helping other resources develop their skills and designing successful client solutions.

Acknowledging Words

“I think the ATG approach – the whole Atlas methodology – is very consciously about delivering an ATG-branded experience. The job isn’t done until your client is positioned to thrive in an accelerating and rapidly changing world, and that’s just a standard of performance that makes ATG pretty special.”

  • Peter Coffee, VP, Strategic Research at Salesforce