Revenue Cloud - N28tech

In March 2025, Salesforce announced the End of Sale for Salesforce CPQ. For existing customers, this means you can continue to renew and maintain the product, but no new licenses, features, or innovations will be added going forward. In other words, CPQ is still running, but it’s no longer evolving. This also means migration is inevitable. In Part 1 of our Revenue Cloud Series, we’ll cover why Salesforce made this decision, what it means for current CPQ users, and how Revenue Cloud is positioned as the path forward. Why Salesforce Moved On From CPQ Acquired from SteelBrick in 2015, Salesforce CPQ was a powerful step forward at the time. But after nearly a decade, its limitations became harder to ignore for companies with complex quoting and revenue operations. The Managed Package Problem: CPQ is Not Salesforce-Native CPQ runs as a managed package on top of Salesforce, not as part of the core platform. This creates fundamental limitations: Performance bottlenecks with large product catalogs Sales reps tend to experience noticeable slowdowns when building quotes with extensive product lists, delaying response times for customers. SOQL query limits during complex quote generation Complex deals frequently hit query limits, causing timeouts mid-process, forcing reps to restart or manually split quotes. Inability to leverage Salesforce’s latest AI and automation capabilities CPQ users can’t take advantage of innovations like Einstein AI or advanced automation, leaving their sales teams behind the rest of the Salesforce ecosystem. The Innovation Drought: CPQ Doesn’t Receive Salesforce Platform Advancements CPQ hasn’t kept pace with Salesforce’s platform-wide investments in AI, automation, and modern user experiences. For example, users haven’t been able to leverage native Einstein guidance, Agentforce capabilities, or the latest Lightning improvements, leaving sales teams working in an older tool while other parts of the Salesforce ecosystem evolve. The Technical Debt Reality: Heavy Customization Creates Fragile Systems Many companies using CPQ end up with heavily customized implementations full of workarounds. Companies often find that Salesforce CPQ requires significant customization to handle edge cases or performance issues in large implementations, which can increase maintenance costs and make systems more fragile over time. The Transparency Issue: CPQ’s “Black Box” Pricing CPQ often functions as a pricing “black box,” where sales teams and customers have limited visibility into how discounts, taxes, and markups are applied. This lack of transparency can slow approvals, create confusion, and add extra steps to the quoting process. A Better Alternative to CPQ: Salesforce Revenue Cloud Revenue Cloud is Salesforce’s native, end-to-end revenue management solution, designed to unify quoting, pricing, contracts, orders, and billing in a single platform. Revenue Cloud isn’t CPQ 2.0 — it’s a fundamental rethinking of revenue management. Built natively on Salesforce’s Einstein 1 platform, it addresses every limitation of the old CPQ approach. Image Source: Trailhead Salesforce The Architecture Advantage: Built Natively on Salesforce Unlike CPQ’s managed package approach, Revenue Cloud is built directly into Salesforce’s core platform using standard objects. This means: Better performance with large datasets and complex pricing Native AI integration with Einstein and Agentforce out of the box Modern Lightning UI that feels like the rest of Salesforce API-first architecture enabling headless commerce and omnichannel experiences The Seven Pillars of Revenue Excellence: End-to-End Revenue Management Revenue Cloud Advanced is organized around seven core capabilities that cover your entire revenue lifecycle: Product/Service Design – Centralized catalog management with flexible bundling Pricing Management – Dynamic pricing with complete transparency Configure, Price, Quote – Enhanced CPQ with real-time guidance Contract Lifecycle Management – Built-in contract creation and management Order Management – Seamless order processing and fulfillment Billing – Integrated billing for all revenue models Revenue Intelligence – AI-powered insights across operations The Pricing Edge: Better Transparency with Revenue Cloud Revenue Cloud resolves CPQ’s “black box” pricing limitations by introducing pricing waterfalls that show exactly how every price is calculated—list price, discounts, taxes, markups—in real time. Sales teams and customers alike gain clarity on how a quote is built, reducing back-and-forth and accelerating deal closure. Understanding Your Revenue Cloud Options Salesforce offers Revenue Cloud in the following configurations: Revenue Cloud Growth: The comprehensive solution that replaces CPQ with Order and Asset Lifecycle Management. Revenue Cloud Advanced (RCA): The comprehensive solution that replaces CPQ, while also adding contract management, order orchestration, and basic billing capabilities. Revenue Cloud Billing (RCB): Available separately or as an add-on to RCA, this option provides advanced billing functionality such as usage-based pricing, automated collections, and revenue recognition. What This Means For Your Business If You’re Currently Using CPQ Salesforce continues to support existing CPQ customers with renewals and maintenance, but no new features or innovations will be added. To stay current with Salesforce’ AI enhancements, automation, and modern revenue management capabilities, it’s recommended to migrate to Revenue Cloud. This migration is not a simple upgrade — existing configurations, customizations, and integrations must be reimplemented and carefully configured from scratch to align with your business processes. While it requires effort, this investment is worthwhile: it replaces an obsolete system, reduces technical debt, and ensures tight integration with Salesforce’s modern platform. Planning and acting now gives your organization the time to allocate resources and execute the migration efficiently. It also ensures access to advanced AI capabilities that CPQ doesn’t provide, while minimizing disruption before outdated processes create friction. If You’re Evaluating Revenue Management Solutions Within Salesforce, Revenue Cloud is the obvious enterprise-grade choice. It not only replaces CPQ but also future-proofs your revenue operations by bringing the entire quote-to-cash cycle onto one unified platform. The Strategic Opportunity This migration from CPQ to Revenue Cloud represents a fundamental shift from point solutions to unified platforms. Companies that make this move now will have significant competitive advantages: Faster quote generation with AI-powered guidance Unified customer experience from quote to cash Better insights with integrated analytics Future-ready architecture for whatever comes next Attribute Salesforce CPQ Revenue Cloud Status End of Sale; renewals supported but no new licenses or features Actively developed with ongoing features and releases Platform Fit Managed package on top of Salesforce; limited alignment

How Penumbra Scaled Its Commercial Operations with N28’s Health and Revenue Cloud Expertise

August 20, 2025 n28tech

Customer Stories Customer Overview Company Name: Penumbra, Inc Industry: Medical Device Company Size: 5,500 employees Mission Statement: Penumbra, Inc., the world’s leading thrombectomy company, is focused on developing the most innovative technologies for challenging medical conditions such as ischemic stroke, venous thromboembolism, pulmonary embolism, and acute limb ischemia. Our broad portfolio, centers on removing blood clots from head-to-toe with speed, safety and simplicity. By pioneering these innovations, we support healthcare providers, hospitals and clinics in more than 100 countries, working to improve patient outcomes and quality of life. Key Services/Products: Neuro: Neuro Thrombectomy System, Neuro Embolization Technologies, Neuro Access Catheters, Neurosurgical Devices Vascular: Peripheral Thrombectomy Platform, Peripheral Embolization System, Vascular Access System, Coronary Mechanical Thrombectomy Website: www.penumbrainc.com/ Social Media: LinkedIn The Challenge To stay competitive in a dynamic market, Penumbra set out to strategically transform its commercial sales operations. With increasing complexity across product offerings and customer expectations, they needed to respond swiftly to market changes and continue to deliver customer value while driving cross-functional alignment. Key challenges included: Establishing a centralized view for enterprise-wide visibility: Without a centralized view of customer intelligence across sales, marketing, and operations, teams lacked the degree of visibility needed to make faster, accurate decisions. Complex workflows limiting sales productivity: Manual pricing and quoting workflows created friction—diverting sales talent away from strategic, high-value initiatives. Fragmented insights into market opportunity: Growth signals existed across systems, but without a consolidated analytics and market intelligence layer, it was challenging to proactively identify growth opportunities and expand high-potential accounts Aligning infrastructure with global scale: Existing infrastructure required improved flexibility and resilience to support Penumbra’s global expansion and future business needs. Customer Quote Why N28 Technologies? When Penumbra set out to transform its commercial infrastructure, they chose N28 Technologies for their ability to align innovation with execution, deep Salesforce expertise, and proven track record in delivering scalable, growth-ready solutions. What stood out: Strategic Execution: N28 demonstrated a strong track record of translating complex business needs into scalable, actionable Salesforce solutions. Cross-Functional Collaboration: N28 worked closely across sales, operations, and IT, ensuring the solution aligned with Penumbra’s broader commercial goals. Deep Technical Expertise: With a highly skilled team, N28 delivered a robust Salesforce implementation designed to scale with Penumbra’s evolving needs. Proactive Partnership: N28’s hands-on, collaborative approach helped accelerate delivery and maintain momentum throughout the project. The Solution To modernize and scale its commercial operations, Penumbra partnered with N28 Technologies to implement Phase 1 of a comprehensive Salesforce CRM and CPQ solution. This strategic initiative was designed to centralize customer data, optimize pricing and quoting workflows, and empower sales teams with greater visibility into key accounts—all while setting the stage for long-term growth and automation. N28 Technologies brought deep Salesforce and medtech expertise to architect a tailored solution that met Penumbra’s regulatory, operational, and commercial needs. Key features of the solution included: Customer Master in Salesforce: A unified customer master record was created to serve as a single source of truth for account data. This allowed sales, marketing, and operations teams to collaborate more effectively with shared, real-time visibility into account information. Lead and Opportunity Management: N28 implemented customized Salesforce workflows that supported Penumbra’s focus on high-value medical device accounts, including VAC (Value Account Committee) opportunities. These workflows streamlined pipeline management, improved follow-up discipline, and aligned sales activity with account-level strategy. Salesforce CPQ Integration: Penumbra’s pricing and quoting processes were transformed with Salesforce CPQ, introducing automated workflows that reduced errors, improved turnaround times, and ensured pricing accuracy across products and customer segments. System Integration: N28 ensured seamless integration with Penumbra’s existing ERP systems, including SAP, to sync customer records and pricing contracts. This alignment laid the foundation for end-to-end commercial automation and supported Penumbra’s broader goal of building intelligence-driven sales operations. Future-Ready Foundation: The solution established a flexible sales infrastructure that has positioned Penumbra to scale efficiently and respond to future market demands. Together, these components delivered a connected commercial ecosystem that not only improved present-day execution but also prepared Penumbra for future digital transformation initiatives. The Results With Phase 1 of the Salesforce CRM and CPQ implementation complete, Penumbra realized measurable improvements in operational efficiency, pricing accuracy, and commercial agility. Key results included: Faster and More Accurate Quoting: Automation through Salesforce CPQ reduced manual effort, accelerating quote turnaround time by 15-25% while improving pricing accuracy and enhancing the overall sales and customer experience. Greater Operational Alignment: Improved cross-functional alignment through centralized customer data and governance in Salesforce, with sales, marketing, legal, pricing, and operations now working cohesively within a unified system. Real-time Visibility into Sales and Marketing Performance: Enhanced visibility empowered data-driven strategies and better decision-making. Increased Agility in Responding to Market Demands: Integration of Salesforce CPQ with backend systems streamlined pricing and order management, enabling Penumbra to respond more quickly and efficiently to customer needs.