What Is a Salesforce Approval Process
An approval process in Salesforce is a set of steps that automate how records are approved in your organization. It specifies the actions to take when records are submitted for approval, who must approve them, and what happens after approval or rejection. This process ensures that important business decisions and changes to records are reviewed and authorized by the right people consistently and efficiently.
What Is Salesforce CPQ Advanced Approvals
Salesforce CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) Advanced Approvals is an enhanced feature within the Salesforce CPQ module that provides robust and flexible approval mechanisms for quotes and pricing. Advanced Approvals extend the standard approval processes by adding more sophisticated functionalities to manage complex approval scenarios efficiently.
Key Components of Advanced Approval Processes
Approval Rules Configuration: Administrators can create a rule and specify the condition for the records to go through an approval process; you can also set up the email templates to be used for Approval, Recall, and Rejection actions. Admins also can configure the effective dates for the approvals to begin and end.
Approval Steps and Chains Approval chains allow the configuration of a series of approvers in a specified order. Each approver in the chain must approve the record before it moves to the next person.
Automated Notifications: The salesforce system sends automated responses to the users involved in an approval transaction for any action such as submission for approval, approved records, rejected records, and recalled records.
Visibility and Tracking: Advanced Approvals offer comprehensive tracking and reporting of the approval process. It maintains a detailed history of approvals and rejections, which is valuable for audits and compliance checks.
Differences Between Advanced Approval and Standard Approval:
Parallel Approval: This feature allows for both parallel and sequential approval processes. Parallel approvals can speed up the approval time by sending requests to multiple approvers simultaneously, while sequential approvals ensure a step-by-step review process.
For example, consider you have a quote record that needs to be reviewed and approved for the correct discounted price and correct legal document attachments. In this scenario, you can use parallel approval to get approval simultaneously from the Sales team and Legal team, respectively. There will be no need to wait for the other team’s approval.
Smart Approval: This feature is designed to optimize and streamline the approval process by reducing unnecessary requests. It leverages previous approvals to expedite the process. If a quote has been previously approved and the new changes do not affect the already approved criteria, Smart Approval reuses the prior approval, avoiding the need to go through the entire approval process again.
For example, consider you have three levels of approval for a quote, and the first and second levels are approved but rejected at the third level and sent back to the sales user. After the correction is made and submitted again, the first and second-level approval will be automatically skipped and directly go to the third level. In other words, CPQ advanced approval understands the history of approval for a record.
Dynamic Approval: This feature can be used to assign approvers dynamically based on the conditions met by the record. For example, a high-value deal might require approval from senior management, while a lower-value deal might only need approval from a regional manager.
Consider this scenario where you have a very big account that should be reviewed by the CEO. In this scenario, you can have a field to mark this as important and use it in the criteria to assign only this record to the CEO.
Delegated Approval: You can assign another user as a delegated approver for the required period without changing the user records.
Customized email templates: You can have customized email templates for Approved, Rejected and Recall actions.
Conclusion:
Implementing Salesforce CPQ Advanced Approvals empowers organizations to easily handle intricate approval processes, ensuring that every quote and pricing decision is thoroughly reviewed and authorized by the appropriate stakeholders. This leads to faster deal closures, reduced administrative burdens, and a more agile response to market demands. As businesses continue to evolve and face increasingly complex approval requirements, Salesforce CPQ Advanced Approvals stands out as a critical tool for maintaining control, consistency, and efficiency in the approval process.
