Nobody buys "a vehicle". They buy a variant, plus registration, plus insurance, plus the tow bar, possibly plus the extended warranty someone remembered to offer. The gap between "a vehicle" and that actual bundle is where dealership margin lives — and where it leaks, one forgotten line item at a time. CPQ for machines is the discipline of making the bundle a data structure instead of a memory test.
Three kinds of component, one model
A configurable product carries a component structure with three behaviours:
- Mandatory components are forced into every explosion of the parent — and the line cannot be deleted. Registration charges, statutory insurance, the OEM-required kit. This is the anti-forgetting machine: the quote is complete because incompleteness is impossible.
- Optional components with defaults — the extended warranty, accessories, service packs — presented at quote time with sensible defaults, quantity bounds, and rules about what can be edited. The upsell happens because the screen asks, every time.
- Configurator choices — the pick-one-of-N decisions, walked through interactively with live pricing.
Explode everywhere, identically
The subtle requirement is not the structure — it is that the same explosion runs in the opportunity, the quote, the order, the invoice, and for that matter the purchase order and the repair estimate. The moment two documents explode differently, "what did we actually sell?" becomes a reconciliation project. One component engine, many documents, byte-identical behaviour.
Price by rule, approve by exception
The configured bundle prices from customer-specific pricing and running schemes; discounts beyond policy route to approval, and the approval stamps the quote and every line. The quiet consequence: the salesman's discretion is spent negotiating, not remembering — and the sales manager's attention is spent on the exceptions, which is where it earns.
Warranty as a component is the sleeper feature
Model the extended warranty as an optional component and three things happen downstream: the attach rate becomes measurable (it's a line, not a habit), the price is governed (it's a rule, not a mood), and — because invoicing a contract item creates the service contract automatically — the sold warranty exists operationally the moment the invoice posts. The configurator is not just quoting the machine; it is quietly setting up the next five years of the relationship.
In the product: vehicle CPQ and the product configurator; where the sold contract goes next: service contracts & auto service leads.