CPQ to ARM in Benelux: Closing the gap to the agentic dream
Joost Van Elsuwé joined a Salesforce-hosted panel on CPQ to ARM migration at World Tour Brussels this week, alongside Brian Galdino, Joel Bynens and fellow partners. Our Reditus team was in the room, talking to customers and partners throughout the day. The questions were sharp. And the conversations confirmed what we hear from Benelux companies constantly.
Most of them are not standing still but also not moving forward.
Where Benelux companies are today
When ARM (Agentforce Revenue Management) comes up, the reaction is usually some version of: “Our CPQ works. We’ve invested heavily in it. Why would we change something that isn’t broken?”
It’s a fair question.
CPQ does what it was designed to do: automate quoting, enforce pricing rules, speed up the sales cycle. For most companies in this market, it was a real investment and a genuine step forward.
But the world doesn’t stand still. New needs arrive, markets shift, and someone builds a workaround to keep up. Then another. The system was never designed for this, and it shows. Five years in, the ROI still holds. But performance has quietly plateaued, and the gap between what the business needs and what the system can deliver keeps growing.
That’s where a lot of Benelux companies are right now. Not broken. Just stuck.
The Agentic dream… and the gap
Salesforce’s direction is clear. ARM is not a CPQ upgrade. It’s a different platform, built natively on Salesforce core, covering the full revenue lifecycle from quote to cash to renewal.
The design shifts from quote-centric to customer-centric. Instead of everything orbiting the quote object, the customer sits at the centre, with full visibility across their whole lifecycle.
That’s the promise. And for companies still running a heavily customised CPQ, there’s real distance between where they are and where that starts. The gap isn’t mainly technical – ARM’s capabilities are stronger than CPQ’s. The problem is organisational: the weight of accumulated customisation, processes that have grown around the system’s limitations, and the entirely reasonable reluctance to disrupt something that, on balance, still works.
What ARM actually fixes
CPQ breaks down at the edges: complex bundles, non-standard deals, renewals managed in spreadsheets, finance team is chasing revenue recognition in a separate tool. Your sales rep doesn’t have a clean view of the customer because the data lives in four places.
ARM puts it on one platform. Agents handle the repeatable work. The exceptions that used to require a workaround either disappear or get handled by a defined process.
That’s not an upgrade to how quoting works. It’s a different starting point entirely.
CPQ to ARM: what the conversation looks like from where we stand
This is the territory Reditus works in every day, and it’s what Joost brought to the panel. A few things came out of the discussion worth saying.
Start by asking why.
Before any conversation about migration approach or timeline, someone needs to answer: what’s the actual business problem we’re trying to solve? What can’t the current system do that the business needs? Without a clear answer, the project drifts. The technology gets implemented. The value doesn’t follow.
Treat it as a business transformation, not a technical exercise.
Finance, legal, operations, back office all have a stake in how this gets designed. Getting the right people in the room from day one, particularly finance which is often the last consulted and the first impacted, is not optional. It is the difference between a migration that sticks and one that creates new problems.
Invest in the design phase.
One of the clearest lessons from early ARM implementations: invest twice as much time in design as you think you need to. For every customisation in your existing CPQ setup, ask honestly: was this built because CPQ couldn’t do it natively, or because the business genuinely needs it? Many customisations that have accumulated over years no longer serve a real purpose. Migration is the opportunity to remove that weight, not carry it forward.
Don’t bring everything over.
Around 80% of legacy data in a typical CPQ environment has very limited ongoing use. Focus migration effort on active contracts and live quotes. Trying to migrate everything is one of the most common ways projects lose momentum and budget.
On timing: waiting has a cost.
Salesforce has confirmed at least five years of continued CPQ support, so there is no emergency. But every year of delay means more customisation accumulating, more technical debt building, and less runway to plan and execute properly when the pressure eventually arrives. The right time to move is when there is a clear business driver and the organisational bandwidth to do it well, not when a deadline forces the decision.
What this means for Benelux organisations right now
ARM isn’t the right next project for every Benelux company. Some aren’t ready. Some genuinely don’t need it yet.
The ones who get it right treat it as a business decision from day one. Not an IT migration, not a platform refresh. A decision to redesign how revenue works, with the right people involved and a partner willing to push back when the approach isn’t right.
The window to do this well is open. It won’t stay that way indefinitely. If you’re starting to ask the question, we’re happy to have the conversation.
