Why we built CPQ Express—the quoting platform mid-market services teams asked for

Enterprise CPQ was “overkill”. Spreadsheets weren’t enough. Our partners made that clear, so we built an AI-powered quoting tool that filled the gap.

Provus CPQ Express is a lightweight AI CPQ for services teams that have outgrown founder-led pricing and quoting, but aren’t a fit for enterprise CPQ software. It turns project requirements into accurate, margin-aware quotes, with AI handling scope structuring, resource allocation, and pricing. No configuration overhead, long implementation timelines, or admin dependency that enterprise-grade tools carry.

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The moment the workaround stops working

Picture a sales rep at a 40-person IT services firm. A new opportunity comes in. They spend days assembling a quote, cross-referencing a rate card spreadsheet, chasing approvals over email, and manually re-entering everything into HubSpot, Salesforce, or Kantata.

By the time it reaches the client, the window may have already shifted. But time loss is only the most obvious problem.

The CEO is the only person who can price a complex engagement. The Head of Delivery finds out how a deal was scoped after it’s already been sold. And margins leak across most projects.

So, what CPQ Express was built to answer was:

“How do you know exactly what you can sell, profitably, before you sell it? And how can you do it fast?”

Not every customer needs the most powerful services CPQ tool in the room

Last year, we were talking to CXOs at several of our partner companies, all services businesses, about how they were handling quoting. They were caught between having to use enterprise CPQ tools that were simply an “overkill” for their situation, and quoting through spreadsheets and endless email threads.

They weren’t wrong. Our own enterprise solution was built for genuine complexity: multi-region contracts, custom SLAs, and deeply configurable approval chains. That’s exactly what global services organizations need. But for a growing services company pushing out four quotes a week, that richness becomes a real friction.

These conversations got us thinking about what the right quoting tool actually looks like for teams at this growth stage.

The answer was Provus CPQ Express.

“We were very clear about one thing: it had to feel light for the user, but still be serious CPQ under the hood. That balance became our north star.”
— Nikhil Tayal, India Site Lead

Easy to master. Powered by $5B in pricing intelligence.

One constraint guided the entire development: it had to be effortless to use, but still pack a serious quoting infrastructure and intelligence under the hood. We didn’t want to build a quoting template or a glorified form builder.

Provus already powers over $5B in services pricing intelligence at the enterprise level. CPQ Express now applies the same pricing logic to teams who couldn’t access it before, without the implementation overhead.

“We didn’t want another tool that looked simple on the surface but broke down the moment things got real. At the same time, we weren’t going to drag in the weight and complexity that slows teams down. The goal was simple to say, but hard to get right—make it intuitive enough for everyday use, without compromising the depth needed for real-world service quoting.”
— Nikhil Tayal, India Site Lead

→ Give CPQ Express a test drive: Start a free trial today

Prompt in. Accurate, editable, margin-aware quote out.

Instead of building quotes from scratch, CPQ Express starts with a prompt. Describe the project scope, goals, and rough constraints in natural language, and the AI structures it into a complete, editable quote.

Provus CPQ Express then reads your pre-defined service offerings and rate cards to suggest realistic totals, discounts, and add-ons, removing “gut feeling” quoting out of the equation forever. As your team closes more deals, the recommendations get more precise, making our professional services quoting software act like your best sales reps.

How CPQ Express handles professional services quoting

Quoting products is fundamentally different than quoting services. Instead of establishing project cost based on a unit price, in services you need to understand who does the work, for how long, at what rate, and with what seniority mix. Get any of those variables wrong, and margins erode before the contract is even signed.

CPQ Express handles that natively: service catalogs, role-based rate cards, effort-based pricing, and add-ons that map to how work is scoped and delivered in reality. Its resource-aware pricing means your margin is protected every time the scope shifts because change requests get priced accurately.

Approval structure and standardization without the overhead

CPQ Express gives growing services teams the quoting controls they actually need: approval flows, quote versioning, and audit trails that show what changed between initial draft and final approval. It connects to the CRM stack you already use, moving quotes from drafted to approved to delivered fast and accurately.

Who Provus CPQ Express is built for: Mid-market services teams

Provus CPQ Express is quote-to-delivery software built for founder-led or early-stage services teams that have hit the ceiling of ad-hoc quoting, but aren’t ready for enterprise CPQ yet.

CPQ Express sits precisely between a comprehensive enterprise quoting solution and generic product-focused tools that don’t understand how services are scoped, staffed, or priced. Our services CPQ software is purpose-built for services, light enough to get running in days, and smart enough to help you scale profitably.

CPQ Express is a focused answer to specific problems hiding in plain sight across thousands of growing and mid-market services companies.

If you’re ready to move beyond founder-led sales, start a free trial today and start scaling your sales motion. Or book a demo if you’d rather have us guide you through the platform first.

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