Retiring the spreadsheet: quoting complex biopharma manufacturing in Salesforce.
How WNC Tech replaced years of Excel-based proposal building for a US-based Contract Development & Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) — using Salesforce Revenue Cloud, a custom Lightning Web Component (LWC) quoting experience, and PandaDoc-generated customer proposals straight from the Opportunity.
Client
US-based CDMO serving global biopharma sponsors
Industry
Biopharma · Contract Manufacturing
Platform
Salesforce Revenue Cloud
Scope
CPQ · LWC · PandaDoc · Approvals
Client Summary
A US-based CDMO, quoting the kind of work spreadsheets weren't built for.
Our client is a US-based Contract Development & Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) supporting global biopharma sponsors from early-phase development through commercial supply. Their commercial team had to translate intricate scientific scopes — drug substance, drug product, fill-finish, stability, analytical testing — into proposals that often spanned multiple phases, dosage forms, batch sizes, and timelines. All of it lived in a sprawling system of Excel templates, manually duplicated and versioned every time a sponsor came back with a change.
The Core Challenges
Excel was the system of record — and it was breaking under the weight.
Every proposal required pulling together unit ops, batch counts, dosage forms, analytical packages, and timelines — repriced for each sponsor and each iteration. The team needed a way to model that complexity natively in Salesforce, without flattening the science into generic CPQ line items.
Excel-Driven Proposal Sprawl
Quotes lived in dozens of versioned Excel templates passed between commercial, manufacturing, and finance. Pricing logic was buried in formulas, change history was lost, and two proposals for the same sponsor rarely matched.
Non-Standard Quoting Logic
Pricing depended on drug substance vs. drug product, batch size, number of campaigns, fill-finish complexity, stability study duration, and analytical methods — combinations that standard CPQ product bundles simply couldn't represent without losing meaning.
Slow, Manual Proposal Assembly
Each customer-facing proposal had to be hand-built in Word — copying figures from Excel, formatting tables, regenerating cover pages, and re-reviewing every section. A single sponsor change triggered hours of rework before the document could leave the building.
Fragmented Cross-Functional Review
Commercial, manufacturing, supply chain, QA, and finance all needed to weigh in on a quote — but reviews happened over email with attached spreadsheets. There was no single, authoritative view of what was being proposed to the sponsor.
No Audit Trail or Margin Visibility
Without a single system, leadership had no reliable way to see quote-level margin, win/loss patterns by service line, or who changed what on a proposal — making forecasting and governance painful and reactive.
Inconsistent Customer-Facing Output
Sponsors received proposals that looked, read, and calculated differently depending on which rep built them — a real risk in a regulated industry where consistency is part of the brand promise.
The Engineered Solution
Revenue Cloud, reshaped around how a CDMO actually quotes.
WNC Tech implemented Salesforce Revenue Cloud as the new system of record for quoting, and built a custom Lightning Web Component (LWC) layer on top so that the user experience matched the way the science is actually scoped — not the way standard CPQ wants to draw it. PandaDoc was integrated to generate a fully branded, sponsor-ready proposal from the Opportunity in a single click.
Custom LWC Quoting Experience
Replaced the stock CPQ quote line editor with a purpose-built LWC workspace: a batch & campaign builder, a process-step configurator, side-by-side scenario comparison, and a real-time price waterfall — all on a single screen shaped like the actual scope-of-work the team thinks in.
Revenue Cloud as System of Record
Modeled the CDMO's service catalog — drug substance, drug product, fill-finish, stability, analytical — in Revenue Cloud with the right product hierarchy, option constraints, and pricing rules. Every quote line now has a defensible, governed origin instead of a hidden Excel formula.
PandaDoc Proposal Generation
Integrated PandaDoc with the Opportunity so that a polished, branded customer proposal — with the right scope, pricing tables, timelines, and terms — is generated in one click. No more copy-paste from Excel into Word. Sponsors now receive a consistent, on-brand document every time.
Governed Approvals & Audit Trail
Built dynamic approval routing in Salesforce so that discounting, non-standard scope, and margin thresholds get the right eyes — from manufacturing to finance — before a sponsor ever sees a number. Every change is now tracked, attributed, and reportable.
Technical Implementation Highlights
BATCH & CAMPAIGN BUILDER LWC
Quote authors stack drug substance batches, drug product campaigns, and fill-finish runs visually — with batch size, number of batches, and yield assumptions flowing into pricing in real time.
SCENARIO COMPARE & PRICE WATERFALL
Side-by-side scenario comparison and a live price waterfall let commercial teams pressure-test trade-offs (batch size, scope mix, timing) before locking the quote — entirely inside Salesforce.
ONE-CLICK PANDADOC PROPOSAL
A single action on the Opportunity assembles the sponsor-facing proposal in PandaDoc — pulling scope, pricing, assumptions, and terms straight from Revenue Cloud with zero rekeying.
THE MOMENT IT CLICKED
"When the client saw the first end-to-end quote come together on screen — their scope, their batches, their numbers, their proposal — the reaction was instant: show this to every other team. Phase 2 was scoped before we left the room."
WNC TECH · SALESFORCE REVENUE CLOUD PRACTICE
Business Impact & ROI
From spreadsheet chaos to one source of truth for every quote.
The shift wasn't just digital — it changed who can build a proposal, how fast it goes out the door, and what leadership can finally see about the business.
Pre-Implementation
BeforeQUOTING SYSTEM
Dozens of versioned Excel workbooks passed between teams over email.
PROPOSAL ASSEMBLY
Manual Word builds — copy/paste from Excel, reformat, re-review every iteration.
CROSS-FUNCTIONAL REVIEW
Fragmented email threads with no single, authoritative quote view.
AUDIT & VISIBILITY
No reliable history of changes, margins, or win/loss by service line.
Post-Implementation
AfterQUOTING SYSTEM
Salesforce Revenue Cloud as the single, governed system of record — powered by a custom LWC quoting workspace.
PROPOSAL ASSEMBLY
One-click PandaDoc generation from the Opportunity — consistent, branded, sponsor-ready every time.
CROSS-FUNCTIONAL REVIEW
Dynamic approval flows route manufacturing, QA, supply chain, and finance — on one record, with full history.
AUDIT & VISIBILITY
Quote-level margin, scope mix, and win/loss now reportable in Salesforce — for the first time.
1
System of record for quoting (no more parallel Excel universe)
1-click
Sponsor-ready PandaDoc proposal generated from the Opportunity
5+
Cross-functional teams aligned on a single quoting workflow
100%
Auditable: every line, every change, every approval tracked
Commercial quoting & sponsor-facing proposals
Revenue Cloud, custom LWC quoting workspace, approval routing, and PandaDoc proposal generation — live for the commercial team.
Extending the same experience across departments
Manufacturing planning, project management, and finance hand-offs — bringing more teams onto the same Salesforce-native workflow the commercial team now lives in.
Why It Worked
We didn't flatten a complex CDMO business into a generic CPQ shape. We built Revenue Cloud and a custom LWC layer that matched how the team actually scopes, prices, and proposes biopharma manufacturing — and made PandaDoc do the rest.
— WNC Tech · Salesforce Revenue Cloud Practice
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