Product Configurator runs entirely inside Business Central, on sales quotes and sales orders, and it does not include an out-of-the-box interface for running the configurator from inside a customer relationship management (CRM) system. It is also a different kind of product from a dedicated configure, price, quote (CPQ) platform such as Experlogix, even though both fall into the same general CPQ category. Whether Product Configurator reduces the need for a separate CPQ tool depends on how a company plans to use it, since the two take different architectural approaches to the same problem.
How Product Configurator Handles CRM Connections
The BOM Designer, Bulk Configuration Builder, and Rule Builder are all Business Central pages, and there is no built-in web or customer-facing configuration screen included with the app. An application programming interface is available for building a custom front end, such as an e-commerce site or another user interface, and some Insight Works customers have used it for that purpose, but building and maintaining that front end is a separate project rather than something the app provides out of the box. Because the item, bill of materials, and routing that the configurator creates are standard Business Central records, any existing integration a company already has between Business Central and a CRM system, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, continues to work with configured items the same way it works with any other item. What is not included is a way to launch the configurator’s option selection screens from inside the CRM itself.
Comparing Architecture Rather Than Feature Lists
Product Configurator and Experlogix both let a non-technical person define configuration rules without writing code, so a feature-by-feature comparison of rule building capability does not show a clear gap between them. The more meaningful difference is architecture. Product Configurator runs natively inside Business Central and writes ordinary Business Central master data directly, a real item from a number series, carrying its own production or assembly bill of materials and routing. A separately hosted CPQ platform instead manages the configuration in its own system and hands data back to the ERP, which typically means an integration layer between the two systems. Whether that difference matters to a specific company depends on whether the priority is a single system to maintain or a dedicated CPQ platform with its own feature roadmap.
Licensing Is Part of the Comparison Too
Product Configurator is licensed per company with no limit on the number of users, and quoting a configuration only requires a Business Central Team Member license. Third-party CPQ vendors typically do not publish pricing, so a direct cost comparison requires requesting a quote from each vendor.
Relevant Tools
Product Configurator is the Insight Works app covered here, turning option selections made on a Business Central sales quote or order into a standard item, bill of materials, and routing, without a separate CPQ platform or CRM-embedded interface.
Product Configurator is not a CRM-embedded tool, and it does not run inside a separate CPQ platform. It is a native Business Central capability, so the decision between it and a product such as Experlogix comes down to whether a company wants configuration handled inside Business Central itself or through a dedicated CPQ system integrated with the ERP.