Enterprise deals do not have ten line items. They have two hundred, sometimes more. The same CPQ quote page that loads in 2 seconds for a small quote takes 30 to 45 seconds for a large one. Sales reps avoid editing because every change triggers a recalculation that hangs the browser. Quotes get split into multiple smaller quotes (because the system cannot handle one big one), which then have to be reconciled manually.
The bottleneck is rarely "CPQ is slow in general." It is usually one of five specific places, and the fix preserves the pricing logic rather than throwing it away.
Bottleneck 1: Price Rules with broad evaluation scope
Price Rules evaluate on quote calculation. Each rule with broad criteria (e.g., "applies to all quote lines") iterates over every line. With 200 lines and 30 Price Rules, that is 6000 evaluations per recalculation.
The diagnostic: count Price Rules in the org. Count rules with no scope filter or with overly broad scope filters. The combination of high rule count and broad scope is the smoking gun.
