Lifecycle
Q2C (Quote-to-Cash)
The whole span from configuring a deal to collecting the money: CPQ, approvals, order, subscription, invoice and payment, treated as one process.
Quote-to-cash is the end-to-end path a deal takes from the moment someone starts configuring it to the moment the money lands: configure, price and quote; approve; accept; raise the order; open the subscription; issue the invoice; collect the payment; recognise the revenue.
It is named as one process because the expensive failures are not inside any of those steps, they are at the joins. A deal is priced in a spreadsheet, approved over email, retyped into a billing system and invoiced from a third place, and the invoice then disagrees with what the customer signed. Every handoff is an opportunity for the number to change.
The test of whether a business genuinely runs quote-to-cash rather than owning the pieces is simple: pick an invoice line and ask which quote line it came from. If answering that takes more than one system, the seam is still there.
Q2C is not a synonym for CPQ. CPQ is the front of the process. Quote-to-cash is the front, the middle and the end.