Conga CPQ vs. CobbleStone Contract Insight®

I think the case when I would recommend Conga CPQ is in a legacy org. In that case, the older style and configuration might be more useful, and you are less likely to find yourself forced to upgrade to lightning. If you are already using lightning, or migrating to lightning, then I would only recommend Conga CPQ if the alternative does not support the features you need.

Incentivized

We use Cobblestone for all of our contract types across the company. We had a phased roll-out which helped get us live fast and share experiences with other departments for their implementation. the fact that it can support the different department and contract type scenarios were the biggest selling point. We are confident that it will evolve with us as we grow and acquire.

• The perceived power strength is that it is supposed to contain CPQ, Contract Management, Document generation and template manipulation, and cash/invoice process all in one wrapped package.
• It was developed on the Force.com platform.
• They provide multiple releases of their product per year.

Incentivized

• The Cobblestone reps are great to work with.
• Cobblestone is easy to use and setup. Our users caught on quick.
• CobbleStone has a nice user-interface.
• CobbleStone's mobile app is a plus.
• Cobblestone integrates with a lot of other systems we use.

• Apttus has not completely transitioned from a product suite to a product platform vendor. Upgrades of certain products can have interoperability issues with other products in the Apttus stack. Our pain point here was attempting to use Apttus Xauthor for Excel to get around product line limitations in the Apttus CPQ shopping cart. The ultimate resolution was for us to upgrade and leverage the latest version of CPQ, where pricing callback limitations were addressed by client side processing, rather than the hybrid Xauthor process we tried to use.
• Upgrades in general require significant testing to ensure no unanticipated issues occur. We have a complete Salesforce sandbox dedicated to providing an environment for testing any modifications or upgrades.
• Apttus support model almost requires you to purchase premium support. Given the CPQ system is complex, the level of skilled support available through basic support require you to escalate several times before getting to a resource that can address your issue.

Incentivized

• They are great to work with.

It is critical to our sales process. We are not satisfied with all aspects of the product and have gone through many tough experiences with their PS, support, and PD teams -- but we're not unhappy enough to re-build what we're already built

Incentivized

Cobblestone has been great for us. I expect that we will work with them for many years.

Conga CPQ is a great tool but lacks good support and [a] very limited knowledge base which doesn't include day to day errors which users face, thus leading us to support and take more time in turn. Also cart performance can be improved drastically which will enhance the user experience as the user doesn't have to wait for the pricing.

Incentivized

We were please to see the fast user adoption with Cobblestone. We used their training services and were pleased with the delivery. The system also includes helpful videos and step-by-step guide. Cobblestone has out of the box dashboards that we used and tweaked to meet role-specific needs. The user interface is easy to understand.

I have not heard of any issue

Tier1/tier 2 support can only handle native functionality. Customizations have to be escalated to developers which aren’t included in the support program.

I go ahead and copy the people I directly worked with on implementation for assistance. I would rate them an 8 for support assistance.

Cobblestone's support is responsive and reliable. We use their self-help content and their standard support.

We attended 5 hours worth of webinars early on.

We had to understand how objects worked to figure out how to structure our data.

I would have liked more in-depth training but it would have been an additional cost

Be iterative. Take the opportunity to build a catalog based on how Apttus works well. Learn the tool yourself or use an SI. Take the time to build a configuration / pricing migration tool with X-Author for Excel or roll your own. Stick with OOTB Apttus as any customization will cost you every time a new version is released

Incentivized

We selected Apttus CPQ over SteelBrick due to the simplicity of SteelBrick's out of the box pricing and ability to customize quoted products. As a global organization with selling a highly configurable products, we felt the ability of Apttus to handle our requirements as standard functionalty rather than a customization was a material difference between the platforms.

CobbleStone is the easiest contract management system to use. The setup took less time than expected and was under budget. The system flexibility was another selling point for us. The other systems seemed OK for one type of contract but didn't seem to support the variety of contracts that we have. It has been great for third-party contracts as well as authoring our contracts from templates and clause libraries.

• The ability to generate engineered configurations that is right by construction has reduced the cycle time of the customer engagement. The fact that we are able to guide the process and end up with a validated bill of material reduces the iterations with the customers.
• As long as the validations rules are correct the generated bill of material is accurate. We are now looking at using Apttus to perform quality checks in our product rules since the tool is able to test different configurations quickly and efficiently.
• Configuration that use to take weeks and consumed valuable engineering resources has been transformed to become a customer facing application that is simple enough for customer to self-service.

• Easier contract request process
• Faster legal reviews
• Simpler workflow and approval processes
• Improved contract compliance
• Easier contract authoring and negotiations
• Faster contract signatures
• More secure contract repository with user permissions
• Better contract analytics