Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review For design automation for SOLIDWORKS, I feel Tacton Design Automation is the best solution out there. It's simple to develop and implement for the design/engineering department. But can be implemented within the sales team as well with Tacton CPQ. When a company has products that are modular and/or have many sizing updates, this is where Tacton excels. If you have products that are completely customized, then Tacton or even design automation isn't the best suited for that.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Tacton has a non-linear solver, meaning it can solve lots of equations without them being is a particular order. This enables the software to be incredibly flexible. Tacton has a great interface to set up configurators for people to use. No knowledge of programming languages is required. The configurator uses equations similar to Excel equations to control what the users options are. Tacton has the ability to easily add lists of data like product lists, beam or pipe sizes that because available for user selections or for calculations. The Tacton configurator also automatically builds the user interface as you set up user inputs making it much easier to set up then competitor software. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review Layout mode is probably the most lacking aspect of the software (within Tacon Design Automation Engineer). Something so powerful as having modular parts should be more heavily supported. Although, I've heard Tacton is focusing on updating this with better functionality. The constraint editor does not display complex/lengthy constraints very well. I end up using Excel to visually break out in cells the different aspects of the constraint. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review Reliability and Availability I have not heard of any issue
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Online Training 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
Read full review Implementation Rating 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
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review Drive Works is the main competitor for the TactonWorks module of Tacton. We actually discovered DriveWorks and purchased it before we discovered Tacton and started to use it. Once we discovered Tacton we liked it so much better we dropped using DriveWorks and switched to Tacton. I think you could accomplish what you need to in DriveWorks, but it is easier to setup in Tacton and Tacton has alot of features that really can make your product configurators nice
Read full review Return on Investment 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. King Ou Director Systems and Solutions
Read full review Time to produce submittals went from 1-2 weeks down to a couple of days. Then, once approved, normally to produce the fabrication drawings (70+ unique parts) it would take from 4-6 weeks. We can get it down to as little as a few days. Read full review ScreenShots