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 I recommend this software to all companies that make their own products, as it helps them with all the sales management, from product creation, details, and features, to sales with customers, invoicing, and budgeting. It has worked very well for us and we have had no major problems.
Inés Prieto R&D / Product Development Engineer - Quality
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 Verenia CPQ gives us the facility to configure a product at the moment of viewing it in our end user delivery, under the option of being able to build a code of the final product and that this is done step by step. Verenia CPQ has an incredible system which gives to enjoy every moment using the program, being able to automate all the training sessions with a continuous support contributing to the tranquility of each client. Verenia CPQ allows us to go deep through great solutions, based on the creation of hundreds of systems that have been successful over time. 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 Bringing existing products into the software was a long and tedious process. We had many customers and products at the time we purchased the software, so getting them all into the software took a long time. I wish they could make this process go faster. We wanted to integrate the software with our CRM program to bring everything into the same system and it was impossible until technical support helped us and we were able to solve it. The configuration of the product, although very detailed and very specific, is also long and sometimes even complicated, we would like the process to be more automatic. Inés Prieto R&D / Product Development Engineer - Quality
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 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 Verenia CPQ has expanded us in the current business making our profits surpass records from several years ago. All of our employees feel secure and confident because of all the tools that Verenia CPQ has given us over the years. Read full review ScreenShots