Conga CPQ vs. Five9

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

Five9 is suited for both large-scale and small-scale companies. If your company deals with marketing more than the technical aspect, Five9 gives a mode of communication and getting in touch with our customer or client in the most reliable way rather than setting physical meetings. In the covid period, Five9 has made it easier to work on calls.

• 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

• Easy dialing and call logging. The process of starting or answering a call, then logging a call disposition with its notes, is simple and easy.
• Voicemail drops. You can pre-record voicemails to leave for customers without needing to speak the voicemail content each time. This is a huge timesaver for our reps.
• You can customize the call dispositions / call labels to match what's used in your CRM.

Incentivized

• 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

• Java based desktop application is a pain to keep updated.
• The user interface for the agent desktop application is clunky and outdated. It could use a facelift.
• The help center for documentation isn't well organized and the documentation needs substantial editing.

Incentivized

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

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

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.

Five9's Customer Support team is also based in Manila Philippines, thus turnaround email response times for our reported issues are great for our requirements. Their CS agents also facilitate mobile calls to followup on outstanding issues and operate on a 24/7 schedule. We've also had experience working with the senior tech agents to investigate recurring issues to completion.

Incentivized

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.

Initially selected Five9 but have since switched to RingCentral which has given us what we needed. Better CRM integration, simpler and in my opinion more robust reporting capabilities and the same omnichannel solution at a fraction of the cost

Incentivized

• 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.

• Cost savings: Five9 replaced a premise-based outbound dialer and a different virtual call center solution for inbound.
• Cost savings: Five9's voice over IP is less expensive than the land lines we were using.
• Cost savings: Five9 requires significantly less management than our previous solutions.

Incentivized