Conga CPQ empowers sales, partners, and customers to efficiently configure complex products and services offerings, and provide personalized prices and quotes, utilizing codified product and pricing information - to drive higher win rates and a more pleasurable buying experience. Conga CPQ also helps to maintain a single price book, discounting structure, and quoting structure across all channels. With an API-first approach, configuration, pricing, or quoting capabilities that can…
$35
per month per user
Responsive
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
Responsive (formerly RFPIO), headquartered in Beaverton, offers their proposal management and automation software, featuring import and export, proposal knowledgebase and answer library, evaluation intake forms, and project management tools (e.g. Gantt chart) associated to proposal tracking.
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.
1. RFPIO is perfect for searching for specific information when you are responding to an RFP. Search engine is powerful. We narrow our search using several customized filters and know we are getting a thorough search. 2. Excel responses work very well in RFPIO. 3. Typical RFPs that are formatted in Word are challenging to run via RFPIO. We struggle with this. 4. We have yet to master the template.
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.
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.
Reporting and Analytics is basic, you can purchase advanced analytics though
It would have been nice to have a set structure in mind or a example/case study to structure our responses in the most appropriate way, but we are working through that with their stellar support team
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
UI is friendly. Basically that alone is enough to renew because it is easy to use and gives accurate and fast results. The effective cross collaboration from other colleagues in my organization also makes for this tool to be extremely effective. Now that I understand how to use it, I can also easily train others on how to use it effectively.
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.
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.
The team at RFPIO is extremely responsive. If I email our account manager or report a bug, I usually hear back within two hours. Additionally, they are quick to make software adjustments based on customer requests and needs. We had a really complicated Excel sheet that their team ended up having to upload for me because of the amount of manual work I was doing. Based on that, they updated the software within two release cycles to make the process more automated, so that future Excel uploads would be more streamlined. I have also had several suggestions implemented rather quickly, and they don't hesitate to reach out for clarification when needed.
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
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.
RFPIO has outstanding, responsive, helpful customer support located in the US in Oregon. Support techs go the extra mile to help with basic issues and functionality training. Same-day support response and problem resolution are the norms. The system is also very user-friendly and very easy to navigate. Their Answer library is simple and far less complex than Qvidian/Inland. Little to no learning curve.
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.
I don't have access to the actual ROI data, but we would continue to invest in RFPIO as a company only if it were providing us with the results to win RFPs.
RFPIO makes the task of filling out RFP responses much faster for me.
RFPIO helps our team be able to divide out RFP chores easily, because we know we all have access to the same high-quality source for information.
