Conga Composer vs. Smart Communications SmartCOMM

Our proposal templates use Microsoft Excel, which Conga Composer is able to communicate with quite well. These documents have complex formulas so are not able to be created in a mircosoft program that doesn't support that. There are several limitations we've had to overcome, include how data gets pulled in and is read which caused us to have to use creative ways to implement those data pieces and still requires some manual template editing once the document has been created.

Incentivized

It is well suited for creating templates on the fly. This is not suitable for handling very high volume printing for which Exstream is more suitable.

• It is positive that Conga integrates with and is operated within SFDC
• Conga allows users to tag any document with dynamic fields that map to SFDC and send it out for signature
• Conga allows us to consistently produce quotes with the correct SKUs, Terms, & conditions at scale

Incentivized

• Template
• Data processing
• Output delivery
• SMS delivery
• Ada compliance

• Initially, it is hard to comprehend as the setup process is a bit complex. More user adoption tools, such as tutorials and resources, would help.
• Sometimes the error message is very generic and hard to troubleshoot.
• Better UI would also be a plus.

Incentivized

• Price
• Licensing is bit complicated
• Frequent upgrades

Though I love how easily Conga Composer ties into Salesforce and its given analytics, it takes a lot of data entry to get up and running. I don't love that sometimes queries can take a long time to pull. I like keeping our marketing templates consistent via templates in the system. Pulling multiple objects into one report is fantastic too.

Incentivized

It's a fairly simple tool to integrate into your current business structure. When we've had issues, we were able to resolve them extremely quickly. The users click a button and it can bring in all the quote lines, and our credit application seamlessly into our tool. I'd definitely recommend it to other colleagues

Incentivized

It was available, it just didn't always work depending on what glitches were happening within our app

Incentivized

This product appears to work well. It was not a fit for us this time, but we would consider in future

It's been hit and miss depending on the issue. We use javascript to generate the urls which has confused many techs even though it generates a clean url - they are overwhelmed by the concept of code and can't understand that the url is all that matters.

Incentivized

It was painful internally to build out all of the templates, but the actual implementation of the product was okay.

Incentivized

I think Nintex is the primary competitor for Conga Composer, but I have not personally used it. I was not present for the decision to purchase Conga but I would recommend it in future document automation vendor selection processes because I have seen how well it works! We are especially fond of complementary features in Conga Composer, including Conga Email Templates and Conga Global Merge.

Incentivized

Much better cloud adaptation. Migration capabilities of SmartCOMM, its portability, and ease of implementation.

Not fair. Its an upfront cost and then pay per use

Incentivized

We used it for something simple and it was still a pain to use

Incentivized

Needs additional training on what they are selling, how to install and use to explain to customers

Incentivized

• Could really use better error handling on the product when the document doesn't generate. Zero notifications are provided right now and have no idea where in a 20 page template the error is. Need to keep cutting the template into pieces to find the error.
• The report generates 90% of the time so far.
• Getting easier to generate templates when knowing how the JSON will be structured to add to merged fields.
• Use Work Plan Template Entries and Work Steps to dynamically generate many deliverables.

Incentivized

• Migration ease
• Latest features
• Cloud readiness