Conga Advantage CPQ vs. DocuSign vs. PandaDoc

It is well suited to providing quick pricing recommendations, allowing those who are quoting to get our agreements out efficiently. Where I find there may be some limitations is around the details that it uses to establish recommendations and the overrides. For example it would be nice to have a way to set overrides for those criteria like length of agreement, etc. and have it apply across the board

Incentivized

This product is well suited in the use case that I provided before: when it comes to onboarding employees and providing a clear channel for decision making for human resources, this is an excellent tool to accomplish that. I would say the weak points is when you have back and forth communication with users that it might seem a little redundant to have that back and forth communication in that scenario.

Incentivized

Best suited for after demonstrations when requested by the prospect when they are looking for pricing with T&C. The data room is also great that acts like a drop box for opportunities and their contacts. Helps share pertinent information with others in the organization.

Incentivized

• 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

• Ease of sending the same document out to multiple recipients, at multiple locations, for multiple signatures
• Quick turnaround - once the recipient signs the document, we receive notification and the document back immediately
• Can resend, alter, change, and/or add to the email and/or document that is sent out very easily
• The recipient can save the document after signing, so they too have their own electronic copy for their records

Incentivized

• Allows clients to remotely execute documents.
• Tracks the progress of document execution.
• Emails clients to remind them to sign documents so we don't have to follow up.
• Emails us when documents have been fully executed.
• Provides an easy-to use interface to place signatures, dates, and other information on our forms.

Incentivized

• Our number one complaint with Conga CPQ has been speed. In my experience, Conga CPQ is extremely slow, especially for large orders.
• In my opinion, the configuration methods of Conga CPQ are outdated and error-prone. One literally puts configurations into string-based custom settings, including the API field names. This often leads to deployment issues and run-time configuration errors.
• In my experience, Conga CPQ is everything but simple to develop. You need things like a 12-step pricing callback to support custom pricing.
• In my experience, Conga CPQ support is not responsive.
• When it comes time to lock in a renewal contract for Conga CPQ, in my experience, they delay engagement, so you are truly behind the 8 ball when it comes time to decide if you are going to continue with Conga CPQ.

Incentivized

• Tracking, particularly when collecting signatures through connected applications, such as an ATS, is not always clean or easily traceable.
• Formatting documents to handle electronic signature types (signatures, initials, etc.) is not always easy, and highly dependent on the partner's technology.
• It is not convenient to have to use DocuSign as a stand alone product if the signatures are required for 3rd party applications. It definitely excels on its own, but the scope of that usage, at least for us, is slim.

Incentivized

• Sometimes the fillable fields don't automatically map properly and you have to manually adjust.
• Plan tiers and pricing recently changed, so now we get less value and less features (limited templates, no more pricing tables or invoicing/connected payment) for the same price, which is pricy for a small business.
• Easier, integrated invoicing as an included feature (so we don't have to use a different software for invoicing/payment collection) would be ideal. You have to upgrade to the Business Plan for this.

Incentivized

The rating is based on several things: 1) Ongoing support requirements being able to be addressed by cross training existing Salesforce administrators 2) Apttus superior corporate vision for the quote to cash space 3) Apttus execution of the corporate vision with automated agents (Max), and Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning offerings to leverage the investment in Configure Price Quote 4) Apttus corporate health and investment in the product line

Incentivized

I can't imagine doing business without DocuSign now. I would never want to go back to the way we used to do things. The "new way" is "the way" is "the right way." We can honestly be proud of a "one right way" process and not have to suffer through "5 ways for 5 days."

Incentivized

The reason I gave it a rating of 7 is because it's probable, but not for sure. This is because there are a few little things we don't love about pandadoc. Mostly that there is not conditional logic such as: they must either fill this field out OR this one. Also it's a little pricey. But we'll probably stay because it's good enough and a pain to switch to something new

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

Generally user-friendly once you have command of the basics, but also has a lot of nuances that can make it difficult to train others on. DocuSign University is a helpful tool, but understandably a lot of content to get through to become a well-versed user. A lot of different functionalities but only a few I use on a weekly basis.

Incentivized

Once you get the hang of it, it's very easy to use. There can be a slightly steep learning curve to get fully in on the system. The new editor v2 has really improved usability and allows us to collaborate on documents simultaneously. Once the templates and library items are set up, a new document, whether it be a sales or HR document, takes very little time to complete.

Incentivized

I have not heard of any issue

It does not go down. I have had zero issues with DocuSign, approaching 4 years.

Incentivized

We haven't had any real issues regarding downtime as of yet.

Incentivized

Everything loads quickly. Reports are generated in a reasonable time. No noticeable difference in integrated software processing speeds.

Incentivized

The documents load quickly for the most part but sometimes if there are larger documents with a high number of variables it could take a bit longer to get the document to show up. Most of the time the document comes on the screen relatively quickly allowing for quick access to documents to be edited and sent out.

Incentivized

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.

I'd give them a 10, but there has been 1 or 2 small cases that seemed to fall to the wayside, but I was able to call them up and get them resolved. We were having a bad implementation night (after midnight) and we needed assistance from Docusign. They were able to get an engineer to help us in the early morning hours

Incentivized

Recently I could not upload a pdf to a contract - support was very responsive and easy to work with. They got back to me the next day with an apparent fix - however when I opened the document nothing had changed. I then could not respond to the rep who was helping me because it was a "no-reply address", the problem still has not been solved and we had to make alternate arrangements to get this to the client. Never had it happen before and was only with this one contract.

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

Docusign is super easy to use, and apart from a few administration details, there was really nothing to train on. Post implementation, there were issues with configuration of auto-filled documents with the integrating 3rd party. That training required some time, because the DocuSign expert took the time to walk me through the 3rd party's configuration (how often does that happen?) so I could see how DocuSign should be best used to overcome weaknesses in the 3rd party platform. 10/10 expert care.

Incentivized

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

Until you get the hang of it, I recommend doing several internal tests before sending a document to a client. As I mentioned earlier, you have to go through a bit of trial and error at first to verify that the workflow works as expected.

Implementation was before the time I was here at Riafox, however, support has been great in assisting to merge spaces and upgrade to 2.0 Editor.

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.

There has never been anything that we could really compare to Docusign. We have tried sending documents in a PDF version, but that was not nearly as efficient. DocuSign saves your signature in the system and uses that as it goes through your documents.

Incentivized

We used Dropbox back when it was still HelloSign. At the time, new templates were very hard to create. We had to upload a PDF and then add the fields from there. With PandaDoc, we are able to drag and drop the text, images, logos, and fields we need easily. This has saved our team an immense amount of time.

Incentivized

In my years of using DocuSign, I have never had an outage. I haven't even encountered a bug.

Incentivized

It's scalable

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.

• Less paper use, faster signature times, less time standing at the printer/scanner to send documents to yourself
• Security over your signature! Security over your company's signature and authorization to approve projects, cash flow etc
• Love audit trails and the seamless tracking of the status of the document

Incentivized

• We have greatly increased the efficiency in which we can get signatures from individuals for documents and increase productivity.
• We have been able to find older documents very easily.
• W-9 have been very difficult due to Section 3, but this was addressed with conditional logic

Incentivized