Conga Advantage CPQ vs. Maxio

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

SaaSOptics is awesome for growing companies that want to automate their invoicing. I like that it is also aimed at subscription based sales structures rather than sales that occur at a single point in time (but has the ability to support both). SaaSOptics makes it super easy to keep track of subscriptions, renewals, co-terms, etc. The reporting is a great feature, but we are unable to use most of the reports as we are a cash-based accounting firm. SO caters to accrual accounting and GAAP compliant firms which makes sense as it is the most commonly accepted accounting basis here in the US, but many small SaaS start-ups are still operating on cash basis. We are one of those companies, so we are able to get a ton of use out of the invoicing side of things, a lot of the reports are useless for us. We also wish SO had a commission module since we already integrate our CRM and accounting softwares into it, but that is not a make it or break it for us. We love the time SO has saved us.

Incentivized

• Fully integrated with Salesforce.com. Allows for the seamless update of all objects on the SFDC platform. As primary quotes are updated, so to are the opportunities.
• Supports integration with Avalara for Sales Tax and Docusign for E-Signature.
• Supports the quoting of product that requires customization that results in a dynamic cost, MSRP and customer price.
• Significant amount of R&D is being invested in to the platform. Many of the items on our wish list have already been incorporated as a standard feature or on the near term roadmap.

• Chargify's API is solid and easy to use, including JSON and XML interfaces.
• Chargify's customer service is responsive and thorough; always making sure your needs as a customer are met.
• Chargify listens to its customer base and their suggestions for feature enhancements.

Incentivized

• The GUI design of Apttus is configurable but prescriptive. If you want a very specific look and feel, it will take some effort to do so. There have been some modern design updates recently using AngularJS. Check it out to see if it works for you.

• We have contracts that are 12 months long but customers pay monthly. When terms change (raise or lower price) mid contract, changes are not easy.
• AR collection was an issue. However, SaaSOptics just released a report to track outstanding invoices and it works great.
• Integration with QuickBooks is OK but it isn't straightforward to issue a credit memo for a particular customer.

Incentivized

There are a few features that we expected from the tool but Cameleon's CPQ has fallen short on these. Possible enhancements and product fixes should be made as soon as possible to change the perspective. Unexpected bugs in the tool have come up during the roll-out that has caught the implementation team off-guard

They are a crucial piece of what we do. We hope to have them as a vendor for a long time to come.

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

There is definitely a learning curve - to me the UI for reporting was not intuitive and often required me to ask our RevOps to pull data for me

Incentivized

As a native Salesforce.com app, it's up as long as Salesforce.com is running.

We had to use an outside vendor to implement the software and we paid them for a while during the initial choppy months. I was learning as I went along and then we could occasionally reach out to Salesforce if we really needed to. I think the support is there, but you obviously have to pay for it if the admin team doesn't have enough experience.

Incentivized

They are willing to help with most challenges and are pretty easy to get ahold of by phone. They are limited in their reach, when it comes to bulk cancellations, along with some other bulk edits. It is no fault to them, Chargify is just a system that hasn’t been upgraded much over the years.

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

You need to have IT involved. The implementation partner downplayed the role that IT would have to play. We needed data migration, user set-up, customizations within Apttus for legacy migrations. Luckily we had a developer on our staff for Salesforce.com.

It has been too long for me to remember all the various CPQ products we evaluated. But our short list came down to Salesforce CPQ and and Conga CPQ. At the time, we considered them both pretty close to equivalent solutions for meeting our needs, so negotiation mainly came down to price of the solution, and estimates to implement. Now that we are migrating to Lightning, the balance has tipped very strongly in Salesforce CPQ's favour.

Incentivized

Maxio (via information we found on their website and in the initial sales call) seemed like the most comprehensive fit at the time and we liked the interface. We eventually found out that there was a massive gap between what was promised us and what was actually delivered. Below is an excerpt to an email that we sent to the technical solutions consultant and sales rep three months after purchase: "I am, however, frustrated that a solution promised in the demo call ended up being a solution that was so cumbersome that 1) no one knew how to implement it except [tech consultant], who I was never able to get ahold of 2) it delayed our launch by two months and resulted in real frustration for my team and thousands of dollars in lost revenue and 3) brought more effort and annoyance to our customers than we were anticipating. I'm bringing this to your attention because I strongly feel that there has been a discrepancy between possible solutions and actual solutions. It is frustrating to make a purchase decision based on features discussed during a demo call, develop a plan of action based on what was discussed, and then have to iterate for months on end. It is also frustrating to hear that something is an "easy" solution by one team member and then hear it is "difficult and not recommended" by another."

• It cost the company almost $1million in 3 years of licensing. It then cost us the business to implement it in 2.5 years over $5 million dollars internally with resourcing involved to roll out globally. There was no ROI, that was just to implement it as the business continues to not adopt the product.
• The adoption level of the product is ~25% of the business actually using the product.
• Business areas ended up hiring and spending something near $150k/year in human resources to use the system for the sales team because of the low adoption.

Incentivized

• SaaSOptics has helped decrease the time spent on month-end. Their reporting is always accurate and reconciling deferred revenue is no longer a headache.
• Increased accuracy in billing which has decreased the amount of invoice inquiries by our clients.
• Sped up the quote-to-cash process with Salesforce.com and Stripe integration. Sales orders are processed faster and customers are utilizing "buttons" on invoices to submit payment details.
• Increased our ability to stay on top of past due invoices with new collections module.
• The metrics in SaaSOptics has improved financial presentations by providing more insight into our business.

Incentivized