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…
$35
per month per user
SMARTe Data Platform
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
A provider of sales and marketing data, SMARTe offers a data platform for revenue teams and professionals, boasting more than 300 companies around the world have boosted revenue growth and improved marketing ROI using the platform's capabilities and data, that include: -270+ research analysts -300+ customers -153 industries -200+ countries -91+ million job titles - 15+ years of global experience
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
SMARTe was purchased to serve three purposes. To to act as a secondary source of enrichment to another product. Our lead qualification processes rely on accurate data being populated and enriched. SMARTe boosts our enrichment rate by 20% in some areas vs our other supplier. We performed this analysis during renewal which confirmed their complimentary functionality in this area. From this point of view it runs silently in the background without maintenance making it perfect for our needs.
The ability to correctly classify free Text job titles into segmentable values. Most enrichment platforms will provide values with a job title they provide which is ok, but SMARTe will categorise any title we send regardless of if they match the contact. This has a large impact to how we can successfully make use of our data from segmentation to Lead Scoring.
New contacts - we have two options here, download straight from their humungous dataset using the filters provided (including being able to upload accounts to match). Or, use their bespoke service which ranges from desk based research to GDPR compliant phone qualifies contacts. One area that could improve is the integration with HubSpot. A robust API means we have managed to integrate, but Native integration would be preferred.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
We use them to compliment each other, there are areas that Clearbit provides matches that SMARTe does not and visa versa. This applies at both a contact and an account level. Where SMARTe really stands out (for me) is the ability to classify any provided Job Title. This really has dramatic impact to our processes. Clearbit does have a native integration that offers data refresh.
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.
