ConnectWise CPQ vs. Consensus vs. Emptoris

The most powerful features are the fact that you can see when your clients have viewed your quote, and that it can pull in real-time information about the products you are selling. It is all online-based, so you can use it from anywhere which is a big advantage over other quoting tools that I have used. We don't use the procurement capabilities, but for quoting pricing and customer visibility it works fantastically.

Incentivized

Within the last 6 months, I've run a personal A/B test on opportunities with and without Consensus videos being sent after every meeting. Those opportunities where I sent Consensus videos after every meeting had a >50% likelihood of closing and/or progressed past the Proposal phase. Those opportunities where I did not send Consensus video, I was left unanswered more often than not

If you have a highly bureaucratic organization that is heavily focused on procurement, Emptoris can provide some value. It seemed to be very good at linking the contract information to procurement for better spend control. If you are trying to implement a standalone contract management solution that allows you to easily create contracts and store them in a central location, this isn't the tool for you. There doesn't appear to be a simplified implementation. In general, when a SaaS solution has a complicated and expensive implementation, I am very skeptical. This does not show that the vendor is trying to move customers forward on a single code base. If that many things need to be done during implementation, you are starting to customize the solution for every customer. This hurts the vendor's ability to scale and make improvements in the future.

Incentivized

• ConnectWise Sell does an excellent job of neatly presenting quotes and proposals to the end user. There are multiple different options for the look and function of the quotes. There are also options for custom quote templates that are designed directly for your organization.
• ConnectWise Sell does a reasonably good job of connecting to and working with Autotask. It took our organization about 6 months to figure out the correct way to flow from quote to invoice with our systems. Sell will easily pull in your customer information from Autotask into a quote and allow you to send the quote direct from your email.

Incentivized

• The ability to tailor demos and demoboards to show various functionality of the product.
• We appreciate the features Consensus has to customize demos in various forms.
• The customer service and post-sales trainings the Consensus team has held for our company have been extremely beneficial. I personally appreciated learning how demos are better received when they're not 'perfect'

Incentivized

• Document protection - the Check Out contract feature is a great way to allow external parties to make modifications to contract language without the ability to accept those changes. Those redlines can then be imported back into Emptoris and reviewed or further modified as needed.
• Notifications & reminders - you can trigger an email manually from within the system, or you can configure automated notifications andreminders to alert users when a new task is received or has aged a given amount of days, etc.
• Interview wizard - there is a lot of value in the interview wizard. Administrators can configure screens with selecting options via check boxes, radio buttons, or typed-in values. Variables and conditions can be used to selectively populate fields within the contract or apply other options, making for a quick and convenient method to generate contracts conforming to corporate standards.
• Field customization - administrators can customize a list of options for various fields including contract substatus, address type, and user created business term variables.
• Approvals - many different options are available to configure approvals to trigger automatically upon presenting and/or executing the contract including specific individuals, one or more approver groups, or based upon various criteria including terms within the contract, type of contract, or the contract's owning organization.

Incentivized

• I'd like to see ConnectWise Sell develop a more user-friendly environment for advanced form and template design that doesn't require developer skills or consulting engagements. in order for us to develop these forms makes us reliant on consultants. These engagements are worth the cost, but sometimes we just don't have time to wait for them to be delivered.
• I'd like to see ConnectWise Sell automatically generate a quote for items such as warranties or services that are expiring in ConnectWise Manage. This would save us a tremendous amount of time preparing quotes.
• I'd like to see a new version automatically created when changes are made to a quote with the ability to reverse or revert back to a particular version. Sometimes people make mistakes and delete or change something they shouldn't have. Or customers want a change to version 1 only to change their minds when you send them the updated one, and want to go back to the original one.

Incentivized

• The front-end UX could be improved to look and feel more like a mature SaaS solution
• There's a limited amount of help resources to assist throughout the video building process
• I'd like to see more integrations with broader SaaS solutions to unlock more use cases (i.e. Engaging in group formats, long-form webinars, etc)

• Reporting, Emptoris comes with standard reports which can not always can be fit into our business. This needs to be improved. I hope Emptoris is addressing this issue in their latest releases.
• Though the feature of editing language in MS word is excellent, loading MS word takes time.

We are in our 4th year with Quosal and fully expect to renew again and again. With their development of additional features such as the Order Porter, Visual Quoting and others, we see the adoption rates continuing to rise while making our time to quoted shorter and shorter. Quosal and ConnecWise's vision of automated quoting is an exciting frontier that we are very happy to be a part of

Consensus has been a valuable and vital sales tool at every stage of our sales cycle. In the very early stages of prospect education, you can send videos to get them familiar and up to speed with our product without a solution consultant's involvement. It is also a very powerful tool at the later stages of the sales cycle, with the ability to tailor demos and intro videos and record exec alignment itro videos, which we have had great success with

Incentivized

There are a lot of new, exciting products coming out in every field and I believe that there is always something better right over the horizon. If it was my choice, I would review my usage of Emptoris and other software periodically to make sure I'm using the most efficient software possible.

Incentivized

Quosal is a very solid product with a LOT of functionality. Quosal has two main products that they offer, 'Quosal Sell' and 'Quosal Create.' If you are looking for an "out-of-the-box" or "ready to use" quoting software, I would recommend Quosal Sell. If you are interested exploring advanced functionality and integration or have a resource on staff willing to assume an "admin" role, I would highly recommend Quosal Create.

It only took me a matter of minutes to onboard myself to Consensus and start utilizing it with my clients. The platform is very simple to set up and straight forward to use. Most platforms take time to learn how to use and navigate but Consensus was very easy to pick up and use as a first time user.

Incentivized

Emptoris is a pretty robust tool overall. Learning curve is small and it is simple to use

Incentivized

I dont think we use this tool to potential

Incentivized

Have to wait till 11pm EST time to get someone knowledgeable. That sucks truly. Almost half my day is gone. They need to provide premium support, where I can contact a "real" Quosal rep, anytime of the day or night 24/7

Incentivized

The above rating for the overall support from Emptoris is for their product / product support, roll out training and refresher training / ongoing training, which is not only good but superior. There is no major or reconizable bad review that can be given to Emptoris at this point in time, from where is stands.

Incentivized

Great implementation, the Quosal team has a smart and well planned process to guide your team through the process. More importantly, they understand the challenges with change and user adoption.

Incentivized

When it comes to the quoting layout Sell gives you so many more customization options. The item inventory is also easier to maintain. Sell is by far the best selling module that I have used thus far and it has helped keep us more organized.

Incentivized

We did not find a similar solution that could provide the prospect experience Consensus provides. We did not seriously evaluate any other platform like we did with Consensus. Consensus allows your prospects to select their interests and only show them the relevant parts of your product. No other software we evaluated could do it like Consensus

I am a fan of Ariba to be used for the entire lifecycle of Sourcing. From RFX's to cutting PO's. I feel Emptoris misses the boat on the idea of a "One Stop Shop" for all of your Sourcing/Purchasing needs

Incentivized

Connectwise Sell is listening and building their software to fit the needs of their customers. Sell is consistently looking to us for feedback and making sure their product is working for us as partners/customers. We feel we are generally behind on getting to know their updates and software upgrades. They are a great vendor and wonderful corporation.

Incentivized

• Customer satisfaction improvement. It's an impressive and professional way to present information that our customers appreciate. They not only have a clear way of knowing exactly what is being proposed, but now have another method they can use to easily track and organize approved/ not-approved quotes.
• Improved brand consistency. We have a reputable, trusted image that projects across our client portfolio (not to mention within our community) and this system helps to promote and maintain our transparency and professional image.
• Following up and referencing past quotes is made easy and quickly, which has benefited us from a time-cost savings perspective.

Incentivized

• I closed 3 deals last year by prospects using Consensus and finding additional modules they wanted to purchase.
• Consensus speed up the buying process in 6 of my deals last year to close in quarter.
• Consensus saved me time from doing additional live demos.

• We won the 2005 Baseline Magazine Award for best ROI related to a technology implementation with an ROI 5544% (see 2005 Baseline ROI Awards, GlaxoSmithkline).
• We always felt we could do "two times the work, with half the people and deliver double the savings".

Incentivized