ConnectWise CPQ vs. Windward Core

ConnectWise Sell is great for Managed Service Providers and smaller IT shops who primarily do computer repairs and maintenance. The tool is generally good at everything it does, but I would not recommend using it for a company that sells IT equipment as its primary business. Quotes take a relatively large amount of time to build in order to get them looking good for the end user.

Incentivized

AutoTag is a brilliant solution for less complex reports where native Microsoft Office output is required. This is where AutoTag really shines. It's also appropriate in situations where our customers want to develop and maintain their own reports but don't necessarily want to commit an experienced data person or report developer to do the work. For complex report requirements that need JavaScript or considerable data manipulation inside the report templates, we will continue to look at other tools in our kit.

Incentivized

• It provides our company with a standardized quoting process. Everyone works the same way, uses the same templates, and generates a professional quote. Nothing gets left out or missed.
• Portal provides your sales staff and management with a complete view of their efforts. They see in real time what opportunities are in the pipeline, and how successful their efforts are when these opportunities are won.
• Provides a collaborative platform for our sales team to work on customer quotes. We can now have 2 or 3 members working in the same quote whereas before we had to wait for someone to free up the document before others could access it.
• It allows us to provide much more information in our quotes by attaching documents to the quote. Things like manufacturer specifications or brochures can now be easily attached into the quotes making it a presentation instead of a bunch of line items with numbers.
• ConnectWise Sell is customizable to meet the needs of my company. This is so important to us because similar products only allow you to do what they design it for. Our business changes regularly and we need our software systems to be agile and adaptive to it.

Incentivized

• AutoTag can easily be connected to virtually any data source. The wizard walks you through all the needed steps. This is very helpful in getting reports from multiple sources or departments.
• WindWard has put together a Wiki based user guide and has the best tech support I have ever worked with. For the rare occasions that we get stuck trying to convert a report the help is plentiful.
• AutoTag is built within the Office suite and is therefore able to leverage all the familiar features. This is very useful when you need to make reports useful and appealing.

• The first year we were using Quosal, they were consistently posting new 'How to' videos and live training sessions to help users become familiar with the software features and best practices. While those videos are still available, they are becoming less relevant with each software version patch. The help manual documentation should be updated with the software versions as well.

• It would be very helpful if it was possible for tag logic to handle an array of data. Without it, the syntax can become very verbose when there are multiple logical conditions to check.
• Most tags are only built to handle a single piece of data so it can be a little confusing when a query only appears to return 1 record.

Incentivized

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

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.

For the most part, the Windward report designer is intuitive for our users; but there are a few areas where it is less intuitive. In these cases, our users need to search Windwards support wiki site, or even contact their support technicians. This can also be due to the short time we've had Windward and our lack of knowledge.

Incentivized

I dont think we use this tool to potential

Incentivized

I have been in business for 30 years, we have about 30 vendors we have worked with or more. Connectwise is on the bottom, if you ask any MSP how you loose clients the fastest, it's all about response and support. Connectwise has not found that out yet.

Support is something they take pride in. Once an issue is raised, they are quick to respond and provide details on a fix. No complaints on support here.

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

Both tools have a very common feature set. Sell is different primarily in the fact that it is online software-as-a-service based deployment, rather than a local server based deployment. That gives it a major leg up. I can use Sell from anywhere in the world easily.

Incentivized

Prior to Windward, we were using an HTML to PDF conversion for our reporting solution. It required substantial development to create and modify our reports and the styling was never up to our standards. Windward has certainly helped decrease our time in developing and modifying reports and has also helped us greatly improve the styling of them as well.

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

• As a fully integrated solution, the ROI is impacted when a client gets stickier with our solution because they see the benefit of Windward.
• Support has been fantastic for our development team so that as we integrate the solutions we have a clear and clean design.

Incentivized