Consensus vs. Oracle CPQ

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

I think CPQ had worked so well for our company because of the widespread nature of our associates and tracking orders that were being placed in multiple time zones. My team specifically needed a way of analyzing these orders to track our progress in real time and sort out any supply orders before they became an issue. If you are in a centralized location with a smaller team then this may not yield much use to you.

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

• Leveraged automation to minimize headcount costs despite 10% year-over-year business growth, and enabled staff to focus on more strategic tasks.
• Established a flexible CPQ system that scales on demand to easily accommodate the company’s multiple global locations.
• Improved customer relations by reducing configuration time and allowing sales more time to meet with customers and close orders.

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)

• Significant setup time, cost, and maintenance. We have to use an implementation partner
• Does not always play well with other software, even Oracle software. While this is improved and being further improved, that it was a third party acquisition means things sometimes require a little extra care
• Additional setup documentation and first walkthroughs would be helpful, especially if it was all in one place

Incentivized

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

So far it is all good with BigMachines, looking for new features since Oracle acquisition has created a lot of expectations. We have outlined our limitations (out of box functionality) in our periodic customer successor advice meetings for a while, hope we get a resolution soon. Also, the BigMachines user license fee has increased a lot in the last three years.

Incentivized

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

The software UI can be as complex or as simple as you need it to be (depending on the business). It does require training others on quote configuration and the order in which to build out order positions prior to configuring a quote. Once users are trained;however, it is fairly straight-forward. The UI is still more static than other new wizard/drag-and-drop models, but it get's the job done

Incentivized

Other than one day two years ago and an hour or two a few times since then due to data center outages, it has been very reliable

It depends upon the day however there are so many failure points with online services, including our internet service, that this is probably closer to 9 with the latest version

Some specific support personal was good and fixed some problems fast using proper solutions. But when one of them went to sleep when we had critical issues and they do unreported commits to our production environment which caused issues and they were hiding it?? you can not give more than a two (maybe even that is too much). They also failed to add a feature for us which also bring the grade down.

They have pretty good training. Our business analysts have been able to go to entry and advanced level training. They have a train the trainer model. Our business analyst attended training, then trained the rest of our staff.

It was a much more technical implementation than we thought. It involved much more code.

Future releases have made and will make administering the tool easier.

EDL consulting had one good developer, but when he was moved off, they were horrible to work with.

The BMI sales team does a “BOA” or a “Business Operation Assessment” which is extremely valuable, not only for them to scope an implementation and get more reach within the organization, but it is also a documentation of business process that most organizations don’t have. It highlights inefficiencies and allows for correction during implementation.

Having a dedicated team (in-house) for implementation is key

Consensus is simple and does what it does very well. It doesn't try to be a deal room software, so they partner for that space. It did not try to be an AI transcription solution at first, so they partnered for that space. They continue to listen to their customers, improve the solution where it matters, in ways that drive the core use case of buyer enablement. I appreciate that they haven't over-indexed on fringe use cases and keep improving what their solution does very well. We continue to get very strong feedback from prospects

Incentivized

Oracle engagement is ahead. They are active in the development of the tool and provide great support after implementation. They also listen to their customers and offer opportunities to feedback and provide input through activities like the customer advisory board forum.

• 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.

• Increased Sales Rep efficiency. Being able to create multiple quotes ACCURATELY and quickly was a game changer.
• Large implementation time. It's a little difficult to fit BMI into a SCRUM style build, with multiple working models and prototypes of all 3 simultaneously.
• A larger fee for licensing and implementation cost. ROI wouldn't be realized in the first year.