IBM Sterling CPQ transforms and automates configuration, pricing and quoting of complex products and services.
N/A
Salesforce CPQ
Score 7.7 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Salesforce Revenue Cloud (formerly Salesforce CPQ or SteelBrick) is built and delivered on the Salesforce Platform and Salesforce1 Mobile App which enables users to create accurate sales quotes quickly and submit error-free orders on the fly from any device.
Were it not for the fact that IBM CPQ lacks mobile and tablet applications, I would have recommended it 100%. However, I still have that 99% recommendation rate since this solution has saved us a lot by allowing us to close more sales within a short period by creating a channel where we collaborate with customers by offering coupons, sending price lists and orders.
What I like best is the ease of use to be able to track all opportunities and quotes in my daily sales tracker I also like the fact that you can reorganize the view for your opportunities. For instance, it is very similar to a spreadsheet where you can filter them by date, dollar amount, name, and several other ways. I found this to be less appropriate when we have to do multiple roles while assigning one task to multiple users. Column resizing within the Quote Line Editor is not supported in the Salesforce mobile app.
Salesforce CPQ easily maps to standard and custom fields within the opportunity in SFDC, allowing you to avoid time spent duplicating effort or copying and pasting deal criteria.
Salesforce CPQ connects directly to pre-determined price book, making it very easy to provide a proposal based on standard cost and/or add discounts to standard cost and reflect those reductions on the order form as appropriate.
Salesforce CPQ provides the ability for administrators to configure workflows for approval based on certain discount %'s on the standard cost, offering a quick and easy way to route automatically through the organization for approval.
Unfortunately, IBM CPQ does not have on-premises applications to use while not connected to the internet. This is no more a challenge since we have a robust WIFI connection in our organization premises.
Our Salesforce is very messy, which tells me it's not super easy to clean up.
I always have a really hard time removing a contacts from an account - it seems like you can't simply remove the relationship so we have lots of people named DO NOT CONTACT or things of that nature.
Sometimes when saving it doesn't seem like things actually save.
There have been some issues with multi-year pricing of certain products and services which we have been assured will be resolved but I guess are still underway, the support team apart from this has not been needed much and in the rare scenarios, it has been needed the resolutions of conflicts has been prompt and quick, so the overall support would have my high regards for being so helpful and customer-oriented so as to assure good performance of their toolset and customer satisfaction.
There are tons of Configure, Price and Quote software, but I have not used a lot of them. However, unlike IBM CPQ, HubSpot Sales Hub isn’t operated in compliance with any ISO standards and secured in a data center making it easy to leak customer sensitive data such as payment details.
There is no comparison to a fully functional instance of CPQ. Nothing comes close due to the amount of customization and ease of use that CPQ offers once it's fully built out. Other solutions may be easier to build or administer, but for the users and business needs, CPQ is the best solution possible.
Salesforce CPQ has helped a lot with overall visibility to the quote to order process. Reps have more insight into the business and the business has more insight into Sales Rep interactions. This makes troubleshooting issues much easier.
Our reporting capabilities have improved immensely. The ability to easily create fields allows you to capture new data points very easily.
Communication in Salesforce CPQ and Salesforce, in general, is a big improvement for our business. The ability to have a chatter feed on any object is very helpful. This can also be used for feed tracking to give some basic change management controls/history.
