IBM Sterling Configure, Price, Quote

Score8 out of 10

15 Reviews and Ratings

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What is IBM Sterling Configure, Price, Quote?

IBM Sterling CPQ transforms and automates configuration, pricing and quoting of complex products and services.

Categories & Use Cases

Quote sharing/sending
Salespeople can share quotes and quote details with customers, via email, a customer portal, a personalized URL, or some other means.
Category average: 9
Product configuration
Allows users to configure products and services by selecting bundles, constraints, options, preferences, etc.
Category average: 9.4
Configuration options
Supports a robust, comprehensive level of detail around configuration options, including product features, services, quantity, etc. Options take into account availability and compatibility of selections.
Category average: 9.3

CPQ-CRM integration
Integrates to the company’s CRM to update the customer record.
Category average: 9
Attachments to quotes
PDFs, contracts, videos, etc can be attached to quotes and/or proposals.
Category average: 9
Order capturing
Allows the capture of orders of complex services and across multiple customer interaction channels such as - direct sales, contact center, point-of-sales, resellers, and customer self-service.
Category average: 9

Erin Quinn View profile

Customer Service Manager in Customer Service at Freeman Company (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

For 4+ years now in my organization, we have been using IBM CPQ to simplify the selling of virtual, hybrid, and in-person events. Therefore, selection, configuration, quoting, and ordering event services are automated by this tool.

Pros

Create a central location for clients and sellers to configure products and services
Automate the entire process of selling
Sending sales orders to customers saves time
Help focus more on valuable processes rather than spend time on low-value processes

Cons

To automate selling processes on the go, I feel like the vendor should implement an on-premise platform, mainly for tablets and mobile phones.

Most Important Features

External applications integration: Salesforce integration has simplified the quote-to-cash process.
Disaster recovery and backup tools: This enables us to regain our last position before a catastrophic failure in our system.
Pricing and discounting tools: This tool enables us to price our services and determine which to impose discounts.

Return on Investment

Positive from closing many sales within a short period
Positive by saving time due to centralized selling channel
Backup and restore data in case of any catastrophe

Other Software Used

TIBCO Data Virtualization, Smartsheet, SAP Litmos, IBM Watson Assistant

Lane Cox View profile

Marketing Director in Marketing at AT&T (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

Firstly, IBM CPQ makes it easy for customers to make rapid products purchases through configuration, pricing and ordering processes.
Centralizing selling procedure in one platform by communicating products pricing to clients.
Improving ROI by attracting customers when discounts are introduced on products as well as offering coupons.

Cons

I don’t have much that I feel should be improved on IBM CPQ, but the vendor should offer more documentation on backup and data recovery.

Most Important Features

Enterprise security feature ensures that the system doesn’t store sensitive client data by hosting it in a secured data center.
Backup & disaster recovery: Although this requires IT knowledge, it helps to regain production environment in case we face issues on data such as data loss.
Customer success manager: This set of feature enables business users to get support from IBM support team after implementation to enhance smooth business processes.

Return on Investment

By backing up data and recovering from disasters, we are able to ensure that we don’t lose even a single data from a catastrophe.
IBM CPQ helps us to determine the right products and services to be discounted, which customers to have coupons while sending price lists to all clients. Doing that helps in revenue generation while minimizing losses.
We initiate approval rules when creating discount rules to ensure that they are authenticated and signed by right managers.

Alternatives Considered

Experlogix CPQ

Other Software Used

MarketMuse, Emma, Gartner Peer Insights

Janna Wiseman

Product Manager in Product Management at Verra Mobility (501-1000 employees employees)

Pros

IBM CPQ has helped us to guide clients through the entire process of configuration, quoting, and ordering process.
This service allows us to communicate the pricing to our esteemed clients via sending price lists.
Creating quotes and determining the right products to have discounts is another great aspect about IBM CPQ.

Cons

Unfortunately, [in my opinion] IBM CPQ is not well documented and hardly offers regular webinars.

Most Important Features

Backup and disaster recovery: backup of production and non-production environment allows us to restore data in case of any catastrophe.
Security feature ensures that customer sensitive data like billing details are not stored on the application.
Client success manager is another feature that makes it possible to maintain post implementation relationship with the right support team.

Return on Investment

IBM CPQ has enabled us to gain a lot of leads, which turns to be real clients by imposing discounts on our services.
Integration with salesforce.com makes it easy to configure products and services by creating quote-to-cash orders.
Price lists and coupons makes it easy to customers to place orders.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Sales Hub

Other Software Used

IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, Bitrix Site Manager, Salesforce Advertising Studio (formerly Social.com)

Brittany Frontis View profile

Sales Marketing Manager in Marketing at Cole Haan (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Dream of every business is to thrive in nowadays competitive markets. Deployment of IBM CPQ was one of the strategies that we implemented in our organization. It has centralized selling process, where our sales team collaborate with customers.

Pros

Customers waste a lot of time looking for products and services: IBM CPQ automate channel selling.
Help customers select, configure, quote and order the right services and products.
Commmunicating amendments on pricing is seamless on IBM CPQ.
Integration with external applications has improved capabilities.

Cons

For the sake of othet prospects, who might be looking to implement IBM CPQ; The vendor has not offered detailed tutorials for the features. Nonetheless, it has a simple learning curve unlike other alternatives.

Most Important Features

ObjectMap based extension tools: This is a new feature that I enjoy using since it enhance products and services pricing logic.
Configurator APIs: supports sub-model on web application.
REST API layer capabilities.
External applications integration: quote-to-cash has been advanced by salesforce.com integration.
Disaster recovery capabilities: This tool is a game changer - help us restore production environment in case we lose data.
Pricing rules: Help determine which products to have discounts, price products based on customers, location etc.

Return on Investment

Simplify quote sharing via emails, communication channels like Slack etc.
Automatic order capturing.
By looking into account purchase history, we make rapid adjustments.
Product configuration encompass robust features.

Matt Saunders View profile

Bank Accountant in Finance and Accounting at Huntington National Bank (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

Automating configuration, pricing and quotation of banking services.
Via web self-service on IBM CPQ, customers and the sales team are able to streamline sales processes by getting guidance whenever needed.
Customers are able to view price lists before making any purchase so as to make informed decisions.

Cons

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.

Most Important Features

Support and Infrastructure features allow business users to get the right support after implementation.
Updates: IBM CPQ being a cloud-based solution does not require updates but offers monthly security patches and feature enhancement quarterly.
Disaster and backup recovery is another great feature that enables us to recover the production environment from any failure.

Return on Investment

Maintaining product and service information in one secure platform enables us to easily access any data such as discount and price lists information.
The simplifying quote-to-cash order procedure is automated by IBM CPQ-Salesforce integration.
Determining the right product or service to impose discounts helps us to improve ROI.

Alternatives Considered

Vendavo

Other Software Used

Asana, SAP Access Control, Bitrix24

IBM Sterling Configure, Price, Quote

What is IBM Sterling Configure, Price, Quote?

Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Top Performing Features

Quote sharing/sending

Product configuration

Configuration options

Areas for Improvement

CPQ-CRM integration

Attachments to quotes

Order capturing

Reviews

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Most Important Features

Return on Investment

Other Software Used

Pros

Cons

Most Important Features

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Pros

Cons

Most Important Features

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Most Important Features

Return on Investment

Pros

Cons

Most Important Features

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

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