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Oracle CPQ

Oracle CPQ

Overview

What is Oracle CPQ?

Oracle CPQ is a cloud-based application that helps sellers configure the right mix of products or services and create accurate, professional quotes to quickly meet their customers’ pricing needs.

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Recent Reviews

Oracle CPQ Review

8 out of 10
March 21, 2019
Incentivized
It's used by a Business segment. It manages the Pricing and Quoting solution. We create and renew quotes, agreements, renew those, revise …
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Review

4 out of 10
March 20, 2019
Incentivized
Oracle CPQ is currently being used by the three largest sales groups. It allows the sales team to manage pricing within the constraints …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 11 features
  • Quote sharing/sending (16)
    8.4
    84%
  • Configuration options (16)
    7.9
    79%
  • Product configuration (16)
    7.9
    79%
  • Price adjustment (16)
    7.3
    73%
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Pricing

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CPQ Pricing

$240.00

Cloud
per month per user

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

CPQsuite Demo (7.5 minutes)

YouTube

Oracle CPQ Training | Oracle CPQ Certification Course Demo | What is Oracle CPQ | MindMajix

YouTube

Oracle CPQ Cloud Service 2017 1Z0-976 questions and answers|CertTree

YouTube

1Z0-436 exam Oracle CPQ Cloud Service 2016 Implementation Specialist | 1Z0-436 PDF Answers

YouTube
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Features

CPQ

Features related to configuring and pricing products and delivering quotes to customers.

7.4
Avg 8.6
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Product Details

What is Oracle CPQ?

Oracle CPQ is a cloud-based application that helps sellers configure the right mix of products or services and create accurate, professional quotes to quickly meet their customers’ pricing needs.

Oracle CPQ Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Oracle CPQ is a cloud-based application that helps sellers configure the right mix of products or services and create accurate, professional quotes to quickly meet their customers’ pricing needs.

Conga CPQ, SAP CPQ, and PROS Smart CPQ are common alternatives for Oracle CPQ.

Reviewers rate Quote sharing/sending highest, with a score of 8.4.

The most common users of Oracle CPQ are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(54)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-19 of 19)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Joseph R. Sweeney | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Part of my role in procurement was to analyze orders taken by our sales reps and project these figures into our annual budget as well as examine areas of potential growth. My role within CPQ Cloud was to access this data and communicate the findings with our executives. It allows for simple access and accurate reporting for taking orders and generating quotes.
  • Orders have always been accurate and we've never yet had an issue processing one
  • Pricing configuration allows for complex tiers within an organization's portfolio and so there are multiple options depending on your situation
  • Report building is simple and intuitive
  • Although reporting is intuitive, it could use a more robust reporting look and feel especially when it comes to graphical displays
  • Mobile view and approvals can be a bit wonky sometimes and need to be refreshed
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.
Jason Parpart | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Oracle CPQ Cloud is our defacto system for generating customer quotes. Currently, our new equipment sales, aftermarket sales, and customer service groups are the primary users of CPQ, with the output from the system feeding Engineering and Order Entry. CPQ addresses a number of past issues, including reduced time from inquiry to quote, full visibility of the sales pipeline, reduction of errors, unified quote style and layout, and consistent pricing.
  • Incredibly powerful configuration rules engine
  • Offers flexibility to achieve almost any business need
  • Very well supported - Oracle is clearly investing in development of CPQ Cloud as updates to the system are regular and significant
  • Document generation systems need some work - Old Document Engine is very powerful, but not user friendly. Newer Document Designer is very user friendly, but lacks a number of features available in Document Engine.
  • CPQ Cloud has gone through some growing pains as part of BigMachines being acquired by Oracle. Many people on the sales side of Oracle still aren't very aware of CPQ, and don't understand how it fits in the big picture.
  • CPQ Cloud is in serious need of a UI update, but that is in the works for upcoming releases.
I believe Oracle CPQ Cloud would be a useful tool for any company that quotes and sells a product or service. The flexibility and power of the system are such that it can handle any magnitude of users, quote size, or business rule complexity. Unless the business is very straightforward and quote generation and business rules are very simple, CPQ Cloud would likely be a good fit.
Gary Sheppard | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Oracle CPQ Cloud to direct our sales people to the correct configurations of hardware solutions that the customers need. The system is used by nearly all sales branches and is being rolled out globally as well. The standardized pricing and quote output provide value to our customers and the data collection and reporting capabilities help our management stay up to date with sales and customer relations. Customer relations are being additionally improved by the integration of Oracle's CRM through a separate contract purchase of that software.
  • Directed sales is done very well by this software but you need dedicated administrators to create, update and grow the configurations.
  • Quote calculation and presentation are done well also.
  • The freedom provided by the administration back end can make the logic to become too complex and conflict, so the administrators need the power in the organization to draw the line on user requests.
  • Oracle has put a lot of effort into improving the document engine (to produce quote documents) but it still has it's headaches and limitations. It can pretty much do what the old engine did after years of development. But they dumbed things down a lot which is frustrating sometimes but will probably be good in the long run.
This is enterprise software that will be good for any large sales team. Startup companies should stay away until they get more established. A business would need to have a very diverse and customizable product line in order to really benefit from the high cost of this good and flexible system.
February 02, 2017

Success with CPQ!

Paul Shapiro, CPA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Oracle CPQ Cloud is being used to provide our channel partners with a front end to configure products, get instant pricing, produce quotation documents, produce product drawings and link to product specification sheets. This information is provided to them in minutes instead of hours making our company easier to do business with. It is being rolled out systematically to our principal customers.
  • The system is very flexible, allowing us to do pretty much whatever we want with the customer experience.
  • Implementation consultants are VERY knowledgeable and picked up the nuances of our business very quickly.
  • Along with the flexibility comes some technical complexity. We are not fully up to speed on the technology needed to make all modifications to our product configurator without consulting assistance.
  • Oracle solutions are not cheap, nor are their consulting resources. We got what we paid for however.
The system is well suited for product configuration. Our pricing is not customer specific and accomplishing that, though possible, will be complicated.
Craig Jacquez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the B2B module from our server using SOAP transactions with our ERP system.
  • Documentation was pretty straight forward and useful.
  • Their server performance was good.
  • Their GUI interface was easy to use.
  • The use of CDATA in the XML isn't something to get excited about.
The BigMachines SOAP interface works as advertised and has proved to be quite reliable.
Stephen Crane | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
At our company, BigMachines is used as the primary Sales quoting and contracting software. It is primarily used by the Sales organization (both internal Sales and District Sales Managers) to build out quotes and generate contracts and addendums for new and existing business. Sales Operations is the owner and is the admin of the software, along with IT, who facilitate the use of user licenses. The software is also used by the Product organization and is a key component in the Go-To-Market process by making new pricing generally available for sale. Business analysts work directly with IT developers to design user requirements when building out new quote products. The software helps to automate the contracting and approval process, making sure that specific quote products go through the correct discount approval channels. There is tie in with Salesforce as well, which has allowed us to generate Opportunities with Products reports and report on sales activities and KPIs for specific products.
  • Automation of discount approvals and protection of margin- This is probably one of the most widely-discussed features. Our ability to set maximum allowable discount thresholds is imperative, especially when there are hard costs like vendor or partner royalties associated with each quote product. You can really lock product discounts down at the line item level (though presents slight frustrations as well).
  • Configurable and customize-able - The code base is configurable and has allowed our in-house developer to develop some fully custom discount approval workflows. It can also be customized to program in maximum and minimum allowable values and graphical control elements like pop up menus, help text, list boxes, text fields, and other software components.
  • Ability to implement business rules based on business requirements (i.e. publicly traded company, Sarbanes Oxley) is a plus.
  • The software is great for implementing simple if/then logic (if X product is selected then Y product should also print on the agreement). Specific trigger rules can be written and implemented based on if/then criteria in order to meet business rules and scenarios. You can write as many quote requirements as you need.
  • Integration with Salesforce
  • One of the biggest challenges we've experience with the software is the lack of flexibility in deploying snippets of code changes to production. Unlike making changes in our Salesforce test environment, when deploying BM to a production environment our IT developer has to migrate a fully tested code-complete snapshot of sandbox to our production environment all at once. This presents challenges for IT when managing multiple projects from different areas of the business, specifically general sales availability expectations. In order to meet business deadlines, sprint cycles are managed against a floating deployment schedule to ensure that code for all projects are deployed at once.
  • While the software is customize-able, deploying more complex changes takes much time and effort. Dedicated programmers and business systems analysts are needed to define the business rules, document the programmed changes, and deploy the software to production. It takes time to learn and and train on the logic behind the scenes. User training is definitely required for more complex configurations. There is no automated wizard to walk-through test configurations (this would be a nice-to-have).
  • In a fast paced agile environment, the software is a little slow in how it integrates into business process, approvals, and Go-To-Market strategy.... at least in our business.
  • Navigation between configuration pages is a little cumbersome.
  • The software UI has been modified A LOT to make the user experience easier for the Sales teams. A lot of credit goes to the programmer but overall the software UI is still static and at times inflexible when compared to other new drag and drop/cloud-based wizard models.
  • Would be nice if there were integration with our billing system (this is a nice to have!) Product Catalog (SKU) management becomes very manual and all the more important when there is lack of integration with the billing system. We have to coordinate efforts with Billing, Sales, and IT to make sure that the product catalog stays clean and up-to-date.
  • While the ability to lock down discount allowables is a plus, this can also stall deals if allowables HAVE to be exceeded to win business (more of a process/culture change I know). Ad-hoc Emergency fixes can be deployed but you have to weigh the benefits against these "whirl-wind" resource costs.
If you're looking for a robust solution that is highly customize-able and configurable, BigMachines is definitely worth exploring. I wouldn't say that the software itself is slick, but rather, its configurable nature allows a talented programmer to implement some pretty slick solutions. The things our developer has been able to do with soft and hard floor discount approval rules is pretty cool. However, dedicated analysts are needed to help with documentation and user training because the software doesn't have a wizard interface. Also be sure to understand how internal business processes (like sales approvals, IT sprint cycles, and SarBox requirements) are impacted due to the strict bulk code sandbox-to-production migration requirements. A complete snapshot of the test environment has to be deployed all at once; this is a limiting factor in our fast pace agile environment (though we've adapted) where speed to market is imperative. Just make sure you can re-write processes if needed, dedicate time and resources to train users and document business rules. Also, make sure the business has a clear operational strategy when it comes to Product Catalog (SKU) management. This process may become very manual due to lack of billing system integration capabilities (based on what I've seen). End-of Sales efforts may have to be coordinated with Billing, Sales, and IT departments to during the SKU removal or clean-up process.
Nikki Flannigan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use BigMachines in the quoting of all sales and renewal pricing for our company, as well as to generate our contracts and order documents that we send to customers. It is used primarily by the sales team, with use by the renewals team as well. Our finance and legal departments have it as a guideline to ensure that pricing is quoted correctly and that contracts are uniform across all deals that we close. It solves the problem of standardizing our pricing and contract process. Makes quoting customers fairly quick and easy.
  • BigMachines is great for quickly putting together quotes and contracts for customers, making the process less time consuming than it would be otherwise.
  • The system integrates with Salesforce, allowing for integrated asset management.
  • Can automatically apply discounts.
  • Sometimes when BigMachines is required to prorate pricing, it does not seem to do it correctly and there can be a number of glitches.
  • BigMachines and Intacct round to different decimal points. Our company integrated BigMachines, Salesforce, and Intacct, and this causes slight variations when we invoice off an opportunity that has a BigMachines quote, as the three systems will have slightly different numbers.
  • The system seems overall very buggy. Our organization has faced different issues that have stemmed from BigMachines not doing certain things correctly, such as populating contract end dates on new assets.
I have used BigMachines for over three years and at two different companies. It is not a product that I particularly like from a renewals perspective, but it seems to work much better for our sales staff and they seem to have a more positive appreciation for it. I think it is great that it integrates contract documents with the pricing, which not only makes things quick, but keeps contracts uniform. Most people at our company do not find it to be particularly intuitive to learn, and I would be interested in looking for something that was more user friendly and had less bugs.
Dave Merullo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • As with most CRM solutions, BigMachines CPQ engine provides best value when the toolset is optimized to align with the needs of the business. While this is an obvious statement, I've found that achieving alignment is sometimes the biggest challenge. But if the implementation is done right, BigMachines can dramatically transform the sales cycle and drive revenue to new levels. In short, the toolset is powerful and flexible but success hinges on collaboration between the team using it and the team developing/supporting it.
  • As a developer/admin, I've been able to deliver functionality within BigMachines that automates complex business logic, ensures accuracy of materials on a quote, includes quick and easy discounting with appropriate approval checking and renders to a variety of PDF proposals. Users have reported reductions in quote preparation time from hours to minutes.
  • Beyond the out-of-the-box features that simply get turned on/off, BML coding of utility functions and Rule administration allow creative and challenging solutions. For example, we were able to allow users to quote support/maintenance for variable terms across multiple products with existing or expired agreements with 100% accuracy. By writing a function that calculates a prorated price based on unit price and end date we were able to plug prorated pricing into any item being quoted. Prior to using BigMachines this was a big challenge which cost salesreps time and resulted in delays due to inaccuracy.
  • There are areas within the tool that are very difficult to troubleshoot and require assistance from BigMachines support. As a developer, this can be frustrating and limiting. For example, when the results of a configuration are added to an existing quote the data passes from "configuration" to "commerce" through what seems like an invisible portal. Improvement in visibility to this process would be of great value.
  • From an admin's perspective, a "developer mode" that shows whats going on under the hood while in commerce or config is needed.
  • The document engine is tough to work with, but BigMachines is commited to rolling out improvements. The latest update is that a complete refresh is on the way.
In my experience, having at least one resource in-house that knows how to develop and support BMI makes a huge difference. Leveraging the BOA process to analyze and document business processes is also of great value not only at the beginning of the implementation but periodically as well. Understand that familiarity from the users will promote ideas for improvement that simply cannot be identified in the blueprinting phase. Plan for continuous improvement and agile development.
Jim Kiltie | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • With most software you either customize the software to fit your process, or you customize your process to fit the software. BigMachines provides customization of its configuration and commerce rules, allowing companies the flexibility to fit to their processes, without requiring customization of the base code. This is not to say that BigMachines is perfect, but compared to the other products out there, BigMachines is far and above their competitors.
  • BigMachines listens to their user community's suggestions for feature requests. Their users also have the ability to vote on other people's suggestions. With 4 releases per year, BigMachines is always moving forward with adding features their users want.
  • The customer support structure at BigMachines is the most responsive I have ever worked with. Support is a very high priority for them, as is evidenced in their ramp up and training of support personnel. More companies should model their customer support after BigMachines!
  • The biggest problem I hear most about BigMachines is how difficult or complex it is to program pricing. I feel it is unfair to lay the blame for this on BigMachines, as each company has their own methods or algorithms for calculating sales price. But, to BigMachines' credit, they are always looking for new ways to make this easier for their customers, as was evidence in the release of the Pricing Rules and Formula Manager functionality. This functionality takes a lot of programming out of pricing and puts it in a format easy enough for non-programmers to work with.
  • My biggest complaint about the product is bulk migration. BigMachines keeps moving in the right direction toward granular or package development, but the way the product works now I must have all of my development completed before I can migrate from my test to my production environment. This forces me to make "live" changes in production for emergency fixes. BigMachines continually adds functionality to their roadmap to enhance this functionality.
If you want a successful implementation of BigMachines you will need:
  • Executive sponsorship that is actively involved in the the implementation and will help drive user adoption
  • Well documented configuration and pricing rules
  • An implementation team that understands your company's sales, finance, manufacturing and procurement processes
  • Knowledgeable consultants to implement BigMachines using best practices
  • For larger companies, trained system administrators to support and maintain your BigMachines environment (BigMachines offers Yellow and Blue Belt training...I highly recommend both!). For reference, support for our 90 users is split about 75-25% between myself and a consultant.
  • For sustainability, an engaged Sales Operations team who stays current with configuration rule changes and additions and can interface between the product teams and your BigMachines system administrator
Josh Saylor | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • The ability to configure complex packages and bundles with highly advanced configuration rules.
  • The document engine is a powerful tool that gives great control on what the finished quote will look like
  • Most recently, the Admin screen is very user-friendly and easy for a new user to pick it up and use
  • Advanced coding for some areas in config and pricing engine are written in BML. This Java-like code may be a bit tricky for someone trying to write very advanced configuration rules or advanced pricing.
  • The flagship system needs to have an easier way to enter in pricing. In the BMX version, pricing is handled through multiple matricies, but in the flagship it is compiled into one ugly rule.
  • Customization. Other software comes with tools to help customize the "look and feel" quickly. To get a re-vamped look on the flagship product, you'll need a CSS expert.
If the customer is looking for a very advanced solution around configuration, I would recommend BigMachines. If the customer is looking for something that is easier to maintain and use their in-house resources I would probably go with another product. BigMachines is a powerful tool, just in more specific use cases than what I usually see.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
BigMachines is being used primarily by the Field Sales department and Inside Sales team to create quotes quickly and efficiently.
  • The administration of the product is quite easy and straightforward. You can quickly setup products and configuration formulas. It's a simple process, but you can make it advanced via the powerful administration tools.
  • BigMachines Express is a Force.com native application built directly into Salesforce, creating a seamless experience for users.
  • The Quoting module can help you create really professional-looking quotes and proposals.
  • The software could use a more robust approval workflow system. Currently it interfaces with the Sales Price field within Salesforce which can make setting discount levels outside of the tool difficult due to Sales Price being your new List Price.
  • Needs more grouping/nesting options in the Quoting module.
  • Would be nice to be able to clone Configuration Rules as they can get quite complex.
BigMachines Express is a great tool for smaller businesses that may not have a huge budget. The pricing is very reasonable for what you get, and their staff is willing to work with you on pricing to make the solution viable.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Bigmachines was used to launch our retail sales initiative. To build and manage quotes from internal sales and channel partners.
  • Salesforce Integration
  • Pricing, Managing part numbers
  • Data tables.
  • Dynamic pick lists
  • Document engine
  • User interface was difficult to make changes to
Integration with custom built apps and APIs is a critical question IMO.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We needed a strong CPQ engine to do our quoting processes. After reviewing most of the ones that were out there, nothing compared to Big Machines. It was initially implemented as a stand alone platform then integrated with Salesforce.
  • Strong Configure Price Quote(CPQ) engine
  • Flexible enough to handle any business processes you may have
  • Integrates seemlessly with Salesforce to make it a much better experience with the sales users
  • Can be used as a shopping cart engine as well
  • Too complex at times
  • Some API calls don't seem to work the same way as the UI calls
  • The document engine is pretty slow
  • Sometimes you need to do a lot of coding to acheive a small functionality
  • Approval process is not mobile friendly
It's great for small businesses that do not go through a lot of customization often or for big companies that have inhouse expertise to handle the changes that would need to be made. Once it's implemented it is kind of hard to modify unless you have a professional service agreement with them to handle the change requirements.
Steven Steier | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • We use the Express version which for a smaller product catalog without a complex pricing model is a great solution.
  • This product is much cheaper and much easier to implement than the Enterprise version of BigMachines, but for the right situation is a great value.
  • This works right inside Salesforce and works like it is part of Salesforce. If you and your team is comfortable with Salesforce then this product just feels like another Salesforce application.
  • Just like with Salesforce without going outside the existing product you have some limits in formatting the product.
  • The HTML editor for laying out your proposal templates is very basic. You really need to do the design work outside of BigMachines and then import the template into Salesforce.
  • We used just use a free online WYSIWYG editor but for what we have seen you can use pretty much any HTML editor. It really depends on your level of sophistication and what you are comfortable using
  • This one is being corrected with the latest release, but when we did our implementation the lack of a true formula field made some things tricky.
We love the product and for anyone with a smaller product line I would strongly recommend the product. If you have a complex pricing model or a large catalog you would need to look at some of the more complete Big Machine editions but Express is a great fit and price for a company with simpler needs
November 08, 2013

BigMachines is a BigDeal!

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • BigMachines makes it easy for business people or beginning developers to help configure they're own product.
  • BigMachines has a great configuration element. It can handle some very complex configurations, and often handles add-ons like calls to webservices pretty well.
  • BigMachines (the company) usually does a great job of helping the customer when they get stuck on an issue. In my experience, when we open a case, someone responds fairly quickly.
  • DocEngine needs some serious help. It's buggy, not user friendly, and in general not very consistent. The DocX output type is especially challenging to work with.
  • The Help section of BigMachines has been downright neglected it seems. The articles are very basic, and as a developer it can be very frustrating not to be able to find the answers you are looking for with more specific and advanced questions.
I think as a consultant who mostly helps configure the product for the customer, this question is a little difficult because I don't often get to see the product being used.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • It handled heavy calculations very well, i.e. fast.
  • It is possible to add any business logic to the system.
  • Support and documentation are very poor. The support is bordering on unprofessional. The documentation on how to configure the system is minimal, and Googling information, returns no hits. So the cost of maintenance is high.
  • It is very hard to maintain your implementation, and deployment of changes is non-trivial. So the cost of maintenance is high.
  • The document engine (the rich text editor part) is so poor we turned back to the xsl markup language to deploy changes faster and have more control. The engine automagically removed variables. So the cost of maintenance is high.
  • The user interface make it very hard and time consuming for users to produce quotes.
I was using BigMachines with Salesforce and I would strongly suggest skipping CPQ and customizing Salesforce instead. If that is not sufficient, if your product catalog is large and you add a large amount of different products per opportunity, I would suggest scanning the market for other options.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • I don’t see any other alternatives, that are based on Salesforce.com and that would support our complexity - complex order outputs, sophisticated configuration engine for complex business rules
  • Sarbox compliance - our business rules are very complex and Sarbox makes it much more complicated as you need to track everything.
  • It is configurable – just requires time from a system analyst
  • I know it can work, but it takes a lot of time, effort and money
  • We used to use their virtual administrator service, but experienced a lot of turnover and varying skill levels. We felt we were better off having someone in-house. It does however help to have expertise available from Big Machines. The VA service provides technical depth on their end.
  • They have suffered from a lot of growth – both in turnover and burnout of people
In hindsight, it would have been better to re-engineer/simplify our business processes and pricing structure as a precursor to buying software. We were surprised by the hidden cost of ownership – due to staff time. You can turn configurator into client or partner view, though we don’t use those attributes.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • For flexibility and a complex offer/contract, I would absolutely recommend the tool with the caveat that this needs to have dedicated admin with a more technical leaning depending upon the volume of changes needed in pricing, contract or For complex offers/contracts, I would give it an 8 or 9
  • In the last year BMI has made major improvements in usability and the roadmap continues to reflect their commitment to If it continues as is, by early 2013, I would give 8 or 9 regardless of configuration or offer type, again due to the flexibility and with new improvements, much easier to use.
  • It supports all processes we bought it for plus some we don’t use with the exception of publishing a price list.
  • For simpler offers, I would give it a 6 or 7 only due to it being designed by an engineer with no usability training whatsoever.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Ability to incorporate business logic within the configurator, i.e. if you buy “x” product, must also include “y” product
  • Ability to trigger approvals based on business rules i.e. sales manager approval needed if discount exceeds 20%.
  • Ability to trigger approvals based revenue recognition rules i.e. finance approval needed if one module discounted more than the others, finance approval needed in previous contract within 6 months, etc.
  • Allowed us to have line-item pricing history.
  • The feature that distinguishes BigMachines from its competition is also the feature that needs the most improvement- DocEngine. DocEngine is the tool that creates RTF or PDF documents based on the results of configuration and discounting/approvals. Most competitors do not have an output option, only configuration. It is supposed to be dynamic, but is very unstable and the output can break. We still have to run contracts through legal to ensure that the system has not caused any errors. Part of the issue is stability, and part is administration UI.
  • Earlier versions required system administrators to understand a code called “BQL”. It was a system designed by engineers with little thought about non-technical system administrators. The latest releases of the product show much more investment and improvement in this area as they move towards clicks not code configuration.
  • Custom pricing/invoicing is difficult, mostly because it’s hard to build logic around “custom” in the system.
BMI may be the “Cadillac” of CPQ systems. Make sure your org will get ROI. BMI can also integrate with other CRM systems such as Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, etc. Consider having at least 3 environments. Production, Development, Testing/QA Don’t underestimate the end-user support needed. And QA required.
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