Complicated with little support.
December 13, 2017
Complicated with little support.
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Salesforce CPQ (formerly SteelBrick)
We use Salesforce CPQ to quote customers on product purchases. We use quotes, quote templates, contracts, subscriptions, products, etc. to handle our ordering process which is quite manual. This is being used by the sales (inside and field reps) teams as well as myself as the Salesforce administrator, in that I have to fix quotes frequently and edit quotes based on our approval process issues.
- CPQ, when it works properly, works well with approval process configurations. For example, quotes need to run through our approval process when a discount is over 25% on a particular quote.
- CPQ allows for easy customizations when it comes to changing quotes on the fly - however, you must be using a stable price book in order for your sales team to be happy with this.
- The Lightning user interface is attractive and looks easy to use for the sales team.
- CPQ has caused more inconveniences for everyone than any of our other systems. Part of this is that our sales team doesn't have access to adequate training or support and neither do I as the new admin to Salesforce. Support tends to be awful unless you purchase the highest level of support that Salesforce provides, which is very pricey.
- There are way too many objects and configurations involved in CPQ that I cannot handle this as an admin without training or support, but was tasked to do so; as a result, our system frequently miscalculates renewal pricing, doesn't properly activate contracts, confuses our sales team regarding start dates and end dates.
- Our CPQ instance has been outdated for two years and as the admin, I haven't received any information about upgrading so I was never in-the-know about the fact that our instance is two years behind. I'm worried to upgrade without proper support because the entire system could be negatively affected.
- Validation rules that were auto-created by the implementation of CPQ have worked against us. For example, opportunity amounts are based on product sum totals and discounts and terms, but if any one of these records has an error, it's extremely difficult to debug because of the amount of objects and rules and the lack of training.
- Positive impacts include the time it takes to adjust quotes - that is if the sales team is trained to know how to do this. It takes under 5 minutes to edit quotes.
- Negative impacts include the fact that once a quote is approved in our approval process, edits cannot be made unless certain fields are reversed, which is a huge pain. A lot of the edits that sales requests to make after a quote has been approved can be attributed to the lack of training and support access they have fromCPQ though.
We are a Salesforce organization and CPQ made the most sense when we first purchased it, not realizing how complex CPQ can be. When you first purchase CPQ, you are required to purchase training for your Salesforce administrator; however, I was a newly appointed admin after our previous admin left, and I was left alone to tackle CPQ. That was the same point in time that I had, by chance, submitted my second support ticket regarding CPQ issues, at which point my support rep at Salesforce CPQ informed me that our CPQ version was outdated. As a result, I'm currently testing the up-to-date version in the sandbox and seeing some improvements, but still a lot of complexities that are unnecessary for my organization's needs.
Salesforce CPQ Feature Ratings
Salesforce CPQ (formerly SteelBrick) Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Knowledgeable team Kept well informed | Slow Resolution Poor followup Problems left unsolved Difficult to get immediate help Need to explain problems multiple times |
No - We do not use the premium support because it's too expensive when only one person will use it (me as the Salesforce admin). The pricing model doesn't make sense for our organization at this time.