Nue.io reposted this
Business Systems Leader | Salesforce Architect | Muses about Salesforce DevOps, Integrations, and Flow Like a Developer | mattpieper.com
Now that it’s clear that CPQ is KTLO, what do you do next? The answer isn't to migrate to RCA. Unless it’s the fit for your company’s needs. Unlike 2015, when Salesforce acquired Steelbrick, there are many alternatives on the market. Beyond typical requirements gathering, such as what you are looking to achieve, you should ask: If you want to buy software or partner with your vendor. If you want to purchase from someone who has had zero transparency around CPQ, leaving customers in the cold. If you want to purchase from someone who will raise your fees 12% YoY while not delivering any new features for that OpEx. If you want a product with a roadmap informed by customers 100x your size, not customers like you. If you want to be able to build internally, or be tied to partners for implementation and maintenance Personally, trust and transparency matter to me, and the Revenue team at Salesforce has shown through their actions over the last five years that they don't consider them an important core tenant. I implore you to explore other options rather than picking up another SF SKU. #salesforce #cpq #rlm #revenue #businesssystems #revops #steelbrick
Great breakdown. Companies behavior can change but for now, I can resonate with what you’re saying about SF CPQ team
Hard agree 👍
Great points about evaluating CPQ options carefully! PandaDoc CPQ is definitely worth considering as you explore alternatives: • It's evolving rapidly with frequent updates and new capabilities • Everything is open and transparent - from pricing to roadmap to implementation needs • The focus is on making it self-service if you want to keep everything in-house without requiring external consultants • It's intentionally kept simple but flexible, striking the right balance between power and usability • You're getting best-in-class documents for quotes, proposals, contracts, etc. - leveraging PandaDoc's document expertise
💯 Couldn’t agree more - as someone building in this space, it’s hard to imagine building a next-gen CPQ product without partnering closely with your customers. Especially given all the experimentation around new pricing models and evolving requirements (agents, outcome-based, etc.)
DealHub seems like a promising alternative, at least for the quote and contract generation. Seems that a big update on the subscription/asset side is in the works
Over promising and under delivering has put customers in a tough spot and on a lengthy journey. The platform approach is one our joint customers are still exploring and they have been open to the fresh direction from ServiceNow. Regardless of solution, customers deserve the value they are seeking.
Build vs Buy no longer seems like the right question to ask re: CPQ. Especially when there’s intent to hire full time employees to maintain either way. The default is “Build” with AI. With a FTE to manage ongoing CPQ analysis and prompts.
Hey Matt Pieper, do you happen to know who a few of the top players in this space are now?
Accelerating time to value and reducing the total cost of ownership of Salesforce - Agentforce - Auto-drawn diagrams - Metadata management
6dMatt Pieper there are SBQQ tools to decrease the TCO of Salesforce. Maintain what you've got until you decide on larger project migration https://elements.cloud/salesforce-cpq-revenue-cloud/