Oracle CPQ vs. PersistIQ

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.

Incentivized

Probably ok if you really don't care who you are sending your outreach to. Really bad for anyone who cares about sending a specific message to a specific audience. Probably not great for clients who enjoy reliable communication, quality results, or actually receiving what you're paying for.

• Leveraged automation to minimize headcount costs despite 10% year-over-year business growth, and enabled staff to focus on more strategic tasks.
• Established a flexible CPQ system that scales on demand to easily accommodate the company’s multiple global locations.
• Improved customer relations by reducing configuration time and allowing sales more time to meet with customers and close orders.

Incentivized

• Integrates well with tools that work with LinkedIn Sales Navigator to scrap lead emails.
• Makes it easy to manage large-scale cold email campaigns with 3+ steps.
• When a prospect replies to an email, it doesn't send them any of the automated emails which allow me to follow-up with those warm leads correctly.

Incentivized

• 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.

• There are some issues with downloading reports. That is, some information is only available in-product and you cannot export these things.
• Creating dynamic replies or steps in Persist isn't currently available.
• Sometimes the Persist system doesn't catch errors in unfilled prospect fields. One must be check and be careful not to send these types of emails.

Incentivized

So far it is all good with BigMachines, looking for new features since Oracle acquisition has created a lot of expectations. We have outlined our limitations (out of box functionality) in our periodic customer successor advice meetings for a while, hope we get a resolution soon. Also, the BigMachines user license fee has increased a lot in the last three years.

Incentivized

While they have a decent administrator interface (relative to other apps), the part that is unintuitive is the printer friendly output. I view this is as the meat and potatoes. They are very constrained on these abilities. To make a font change is really cumbersome. There is no content management protocol to protocol. This kills us.

In my opinion, poor service, and in our experience, ignoring our advise on who our customers are.

Other than one day two years ago and an hour or two a few times since then due to data center outages, it has been very reliable

It depends upon the day however there are so many failure points with online services, including our internet service, that this is probably closer to 9 with the latest version

Some specific support personal was good and fixed some problems fast using proper solutions. But when one of them went to sleep when we had critical issues and they do unreported commits to our production environment which caused issues and they were hiding it?? you can not give more than a two (maybe even that is too much). They also failed to add a feature for us which also bring the grade down.

Terrible; non-existent. Weeks without replies, and no improvements in 4 months.

They have pretty good training. Our business analysts have been able to go to entry and advanced level training. They have a train the trainer model. Our business analyst attended training, then trained the rest of our staff.

Like with any implementation go into it with a clear and realistic plan for getting the implementation completed and it will go much smoother. BigMachines has a clear process and an excellent staff fort getting an implementation completed we just needed to follow more of it instead of creating our own roadblocks

We debated a few different options, including a home-grown custom program, uCommerce, and just using only Oracle Commerce Cloud. Since we had already decided to use Oracle Commerce Cloud over uCommerce, the integrations available between OCC, Oracle's ERP system, and Oracle CPQ definitely seemed like the easiest option with the greatest benefits. However, the cost/benefit of Oracle CPQ was more apparent when we were ready to launch more complex configurations across all of our product groups.

Incentivized

Compared to MailChimp, Persist IQ allows for more personalization, simpler emails, and more complete campaigns. MailChimp is basically a tool for bulk email with heavy design. Versus Marketo, PersistIQ is much more user friendly. You don't need to be an engineer or SQL master to use Persist. It's made for sales and marketing folks. Marketo is built for bigger teams with engineers and CRM experts. Marketo is better for nurture campaigns and automated email, plus database management and as a CRM. But Persist is a much lighter option and it's WAY cheaper. I've used the Gmail plug-in for HubSpot and their templates feature. It's not great for bulk email or building out campaigns, but it's nice to have canned messages right in Gmail. To use PersistIQ on the other hand, one must work directly in their system, not in Gmail, although replies and sent messages do go directly though the email provider.

Incentivized

• Sales Operations or IT would have a better understanding of the license user costs and ROI. I do know that Sales has experienced frustrations in the the lead gen-to-close process and have experienced delays with some deals. In other instances, the software has worked fine. I would love to see an analysis on how our lead-conversion rate, sales cycles, and proposal volume stacks up.

Incentivized

• I have 100% closed multiple deals due to my outreach on PersistIQ.
• Outside of closing deals, this has been a great tool for getting me in front of a lot of high profile clients.
• I have easily paid for my license with PersistIQ in 8 months.

Incentivized