Oracle CPQ vs. RFP360

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

Massive RFP workload- juggling several at a time, filling out answers that are similar. This works incredibly if you have past RFPs to load into the answer bank. It cuts out the time required for completing new ones, while keeping things organized and at forefront. RFP360 streamlines the entire process, giving you at a glance what you need to do when. The Google Chrome add on extension works very well, as well as the microsoft word and excel plugins. The tools given in RFP360 allow one to fill things out at a much quicker pace while having all past answers available, making it easy to update new ones.

Incentivized

• 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

• Organization
• Knowledge base
• Team collaboration

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.

• Analysis Tools: although what is provided is quite good, there is definitely room for improvement. For instance it would be nice if it were easier/quicker for each evaluator to record their notes/comments when scoring, and to be able to search through those notes/comments later. Also, it would be really helpful to be able to annotate/mark-up the actual responses (highlight, underline, circle, call-out notes, etc.), with such mark-up tracked by evaluator, and with the option to hide/show mark-up.
• Results Analysis, Reporting, and Presentation: in my opinion, this is the only area of weakness in RFP360. There are very limited options, after scoring/evaluation of responses is completed, for generating reports, graphs, charts, etc. to be used in evaluating results and presenting to the end client. I've always had to export the scores and use Excel to create the necessary visuals for final analysis and presentation.
• Complex Questions: RFP360's ability to handle complex RFP questions (e.g. involving tables, charts, multi-part answers, graphics, etc.) is limited, and existing capabilities in this area are fairly cumbersome to navigate and use.

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

This tool has been fantastic as we have revamped our RFP process. We are much faster and far more efficient.Our win rate is up, but I am not 100% sure this is the cause, but I love to see it. The customer support and training are also fantastic. Thumbs up!

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.

Very easy to navigate and use. Very intuitive user interface

Incentivized

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.

Excellent support during the training process. Since we were onboarded, we have not had too many questions, but when we did, they were answered promptly and thoroughly. We have been very satisfied.

Incentivized

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

onboarding and training were great

Incentivized

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

I was not involved in the process of selecting RFP360 for our firm, so I am largely unfamiliar with competitors. I am, however, quite pleased with RFP360 as a user, and am confident that my colleagues who were responsible for making the decision were thorough and discerning.

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

• Quicker RFP turnaround time leads to money saved.
• Better RFP responses lead to more closed business.
• Better team alignment lead leads to high efficiency.

Incentivized