Cameleon CPQ - a review
Rating: 6 out of 10
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Cameleon CPQ is used by the sales team to create quotes for a wide range of products. Since my client's focus shifted towards the usage of Salesforce as the primary CRM tool, Cameleon's Salesforce integration capabilities and competitive pricing made it a viable alternative to the existing CRM and quoting system used by the sales team. In the process of implementing CPQ, several challenges related to quoting were addressed and process improvements were made. The roll out of the tool is in progress and the initial reaction from the sales team has been positive. Some enhancements need to be taken up by Cameleon that are currently lacking.
Pros
- Salesforce.com integration via a plugin that lets end users access Cameleon CPQ systems.
- Quoting made easier with complex business rules.
- Good support from the Cameleon team with fixes and enhancements.
Cons
- Integration with other onsite systems such as Oracle databases require the expertise of knowledgeable developers. Manual upload of flat files are always an option , but not necessarily the cleanest.
- Better Cameleon CPQ Designer UI would go a long way. Currently UI is a stark contrast to the intuitive UI of SalesForce.com or similar SaaS based tools. Not too much to ask for , considering the fact that we work in the era of Facebook and Twitter.
- Real time data availability is a long way to go for Cameleon CPQ. Updates to data pushed over as batches to Cameleon are reflected at Salesforce.com only after a 'versioning' process is launched. Current recommended frequency for this process is once a day (an upgrade to make it twice a day is in the works).
Likelihood to Recommend
Is my IT team ready to handle the challenges with data integration ? Are all the features offered by my current quoting tool being offered by Cameleon? Do I need a SaaS based quoting tool? Would it be easy and intuitive for my sales team (who,quite frankly, worship MS Excel) to use Cameleon ? Do I need a real-time/near-real-time quoting tool or would delays in data refreshes be acceptable ?
