Almost a year ago I prepared an outlook for CPQ in 2016 (Read it here). Before I go ahead and do this again (in the first week of January) for 2017 I wanted to check myself and see how good or bad my expectations/predictions were. After all I want to provide high quality information and that means to constantly check myself and improve as much as possible. So let’s have a look:

My first expectation was related to the Salesforce acquisition of Steelbrick and the assumption that CRM and CPQ would remain two distinct business categories.

Conclusion: This expectation was correct. While many CPQ Vendors now offer closer partnerships with CRM Vendors (e.g. on the Salesforce CRM platform: Tacton, KBMax, Encoway offer specialized solutions that go beyond the Salesbrick CPQ capabilities) the CRM and CPQ functionality is still very different and I expect it to remain different for the foreseeable future.

My second expectation was related to the IPO (Initial Public Offering) of Apttus.

Conclusion: My cautious suggestion that Salesforce may look at acquiring Apttus was wrong. Instead Apttus expanded to the Microsoft CRM Platform (Read it here) and according to this article gets ready for an IPO in the first half of 2017.

My third expectation was about the Impact of Salesforce’s Steelbrick acquisition to other CPQ Solutions

Conclusion: My expectation that the pressure on other CPQ Vendors would increase was correct. Nevertheless the current CPQ market is big enough to also let smaller CPQ Vendors prosper. Note that Gartner predicts (Read it here) year over year growth of 20% for the CPQ market until 2020. Many of the CPQ Vendors on our CPQ Vendor List (Note: We have 75! Firms on that List now) are hiring and working on innovative and specialized CPQ solutions. Main Difference is that instead of offering “standard” CPQ solutions more CPQ Vendors now lean to offer more specialized solutions (e.g. for a specific CRM, for a specific Industry, for a specific area of CPQ.). In short something that sets them apart from other CPQ Vendors for a specific use case.

My fourth expectation was about the impact of Salesforce’s Steelbrick acquisition to the Integration and Consulting Partners. It had two key parts

1. The Big Four Consulting Companies and second tier Consulting Companies will add Salesforce CPQ Services to their offering.
2. Smaller Consulting companies still provide a large amount of Salesforce CPQ Consulting

Conclusion:  My expectation regarding point 1 was correct. E.g. Accenture, PwC, Slalom, Bluewolf (IBM owned company) are now Salesforce CPQ Partners. (Read it here).

My prediction regarding point 2 was correct too. Just notice how the number of Salesforce CPQ Partners has grown on their Partner site!

My fifth expectation was about Oracle acquiring NetSuite.

Conclusion: This was correct (Read it here)

Based on the above I’m happy to say that 4 out of 5 expectations were correct. This hopefully provides you some confidence that my opinions/predictions may be worth a look. In any case I’ve set high expectations for myself and I will make sure that I put considerable effort in preparing, hopefully equivalent, good expectations/predictions for CPQ in 2017.