The Challenge with existing CPQ Analyst Reports – Something New is Needed
As the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant Report came out recently I noticed once again how popular these Reports are with, mostly midsize and enterprise, customers as well as CPQ Vendors. These popular reports are obviously not just from Gartner but from a number of other Research Firms as well like Forrester, IDC and others. People like these Reports for different reasons.
Customers want to have confirmation from an “independent” third party that a CPQ Software Solution is well suited to their industry and business case.
CPQ Vendors on the other hand want to show up as “leaders” on these reports because that helps them with their sales and marketing efforts.
I see multiple challenges with the reports as they are right now and hence put a list together to see how that can be improved.
First how independent is this research? I leave this open but know many folks who have strong opinions on this topic.
Second numerous successful, innovative and promising CPQ Vendors are not included, they don’t even get an honorable mention. Without naming names here it is important from a customer point of view to have a broad overview of available solutions before a buying decision is made. Many companies get excluded because they don’t meet certain Report entry criteria but they have customers who are very satisfied. Should a new customer not be able to at least find these CPQ Solutions if they meet their (customizable) business needs?
Third CPQ Vendors that never compete with each other in the real world show up in the same Reports. This is confusing for customers! Example from the latest Gartner Report: Vlocity and KBMax will not compete for the same customers. Let us compare that to a Report where buses, cars, trucks, ships and airplanes are all mentioned in the same Report. How useful is that? Yes, they are all about transporting someone from point A to point B but they are all very different means of transportation and are used for very different purposes. What is needed is the capability to build a list of relevant CPQ Solutions where a customer can select the criteria (i.e. capabilities, industries etc.) that they consider important and build a list of CPQ Vendors they could work with. Basically a configurator to find the best CPQ Solutions for them. This list should be developed by an independent third party!
When this list of CPQ Solutions is generated it should consider the following areas in addition to a general CPQ Market Overview:
- Capabilities – what core and advanced CPQ capabilities does this solution offer
- Integration into existing system infrastructures – works with CRM Solutions like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics and/or ERP Solutions like SAP/Oracle/Infor/Epicor and/or CAD Solutions like Solidworks, Autocad and so on
- Customer Feedback – what do existing customers have to say about this CPQ Solution? Data should come from multiple sources
- Solution Demo – same demo script for every vendor needs to cover multiple business scenarios like Direct Sales, Indirect Sales, eCommerce and more
Conclusion:
A customizable CPQ Report is needed! We are currently developing a “Top 5 CPQ Vendor List” and expect to offer something in this area in 2020. Let me know if you are interested to learn more by sending an email to info@novuscpq.com
Fully agree. Generalized CPQ quadrants are next to useless. Gartner has tried to address this by creating a configurable quadrant that enables the user to select different capabilities and use cases, and generate a user centric quadrant. Another observation is that certain use cases require close integration with other capabilities, e.g. subscriptions and usage require close integration with billing systems. In latest Gartner MQ, I didn’t see any extra-credit for the CPQ vendors that have developed companion billing capabilities for their CPQs (possible because ONLY customer with the more complex subscription use cases care about these capabilities.