ConnectWise CPQ vs. Qvidian RFP & Proposal Automation

ConnectWise Sell is great for Managed Service Providers and smaller IT shops who primarily do computer repairs and maintenance. The tool is generally good at everything it does, but I would not recommend using it for a company that sells IT equipment as its primary business. Quotes take a relatively large amount of time to build in order to get them looking good for the end user.

Incentivized

Functionality and support are my two main areas. I want to be able to speak to someone when I have an issue. To Quvidian's defense, my company didn't see the value in sending someone to NH for the training. I'd used an RFP machine before so they thought that was sufficient. It was a poor decision on the company's part because although it was similar, it was not the same.

• It provides our company with a standardized quoting process. Everyone works the same way, uses the same templates, and generates a professional quote. Nothing gets left out or missed.
• Portal provides your sales staff and management with a complete view of their efforts. They see in real time what opportunities are in the pipeline, and how successful their efforts are when these opportunities are won.
• Provides a collaborative platform for our sales team to work on customer quotes. We can now have 2 or 3 members working in the same quote whereas before we had to wait for someone to free up the document before others could access it.
• It allows us to provide much more information in our quotes by attaching documents to the quote. Things like manufacturer specifications or brochures can now be easily attached into the quotes making it a presentation instead of a bunch of line items with numbers.
• ConnectWise Sell is customizable to meet the needs of my company. This is so important to us because similar products only allow you to do what they design it for. Our business changes regularly and we need our software systems to be agile and adaptive to it.

Incentivized

• The search function ranks information based upon usage and is adaptive, learning/improving rankings with every search. This makes finding the right piece of information quick and easy.
• The tool offers flexibility to build various types of sales documents (proposals, presentations, case studies). This drastically reduces the time it takes to put together a client-facing document.
• The content management functionality allows for various content formats and related content can be connected. This simplifies tracking content updates by knowing which other pieces of information may also need review and update when a change is made outside the normal update cycle.

• The first year we were using Quosal, they were consistently posting new 'How to' videos and live training sessions to help users become familiar with the software features and best practices. While those videos are still available, they are becoming less relevant with each software version patch. The help manual documentation should be updated with the software versions as well.

• This is a weird one but when adding content to the 'Q' the tab in word sometimes disappears. Not sure why that happens and we haven't really tried to trouble shoot yet. My solution at the moment is just closing it and re-opening it. Sometimes it works and sometimes I have to do it a few times.
• While being a great place to keep content for our team to access, there is always the thought of whether the information is still accurate. Especially when comes to statistics and facts. We at times get so used to just using what is in our boilerplate that we forget to question whether information is accurate or not. This is more of an observation for users rather than an issue with 'Q' however the information is only as good as it's accuracy.

We are in our 4th year with Quosal and fully expect to renew again and again. With their development of additional features such as the Order Porter, Visual Quoting and others, we see the adoption rates continuing to rise while making our time to quoted shorter and shorter. Quosal and ConnecWise's vision of automated quoting is an exciting frontier that we are very happy to be a part of

We've already renewed our contract with Qvidian and plan on using it for the foreseeable future. Apart from the fact that Qvidian has all the features we need to respond to RFPs and maintain a large informational database, the time that would need to be spent researching and testing out a different piece of software just wouldn't be worth it. All of our users are well learned in Qvidian, and it's easy to teach to new users. Having to learn a brand new application when the current one works great is pointless. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" applies here.

Quosal is a very solid product with a LOT of functionality. Quosal has two main products that they offer, 'Quosal Sell' and 'Quosal Create.' If you are looking for an "out-of-the-box" or "ready to use" quoting software, I would recommend Quosal Sell. If you are interested exploring advanced functionality and integration or have a resource on staff willing to assume an "admin" role, I would highly recommend Quosal Create.

The shift they made in architecting documents from content to outline, is now reversed allowing outline creation first, then content which is more natural. But, due to the fact that we went through a migration of content to get to the new version, it feels less optimized than if we would have re-implemented.

End users having to configure settings more often than desired

Qvidian system maintenance is performed on weekends, usually at odd hours, and advanced notice is given so that teams can plan accordingly.

I dont think we use this tool to potential

Incentivized

Remote or VPN employees seem to have somewhat slower access time. Server maintenance has improved performance.

Finding occasional recurring prompts to update settings in Microsoft (Explorer, Word, Excel, Powerpoint)

I have been in business for 30 years, we have about 30 vendors we have worked with or more. Connectwise is on the bottom, if you ask any MSP how you loose clients the fastest, it's all about response and support. Connectwise has not found that out yet.

They are very much in support of great customer service. They respond quickly with emails and in some cases phone calls to resolve any issues and often times user questions in the past when I could not figure something out.

Incentivized

Live instructor training is expensive, though we have had instructors come to our offices for a ‘refresher’ before. The refresher was more of a “let us fix that for you” than a training on how to do it ourselves.

Online training is limited in my opinion.

Great implementation, the Quosal team has a smart and well planned process to guide your team through the process. More importantly, they understand the challenges with change and user adoption.

Incentivized

IT works great. UPgrades are handled automatically. I was not involved in setup but I know they are there when we need them

Incentivized

Both tools have a very common feature set. Sell is different primarily in the fact that it is online software-as-a-service based deployment, rather than a local server based deployment. That gives it a major leg up. I can use Sell from anywhere in the world easily.

Incentivized

Of the competitive vendor demos I have reviewed over the years, each may have its own strength. Some may be set up to drive compelling differentiators or solutions (E.g., propLIBRARY.com). Some may be built on existing CRMs (E.g., Qorus). Some may have tablet-friendly interfaces (E.g., SAVO). Others focus on collaboration (E.g., XaitPorter). There is nothing wrong with any of these models. You will just have to perform your own gap analysis and see what best addresses your needs. For Blackboard Inc., none of the aforementioned competition offered a holistic and robust replacement for our current PA tool. We have senior writers to craft compelling differentiators. We use SFDC, not SharePoint as our EA CRM. While our strategic writing and architectural needs outweigh having the slickest tablet-friendly user interface, we still have an interface and user experience that is geared toward usability and performance while being cognizant of adoption. New collaborative tools are a big draw, especially when responding to private sector proposals with a 10-to-20 day turnaround. However, not only has this not been a pain point for us (we currently have a versioning process in place) but the conversion and adoption hurdles just for one feature where there is already a workaround in place does not justify the migration.

Connectwise Sell is listening and building their software to fit the needs of their customers. Sell is consistently looking to us for feedback and making sure their product is working for us as partners/customers. We feel we are generally behind on getting to know their updates and software upgrades. They are a great vendor and wonderful corporation.

Incentivized

• Customer satisfaction improvement. It's an impressive and professional way to present information that our customers appreciate. They not only have a clear way of knowing exactly what is being proposed, but now have another method they can use to easily track and organize approved/ not-approved quotes.
• Improved brand consistency. We have a reputable, trusted image that projects across our client portfolio (not to mention within our community) and this system helps to promote and maintain our transparency and professional image.
• Following up and referencing past quotes is made easy and quickly, which has benefited us from a time-cost savings perspective.

Incentivized

• Our experience has been largely positive. It's allowed our RFP team to quickly and efficiently produce very professional documents. This has lead to more time being able to speak to the clients needs specifically. We've received lots of positive feedback from clients saying that the RFP looked tailored to them, and not just some content dumped in a binder. That was our goal.