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UPDATE ON APTTUS:
A LEADER IN CPQ AND QUOTE-TO-CASH
By P.J. Jakovljevic, TEC Principal Analyst
www.technologyevaluation.com
Update on Apttus: A Leader in CPQ and Quote-to-cash
Apttus is a cloud software company that has risen fairly quickly from relative
obscurity to being a prominent fixture at salesforce.com’s major events—the
Dreamforce mega conferences and Salesforce1 world city tours. Needless to say,
the company has also grown and expanded its operations and functional scope in
just a few years. Apttus is based in San Mateo, California, with additional offices in
London, UK; Bozeman, Montana; and Ahmedabad, India. In 2014 it added about
350 people to its headcount, now nearing 550 worldwide, as well as 95 new client
logos to its install base of over 300 corporations. It is not surprising that its name
is derived from Latin words meaning “capable” and “speed.” Speed and agility
(responsiveness) in sales, service, and marketing (and entire business, if you will)
are indeed the new business imperative.
Apttus was founded in 2006, and its first solution was cloud contract lifecycle
management (CLM) software, in part owing to its founder’s involvement with “old
school” contract management software vendors Nextance and iMANY. The
company was started on its founder, chairman, and CEO Kirk Krappe’s credit card,
quickly ringing up an outstanding balance of $70,000. But in the first quarter of
the company’s existence it closed five deals. The last one was a million dollar deal
and the company was off to the races. Apttus is a software and product company
that was born in the cloud, multi-tenant on day one. This is a big deal, because
with configure, price, quote (CPQ) software (which the vendor will tackle along
the way) one can dig a hole with customizations and total cost of ownership (TCO)
spiraling out of control. This situation has dearly cost customers of other “cloud
perhaps” CPQ vendors who came on board in the late 2000s and couldn’t upgrade,
and were then faced with either a costly re-write or switch to another provider.
Apttus raised no capital until September 2013, salesforce.com being one of the
three investors. To date, every dollar spent by Apttus has been generated as
revenue by the company, while the capital raised is still in the bank. In 2007,
Apttus was interested in building a CPQ application, but salesforce.com’s product
management team announced that they were adding quoting capabilities to Sales
Cloud, so Apttus didn’t do anything at that time. A year later, however,
salesforce.com’s release turned out to be very rudimentary and Apttus started
building its CPQ solution, which launched in 2009—later to market than others,
but quickly catching up (see Figure 1).
Update on Apttus: A Leader in CPQ and Quote-to-cash
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Figure 1. Apttus’ Genesis
The reason to build everything on Force.com (and later on the Salesforce1
platform) was largely predicated on Apttus staffers’ past frustrations at Oracle,
Apple, Clarify, Nextance, and other old school enterprise software places where
building, delivering, and maintaining software was a nightmare. Neehar Giri,
President and Chief Solutions Architect (i.e., Apttus’ technical brains), built a
contract management app over the summer of 2006 on Force.com, and realized
that the platform was really well built for third-party developers. In addition,
Apttus could build a company without outside capital because it could leverage
salesforce.com’s global cloud-based infrastructure, and only had to pay
salesforce.com when a new customer came on board.
So the cloud model worked for delivery, and the business model was clearly
effective and capital efficient. Over the years, having 500,000 users in 50 countries,
with customers like GE Aviation, GE Power & Water, GE Healthcare, HP, DSV,
Global Foundry, Motorola, Phillips 66, Bobcat, Spark New Zealand (previously New
Zealand Telecom), Verizon, AT&T, Telenor Group, Covidien, McKesson, American
Express, Delta Airlines, etc., speaks to the strategic value of this decision eight
years ago. Figures below depict Apttus major clients by vertical industries (Figure
2), as well as the top 10 reasons why these customers have chosen the vendor
(Figure 3).
Update on Apttus: A Leader in CPQ and Quote-to-cash
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Figure 2. Apttus Major Customers
Figure 3. Why Apttus
Contract Management Stronghold
Given that Apttus and salesforce.com seem to be joined at the hip, salesforce.com
is also a prominent Apttus CLM reference customer after deploying it in the late
2000s. Here’s a webinar regarding the solution deployment and its use by
salesforce.com.
Update on Apttus: A Leader in CPQ and Quote-to-cash
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Considering Apttus’ origins in CLM, it is only logical that the majority of its 300
customers (about 60 percent) use that solution. Users can conveniently redline
contracts and collaborate in Salesforce Chatter directly from Microsoft Word (see
Figure 4). They can also update contracts quickly with pre-approved language
from their legal playbook. Nifty dashboards help them analyze contract workloads,
cycle times, contract value, and more for all agreements (see Figure 5).
Additionally, Apttus’ patent pending (12 patents) X-Author technology enables
Microsoft Office to be a user interface (UI) with full interaction and control
between salesforce.com and Microsoft Office.
Figure 4. Apttus CLM
Figure 5. Apttus CLM Analytics
Update on Apttus: A Leader in CPQ and Quote-to-cash
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Apttus Quote-to-cash Portfolio
During the last several years, Apttus has surrounded its original CLM solution to
become a Quote-to-Cash (QTC) software company that can cater to the vital
business process between the buyer’s interest in a purchase and the realization of
revenue. Cloud re-platforming of the IT infrastructure is creating opportunities for
salesforce.com and Apttus. A modern CIO mindset is that SAP, Oracle, and other
enterprise resource planning (ERP) products are Systems of Record, whereas
salesforce.com and Apttus are Systems of Engagement.
As Figure 6 (below) depicts, in addition to the aforementioned CLM and X-Author,
the QTC applications include CPQ, Renewals, and Revenue Management. The
system supports complex renewals, including add-ons, co-terminations, swap outs,
and end of life (EOL) situations. The enforcement of increase clauses during
renewals can result in addition of significant revenue. There is a recommendation
engine for up-sell, cross-sell, and renewals. Advanced deal management provides
insight into impact of potential changes allowing for increased control and deal
value.
Figure 6. Apttus QTC Portfolio
There is a support for complex pricing structures and deal ratings for global sales
organizations, with multiple price lists based on customers, channel, regions, etc.
The system supports a multi-dimensional pricing matrix and multiple price types
including one-time, recurring, usage-based, services, contract-pricing, etc. Also
supported are pricing tiers, ramps, pricing adjustments, pro-ration/co-termination
charges, over-rides, quote re-pricing, and more, including approvals for products
or pricing. Apttus has also been doing price guidance/prescriptive pricing based
on historical data and/or rules via machine learning.
Update on Apttus: A Leader in CPQ and Quote-to-cash
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Figure 7 (below) shows X-Author for Excel, which makes it fast, easy, and safe to
use Excel to update QTC information, including pricing. Apttus considers X-Author
a competitive advantage because Excel and Word users can use it as an alternate
UI for their CPQ or QTC processes. They can update multiple objects in Office apps
while observing all the security controls and rules defined in salesforce.com.
Moreover, X-Author currently offers the offline mode with replication capabilities,
given that the Salesforce1 mobile platform is not there yet.
Competitive CPQ Offering
In a matter of just a few years, Apttus has developed complex CPQ capabilities
that include product catalogs, groups, hierarchies, entitlements, nested
configurations (product bundles and sub-bundles), solution selling (products and
services bundles), and guided selling at any levels with intelligent constraints to
reduce sales errors and customer confusion. There is an attribute-based search
capability and asset-based ordering for existing customers.
The system provides application programming interfaces (APIs) for “headless
configuration” and custom UI to enable the automatic configuration of
customizable products that are based on a promotion definition. Headless
configuration can work with or without the UI. When you don't have a UI, you are
using the APIs to validate the configuration. This is especially useful when a quote
has been sitting for months and the customer is ready to finally sign the purchase
order (or there are changes to existing in-flight orders). This capability also allows
non-quoting apps such as back office systems to recheck orders via a UI. It also
helps in doing batch validation or individual validation of inflight orders or quotes.
You can use APIs to run through the options to confirm that what you quoted, say,
six months ago, is still valid or not.
In addition, a stateless engine allows companies to scale very efficiently since the
session can be set to any server and processed (Google and Facebook are
stateless engines and scale very well). If a session fails or hardware fails, a user
can pick up and proceed seamlessly once it is back. If it is not stateless then one
won't be able to do hot failover switching (to prevent downtime) easily, which is
needed today for 24/7 operations for global companies.
For its part, declarative programming makes it easy to specify the constraints and
rules, especially the complex ones for large companies with lots of products and
rules. It makes it easy to create a "truth table" or a set of valid solutions amongst
millions of options with support for inclusion, exclusion, compatibility, resourcebased constraints or rules, etc. These constraints and rules can fire in any
direction, as opposed to a procedural way to write lots of “if-then-else”
statements. If you have a constraint engine then you are modeling, executing, and
maintaining in a very efficient fashion. In Apttus’ case, there is no proprietary
Update on Apttus: A Leader in CPQ and Quote-to-cash
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language—everything is click, drop down, and select. Companies need datadriven modeling with clean separation between customer data, rules,
configuration engine, and UI to achieve this. Many CPQ vendors never got there
and thus their upgrades were very difficult, and scalability and system
performance at the end of each quarter (when sales orders would typically flood)
was very difficult.
Last but not least, as Figure 8 displays, there are rich visualization capabilities via
integration with leading computer aided design (CAD) and product lifecycle
management (PLM) systems to render 2D and 3D visualizations, as well as
schematics/blueprints for more engineered products. There are integrations with
SAP, Oracle’s Agile PLM, Dassault Enovia, PTC Windchill, Arena PLM, SolidWorks,
AutoCAD, and more.
Figure 8. CAD Viewer Integration
As many other CPQ vendors do, Apttus too has some joint customers with SAP.
Thus, Apttus can import product models built in SAP Variant Configurator (SAP VC)
into Apttus. The product models actually map well given that the rules in SAP VC
can be convoluted. SAP VC is good for managing the fulfillment of ordered
products and managing the manufacturing bill of materials (MBOM). However, it
does not have the flexibility to support bundles, pricing structures, and other
creative ways of packaging the same products in different ways. It was designed
for product companies and does not work well for services-based companies such
as telecom, financial services, or subscription business models. It is also not a
customer-friendly or sales-friendly configurator.
SAP has built its own Internet Pricing & Configurator (IPC) as its front-end
configurator. Still, SAP VC customers don’t make changes often because it is not
easy, and they are also struggling with stock-keeping unit (SKU) proliferation.
Those customers want Apttus to pull the product or pricing master from SAP and
then use the flexibility in Apttus’ solution selling (bundles of bundles or nested
Update on Apttus: A Leader in CPQ and Quote-to-cash
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models) and comprehensive pricing capabilities for products and services, selling
through partners, etc. They thus consider Apttus their new “front office” for its
speed, flexibility, and being customer centric.
Strong CPQ Attracts salesforce.com As Well
Not surprisingly, salesforce.com selected Apttus for corporate-wide CPQ needs in
2013. Previously, salesforce.com had a heavily customized CPQ tool (Comergent by
IBM) that was neither efficient nor fully executed in the cloud. The vendor needed
a solution that could adapt to continuing company acquisitions and rapid growth,
given that the former CPQ solution prevented 5,000 or so reps from effectively
selling new products and company growth. Apttus was selected not only for
already being the CLM solution at salesforce.com and for being 100 percent native
on the Salesforce1 Platform, but also for a proven success with complex and large
product catalogs, the ability to maintain and manage the entire QTC process
(including constant and rapid changes) without requiring proprietary coding and
developer involvement, comprehensive functionality and advanced usability, and
being multichannel for both direct and online sales. In addition, increased
collaboration from Salesforce Chatter and Microsoft Office is enabled
by Apttus X-Author for Chatter.
At the recent Dreamforce 2014 conference, there was a QTC Session with Apttus
CMO Kamal Ahluwalia and Meredith Schmidt, SVP of Revenue Operations at
salesforce.com, entitled “5 Ways Salesforce Closes Complex Deals, Anytime—
Anywhere.” Those five ways that Apttus helps salesforce.com close deals are as
follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Figure 9. Apttus Mobility
Some competitors might point to the fact that Apttus CPQ is not yet live at
salesforce.com after a lengthy project, but Apttus claims that its solution is
ready—it is just that salesforce.com has postponed the go-live date due to fiscal
year end consideration. Also, some competitors claim that Apttus is complex
because the solution has some custom objects. But Apttus has a complete data
model for a full QTC process, which requires objects that salesforce.com doesn’t
yet have in its standard objects library. Apttus does the complete automation of
this process and can provide the right level of detail/insight for executives or
operational teams on any device.
Update on Apttus: A Leader in CPQ and Quote-to-cash
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Automate the QTC process
Add Deal Guidance to help sales people
Add E-Commerce to help customers and partners self-serve and find and
configure the right products online
Mobility: Explore data, uncover new insights, and take action instantly from any
device (see Figure 9)
Machine Learning: Data-driven dynamic guidance for deals up-selling/crossselling
Apttus is also built for Manufacturing, Healthcare/Life Sciences, Telecom & Media,
and Financial Services verticals, and there are plenty of use cases for these large
global customers that are not yet supported by salesforce.com, for which Apttus
had to add its own objects. In addition, salesforce.com has traditionally not been
focused on transactional systems such as e-commerce platforms, where it lags
behind Oracle ATG, SAP Hybris, IBM WebSphere Commerce, NetSuite Venda,
Epicor ShopVisible, etc. That is changing now with its platform becoming more
and more capable of handling e-commerce use cases both in terms of volume and
pricing for a large number of users. Salesforce.com has let its partners lead the
investment here and Apttus is glad about the traction it is getting with its ecommerce solution. It now has a complete multi-channel selling solution
(including e-commerce and partner commerce) for global companies (see video).
Of the aforementioned competitive e-commerce platforms, only IBM can handle
configurable products (Oracle is likely still integrating BigMachines with ATG).
Click-to-chat (Online Agent) and co-browsing capabilities are already available on
the Salesforce Platform, and used in Service Cloud. So far, Apttus has gained ecommerce customers who want to sell across multiple channels, and sell complex
products—so catalog-based selling is not enough. More and more CIOs are
moving their infrastructure into the cloud, whereby on-premises (or hosted at
best) e-commerce solutions like ATG are not preferred. Some of the
merchandising capabilities for consumer goods are still likely to be better with
ATG or Demandware, but Apttus e-commerce is quite competitive where
complexity and configuration matter.
Expanded Quote-to-cash Analytics
Many future enhancements at Apttus will be about analytics, making everything
increasingly data driven to make the full QTC environment dynamic and
responsive to customers and markets. There will be more key performance
indicators (KPIs) and dashboards on performance/trends/risk with quotes,
products, pricing, contracts, rebates, and revenue management.
In fact, at Dreamforce 2014, Apttus announced they have joined the Salesforce
Analytics Cloud (a.k.a. Salesforce Wave) ecosystem with its new Quote-to-Cash
Intelligence (QTCI) solution. Apttus QTCI leverages quoting, contract, and data in
salesforce.com’s customer relationship management (CRM) Sales Cloud, offering
to provide actionable data including machine learning-based guidance that
ensures executives meet their targets via actionables that uncover the often
hidden behaviors and patterns. Wave is a cloud analytics platform designed for
every business user to explore data, uncover new insights, and take action
instantly from any device.
Salesforce Wave is a business intelligence (BI) offering (although some might
debate that it is rather an engaging reporting and visualization cloud solution for
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now) by providing a user interface (UI) that allows data to be easily manipulated
and visualized by non-IT personnel. Wave is not about traditional rows and
columns and pivot tables and queries, and salesforce.com wanted everyone to
interact with the product and feel good using it (some suggest that video games
experiences have served as an inspiration here). Its mobile-first design, advanced
search features (enabled by the EdgeSpring acquisition), and the ability to easily
integrate with many data sources are other nice features.
QTCI works in conjunction with Apttus and Sales Cloud, providing users with
accessible and useful recommended actions for every aspect of the sales and
revenue cycle. By combining the power of the Salesforce Analytics Cloud (Wave)
with the utility of QTCI, customers now have access to a suite of predictive
intelligence tools inside salesforce.com that can provide the following:






Dynamic recommendations of what products current and future customers are
most likely to buy, and what upsell/cross-sell products representatives should
recommend. Close more business this quarter with system-driven
recommendations that learn from your historical behavior, business rules, and
revenue goals.
The optimal sales and ordering configurations for all configurable products
Suggested updates to contract terms and conditions, discount types, product
bundles, and more based on previous successes and failures
Algorithms and KPIs that generate practical and contextual tracking and
predictions against customizable goals (see Figure 10)
The ability to monitor the most critical KPIs and get alerts and notifications to
take the necessary action from a mobile device
Specific tailored recommendations for the individual, the group, and the
company
Natively integrated with Salesforce1 Platform, Salesforce Wave benefits from the
trusted platform and enables admins to quickly drag and drop salesforce.com data
to deploy sales, service and marketing analytics apps. In addition, developers and
IT can use new Wave APIs and other data connectors to easily connect to other
data sources to build custom analytics apps for any business function, or embed
analytics into analytics apps and connected products for customers.
Update on Apttus: A Leader in CPQ and Quote-to-cash
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Figure 10. Apttus QTCI Revenue Snapshot
Given that Apttus brings all sales and revenue-related processes, data, and
insights inside Salesforce CRM, companies should better understand which deals
are more likely to close based on historical success factors, and then take action
on any deals that are “at risk.” Companies can also monitor their exposure to risk
by setting risk definitions and thresholds for quoting, contracting, order
fulfillment, invoicing, and revenue management (see Figure 11). They can also
track sales activity across all their channels, including e-commerce and partner
commerce.
Figure 11. Apttus QTCI Risk Monitoring
Getting More Scalable
As a recap, Apttus has become a CPQ leader (in addition to the CLM leadership) in
the salesforce.com ecosystem almost overnight. That advancement was helped by
the exit of BigMachines, which used to be the CPQ leader at the Salesforce
AppExchange marketplace, but has since been acquired by Oracle (in fact, its
underlying technology is Oracle database and Java, which made it a logical fit for
Oracle). Certainly, FPX, PROS Cameleon CPQ, and CallidusCloud CPQ remain loyal
Update on Apttus: A Leader in CPQ and Quote-to-cash
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salesforce.com partners and strong CPQ providers, but they have their own
platforms, citing Force.com’s past issues with processing huge volumes of
sales orders, configurations, commissions, etc.
As part of salesforce.com’s insider circle, Apttus knows what is coming down the
track to address these performance shortcomings. The code-named “Aura”
framework was used last year for mobile-first applications on Salesforce1. The
recently-unveiled Salesforce1 Lightning builds on top of Aura to make it easier to
build responsive applications for multi-device interactive screens. Lightning
includes a number of tools for developers, such as Lightning App Builder (build
apps visually using off-the-shelf and custom-built Lightning Components) and
Lightning Components (re-usable, self-contained UI elements for Force.com
apps).
With Lightning there is more client-side logic, which should reduce round trips
and improve performance, especially for interactive applications like Apttus.
More along the lines of improving performance/scalability, a new Salesforce
Apex code compiler will significantly speed up the first time load models. Last but
not least, the session affinity capability will be able to route new user sessions to
pods that already have the models in cache.
While Apttus can never relax, both due to the competition from the
aforementioned CPQ establishment and the Salesforce1 newcomers like
SteelBrick (which touts simplicity and Force.com purity, but is targeting less
complex and somewhat smaller companies than Apttus does), the future
seems bright for the upbeat company. It will be interesting to watch what new
developments come from the vendor, both in terms of new customers and
functionality.
About Technology Evaluation Centers
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