Salesforce CPQ vs. Oracle CPQ: 2024 Comparison of Features, Pricing & Integrations

Corporate buyers expect more from their configure, price, and quote (CPQ) purchases, and developers are responding by adding new features and leveraging sophisticated AI technology. CPQ software, therefore, became and will continue to be, a necessity for many retailers who want to stay on top of their game. Among the CPQs worth checking out would be Salesforce CPQ vs. Oracle CPQ, but choosing between these two could be challenging because they are both market leaders.

On this page, we will dive into the difference between Oracle CPQ and Salesforce CPQ in terms of features, pricing, integrations, and more. These details will help you decide on the right CPQ software that would address your business needs.

B2B sales are becoming more complex and global. Now, SaaS software companies are not the only ones using innovative sales strategies like subscription-based sales and customizable product packages. The market statistics for CPQ software confirm this, with companies from various industries found to have implemented CPQ technology. The global CPQ market is expected to reach $4992.9 million by 2028. Such an increase is projected at a 12.3% CAGR, and that is owing to the COVID-19-induced lockdowns, which compelled many companies to automate their processes not only for efficiency but to make way for the trend of remote work.

The following is an overview of what companies hope to gain from CPQs, thus underpinning their decisions when purchasing software:

• Better Sales Data Integration Throughout the Supply Chain. Companies whose sales processes are becoming more complex require more high-level data that are consistent throughout company units. CPQ technology improves efficiency, allowing every department, not just sales, to have access to the same CPQ data points, which are formatted and processed similarly so that they all could work towards the same goal of growing the company.
• Empowered Decision-Making Capabilities. Reps are more prone to error when making decisions based on poor data or research. Empowering salespeople with accurate information, therefore, is the goal of CPQ designers. Besides, the B2B sales funnel is driven by buyer and sales rep decisions, and the best software helps to make every detail count, thus rendering them easy to grasp for better decision making.
• AI-Powered Analysis and Automation. CPQ systems have traditionally used AI, but it has recently grown smarter, cheaper, and more versatile. AI will continue to change CPQ software, helping automate processes and allowing for fast complex analysis, helping you see the big picture of a deal, revenue, expense, and profit, and identify potential difficulties. AI will become increasingly important in maximizing CPQ software’s capabilities.
• Simplicity for Reps and Customers. CPQ software has always been about organizing complicated systems to enhance sales. It helps you see all the moving parts of your operation. Advanced CPQ systems use AI and data segmentation to help salespeople better understand their products and value propositions. More importantly, CPQ software benefits customers, especially now when vendors are geared toward enhanced self-service.
• More Customization for Unique Sales Situations. Customization is a priority for developers to make CPQ software immediately adapt to hundreds of different product combinations. As developers increase their CPQs’ customizability, sales teams can produce faster and more accurate proposals and quotations for prospects, thus decreasing bottlenecks in complex products and sales, and letting customers realize the value of their purchases faster.

It can be a challenge to choose from the many CPQ options available today, but it is best to investigate the market’s leading software. The details of Salesforce CPQ vs Oracle CPQ presented in this article will help you determine which leading CPQ provides you with the best features at the most reasonable price.

Overview of Salesforce CPQ and Oracle CPQ

Salesforce CPQ

Salesforce CPQ is known for doing more than other CPQ software, covering other aspects of a business that are just as stressful as pricing. Paired with Salesforce CRM, you can also close deals or finalize deals apart from simply creating quotes. The efficiency it provides in helping you handle multiple deals allows you to do more deals, reach more businesses, and gather more revenues.

Since Salesforce CPQ seamlessly integrates with Sales Cloud, your sales reps can identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities using the product catalog. They need not copy and paste sales agreements into Salesforce CPQ, and they can use standard articles like price books, orders, and assets. The app also assesses discounts, personalization, product quality, and quantity.

Salesforce CPQ helps you to automate quoting, ordering and contracting processes, and because it is cloud-based, you can generate accurate sales quotes and orders on the fly from any device. As such, you can close deals faster and increase sales productivity without ever leaving Salesforce. More importantly, with Salesforce’s AI, Einstein, this software can forecast offers. Forecasting in real-time based on delivered quotes is available, as are sales tools for partners and resellers.

Oracle CPQ

Oracle CPQ is ideal for the marketing, sales, supply chain, and service businesses of SMBs and fast-growing companies. It fully automates sales orders as well as CRM operations throughout the purchase cycle while allowing you to streamline the order lifecycle, improving both sales efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Oracle lets you generate proposals easily based on business principles and price models as well as helps sales employees to create branded quotes from any device, anywhere. Oracle CPQ Cloud increases sales productivity and margins while completing the quote-to-cash process.

The system is adaptable, scalable, and enterprise-ready according to Oracle. Besides, its ability to connect price, inventory, customer data, and other crucial data elements can reduce sales cycle time, increase profitability, and support more complex agreements.

Comparison of Salesforce CPQ vs. Oracle CPQ

Core Features

Oracle CPQ and Salesforce CPQ are both leading CPQs. While the features of these two CPQs are closely similar, both generally meeting various business needs, Oracle CPQ has a relatively lower adoption.

Configuration

In terms of configuration Oracle CPQ and Salesforce CPQ are similarly powerful. However, Salesforce CPQ is user-preferred in terms of building bundles, applying rules, and managing dependencies inside their product masters. In guided selling, product catalog management, and user-friendliness, Salesforce CPQ routinely surpasses competitors.

Oracle CPQ also delivers guided selling, which lowers training time by identifying client needs and relevant product offers, as well as reusable rules and simple interfaces that encourage channel sales and self-service.

Quotes

While Oracle CPQ and Salesforce CPQ compete closely for quotation features, professional and client feedback indicates that Salesforce CPQ is the preferred quoting tool. Oracle CPQ enables you to generate custom-branded quotes, statements of work, engineering documents, datasheets, and contracts in one click, as well as proposals with accurate quote details. It also supports multi-languages and has document output options.

However, Salesforce CPQ’s built-in quote generator is preferred due to its numerous features and seamless compatibility with various plugins for advanced document generation and management, as needed. The quoting engine in Salesforce CPQ also wins in the grouping, quote production, and order.

Oracle CPQ quote dashboard.

Integrations

In terms of integration, Salesforce CPQ vs Oracle CPQ makes for a difficult choice because they can both integrate into their respective product families. Salesforce CPQ works with Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud for direct sales, as well as Salesforce Partner Relationship Management for resellers, and the entire Salesforce product suite. In the meantime, Oracle integrates with other Oracle software assets such as Oracle Sales, Oracle Commerce, Oracle Service, Oracle E-Business Suite, and Oracle Order Management.

Nevertheless, Salesforce CPQ has an ecosystem of third-party software add-ons, including Zilliant for price optimization, Xactly for sales commissions, Avalara for tax calculation, and DocuSign, Sertifi, Adobe, and Oracle for e-signature. Among the large and small specialty implementation partners are Accenture, Cognizant, Deloitte, PwC, and Simplus. All these working together with Salesforce CPQ allows you extended functionality far beyond what other solutions can provide.

Pricing

In terms of pricing, Salesforce CPQ comes out on top, particularly with terms and conditions, approval workflow, and renewals. Meanwhile, Oracle CPQ offers nearly the same pricing features but could be a bit more difficult to use. One study reveals that practically all price logic on Oracle CPQ must be created using formulas, scripts, and custom tables, for which there is a restricted, business-user-friendly admin UI.

Salesforce CPQ has two fixed-priced packages and two per-quote packages and is perhaps one of the priciest CPQ offerings. Add to that the partner ecosystem products to meet your needs, and you are looking at a much higher cost.

Salesforce CPQ offers four packages:

• CPQ includes basic configure, price, and quote features.
• CPQ Plus adds increased process control and automation to the CPQ.
• CPQ & Billing Growth adds integrated quoting and billing solutions to the CPQ Plus offering.
• CPQ & Billing Plus is a complete quote-to-cash solution.

Oracle CPQ meanwhile offers one package, but you may contact it for prices of additional services. This package would include the following:

• Product and service configuration
• Guided selling
• Nested system configurations
• Real-time quote collaboration
• Pricing and rating engine
• Subscription ordering
• Discounting and deal management engine
• Multi-site Document Designer
• AI-based price optimization
• Workflow approvals
• CRM integration with leading SFAs
• List and customer-specific pricing

Ease of Use

Salesforce CPQ is ranked high in terms of ease of use on most review platforms. While it makes it simple to set prices and track orders, it also offers revenue recognition, sales tax management, and other transactional solutions to assist with other processes. Its quote-to-cash solution is built with the same strong, user-friendly design language as the Salesforce CRM solution. Furthermore, it can forecast offers using Einstein AI as well as real-time forecasting based on delivered quotes, giving you a more accurate picture of your process’s performance.

While Salesforce CPQ is said to have more problems than other solutions with poor ergonomics and UX design, its strength lies in its integration with the Salesforce B2B Commerce Lightning version, which makes performing other processes simple. Furthermore, with subscriptions, configuration, and channel switching capabilities, it is one of the best omnichannel implementations this year.

Oracle CPQ is also praised for its omnichannel capabilities. It provides one of the best multichannel quoting and ordering solutions evaluated for this report due to its close integration with Oracle Commerce. Its sales catalog, on the other hand, is basic, with no subcategories, faceted search, or product comparison, making it difficult for those who sell a large number of products. Salesforce CPQ’s reporting and dashboard features could present challenges.

A Salesforce CPQ dashboard showing a quote being completed using a smart template.

Getting Started

Oracle CPQ is more difficult to implement, often taking months to fully ramp up and work in the CPQ. It has been reported that it is difficult to implement and maintain in the long run. The administration UI is dated and has a steep learning curve when compared to Salesforce CPQ.

Salesforce CPQ, on the other hand, has a large knowledge base and community support, and it takes only six to eight weeks to implement. However, there have been reports of implementation in two weeks. Furthermore, Salesforce CPQ enables the smooth release of sales cycle upgrades. While Salesforce CPQ is highly rated for its ease of use once set up, you may need to hire a professional implementation team to help you get started with the platform.

Use Cases

With eight deployments of 10,000 users or more, Oracle CPQ is proven to work at an enterprise scale. Salesforce CPQ customers, meanwhile, range from small to enterprise organizations, spanning high-tech, manufacturing, HLS, and more.

Meanwhile, since Salesforce CPQ integrates with other Salesforce products, its functionality can extend to so much more than just configuration, pricing, and quoting. Paired with features of CRM solutions, you can get more leads, close deals, and increase productivity. The marketing cloud helps you connect with your customers through email, SMS, social, and advertising platforms. All these plus, the functionalities that other third-party applications can add let you improve other business processes.

Oracle CPQ integrates with other Oracle products to extend functionalities as well as with Salesforce Sales Cloud and Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM. However, the limited integrations with other third parties fall short of the functionalities that Salesforce CPQ could give. Oracle CPQ integrates with Oracle Subscription Management Cloud to provide extensive subscription order support, including renewals, amendments, suspensions, terminations, order stacking, and subscription invoicing.

A Salesforce CPQ dashboard showing a product’s report and analytics highlights

Salesforce CPQ vs. Oracle CPQ Comparison Table

Salesforce CPQ vs. Oracle CPQ–Which Is Better?

Salesforce CPQ vs. Oracle CPQ is a close battle. Both have a significant market presence and are considered major industry players. Salesforce CPQ, however, has several advantages, including, but not limited to, faster implementation, integration with the best Salesforce products, and a large software partner ecosystem. Despite reported flaws in ergonomics and user experience design, it has higher user satisfaction than other CPQs.

Of course, the best CPQ for your company is entirely dependent on your needs and whether you can address such needs at a price you are willing to pay. While the difference between Oracle CPQ and Salesforce CPQ in terms of features is very little, the price of the package clearly distinguishes Salesforce CPQ from Oracle CPQ.

By Nestor Gilbert

Nestor Gilbert is a senior B2B and SaaS analyst and a core contributor at FinancesOnline for over 5 years. With his experience in software development and extensive knowledge of SaaS management, he writes mostly about emerging B2B technologies and their impact on the current business landscape. However, he also provides in-depth reviews on a wide range of software solutions to help businesses find suitable options for them. Through his work, he aims to help companies develop a more tech-forward approach to their operations and overcome their SaaS-related challenges.