Share your experience using Pega Sales Automation

We primarily use Infor CloudSuite CRM for booking orders, tracking customers, managing estimates, and handling codes and related information.

One feature of Infor CloudSuite CRM that I find most beneficial is the transmission of information. Workflow management and collaboration tools enhance operations and facilitate seamless interaction among departments.

They could include marketing automation for the product.

We have been using Infor CloudSuite CRM for 15 years.

The platform has supported our business scalability and growth over time by enhancing productivity and expediting processes. It enables us to respond to customers more quickly and reduce order lead times, resulting in higher customer satisfaction and improved margins.

I rate the scalability a nine out of ten.

The technical support services are good.

Positive

The Infor team creates the instance, so the initial setup is straightforward. For a mid-sized organization, the software would be deployed in a maximum of three months.

The product is expensive. I rate the pricing a five out of ten.

We store all customer information and transaction details within Infor CloudSuite CRM, which is also integrated with our ERP system.

It has significantly impacted our sales and marketing strategies. It is a transactional system with features like workflow management and document control capabilities. This integration allows seamless communication and collaboration between our field teams, engineering, and sales departments.

While integrating with Infor ERP systems is relatively straightforward, connecting with third-party systems may require technical assistance. It is possible to integrate with external systems with the necessary technical support.

I advise others to look at the digital transformation tools in addition to the CRM. That will bring higher value.

I rate it a nine out of ten.

Our use cases are in the manufacturing and distribution sectors with Creatio, medium to large enterprise deployments.

The initial selection of Creatio is due to the time it takes to get up and running and the fact that people are productive using the application. Once a sales team, marketing team, or even a service team starts using the product, they'll find a consistent user interface between each of those modules. There's also the ability to automate workflows between them. 

For example, a qualified lead can be automatically passed from marketing to a sales team, and you could specify the sales team by certain parameters. Creatio allows you to use any of the more prominent sales processes in the marketplace. 

You can simply copy that into Creatio, and then that will be the designated sales process. Once you get those processes down, then it will, in fact, lead you to guided selling and AI insights on what the next best steps are in pursuing that sales opportunity. So, that's time to value right there – from the time of implementation all the way to the time of getting through the sales process.

The reporting and analytics tools are pretty good within Sales Creatio. Each step of the customer journey is recorded by certain metrics and KPIs. If you want to do a lot deeper dive with Excel pivot tables or third-party analytics tools like Qlik or Tableau, that's an option. But what I'm finding is that for companies just getting started with the platform, the out-of-the-box analytics may be sufficient. That might change after you see more significant results from using the platform. 

The analytics are good – you can create your own analytics dashboards or use the ones that come pre-built. I typically use the pre-built dashboards, and they cover everything I need as I'm managing the customer journey – whether I'm in the sales, marketing, or service module. That works well for me now, but managers who want pivot tables and things like that can export those dashboards to Excel and analyze the data there. 

The most valuable features are the platform's agility and how quickly it can be modified to meet the workflows of any organization. That translates to a faster time to market and time to value. 

Creatio doesn't take as long to implement as other CRMs out there, and you don't need as heavy a consulting staff for that implementation and those modifications. So, time to value is one of the big pluses for the platform.

The biggest area of improvement for me is the mobile app. Creatio has moved towards this composable architecture and user interface, and it looks good and works well on a laptop or tablet. But the mobile app could be improved.

Only half of the mobile app uses the new architecture, and I believe their roadmap is to fully update it so there's a consistent user interface throughout the mobile app. Some of it uses the older Creatio technology, some of it's newer, and I think they're aiming to have it fully updated sometime in the second quarter. That will be a big jump.

It supports the remote sales team, but it could be a lot better. Creatio needs to move the mobile app update higher on its priority list. We can see a difference when we look at other mobile CRM solutions out there – Creatio's mobile app isn't as fresh as other parts of the application.

The other area I'd like to see Creatio improve – is the development of a robust field service application or enhancement to their existing Service Creatio module. It should be a separate product called Creatio Field Service. Field service is important because it addresses the large number of workers out there who aren't desk-bound, and that really corresponds with the mobile app improvements.

I have been using it for three years. 

I haven't had any outages or anything like that with the product. Sometimes, the loading is slow, but I'm going to blame that on my internet connection. I haven't heard of many cases where there's been a massive routing issue or problems with network availability. I know Creatio has data centers all over the world. I haven't seen anything that's any worse than some of the other web-based applications that I use. So, I would give the stability a nine out of ten.

I would rate the scalability of this product an eight out of ten for very large organizations needing to scale. 

For small organizations, SMBs,  scalability is a ten out of ten. For medium enterprises, meaning 500 to 1000 users, it's probably a nine. 

For over 1000 users, that's where it's about an eight and a half. That's only because those larger organizations might also want a field service application, and Creatio doesn't have one built-in.

Based on my experiences, the customer support and service are strong. I've only had a couple of issues, and they were related to a third-party product I was trying to integrate. I was getting emails all hours of the night - someone was actively working on it, and we finally got it resolved. 

So, I have to give them kudos for that. It took about a week, only because they had to work with the third-party vendor to make sure the API was working correctly. They were able to analyze Creatio system, ensure there were no corrupt files on my side, and test it using their internal tools. 

Ultimately, we did find that there was a missing element on the third-party vendor side that needed to be enhanced for proper integration with Creatio. 

Positive

I have used other CRMs, such as Sugar CRM, Hubspot and Salesforce. The main difference is cost. The other difference is time to value along with features and functions. 

For example, even with Creatio's most basic plan, which has Growth, Enterprise, and Ultimate, I use the Enterprise version. It's a fully-featured CRM that includes sales, marketing, and service, along with the studio product. 

That's different from some other vendors where they have different tiers of their product, and you don't receive all the features unless you're ready to pay an exorbitant amount – whether it's Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Sugar CRM, or definitely HubSpot. 

I commend Creatio for that approach, and it's going to pay off even more as people become more aware of the product.

The deployment depends on the size of the company and the specific use cases they want to implement. A lot of the people I talk to have come from other CRMs like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Sugar CRM, and HubSpot. In any case, I haven't heard of a large deployment taking longer than five and a half months – and I mean very large, with thousands of users.

Typically, we're looking at three to four months. That's mostly focused on getting data migrated over, making sure it's clean and de-duplicated. For a medium to large organization, I would say three to four months is pretty standard. For smaller companies, we're talking weeks.

You start seeing it within six to eight months after all the change management, integrations, and everything else is complete within an organization. Once you start using the product consistently and get away from the initial jitters of change, people really like using Creatio. 

The user interface helps them do their job better and more efficiently, and our team actually enjoys logging into it. It also has an internal Slack-like feature where they can chat and have feeds, not just email, to teammates all over the world – all within the application at no extra cost.

Overall, I'd rate it a nine and a half out of ten. The half-point deduction is only because of the mobile app and lack of a built-in field service solution. Otherwise, it's excellent.