Campfire Interactive Reviews

My main use case for Campfire Interactive is opportunity management, reporting, and planning. A specific example of how I use it for opportunity management reporting and planning is budgeting and forecasting as well as acquisition pipeline tracking and reporting.

The best features Campfire Interactive offers include the opportunity to have a closed loop system from the start of a quote or opportunity through planning and the end of production on a program.

Having that closed loop system helps my team and my process by providing a single source of truth and a one-stop shop for the sales team for sales reporting and for revenue recognition.

Campfire Interactive has not positively impacted my organization at this point, as we do not have the full system implemented. I suspect that once the full system is implemented, we will see positive change.

The positive changes I am expecting once the full system is implemented include reporting efficiencies, accountability to numbers, and accountability to where we quoted versus the actuals that are coming in.

Campfire Interactive can be improved as I would like a few things to be more user-friendly. The user interface is slightly dated, the reporting features are also dated, and for our specific business, it is not customizable enough.

I have been using Campfire Interactive in my day-to-day work for four months.

Campfire Interactive is stable.

The customer support is great.

I previously used a different solution, which was a homegrown system that did not allow for a closed loop from quote to production.

It took over a year to implement the solution with Campfire Interactive's in-house implementation team's assistance because of internal and external reasons.

I worked with Campfire Interactive's in-house implementation team, and my experience with them was that the team is very helpful and very responsive.

I did evaluate other options before choosing Campfire Interactive, but I was not involved in that evaluation.

The ability to manage data through business processes and workflows in Campfire Interactive is extremely important, as the quote process involves quite a bit of approvals, workflows, and similar processes.

I would rate Campfire Interactive a seven on a scale of one to ten. I chose a seven because overall systemically, it allows you to plan for opportunities, although there are still definite improvements that need to be made.

My advice to others looking into using Campfire Interactive is to give it consideration but make sure that you understand the full capabilities of the system and how your business can adapt to those capabilities. My overall review rating for Campfire Interactive is seven.

My use case for Campfire Interactive is primarily for opportunity management and sales forecasting, where we manage our forecast for all of our current production parts and our long-term forecast.

We're able to quickly assess changes in the automotive industry now that we have all our data consolidated. For instance, during the union negotiations a couple of years ago, there was a potential strike. We could quickly estimate the impact of any downtime on our operations, broken down by plant. This ability to plan and respond effectively is extremely useful for us.

We have observed several enhancements to the user interface and the pricing table. On the other hand, there is another module that I haven't been directly involved with: the costing, pricing, and quoting module. The team is continually working to improve this process, providing us with new ways to manage our workflow and process flow. From this perspective, having our cost estimating history and quoting history all consolidated in one system has been a significant improvement for us.

We have dozens of manufacturing plants whose systems do not communicate with each other. Campfire Interactive allowed us to bring all of our data into one platform.

The reporting tools are really useful, and we are able to integrate some other reporting solutions by presenting the data to the Microsoft Power BI platform.

The role-based access control is a useful feature in Campfire Interactive, giving us control over who can see what. However, there are certain processes that require particular users to have overall admin rights, which unfortunately grants them too much authority. We want to refine some of the roles further to ensure that access is appropriate. Our IT team began addressing this issue a few months ago.

I wouldn't say there are any system issues. There are minor enhancements that we request from time to time, and the Campfire team collaborates with us on those. These enhancements are not system issues; rather, they are opportunities for us to learn how to utilize the system more effectively. As a result, we come up with requests to add different cost categories and additional reporting functionality. When I think about the system, I focus less on issues and more on how the Campfire client integrates it into their business processes and trains users to use it correctly. This integration is really the key point; it's all about how the client incorporates the product into their workflows.

Regarding BI Reporting, the standard reporting module within Campfire Interactive primarily gives you an Excel data dump, and while there are some visualizations for creating dashboards, I found those limited for my needs. We started presenting the data to Microsoft Power BI, which is much better for generating the reports I want.

The forecast accuracy of Campfire Interactive has been generally good, with no significant issues. However, there are some improvements we could make to achieve more granular data. For example, we have parts that are common to multiple vehicle programs, but the system does not allow for custom volume settings for each program.

I've used other systems and each has its pros and cons. Campfire advantages include speed and an easy to use price table. One area for improvement would be the integration of actuals from our ERP systems. There is currently no interface within the Campfire application to assist with the alignment of actual ship records with the forecast part records.  

I have been using Campfire Interactive since 2020.

It is stable. I can only think of one issue where some data seemed to be missing. It was reported once in five years.

Campfire Interactive is scalable for our organization. Since we are owned by a private equity company, it’s quite possible that we could acquire another company and merge it into our business. Campfire Interactive is fully capable of scaling up and handling any additional volume we want to put into it.

We have close to 180 people working with this solution.

I would rate the technical support a six out of ten. The response time is great, and the engagement with the Campfire team is also very good. However, the main issue tends to be the timing of deploying new enhancements. It often feels like the delivery of certain updates takes longer than expected. Even when we know we're ready to implement changes, there can be unexpected delays. I think they are trying to harmonize the various environments that their clients have, which makes sense to ensure that everyone is on a more common system instead of each client using a unique custom application. While I understand their efforts, the process does feel slower than it could be.

Neutral

I have used another system and there are pros and cons to each.

It took about six months for me to launch the Opportunity Management and Sales Forecasting System. However, this is highly dependent on the client. A properly prepared team could likely launch it in one to two months. 

Similarly, we could have launched the costing, pricing, and quoting module faster, but we had our own issues to work through at the same time. 

There isn't any maintenance; just typical ongoing data changes.

It's difficult to measure return on investment precisely, but I believe one of the biggest benefits is that it provides the sales team with a tool to develop a strategy on a customer-by-customer basis. This allows us to anticipate our staffing needs effectively. We're able to analyze changes in the forecast, identify which programs are ending, and determine which new programs we should prepare to quote and staff for. Overall, I would say that enhancing our commercial strategy has been a significant advantage, resulting in millions of dollars in additional revenue that our sales team has been able to achieve through effective planning.

Its time to value was immediate on the forecasting side. However, it took us a few years to catch up on the quoting side. I believe that the delays were largely due to our approach and the way we wanted to implement things, which ultimately slowed us down.

I don't know the full scope of our subscriptions for all the modules, but from what I've seen before, it seems fairly expensive. The high cost may drive some potential clients to consider developing a homegrown solution internally.

We do not use any Material Index Management, but we use their pricing table to manage our long-term agreements, which include price reductions year over year. We can budget for those price reductions in the future.

I would recommend Campfire Interactive to other users, but the choice really comes down to the specific use case, the importance of having built-in interfaces to manage your ship data, and how important it is to be able to give different programs different take-rates. 

Overall, I would rate Campfire Interactive an eight out of ten.

The primary use case for Campfire Interactive is for tracking and sales forecasting for the automotive industry, specifically for all the products that our company sells to that market.

When I look at project management, I'm looking at having an engineer or a program manager or somebody who has dates and deliverables and milestones for developing a part, designing it, tooling up for it, doing sample parts, doing production runs, and then going into production. That's what I consider to be project management. We do not use Campfire Interactive for any of those tools.

At the time we launched Campfire Interactive in 2012, we were three companies coming together with three different systems. It took some time to build the infrastructure to populate the Campfire Interactive tool, which was about a three to six-month process. As we went through each of our manufacturing plants' implementations, it took additional time. The overall time to launch was about 2 years. It was a very time-intensive process because we could not launch all 12 plants at the same time. We were able to realize its benefits or acknowledge the benefits at the time of the development to define what attributes our company needed within the Campfire Interactive tool, along with the outputs that came from it once we started to report on the data. The standardized work that we had and the master data management that we had were extremely valuable, almost immediately.

When it comes to opportunity management and sales forecasting, I have recommended Campfire Interactive to at least 10 companies over my career, including some of the largest Tier 1 automotive customer suppliers in the world. Different companies have adopted different aspects of Campfire Interactive and have been happy with the solution. In general, I would highly recommend their solution.

The overall forecast accuracy is dependent upon the accuracy of the inputs into their system. They're not forecasting experts, they're just a software tool. In terms of the mathematics or the algorithms that are used within the Campfire Interactive tool, the tool works very well.

I've had recent discussions with the leadership team at Campfire Interactive about several issues. They're fully aware of my displeasure with certain things. Some concerns are not related to the tool itself, although there are some aspects that could be better with the tool. The issues are more related to technical service, specifically when we have an issue or problem with the tool, the communication gap, and the follow-through on issues that need improvement. They're fully aware of that concern, and they're doing things to address it.

From a technical standpoint, there are some limitations within the tool that are somewhat out of Campfire Interactive's control because it's a complicated industry to try and have one solution that fits all vendors. There are times when we go to execute reports from their system, and the data does not generate as expected. When that happens, we have to inform the Campfire Interactive IT or Support group what the failure is. They have to research and come back to us. In the meantime, we have 2, 4, 6, maybe 12 hours of downtime where people around the world are trying to use the system. Though it affects less than 50 people, these instances are frustrating.

I've been using Campfire Interactive since 2012.

The stability of Campfire Interactive has mostly been good. There have been some instances where we've reached a capacity issue or a memory issue with the size of the server or the space on the server that's been allocated to the Campfire Interactive tool. Some of that falls on Campfire Interactive in making sure that we're aware of the limitations or the requirements. Some of that also falls on our own IT organization to manage those things effectively. In general, there haven't been many crashes. If there is something that they feel is a bug or needs a fix that needs to be pushed through, we're able to work with them effectively to schedule those things and not be disruptive to the business.

We started off with about a dozen different forecasts that we were managing 12-13 years ago. We're up to about 20 now, so we've almost doubled some of the work that we do, or the complexity. There haven't been any issues with that. If we go the route that I'm hoping we do, through the proposal I mentioned earlier, and we merge with this other company, and Campfire Interactive gets adopted by their organization as well, I don't have any concerns about scaling up for that. The concerns are more about implementation than scalability.

For technical support, there are two aspects to consider. The effectiveness of communication, follow-up, timely support, not relying upon only one or two people, and having a team of people. In that regard, I would give them a five. When it comes to the actual technical knowledge and solutions of the tool and how to go about resolving the issues themselves, I would give them an eight out of ten.

Neutral

Prior to adopting Campfire Interactive, there were three different companies or divisions coming together. The tool being used was a homegrown, internally-developed software solution. There were some features about the original, homegrown project that could not be transferred or translated into the Campfire Interactive solution due to too much complexity in the original solution. However, the majority of the rules and capabilities that we needed were solved by Campfire Interactive.

I worked for a period of 3 years outside of this company at a different automotive supplier where I introduced Campfire Interactive to the organization. We went through an implementation from scratch. At this other company, we decided to implement two systems: sales forecasting and the quoting tool, which they refer to as business processing. That was a very painful development process. Some of it was self-inflicted, but much of it was a challenge for resources from Campfire Interactive that could execute the needs of that company. I left that company in 2022, and as of that time, that module had still not been implemented after 2 years. It's my understanding that while some features of that tool were eventually adopted, most of the tool was decided to be scrapped because it didn't work to the company's needs.

I don't get too involved in the overall scope of the pricing. I know what it costs generally, though I'm not an IT system or cost evaluator to say that's good or bad. We had a negotiation with them back in March of this year to extend our contract for 1 year. They were willing to work with us to negotiate different terms and a different cost of production. They were asking for a certain percentage increase, and we said that was not acceptable. They were willing to settle on a different number.

We only did a 1 year contract, as opposed to a longer term, because our organization is in the process of merging with another company, which has a completely different tool or system that they use for the same purpose. We are going through an evaluation process this summer to determine if we continue with Campfire Interactive or if we go a different route. We were very transparent with them in February and March to communicate that this change was going to happen in our business. It was something that was publicly announced, so it wasn't confidential in any way. They know that for the next 6 months, perhaps maybe 9 months, they have to prove that their capabilities are worth keeping compared to the alternative solution.

Setting aside some of the IT Support issues that I've mentioned, which I know that they're working on, I would rate Campfire Interactive an eight overall for everything.

We use the OMSF module for forecasting, and then we use CPQ for new business quoting.

The feature I appreciate the most about Campfire Interactive is probably the forecasting module, the way it links to IHS for the IHS forecast. It's able to dynamically update the volumes in the forecast every month as we load in the latest IHS data.

Real-time reporting is pretty important to our company on the material index side, although it is complicated to use. We're not able to load things ourselves; we need to pull in someone from Campfire Interactive, and they need to do development in certain cases to get the correct data in. When it's in there and it's working, it is important.

The forecasting module in Campfire Interactive is the best use case. When there aren't issues, it works efficiently.

There are numerous things they can do to improve the system, which I have communicated repeatedly. We just had our biweekly meeting with the team. Their customer service can be better. They're responsive when we have an urgent issue, but for a lot of the longer term things, such as adjustments we want made in the system or additions we want to be made, we see little to no progress.

I do not prefer the role-based access controls in Campfire Interactive. The role-based system makes sense on paper, but a company such as ours, where people wear multiple hats and different people have multiple roles in some cases, makes it very difficult at times to assign the correct people in the process. I've asked for years to give me, as an admin in the system, the ability to ignore the role and just select the person I want assigned to a task, because the role-based system makes it way more complicated than that.

The forecast accuracy of Campfire Interactive is usually good. It has helped us save time and costs. However, we have had issues, and actually are currently having issues where some of the take-rate numbers get messed up. When we load it in an IHS forecast, if a specific program in that forecast has added years, the take rates are not applied to those additional years. It ignores the prior input, which leads to errors and data that is not accurate. We just went through that last month, where we had reported data to our board of directors and then came to find out that some parts of the data were incorrect, which is really frustrating.

The reporting works pretty efficiently, but it can be enhanced by Power BI, which they don't use. It's all Excel-based, which is functional and works.

The pricing system, when you get it input, is good, but it is a lot of painful work to get the correct data. I have been working in the system for 3 years. We still have customers where we don't have the dynamic pricing set up, partially because that's our fault; we don't know everything that we should know. It's not entirely on Campfire Interactive, but when we get that information, it can be very difficult to translate it into the Campfire Interactive system and get it calculating properly.

I have been using Campfire Interactive for around 3 years.

I have had problems with stability. A recent example of instability occurred when I was in Europe and planned a whole day with the sales team there to review the data. I set up a workshop, but they had access issues that day. They said it was the server. Campfire Interactive was down for the majority of the day, which wrecked my plans to go through the data in the system with them.

As Campfire Interactive is US-based, we were starting early in Europe, but the team didn't see any of my messages until 1:00 p.m. local time for me. At that point, we had lost the day. There's a lack of global support when we have issues, and we've had previous issues where a bunch of our data got messed up in the system, and the pricing jumped without explanation. Some of the parts jumped in price from $50 to $300, and they had no idea why. They had to reset something to fix it. I don't know what they did to fix it, but we have had issues.

Regarding scalability, it handles adding more data pretty well.

We got a new customer success representative a few months ago, and that transition was not handled properly. It was basically nonexistent. We just got an email telling us we have a new person to reach out to. They have made no progress on anything. I have a list of open things we continue to work through. Yesterday, we had another meeting, and nobody had done anything for months on this stuff. 

The support is pretty good, depending on who we're talking about; they're all capable. The issue is the workload. As a paying customer, we don't see progress on items. The excuses, 'I've been just so tied up with other customers, I haven't been able to get to that,' are not something I want to hear. That tells me that Campfire Interactive doesn't have enough people on its support staff.

Neutral

I have tinkered with alternatives to Campfire Interactive, such as Salesforce, in the past. When comparing Campfire Interactive to those alternatives, it's hard to say; I haven't used the other two that extensively. Campfire Interactive is probably the best of the options, but don't take that as a ringing endorsement.

The initial deployment of Campfire Interactive was very difficult for my team. We saw the benefits of Campfire Interactive after some time. Getting all the correct data into the system for our needs was painful and a long process.

It took us some time to fully deploy Campfire Interactive. I work in the sales department, and we initially planned to grant access to all customer-facing account managers in order to manage their business activities within Campfire. However, we encountered issues with comprehension and understanding of the system, as it can be quite complex and not very intuitive. As a result, we decided to revoke access for all account managers.

Currently, only a few members of my team are allowed to manage inputs into Campfire. This decision stems from the difficulties associated with the system and the need to maintain data integrity. We found that having too many users making changes created confusion, leading to inaccurate information in our reports.

To address these challenges, we shifted from the original plan presented to us by Campfire and established a system with designated gatekeepers who are authorized to make updates.

In terms of maintenance, they manage the system.

Our sales group has about 20 people.

Overall, I would rate Campfire Interactive a four out of ten. In terms of what's on the market, it's probably one of the better solutions, but considering where it could be and actually meeting our needs, it's at four. There are two modules that we're paying for that we haven't rolled out yet because of how complicated it is.

We use it primarily to project our global sales forecast. They offer several solutions, but we only utilize the opportunity management system. Sales forecasting is the main focus, complemented by what we call a hunting list. Essentially, we examine the targets for the upcoming years, which are part of the forecast. So, sales forecasting is our primary use case.

We implemented the software shortly before COVID happened. Before that, everything we did was Excel-based or used another system. Notably during a global event like COVID, our previous methods would have taken weeks for forecasting. Let's assume across the globe we saw a 20% decline in vehicle volume. People would have had to go in and make the modifications, and then we would have had to globally consolidate all this information again. It would have taken weeks to make an adjustment to project the new forecast based on what was happening with COVID. With the new system, using the latest IHS information, projections became instantaneous. We were able to project what was going on in the market and see the decline in volume globally, and within hours.

We are Chinese-owned, and there are a lot of investment opportunities in our company. We constantly get asked questions about the forecast, target, bookings, and so on and so forth. We have about 150 users in the system around the globe, and because everybody is using the system globally, it is much easier to consolidate that data. Previously, it was sometimes on people's personal computers, and we would have had to ask everybody individually. Because of the standardization and the global nature of the product, we are now able to get to global information based on the executive questions in a few days, and sometimes in hours. That is a big benefit. For example, we can see what's going on in Japan, so they maintain the opportunities. We give the guidelines globally for how they have to maintain the opportunities and when they have to maintain them. I can now go into the system and see that people do their work, that they go in, that they really change, and pull that information out at any time.

We now have a lot more standardization which is beneficial. We do see the same information globally.

It is not the tool itself that ensures accuracy, but rather the data we input into the system. The combination Campfire uses for the automotive sector, particularly the IHS forecast, offers unique predictive capabilities. Few companies provide this. This is why we do not use our ERP system, SAP, for forecasting. Their reliance on EDI limits forecasts to six to twelve months, whereas Campfire provides longer forecast periods.

I appreciate the flexibility of the company more than any specific software feature. I have worked with SAP and other software providers before, and since it is still a smaller company, there is a very personal exchange. If we have a simple need that does not require coding, the company is willing to make changes overnight or even within hours. They are truly flexible and customer-oriented.

I recently discussed with them the need for better KPI measurements in the automotive world. A big KPI in the automotive world is the bookings of the future years, and we measure that not in annual revenue but in the lifetime of any given vehicle. Let's say, on average, a vehicle is in the market for five years, so we add up the five years of revenue that is generated with that vehicle. Every region and every account has targets where they have to say, "I'm going to source amount x in the upcoming year." This LOP calculation is not easily done because IHS also has limitations, so right now, it only projects out till 2031 or 2032. For instance, if we launch a program in 2028 that starts in 2030, only two years of data can be seen, and I cannot calculate the life of program revenue. We discussed it with them. They are looking into AI to make longer projections possible and to also improve the quality of the data that we have in the system to calculate this LOP based on historical data or IHS information.

They had people who trained our staff, and some people, even though located in the US, were working 24/7 to accommodate our needs in Asia or Europe. These same people also had to implement the system and not just train, which I thought was a bit too much for people to handle. I told them that it would be beneficial to have someone in Asia or Europe to do those types of training during the time when those regions are working. They can have a hotline for simple questions. Sometimes, simple questions disrupt complex tasks. Having dedicated resources for basic inquiries could alleviate this issue. Additionally, it could be beneficial to have training videos within the system to handle routine questions instead of constantly bugging the people who are supposed to do way more complex things than that.

I have been using it for almost six years. It will be six years in April.

More modules are available that could enhance the system significantly for our company. However, due to our current financial situation, we are not opting to purchase additional software. The existing modules make a lot of sense, and we can add them at any time.

Overall, customer service is good. However, the workforce is relatively small, especially the team developing and rolling out the software. They are expanding into India to find new hires. When they secure many new contracts, the staff can be stretched thin to meet deadlines. Sometimes, it took longer than expected to fulfill promises. Considering the tool's cost and the times they provided additional development support at no extra cost, we could not complain. However, companies with higher demands might encounter issues.

Positive

I reviewed an alternative a few months ago during contract negotiations, but I have not used any other.

Every software rollout is difficult, and we still have difficulties, but that is not a Campfire issue. It is an overall acceptance issue and cultural issue, but the support that they gave us for the implementation was outstanding.

In the beginning, it took us several steps just to run a report. Although the system was not used to its full capacity early on, within three to four months, it became more stable. By the second year, the budget process was significantly more stable. We still improve the system. That will always be the case because we are trying to make it better and better train the people who use the system. Overall, in a year, it was relatively stable.

Initially, more people were involved, some of whom had worked for my company before transitioning to Campfire. These two gentlemen remained on the team to support us consistently. Over time, additional people were added in high-level roles to regularly check in on progress. 

They do maintenance on their end, so we do not have any IT people working. We used to have somebody who was working with Campfire on our side, but now, IT involvement is required only as needed. Although we do not have dedicated IT personnel working regularly with Campfire, connections are made with our IT team as necessary, such as for setting up interfaces with our PLM system. We need our IT people to establish that exchange of data.

Compared to everything else I have seen, it is very fair.

I would definitely recommend using this solution and also suggest evaluating other options to ensure the best fit. Overall, I would recommend it. The implementation was supported by a substantial team from Campfire. However, with many new customers, they occasionally became overwhelmed, leading to slowdowns due to the busy workforce. Overall, my experience has been positive.

I would rate Campfire Interactive an eight out of ten.

We're using Campfire Interactive for opportunity management.

The forecast accuracy of Campfire Interactive is extremely good. We compared it to our internal sales forecast, and once everything was properly configured, it matched very closely.

The dashboard will enhance our ability to present to management, senior leadership, and shareholders through dashboards that instantly show where we stand with booked sales, targeted sales, replacement business, and additional new opportunities. Previously, using Excel made this process more complicated and time-consuming.

Campfire Interactive’s ability to manage data through business processes and workflows is crucial for our organization.

Campfire Interactive’s ability to provide flexibility and configurability in managing data based on our organizational needs is good. I would rate it an eight out of ten for that.

I appreciate the dashboard features and widget features of Campfire Interactive because it has the ability to consolidate data in bar graphs or pie charts, making it very easy to visualize the situation with new opportunities. 

The Campfire team was able to tweak everything that we felt needed improvement to better suit our needs.

One aspect that could be simplified with Campfire Interactive is the process of entering opportunities into the portal. Currently, if we receive a quotation for 20 parts, we can enter one opportunity in our homegrown system that allows us to list all 20 parts within that single opportunity, but Campfire Interactive requires creating separate opportunities for each part. That's the only downfall I observe.

We started using Campfire Interactive around January of this year, approximately five months ago. The actual solid usage has been about a month and a half to two months at most.

The stability of Campfire Interactive rates as a ten out of ten. It is very stable.

In terms of scalability, Campfire Interactive rates as either a nine out of ten.

We currently have ten seats for Campfire Interactive, shared between the sales team and business development team, with potential needs for expansion in the future.

I would rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

We used our internal home grown system prior to switching to CampFire OMSF.

It's moderate in terms of complexity. The implementation took approximately three months. While we're not fully up to speed, progress is steady.

It requires minimal maintenance, with updates occurring approximately once a month.

Campfire Interactive's in-house implementation team is excellent. They are thorough, answer all questions, and come prepared.

Campfire Interactive has already helped save time and indirectly save costs since we aren't paying people to compile data and create pie charts. Though we haven't quantified these savings yet, the time savings will eventually show a direct correlation to cost reduction.

Each quarter, we used to spend three to four days compiling information for presentations. Now, instead of doing it quarterly, we can do it monthly. Previously, our younger team members would spend three to four days on data entry to compile information that we can now access instantly with Campfire Interactive.

Campfire Interactive is on the expensive side.

The opportunity management sales forecasting is effective, though we're still navigating the learning curve and launch phase. The Campfire Interactive team has been accommodating in making tweaks to adapt it to our needs. It's becoming equivalent to our homegrown system and surpasses it due to the dashboard capabilities.

At this point, it's still fairly new to us, but I would recommend Campfire Interactive to other users based on its professional appearance and ease of data entry.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

I'm responsible for different tasks at Campfire Interactive. From one side, I'm a business manager, so I use it to create new business opportunities for the company. On the other side, I'm a Campfire Interactive administrator too, so I'm involved in actual mappings, month-end processes, and everything that is done regarding the upload from IHS in data. All those administrative tasks, and I also add someone new coming in, and I normally have a one or two-hour training so that the people understand how Campfire Interactive works, and that's more or less the tasks I'm involved in. We have role access management, where specific individuals are only able to view certain aspects of the solution. Having designated access rights is great and quite important because we have control over what some people can do or cannot do to avoid any mistakes or failures. Sometimes that happens, and it has happened in our case. For example, we used to have one of the features available for everyone, and then we realized that sometimes with that feature, we made other users make mistakes because they didn't know how to use it, and it wasn't really needed. So we took that opportunity away from the people.

We work with IHS with S&P Global; we upload data from there, and then we have the opportunity to manage different rates or any other changes. It's quite good. One thing that I see, for example, now we are working with medium-heavy trucks and also with light vehicles, and we're just starting to get data from IHS for the medium-heavy trucks. We've seen that we need to have separate forecasts for all those things. I believe there should be some points of improvement there to manage everything together. Many times we reach out to the Campfire Interactive team for support, and we may find out that there are things we didn't even think would work, and Campfire Interactive knows how to do it.

The opportunity management and sales forecasting module is quite useful. Sometimes I think the fields are a little bit repetitive to fill in. We are working with the Campfire Interactive team to improve that. It's not wrong at Campfire Interactive because I know this can be improved or changed or managed. Having that option is really interesting because we can personalize the different features and different fields. It's really good how it works because it has the price tab, the volume tab for us to manage different volumes and the take rates. It's a way to have everything in one place. It gives us the opportunity to track the different statuses that each opportunity goes through. This is something we need to do; we need to make reports to understand the business, to understand trends, and it's a very powerful tool for that. Maybe 40 people work with Campfire Interactive.

I don't have too much experience with different tools. In fact, the only similar tool I used in previous positions was Excel, but I think Campfire is much better. We have all the IHS information, we get to combine it with other information coming from our finance, for example, all the sales and the actual sales that we have; we can include them in Campfire Interactive and see everything together, and make the reporting quite useful too. Creating opportunities and things are very useful, but that's something that many people work with in an Excel file. The most important feature from Campfire Interactive is its ability to work together with other different applications that we use in our company, and I think that's one of the best features it has. The opportunity management and sales forecasting module is quite useful. It gives us the opportunity to track the different statuses that each opportunity goes through. This is something we need to do; we need to make reports to understand the business, to understand trends, and it's a very powerful tool for that.

It could be a little bit more user-friendly. I know that there is a version that is more user-friendly than the one we are using, but for different circumstances, we haven't moved to the new version yet. That's something I'm eager to see soon. We sometimes face trouble with space because there is a lot of information saved there, and the system sometimes gets stuck, but I don't think it's a problem from Campfire Interactive itself. It's more about all the applications that are feeding information into Campfire Interactive. Optimizing that would be very useful. For the rest of the things, I've seen the team working closely with us every time we need or request help to make changes or to do things differently, and I really enjoy working with them.

I have been using the solution for around five years.

I would rate the stability as an eight; it's not perfect, but it's good enough.

Managing data through business processes and workflows is 100% required. We really need the stability to have trustful data and information, tracking whatever we need to track for stability is essential for us, especially because we have Campfire Interactive connected with other applications we use in the company.

I would rate the technical support a nine. Sometimes we want to get answers immediately, but we understand that it's not always possible. I must say that sometimes we need technical support even on weekends, and we get the help we requested. That's really something I appreciate.

I don't know how Campfire Interactive changed the way my organization functions because I've only been working with it for five years, and I think we have had Campfire Interactive for much more than five years. At the moment that there was a change from the previous status to the starting of Campfire Interactive use, I was not involved. I know many people who had worked before with Excel files, and Campfire Interactive is more accurate, safer, and has the ability to bring everything together. I think it's a nice improvement, but I haven't experienced that because I started this job with Campfire Interactive.

I cannot answer that because I don't know how much we paid for those licenses. That's managed by the purchasing department.

I don't know any other vendor.

Once you get to know it, it's more or less easy, but I would prefer something friendlier for people who are new to Campfire Interactive. I've been working with it for some years, and I understand it, but for people coming new to the company needing training in Campfire Interactive, sometimes they see there are so many things, and it's not so friendly to use. There are aspects that can be repetitive when filling in those things every time. I would recommend Campfire Interactive to other users, especially if they are working with Excel. I would recommend moving to the Campfire Interactive application because it's much safer, better for tracking, and better for reporting everything from the application. I don't think Excel has the same stability that an application system like Campfire Interactive can have. Overall, I would rate Campfire Interactive an eight out of ten.

I started using it in 2011 when we purchased the Opportunity Management and Sales Forecasting module for forecast purposes, specifically for sales forecasts. We purchased it at a regional level in North America and then, in 2015, expanded it to all of our regions, including Europe and China.

We all speak the same language now. We talk about PLM programs, opportunity IDs, and RFQ IDs and use these as our touchpoints instead of everyone using their own jargon and comments. This is more uniform, and everyone knows exactly what they are referring to when using these terms.

On the Opportunity Management side, there is a database source where we can bring in a third-party vendor, which we use in two of our forecasts. We have not integrated anything else. We just enter the information manually.

Campfire Interactive gives us a good starting point for forecasting. It is as accurate as the data that is provided there. Overall, we base a lot of our decisions on the forecast and review it on a quarterly basis to make sure that it stays as accurate as possible based on our own business intelligence.

Campfire Interactive has saved us time because the data that we are collecting is the same. We used to spend extra time clarifying questions, but now, all the attributes are there for the information we need. From a time perspective, there have been savings, but I do not know about the cost savings.

We were able to see its benefits after some time as an organization. People are resistant to change, but we definitely saw the value at the regional level and wanted to replicate that at the global level. It took a little bit of time, but there was definitely value in it.

I like the visibility of global opportunities. Prior to using Campfire Interactive, we would conduct Excel-based reporting and sales meetings with everyone bringing their information. Now, we can check it daily, look at the reports daily, and see what is coming into the system and what needs to be managed. Our Requests for Quotes in the BP process are wonderful. We have global meetings related to this every week to prioritize the business and opportunities coming in. All of that is helping us daily to manage our business better.

Because we use a multitude of modules, some of the interactions from one module to the other are not as seamless or fluid. I would like to see some more fluidness from one module to the other.

We started with a module from the product offering in, I believe, the early 2000s, probably 2007, and then added additional modules over time.

We have had minimal issues. It is stable.

Certain modules are better than others.

We have a crisis-type customer support number, but we do not use that too often. We have their customer success team that we meet with regularly to make sure that everything is flowing the way it needs to. It is for just touch-point questions and answers.

Overall, their support is good to excellent, but if the issue is a little more complex, it can take a little longer. I would rate them a nine out of ten. They are responsive. They cannot sometimes give us the result we want, but they are responsive.

Positive

We did use another solution. 

I have used Campfire-like software at a previous company. I have found Campfire Interactive to be comparable and even better because of the fact that it is global and easy to use.

It is user-friendly. They do most of the maintenance. We provide feedback, but they maintain.

To those who are evaluating project management or opportunity software solutions, I would say that the Opportunity Management and Sale Forecasting (OMSF) module is a value add. The data is consistent. It is in a format that is easy to manage, and the visibility is worthy.

The best thing is to look at every module and see how they are interconnected so that when you are putting data in, it satisfies not just the one that you are working on but also the other modules going forward. 

It is very user-friendly, although certain modules are more user-friendly than others. The more you use, the better you get. I was a heavy user, so I learned rather quickly. We have some users who are only in and out of the software on a weekly basis, and they tend to need a little bit of a refresher on where to go, but overall, it is easy to use.

I do not use all the modules on a daily basis. Based on the modules I use, it is an eight out of ten.