What advice do you have for others considering Campfire Interactive?

We are currently going through some organizational adjustments, so there would be things coming up regarding how Campfire Interactive is going to be used. We are going to integrate Campfire Interactive data into our current Power BI system, so then our Power BI is going to get much better, but I do not have super concrete examples right now of that. Campfire Interactive has always been very open with their development timelines. They have been constantly putting out new things and new updates. Even if we have suggestions or needs they cannot fix now, it is not a never. It is always that they can put this on the development timeline and in phase two or three months they can have it done. Everything that we have needed from them, they have more than provided. The deployment model is on-premise. Maintaining data quality and data integrity and being able to report is everything. The much quicker RFC and the ability for anybody to go in and have their changes reflected in the system immediately makes a significant difference. They are able to see how their sales are decreasing year over year when they should be increasing. They can go in and look at these opportunities, adjust either the volume or the price of these opportunities, and then see what the data looks like now. That makes it much easier for the account managers as opposed to me pulling all the data from SAP every couple of days and making large reports for them to filter themselves. We are certainly already increasing efficiencies. The main challenge from what we had to go through is more so internal alignment. If you have a regional structure, getting alignment between the regions of what they want and what they desire out of the system is important. The slowdowns we had were not due to Campfire Interactive being unable to do something. They were due to internal company conflicts of what we wanted. I would rate this review as a ten overall.

The Power BI report is very important because it provides clarity that we may not see in our own reports regarding Campfire Interactive's material index management and integrated business intelligence reporting. Campfire Interactive's forecast accuracy is high and delivered without any delay or inaccurate numbers. Although we do not have metrics at this time, the forecast accuracy has contributed to cost savings for our organization. Campfire Interactive's ability to manage data through business processes and workflows is important for our organization because it creates a closed loop that allows us to always trace information back to its original source. The Opportunity Management and Sales Forecasting module is a valuable tool that Campfire can customize to meet your company's specific needs, which is a very nice feature. My advice to others considering Campfire Interactive is that you should thoroughly understand the tool and ask as many questions as possible to the Campfire team from the start. I would rate this review a perfect ten out of ten.

The role-based access controls of Campfire Interactive are very easy to set up. I have no problem setting up roles and assigning people to those roles. There are no issues there. Reporting out roles, however, falls in line with the difficulty of getting a good report out of the system that shows all users and their roles and the forecast they have access to. I had to have that custom built. For the most part, the forecast accuracy is very accurate. We have had some cases where something happens in our forecast and our frozen forecasts have some live data migrate over, but the team is usually pretty quick to take a look at that. I think the forecast accuracy is pretty good. Regarding maintenance for Campfire Interactive, we have some master data we have to maintain. We have integrations that we maintain and make sure those integrations are running at all times. We don't do any server maintenance or anything of that nature. I would rate this product a seven overall.

The accuracy has helped my organization save time and cost. All of my employees have salaries and the more time I spend on printing data out or trying to get data, the more it costs for the company. So right there, it is beneficial for me. I do not have any specific metrics. I am just using it based on time and how quick it is to pull the information I need to show management. Campfire Interactive is an efficient solution, and the key part of it is when I have suggestions, Campfire Interactive implements them, and that is fantastic. To me, that is what puts Campfire Interactive in the higher range from a one to ten scale. I would rate Campfire Interactive as an eight out of ten because I think that is a good number, but I would say eight to ten would be sufficient anywhere around there. The number one thing is when I have suggestions, they implement it immediately for me. I give Campfire Interactive an overall rating of eight.

I would rate Campfire Interactive a solid eight out of ten.

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.

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.

We don't use the material index management or the integrated business intelligence reporting features in Campfire Interactive, and I wish we did, only insofar as that may change my judgment. The way that we use Campfire Interactive is not for forecasting; we use IHS volumes and therefore, we don't actually use Campfire Interactive for the development of a forecast on the current year. I had a peer call me up last month and asked me if I would recommend Campfire Interactive, and I said I would not. I would rate Campfire Interactive overall as a six out of ten. There's a rough gem here that could be really great, but in its current form and its current way of operating, it's driving my global team quite mad.

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.

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.