The end of Salesforce CPQ—and why you should trade up to Conga CPQ

For years, Salesforce CPQ (formerly known as SteelBrick) has been the quoting solution of choice for thousands of companies. However, Salesforce recently announced it will no longer sell the Salesforce CPQ solution—marking the beginning of its sunset and the eventual discontinuation of this product.

Current Salesforce CPQ customers essentially have three options: 

1. Do nothing. Continuing to use Salesforce CPQ is a viable but temporary solution, as Salesforce won’t keep supporting this product forever
2. “Migrate” to Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advantage (RCA), an immature product with high costs, long timeframes, and significant adoption concerns. The reality is, this option requires starting from scratch with a total rebuild.
3. Select and implement a new CPQ solution. 

In a recent webinar, leaders from Conga discussed today’s evolving business landscape and offered guidance to help companies navigate their future CPQ journey.  

Key issues organizations are facing

In today’s business environment, keeping your sales tools current is a must—and the right CPQ technology can be a game changer for long-term revenue strategy. There are three core issues driving the need for a modern, flexible CPQ solution.'

1. Product configurations 
   Over time, product offerings have become much more complex—covering more products, more SKUs, more bundles, multiple locations, pricing variations, tiered discounts, etc. As catalogs become bloated with these nuanced offerings, the increased complexity slows down deal volumes—frustrating buyers and sellers alike. At the same time, platform performance can degrade under the weight of these complex offerings.
2. New business models 
   Many businesses offer a combination of products and services, subscriptions, and more. Legacy systems aren’t built to handle this complexity, so they can actually end up hindering growth. In many cases, it becomes difficult to monitor and update recurring revenue streams. Manual processes may be introduced to compensate for technical shortcomings—but this leads to even greater inefficiency.  
3. Omnichannel delivery 
   Today’s companies sell across a variety of channels, because that’s what today’s buyers demand. Unfortunately, it is costly and difficult to extend selling across multiple channels, so companies often end up with different channels on totally different systems. Without a seamless data model between quoting and contracting, there’s no way to ensure consistency—so errors and customer frustration are inevitable. It’s also difficult to keep order changes synced with billing and renewals.

Implementing the right CPQ technology is a critical step toward addressing these issues. And the fact is, failure to adapt along with today’s changing business environment can have serious implications, including:

• Loss of market share
• Revenue decline
• Reputation damage
• Operational inefficiencies
• Missed growth opportunities 

Taking advantage of the current opportunity

The sunsetting of Salesforce CPQ isn’t the end of the world. In fact, for most organizations, there’s no urgent need to make a change immediately. But as Salesforce CPQ ages out, it creates an opportunity to evaluate your business needs and determine whether your current solution meets those needs.  

Factors that will play into this decision include:

• Margin protection 
  Especially in an uncertain environment plagued by shifting tariffs and supply chain disruptions, it’s important to clearly understand your costs when making pricing decisions. The right CPQ lets you balance competitive pricing with profitability, ensuring that every deal maximizes value without sacrificing deal velocity and contractual agreements.
• New business models 
  New business opportunities often involve adding new products and services—or even changing your business model altogether. A robust CPQ lets you manage product offerings expansion, along with more complex pricing and bundling strategies, while helping sellers to navigate an ever-expanding array of product configurations.
• Omnichannel delivery 
  B2B sellers increasingly need to accommodate through a variety of channels—online, through a salesperson, or through an intermediary. CPQ technology lets you deliver a consistent, integrated, and seamless buying experience—regardless of channel.  

Prioritizing your business needs

Smart organizations will view this as an opportunity to not only change technology, but to improve their business processes from top to bottom. That said, it’s important to make a critical assessment of all your current processes, rather than just “lifting and shifting” to a new technology.  

Instead, take the time to carefully consider what’s really needed, what’s most important, and how to make things better. Laying the right foundation up front ensures you’ll encounter fewer roadblocks and failures as you start your deployment down the road.

The panel shared an evaluation framework, based on a real-life customer migration, that can help to visualize what that evaluation process might look like: 
 

Key considerations when migrating to a new CPQ

There’s no way around it, transitioning from Salesforce CPQ to another solution is not an easy process. That said, it is completely doable—and completely worthwhile—with the right preparation, the right process, and the right partnership.

Following are some key considerations as you approach any CPQ migration, either now or in the future.

• Clarity of scope 
  Understand what your CPQ really does today, as well as what it should be doing. Migrations are the perfect time to streamline and standardize—not simply lift-and-shift unnecessarily complex processes.
• Data and dependencies 
  Map your data model early. Pricing logic, approvals, integrations, and product rules often hold hidden dependencies that can derail timelines if they’re not surfaced up front.  
• Change management 
  Never underestimate the human side. New platform = new processes. Success depends as much on user adoption and enablement as it does on configuration.

Watch the full webinar recording for real-life examples that illustrate these considerations, a framework for evaluating potential solutions, plus a step-by-step guide to map out a new CPQ implementation. 

Why choose Conga CPQ?

If you decide to move forward with a new CPQ solution, you have many options available to you. But there are some compelling reasons to choose Conga as your CPQ partner.  

1. Future-ready flexibility 
   Conga CPQ supports a crawl-walk-run approach, enabling you to launch quickly and evolve over time. As complexity grows, Conga scales with your business, supporting sophisticated configuration and pricing needs both now and into the future.
2. Speed and performance 
   With Conga CPQ, you get unmatched speed and performance at scale. Conga customers manage massive carts and catalogs 10,000+ line items every day with our CPQ technology—with no limits or governors to slow down performance.
3. Omnichannel delivery 
   Conga CPQ lets you create a truly connected customer experience with a single CPQ engine and a unified data model. Support all your channels and all your selling markets on a single platform, creating one source of truth and one system to manage.
4. CRM agnostic 
   Conga CPQ works with any CRM—so even if different teams within your organization are running on separate CRM platforms, they can all access the same CPQ system. And if you ever decide to change your CRM provider, Conga CPQ can adapt along with you.
5. Complete lifecycle impact 
   Conga is the only provider that truly supports the entire revenue lifecycle. Conga CPQ seamlessly integrates with CLM, billing, order management, accounts receivable, and renewal systems. And with its unified data model, Conga CPQ empowers your teams to unlock AI-driven insights and automation across every stage. 

For more insights from the Conga team on modernizing your CPQ solution, watch the full webinar recording above.