I remember when Salesforce rolled out Apttus to their team – lots of hype – lots of PR on both sides and the decision and the confident predictions of what the future state would be.
Well, As a fly on the wall (in and around the Salesforce offices) I can tell you that the rollout produced some “unpredictable results”… The Salesforce reps, were really not thrilled with the end product – it was slow (at least according to my reps), and it was unnecessarily complex.
So I wonder if that whole experience had anything to do with the ultimate decision to buy SteelBrick last year, as opposed to Apttus. I realize SteelBrick is aimed at a different market (sort of) but I don’t think that’s enough for SF to change direction – I’m guessing (truly a guess BTW, I wasn’t invited to the last Salesforce Board meeting) that the experience had at least SOMETHING to do with the decision.
SteelBrick is a cool tool – and I think of the tools out there (including Vlocity), SF made the right choice – and so I’m excited to be part of the SteelBrick side of things. But it seems to me (and me only) that at least a small part of this decision was made easier by the Apttus rollout at SF. Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda…