Podcasts about cpq

In this episode of the CPQ Podcast, Frank Sohn speaks with Rohit Chhabra, Chief Product Officer at Conga, about Conga's CPQ strategy, the role ofConga Smart CPQ, and how AI is becoming a broader part of the quote-to-cash and commercial operations landscape. Rohit shares insights from more than 25 years of business, engineering, and product leadership experience, including how his background shapes the way he works with teams, prioritizes product investments, and focuses on customer outcomes. He also discusses his involvement with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation / Breakthrough T1D and how that personal connection has influenced his views on leadership, urgency, and mission-driven work. The conversation covers Conga's two CPQ product lines: Conga Advantage CPQ and Conga Smart CPQ. Rohit explains why the solutions address different customer segments and industry requirements, and why Conga plans to continue investing in both offerings rather than forcing them into a single product path. A key topic is the role of pricing optimization and pricing explainability, especially following Conga's acquisition of PROS. Rohit also discusses Conga's broader AI approach across CPQ, pricing, contract lifecycle management, and document automation, including sales agents, redline-related AI capabilities, admin AI for rule maintenance, and a unified AI technology stack. Listeners will also hear Rohit's perspective on integration strategy, including Conga's OEM relationship with Workato, expansion beyond Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, potential HubSpot CRM support, and how Conga prioritizes its roadmap using a business-outcome-based approach. This episode is especially relevant for anyone interested in CPQ software, pricing optimization, AI in quote-to-cash, revenue lifecycle management, CLM integration, and the future direction of Conga's CPQ portfolio.

In this episode of the CPQ Podcast, Frank Sohn speaks with Parag Jagdale, Co-Founder and CEO of Unific, about the continued evolution of Quotific, Unific's CPQ and quoting solution for eCommerce-driven businesses. Parag explains how Quotific has developed since his last appearance on the podcast, including deeper integration with Shopify, support for customer-specific price lists, location-based inventory visibility, and improved product catalog search capabilities. He also discusses why Shopify's recent B2B-related enhancements are creating new opportunities for companies that need a more connected quote-to-order process. A major theme of the conversation is the growing need to reduce fragmentation between eCommerce, CRM, quoting, pricing, approval, and order management processes. Parag shares why many customers want sales teams to work primarily inside HubSpot, while still connecting quoting and ordering activity with Shopify. He also explains why Unific has chosen to focus more deeply on Shopify and HubSpot before expanding its integration efforts with platforms such as Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics. The discussion also covers common challenges in B2B eCommerce and high-ticket B2C selling, including pricing complexity, discount approvals, fragmented workflows, and the difficulty of changing sales rep behavior. Parag shares examples from customer conversations and explains why time savings, easier quote management, and a smoother buyer experience are key adoption drivers. Toward the end of the episode, Frank and Parag discuss the role of AI in CPQ, including product recommendations, customer segmentation, and the potential for AI to improve the buying experience in eCommerce-focused CPQ scenarios. This episode is especially relevant for anyone interested in CPQ, eCommerce CPQ, Shopify CPQ, HubSpot quoting, B2B eCommerce, quote-to-order automation, and the future of AI in CPQ.

In this episode of the CPQ Podcast, host Frank Sohn sits down with Siva Rajamani, the Co-Founder and CEO of Everstage, to discuss the evolving landscape of Revenue Operations and the critical role of Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) software in modern business. Siva shares his journey from managing Revenue Operations at Freshworks—where he witnessed the company scale from $10M to $100M ARR—to founding Everstage in 2020. Having seen firsthand how pricing changes can disrupt downstream operations, Siva built Everstage to empower RevOps and Finance teams with a strategic, no-code platform. What You'll Learn in This Episode: The Evolution of Everstage: How a platform with 300+ enterprise customers for incentive compensation expanded into a cutting-edge CPQ solution in October 2024. AI & Agent-Led Innovation: How Everstage is leveraging AI and intelligent agents to automate code creation and simplify the user experience for sales reps. Market Focus & Growth: Why Everstage is prioritizing the tech industry for its CPQ rollout and its ambitious goal to add 150 new CPQ customers this year. Complex Pricing & Integrations: A deep dive into the platform's ability to handle subscription pricing, ramp deals, usage-based models, and 100+ out-of-the-box integrations including Salesforce, HubSpot, NetSuite, and Stripe. The Human Side of Tech: Siva talks about his life as a "Girl Dad" and the importance of staying grounded while scaling a global startup. Whether you are a RevOps professional, a finance leader, or a CPQ enthusiast, this conversation offers a masterclass in building scalable systems that drive revenue growth.

In this episode, Frank Sohn sits down with Erik Pilgrim, Founder and CEO of RenderDraw, to explore how 3D visualization is transforming the complex world of CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote). Erik shares his journey from leading pre-sales and product teams in the SAP and Salesforce ecosystems to founding RenderDraw just as the world changed in early 2020. We dive deep into how RenderDraw acts as a powerful visualization and interaction layer for some of the world's largest manufacturers and high-tech companies. They discuss: The "Visual Gap" in CPQ: Why standard configurations often fall short for heavy industrial manufacturing and complex CAD-heavy assemblies. Platform Agnosticism: While heavily rooted in the Salesforce ecosystem (including integrations with Agentforce), Erik explains how the market is shifting toward a CPQ-agnostic approach, with RenderDraw now supporting ServiceNow (Logik.ai) and Conga. The Manufacturing Lifecycle: Moving beyond the quote to explore product discovery, digital twins, and spare parts reordering. The AI Revolution: An inside look at Journeys, RenderDraw's new standalone 3D + AI application designed for both humans and AI agents. Implementation Realities: Why a "one-day setup" is a myth for enterprises, and how to build a visual solution that a standard Salesforce Admin can maintain. Whether you are a Mid-Market leader or an Enterprise architect in industrial manufacturing or data centers, this episode provides a roadmap for leveraging spatial reasoning to close deals faster and improve the post-purchase experience.

In this episode of the CPQ Podcast, Frank speaks with Eyal Orgil, co-founder and Chief Growth Officer of DealHub, about how the company has evolved over the past 12 years and what that growth says about broader trends in CPQ, billing, and revenue lifecycle management. Eyal reflects on the responsibility that comes with building a company of roughly 300 employees and serving around 1,000 customer organizations, while also sharing why this stage of growth feels especially meaningful.  The conversation also explores Eyal's transition into the Chief Growth Officer role after leading sales for more than a decade, and how that shift changes his focus from direct customer engagement to broader product and growth strategy. Frank and Eyal discuss DealHub's acquisition of Subskribe, including the reasoning behind the move and why the combination of CPQ, billing, and invoicing is becoming increasingly important for many companies.  In addition, this episode covers DealHub's recent $100 million funding round, the continued strength of the tech and SaaS customer base, the changing CRM landscape, and the market impact of Salesforce's Revenue Cloud end-of-sale announcement. Eyal also shares how DealHub is approaching AI, including conversational quoting, prompt-based insights, contract intelligence, role-specific AI capabilities, and plans around MCP servers and future admin-focused AI developments.  For anyone following CPQ trends, revenue operations, AI in quoting, or the convergence of CPQ and billing, this episode offers a timely look at how one established vendor is thinking about growth, product direction, and market change. 

How much revenue is lost because the systems behind pricing, quoting, billing, and finance still do not talk to each other properly? In today's episode, I'm joined by Tina Kung, CTO and Co-Founder of Nue, the quote-to-revenue platform helping AI and SaaS companies rethink how they sell, bill, and grow. Tina brings more than two decades of experience across enterprise software, CPQ, billing, and revenue operations, with previous roles at Oracle, Zuora, SteelBrick, and Salesforce. Tina shares the story behind Nue and why she saw a growing gap between the systems that handle selling and the systems that manage revenue. As SaaS companies move from traditional subscriptions into usage-based pricing, credit burn-down models, product-led growth, partner channels, and enterprise sales, the old way of stitching together tools with manual work and spreadsheets starts to break down. We discuss how AI is changing go-to-market operations and why transaction-level intelligence matters. Tina explains how Nue connects quoting, billing, usage, and revenue data into a single system, then applies AI so teams can understand what is happening, spot opportunities, and take action faster. One of the standout stories is OpenAI, which rolled out Nue in just eight weeks to support the rapid growth of its ChatGPT Enterprise business. Tina shares what that process revealed about the speed of modern AI companies and why flexible revenue infrastructure is now a serious advantage. We also talk about the rise of agentic AI in revenue operations, from creating quotes and orders to handling subscription changes and surfacing upsell opportunities. As the SaaS model comes under pressure from AI, Tina offers a practical view of what needs to change behind the scenes for companies to stay competitive. If SaaS is entering a new chapter, are your revenue systems ready for how customers now buy, use, and pay for software?  

In this episode of the CPQ Podcast, Frank Sohn speaks with Rourke McCarron, founder of Kabaido, about building a modern CPQ solution for precision manufacturers. Rourke shares how his experience in the tooling industry revealed a disconnect between sales and engineering teams, which ultimately led him to launch Kabaido in late 2025.  The conversation explores how Kabaido is approaching complex quoting and product configuration for manufacturers that process high volumes of quotes. Rourke explains the company's focus on precision manufacturing, its support for 2D and 3D configuration use cases, and how its platform is designed to help companies move faster from customer request to quote and integration. He also discusses implementation timelines, customer size fit, and why adoption can matter just as much as technical deployment.  A key part of the discussion centers on AI. Rourke talks about KAI, short for Kabaido Applied Intelligence, and describes how AI is being used to support quoting, configurator logic, and integrations with tools such as Excel, Symphony CRM, and Microsoft Dynamics. The episode also touches on Kabaido's MCP-native approach, current growth stage, global team setup, and efforts to obtain SOC 2 Type 2 and related certifications.  For anyone interested in CPQ software, AI in manufacturing, product configuration, quoting automation, or the future of digital sales in complex manufacturing, this episode offers an early look at how a new vendor is approaching the market.

In this episode of the CPQ Podcast, Frank Sohn speaks with Tyler Moini, Founder and Managing Director of Expedite Commerce, about how the company has evolved since its earlier positioning around composable commerce and API-first architecture. Tyler explains why Expedite Commerce now describes its approach as a governed execution platform, designed to help organizations manage commercial processes across pricing, quoting, contracts, subscriptions, billing, and asset-related workflows. A central topic in the discussion is Genesis, the company's underlying AI system. Tyler outlines why Expedite Commerce sees AI not as a separate add-on, but as part of the foundation of the platform. The conversation looks at how this approach is intended to support user guidance, manage commercial state across the revenue lifecycle, and help organizations handle complex selling environments with more structure and consistency. The episode also covers the company's target market, including mid-market and early enterprise organizations with complex revenue models, such as subscription businesses, manufacturers, and companies managing configured products, services, warranties, or serialized assets. Tyler also discusses support for CRM platforms such as Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho, as well as ERP integrations with systems including SAP S/4HANA, NetSuite, Oracle, and Workday. In addition, Frank and Tyler discuss e-commerce capabilities, billing support for more complex pricing models, and how AI may affect the future of revenue management and CPQ. The conversation provides useful context for listeners interested in CPQ, revenue lifecycle management, AI in CPQ, subscription management, digital commerce, and enterprise sales technology. If you follow developments in CPQ software, AI-driven quoting, revenue management platforms, or enterprise monetization, this episode offers a detailed look at how one vendor is approaching those challenges today. 

In this episode of the CPQ Podcast, Frank Sohn speaks with Garima and Pulin about how AI-driven fair market value (FMV) intelligence can support pricing and CPQ-related processes in the used IT asset market. The conversation goes beyond product features and also explores the personal stories behind the business. Garima shares her journey from flight attendant to entrepreneur and explains why perseverance has been such an important strength throughout her career. Pulin talks about starting out in finance, teaching himself computer skills, learning from a failed startup, and even driving Uber in the early days of the company to help keep the business going. On the business side, this episode looks at how their platform is designed to bring more structure and pricing transparency to the used IT asset industry. Pulin describes the goal as creating something similar to a Kelly Blue Book for used IT assets, while Garima explains why fair market value is at the center of the platform. The discussion also covers why they see CPQ and their business as mirror images, how FMV-based intelligence can influence pricing decisions, and why this matters for organizations involved in reverse supply chain and asset monetization processes. Frank, Garima, and Pulin also discuss the company's ideal customer profile, including OEMs, VARs, and ITAD organizations, as well as broader trends around AI, data, integration, and the future of pricing.  This episode is especially relevant for anyone interested in: CPQ AI in pricing Fair market value intelligence Quote-to-cash Used IT asset pricing Reverse supply chain technology IT asset disposition (ITAD) If you work in CPQ, pricing, revenue operations, or B2B technology, this conversation offers a different perspective on how pricing intelligence can shape commercial processes in markets that have historically lacked consistent benchmarks.

Fireside with a VC E131: Discover how Tyson Tuttle, CEO of Circuit AI, is leveraging AI to revolutionize manufacturing, supply chain, and enterprise workflows. This conversation covers strategic company growth, technological innovation, and the future trajectory of AI-enabled industrial solutions.· Tyson Tuttle's journey from semiconductor leadership to AI entrepreneurship· The application of AI in manufacturing and supply chain optimization· Strategies for go-to-market, customer engagement, and scaling of AI solutions· The role of VC funding, growth plans, and long-term vision for Circuit AI· Insights into Texas's evolving financial and manufacturing ecosystem· Tyson shares his experience leading Silicon Labs through $3.5B IPO and $8B acquisition· Details Circuit AI's focus on automating technical workflows within manufacturing· How AI transforms complex sales processes, CPQ, and technical data management· The importance of land-and-expand strategies inenterprise AI deployment00:00 - Introduction: Tyson Tuttle's background and recent successes02:29 - Silicon Labs IPO and strategic pivot into IoT04:51 - Transition from hardware to AI software solutions07:14 - Founding Circuit AI with co-founder Matt Weiss09:09 - Building a strong leadership team and company culture11:23 - Circuit AI's focus: Enabling manufacturing with AI12:52 - The value of AI in technical document understanding and automation 14:21 - Targeting manufacturing and supply chain for AI application 15:38 - Impact of AI on manufacturing workforce and productivity18:05 - Automating front-end sales workflows with AI (CPQ & quotes)19:58 - Reducing manual workflows, onboarding, and scale strategies23:01 - Use cases: Contract review and document analysis in supply chain24:37 - Long sales cycles in manufacturing and strategies to shorten them26:46 - Land-and-expand approach with large manufacturing clients28:08 - Cost savings and productivity improvements (Culligan case study)29:55 - Importance of user adoption and ROI in AI deployment31:21 - VC interest in rejuvenating American manufacturing33:28 - Differentiators: Vertical focus, manufacturing-specific solutions35:23 - Company financing and future fundraising plans36:39 - Vision for Circuit AI: Growth, customer acquisition, and vertical expansion38:05 - Implementation and scaling of AI-powered CPQ systems41:23 - Building Texas's financial ecosystem via Texas Stock Exchange44:27 - Texas's advantages over traditional markets and regulatory environment45:47 - Closing remarks: Exciting outlook for AI-driven manufacturing· Circuit AI https://www.circuit.ai/· Texas Stock Exchangeandrew@7bc.vc          If you are a VC or LP join the next 7BC European Roadshow with stops in Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich, Geneva and Monaco this June. ⁠https://www.7bc.vc/events

Synopsis Dans l'épisode 0x290, Patrick, Steve et Francis reviennent sur une semaine chargée en cybersécurité. Un marin français a révélé la position du porte-avions Charles de Gaulle en Méditerranée via Strava — un problème d'OPSEC récurrent qui rappelle le cas du capitaine de sous-marin russe traqué et exécuté grâce à ses données de course à pied. L'équipe en profite pour discuter de l'utilisation des téléphones personnels par les policiers et militaires canadiens. L'équipe décortique ensuite ce qui pourrait être une des plus grosses brèches au Canada : TELUS Digital compromis par le groupe Shiny Hunters, avec un pétaoctet de données exfiltrées. Le tout via des outils de base comme TruffleHog, en scannant des mots de passe en clair dans les données internes. L'ampleur touche TELUS Santé, la domotique (ADT) et bien plus. Parmi les autres sujets : Google qui finalise l'acquisition de Wiz, Microsoft Copilot qui contourne les règles d'accès pour lire des courriels restreints, la Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec sous enquête, le démantèlement de quatre botnets majeurs avec la participation de la SQ et de la GRC, la vente de son visage et sa voix à l'IA, les pannes informatiques récurrentes dans les hôpitaux québécois, et les menaces cyber liées au conflit au Moyen-Orient qui touchent directement le Canada — incluant l'attaque destructrice contre le conglomérat biomédical Stryker via Microsoft Intune. L'épisode se termine avec un hommage humoristique au décès de Chuck Norris et une réflexion sur la vulnérabilité des infrastructures essentielles canadiennes, d'Hydro-Québec aux stations radar du Grand Nord. Crew Patrick Mathieu Steve Waterhouse Francis Coats Liens et ressources Steve StravaLeaks : le porte-avions Charles-de-Gaulle localisé en temps réel grâce à l'application de sport TELUS Digital confirms breach after hacker claims 1 petabyte data theft US seizes domains and infrastructure used in sprawling botnet campaigns Justice Department disrupts botnet networks that hijacked 3 million devices La Commission d'accès à l'information visée par des enquêtes Canada should ‘absolutely' match Poland's Chinese EV ban at military bases: expert Stryker attack wiped tens of thousands of devices, no malware needed Seriez-vous prêt à vendre votre voix ou à louer votre visage pour entraîner une IA? Switzerland built a secure alternative to BGP ‘Source of data': are electric cars vulnerable to cyber spies and hackers? Max severity Ubiquiti UniFi flaw may allow account takeover The US bans all new foreign-made network routers Patrick Crunchyroll data breach Wiz acquisition finalisée par Google Anthropic finds 22 Firefox vulnerabilities using Claude Disnat serre la vis - MFA enfin activé L'hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont affecté par une panne informatique Google Chrome - 26 CVE patchés Microsoft error sees confidential emails exposed to AI tool Copilot Francis ITSEC 2026 : j'y serai! Shamelessplug Join Discord — channel

Winning the AI Trust Race Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this compelling discussion from the Ultimate Partner Winter Retreat, Vince Menzione sits down with Marc Monday of ServiceNow and marketing expert Ashleigh Vogstad to deconstruct the “tectonic shifts” currently hitting the tech industry. As the market moves from AI excitement into a period of “POC fatigue,” the conversation pivots to the essential groundwork required for success: clean data, governed workflows, and the transition from an attention economy to a trust-based machine economy. They explore how Gen Z's massive spending power is reshaping marketplaces and why simply automating a 27-step bad process with AI is a recipe for failure. Whether you are a partner manager or an entrepreneur, this episode provides a roadmap for staying human in a machine-to-machine world. Key Takeaways The market is experiencing “POC fatigue,” making it critical to transition from experimental AI to real-world value driven by central databases and knowledge graphs. ServiceNow is shifting focus toward “Control Tower” solutions to govern and orchestrate how various AI agents interact with mission-critical data. We are moving from a human-centric “attention economy” to a “trust economy” where machines make high-stakes decisions on behalf of users. Automating an existing 27-step approval process without rethinking the workflow first results in an “automated bad process” rather than a solution. By 2030, 75% of B2B buyers will be Gen Z, a demographic that favors authentic voices and direct-to-fan platforms like Substack over traditional channels. Hyperscaler partnerships are becoming essential “third-party validation” layers that allow AI agents to verify a company's win rates and credibility. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags ServiceNow, Marc Monday, Ashleigh Vogstad, Ultimate Partner, AI Fatigue, Agentic AI, Control Tower, Trust Economy, Knowledge Graph, Workflow Engine, Gen Z B2B, Marketplace, Hyperscalers, Machine-to-Machine, Data Governance, POC Fatigue, Substack, LinkedIn, Digital Transformation, Co-Selling, Partner Programs, ERP Intelligence, Uncanny Valley, Marketing Lag, Shared Business Planning. Transcript Ashleigh and Marc Monday Audio Episode [00:00:00] Ashleigh Vogstad: But the reality is, if you’re not using AI in a very meaningful way in your sales and marketing functions of your businesses, I mean you’re just way behind. [00:00:13] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out crowd. Come join me now for a compelling discussion on the impacts of the tectonic shifts we’re all seeing. Maybe just a second about roles and responsibilities. Most of you know Ash from previous, uh, things you’ve been doing with us. [00:00:34] Vince Menzione: But, but maybe for you, Martin, this is your first time. [00:00:36] Marc Monday: Where should I [00:00:37] Vince Menzione: look there? Alternate partner. Their lives [00:00:38] Marc Monday: there? [00:00:39] Vince Menzione: Uh, yeah, over here is good. Either one. [00:00:41] Marc Monday: Look over there. Which would you prefer? [00:00:43] Vince Menzione: Um, this is good. [00:00:44] Marc Monday: Great. It’s, [00:00:45] Vince Menzione: and, but right now I’m just asking you for everybody, tell everybody who you are in your role. [00:00:49] Vince Menzione: ’cause you just shifted roles at ServiceNow. It’s [00:00:51] Marc Monday: true. It’s true. Hello everyone. My name is Mark one day and I lead the America’s partner business, uh, partner sales business at ServiceNow today. And effective Monday I’ll lead the global partner team. Uh, Jen Odes, who’s been on the podcast. Yes. She’s been and I are switching roles. [00:01:07] Marc Monday: Jen’s gonna go run the patch and I’m gonna run the programs, uh, effective next week. [00:01:11] Vince Menzione: That’s fantastic. [00:01:12] Marc Monday: And I live in Seattle. [00:01:15] Vince Menzione: You live in Seattle. Yeah. And you made the trip out here. I really appreciate that. It’s a long journey. And Vancouver or Whistler? So both of you came from the, from the West coast. [00:01:23] Marc Monday: This may be the first snowboarding panel in history of ultimate partner. [00:01:29] Ashleigh Vogstad: I liked the question earlier. Somebody asked, did anyone leave the snow to be here? It was literally a blizzard. I did not know if I would make it driving at 4:00 AM to the airport in a total whiteout. [00:01:41] Marc Monday: You’re getting zero sympathy from me Live in Whistler. [00:01:44] Vince Menzione: So, so Service now has been, uh, I would say on the forefront of this AI thing. I mean, like you were early in and control towers, that I always get the, the nomenclature wrong, but I do feel like we are seeing some, a level of fatigue right now. And I keep seeing, I mean, it feels like every, we’re getting whiplashed at least the last few weeks. [00:02:03] Vince Menzione: Are you seeing that? And what are the two or three biggest blockers you’re seeing now in the market? [00:02:10] Marc Monday: I think there’s, there’s a lot of excitement obviously in the marketplace, but there is a bit of AI fatigue. There’s a POC fatigue, I think that’s going on. I think the reality is we have to make AI real, and the reality is it starts with good data, uh, a, a central, uh, a database, and really making sure that that’s extensible through a knowledge graph. [00:02:31] Marc Monday: And then that provides us the ability to identify that workflow. Then importantly, um, making it real and, and as fast as possible. And I think that’s really important for the customer. One of the value props of ServiceNow, of course, is that we’ll meet the customer where they are with whatever their estate has, [00:02:47] Vince Menzione: right? [00:02:47] Marc Monday: So any hyperscaler, any workload, any core dataset, um, any LLM and, um, our history is as a workflow engine, and so we can bring that level of knowledge to their business. And then importantly, we bring together the governance and orchestration from a control tower perspective. [00:03:08] Vince Menzione: Nice. Ash had perspective on this, on the kind of the whiplash we’ve been feeling. [00:03:13] Vince Menzione: From From the marketing agency side? [00:03:15] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. I mean, what comes to mind is the Miriam Webster dictionary said that LOP is the 2025 Word of the Year lop and Satchin Nadella actually came out with some press immediately following on that, saying that essentially that LOP is an exactly a useful construct to be having a conversation around the future of media. [00:03:37] Ashleigh Vogstad: But I think what this is pointing to is just we’re all navigating. Exactly how much AI is good ai, and maybe we will get into a little bit later, but what is the difference between selling to a human being and selling to a machine? Um, and really when we’re getting into this age agent landscape, it’s much more about that machine to machine conversation. [00:04:01] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s not necessarily. Human eyeballs on recommendation links that is paid for by advertising. It’s more of a trust economy actually, where machines wanna be able to make decisions on our behalf with high trust so that you continue to enable that machine to make those decisions for you. [00:04:22] Vince Menzione: We talked about the data. [00:04:23] Vince Menzione: I thought we’d double click a little bit on that. In fact, that point it would normally have been here, but because of the snow wasn’t able to, they focus in on this governance and this data element. I was thinking maybe we could talk a little bit about that, because it doesn’t seem like AI will work properly if we don’t have the data to stay governed and clean, right? [00:04:42] Marc Monday: I think this is the amazing opportunity for the partners out there. They do this already. This is one of those assessments that’s so quick and not easy, but clear to deliver a value prop as a partner. Let’s get you ready for ai. Let’s make sure that we’re ensuring that your data’s in a extensible in a way across, uh, some sort of knowledge graph that can be accessed across a number of different, um, use cases. [00:05:09] Marc Monday: And oftentimes that’s multiple data sets. And so how do you get those columns and rows organized in a way that’s extensible for an agent, that we’re basically asking to do something that is an unique opportunity for partners right now. And I, I think that we maybe missed that step. So I see what I see happening right now is we’ve gotta come back to that as a starting point for the partners. [00:05:31] Vince Menzione: Let’s talk about agent ai or you also have orchestration AI as well. I wanna talk about their, your new service platform specifically, but maybe if you could double click with this on that. [00:05:42] Marc Monday: Well, I think that, you know, everyone is kind of trying to figure out how do we get there and who’s gonna orchestrate and govern what AI agent is calling on, what data set at what time, and what sequence. [00:05:54] Marc Monday: You may have a mission critical application that needs to have immediate access, and you may have other agents that have casual access. How do you control that in a meaningful way is gonna be become increasingly important. So we have the idea of this product that we call control tower. The control tower gives you the ability to manage that orchestration as well as the governance. [00:06:14] Vince Menzione: Any perspective on this? [00:06:17] Ashleigh Vogstad: I think I’ll share the perspective. As an entrepreneur, I know many people here represent. Companies that are our clients and are, are massive in scale and, and hyperscalers. But I think there are some people in the room who are running their own organizations. I think when I came out, Vince asked, you know, Ash growth mindset, how are you actually living this? [00:06:36] Ashleigh Vogstad: And we’re going through a journey in my business right now around what are all of the data sources that we have and how can we get that into an enterprise resource planning type system so that we can then overlay more intelligence. And that’s kind of where we’re at in the, it’s funny ’cause when you look at those maturity curves, they try and fit you in a box. [00:06:57] Ashleigh Vogstad: Nobody here likes being in a box. Um, and we’re in a corner. Yeah. In some ways it’s like we’re in that agentic box. I built an agent last week, funny enough for Microsoft actually, um, an executive comms agent, but in one hand we’re on that end and on the other, our data’s a mess and we really can’t apply a lot of intelligence to the majority of the data sources within our organization. [00:07:20] Ashleigh Vogstad: So we’re getting that all together right now. [00:07:22] Vince Menzione: When you came out, we talked a little bit, you were, you were mentioning having an advertising agency, marketing agency. The changes that are going on right now. Right? The attention economy and the trust economy. And I thought maybe you could double click with us on that. [00:07:35] Vince Menzione: ’cause that’s, uh, very interesting to see this shift. [00:07:39] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s a huge shift. So, uh, 1964 Canadian philosopher, Marshall McCluen, he comes out and he says The medium is the message. [00:07:49] Audience Question: Yeah. [00:07:49] Ashleigh Vogstad: And so you wanna think about how is agenta a different medium and what are the biases that this medium inherently has? So in my media world, you know, you get these storytelling tools rolling out at Speed Chat, GBT, soa, and in the beginning they’re really at that low end of the curve. [00:08:08] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, they can produce a shitty first draft, uh, but the content that they’re creating is really low emotional resonance. If you take kind of a neuroscientist perspective on this, and I’m definitely not a neuroscientist, but the part of your brain that’s responsible for that pattern recognition, your cortical sal circuit, that’s what’s kicking in. [00:08:29] Ashleigh Vogstad: And when you’re looking at, say, an advertisement, you’re starting to think, you know, is what I’m looking at actually commensurate with what I expect to see? And when it’s not, you can trigger that what psychologists call your uncanny valley. Now some will argue that on County Valley is really diminishing these days because AI generated media is getting better and better. [00:08:52] Ashleigh Vogstad: And I do think that it’s something you want to lean in, but you also wanna think intelligently around how you’re using this new medium and exactly what its, what its biases are. [00:09:03] Vince Menzione: Is that the gut syndrome? Like when you feel something in your gut? Is that what you described? [00:09:07] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the classic example is Coca-Cola. [00:09:10] Ashleigh Vogstad: So 2024 Coca-Cola rolled out their very nostalgic for many of us holiday campaign, and they decided to use tools like Luma Dream Machine to make this whole Santa Claus North Pole, but AI generated universe. And it had that classic stuff around, you know, six fingered people and it gave you this. Kind of creepy post-apocalyptic vibe and the campaign completely tanked in market. [00:09:37] Ashleigh Vogstad: Or more recently, last year, mango rolled out a new fashion line Mango’s a huge global fashion retailer. They rolled out a new fashion line, and in their advertisements they had AI generated models and AI generated clothing. Like to sell a real line. So, you know, you, you have to really be thinking about, again, when we come to an attention economy based on human beings or a machine economy based on trust, many of these companies are still selling to us human beings. [00:10:09] Ashleigh Vogstad: And I, I think they can forget that at times. [00:10:12] Vince Menzione: So what’s your guidance to customers today and to this audience and viewers watching us today from a go-to market motion? In this world of ai, like what? What are you telling? What? How are you counseling these organizations? [00:10:25] Ashleigh Vogstad: You need to have an authentic voice. [00:10:27] Ashleigh Vogstad: We, we’ve heard this a million times, so I’ll try and put a bit of a, a different spin on it at platforms direct to fan platforms, things like Substack. Substack grew 48% last month. I mean, we are seeing this skyrocket, and that’s a new channel where you can have an authentic voice. Many people in this room, myself included, we live on LinkedIn as the business to business platform. [00:10:50] Ashleigh Vogstad: Consider expanding out into, into a new channel, um, would be one of my recommendations. Interesting. [00:10:57] Vince Menzione: Any, anything else from, uh, what you developed or what you use and ai and what do you, what, what tools do you recommend they use and what. [00:11:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: There. [00:11:06] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:11:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: What are we seeing with our, so I can give this example of this executive comms agent that we built. [00:11:12] Ashleigh Vogstad: Or even part, yeah, we’re building agents all the time, so what we try to do is think about what is our customer seeking to solve. We heard a lot today about outcomes, and then we challenge an AI first lens, which is how can we build something with AI to make this easier, better, faster, more creative? We’ll even do things, we’re a marketing agency, so we’ll even do things like beat the bot, pitch competitions. [00:11:37] Ashleigh Vogstad: So this is where you’re inviting your agent into the room and you’re asking it to put the pitch together, say for ServiceNow and Microsoft, and what can it come up with? And then we put it in a room of human beings and see who can out pitch. Bot, um, and come up with a more novel, creative idea. But the reality is, if you’re not using AI in a very meaningful way in your sales and marketing functions of your businesses, I mean, you’re just way behind. [00:12:07] Ashleigh Vogstad: And I see it a bit more advanced in all honesty and sales because I think some of your large. Organizations push the AI down to the sellers. Mm-hmm. Um, so they’re somewhat forced to use it, but in marketing, I’m still seeing a real lack, which is funny since generative AI came out in 2022 and everybody thought the marketing function was the one to really be disrupted and displaced. [00:12:30] Ashleigh Vogstad: I do think your marketing teams need to be leaning in more. [00:12:35] Vince Menzione: We were talking about trust earlier. I wanna weave this into the conversation. Right. How do, how do you. How do you think through trust and applying trust in the area I world, I’ll ask you both this question under service. Now think about it. How do you think about it or transcend? [00:12:54] Marc Monday: Maybe I’ll take a step back. I, I think just to kind of go back to the previous question, I think we’re in this age of massive complexity. Incredible complexity. Nina said it earlier, the customers kind of want us to tell them what to do. What are the steps? We’re at this dichotomy of this level of complexity that’s almost unimaginable and we have to make it simple. [00:13:18] Marc Monday: I think that’s the first one. And then that, that is put up against this notion of we have to go incredibly fast ’cause the market’s moving faster than we can even understand it. [00:13:28] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:13:29] Marc Monday: And then we have to add on this veneer, and this is where the partner community becomes so important of how do we scale? [00:13:35] Marc Monday: So how do you take simplicity, speed, and scale and bring it to market? It starts with the data, of course it starts with the workflow, but I might just take a giant step back and say one of the things that another partner opportunity you might run to really consider is automating a bad process, even with AI is still a bad process. [00:13:58] Marc Monday: So again, a partner opportunity is, let’s zoom back out and say if your approval. Takes 13 steps in 27 days, building an AI process around that. Without rethinking it might not be the right solution. So I think part of it is also like rather than just dictating all of the steps, part of it, to the point of telling the customer the steps is getting them to participate in that conversation. [00:14:29] Marc Monday: Why do you have 27 approval layers? Well. It’s the most dangerous thing in the language. It’s because we’ve always done it that way. Well, what if we did it differently? Yeah. And so I think that’s an area where the trust is a two-way street and you can’t just the part, the customer shouldn’t just outsource all of their decision making to you. [00:14:50] Marc Monday: At the same time, you have to bring them into that discussion of what are you trying to accomplish and what is your, um, risk appetite relative to that. [00:15:02] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, that, that’s great, mark. I mean, trust is a really important conversation. I think about the Amazon versus Perplexity lawsuit right now that some are headlining the end of commerce. [00:15:14] Ashleigh Vogstad: Um, and so really this precedent setting case, what this is about is perplexity. Essentially is disintermediating the Amazon platform. So you know it’s making purchase decisions on your behalf, so, so this idea of trust in the agent world is something I think about a lot. And how do you optimize trust for this agentic world? [00:15:36] Ashleigh Vogstad: The professor I was mentioning, Eric Zow, who has this attention economy and the trust economy for agents where my research is leaning in is really around what is the hyperscaler layer on top of that. My working theory is that hyperscaler partnerships are just gonna become more important because the machines need to verify via trusted third party data sources what it is that you’re up to. [00:16:02] Ashleigh Vogstad: So how many deals have you done? Uh, what is your win rate percentage? This kind of information is incredibly valuable to the agent world, and so I think we’re gonna see an. Increasing lean in to these third party validation co-selling systems like partner center. [00:16:22] Marc Monday: I mean, just to add onto yeah. This idea, I mean, we do talk a lot about trust, but attention is probably underserved if I think about the role of a partner manager or an alliance director, it’s all about the trade-offs of what am I gonna spend my time on today? [00:16:37] Marc Monday: And you’re being pulled in a million directions, and I dunno about you, but it’s probably 900 to 10,000 unread emails and maybe you’ll respond to your immediate messages and if something happens, you’ll respond in in text. Part of it is also delineating between the busyness and the impact, and I think a lot of that’s also part of this discussion of how do we get focused on the outputs that matter. [00:17:02] Marc Monday: Really helping the customer get there through that discussion, which again goes back to it has to be a dialogue with the customer rather than just, this is the solution. Here’s our SOW. We’ll see you in six months. [00:17:14] Vince Menzione: Agree. We have a couple extra minutes. I was thinking of maybe opening it up for you. Any questions? [00:17:19] Vince Menzione: We have a mic in the back and I’m sure people have questions about this topic is, is fascinating to me and I wanna make sure that we’ve covered any of the questions we have. We have one right in the front from Shannon. [00:17:30] Marc Monday: Send the hard [00:17:31] Vince Menzione: questions over there. Not Yes. I’ll take the Easy books. Yeah. [00:17:36] Audience Question: You referenced marketing lag. [00:17:38] Audience Question: I think all of us would love to see marketing leading. [00:17:41] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yes. [00:17:42] Audience Question: Um, so how are you infusing within your marketing team at different levels around content creation? Um, there’s so much, uh, ego right on being a graphic designer or an editor, a copy editor that they. The human inflation in that conversation is a, is a hard thing to get them over. [00:18:02] Audience Question: And now AI can help this. How are you? [00:18:04] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, let’s have a conversation after. But you just brought up a funny No, I’m gonna answer as well, but you brought up, brought up a funny, uh, conversation we had internally, just in the last 24 hours we’re interviewing for a new creative director and one of our candidates said, yes, but I don’t do Figma. [00:18:20] Ashleigh Vogstad: I’m not a UX person. I just laughed and I said, you know, the day is coming where It’s a designer, it’s a UX person, it’s a project manager, a program manager, a copywriter. You know, AI is condensing a lot of roles in that way. So I think being multidisciplinary in your skillset is, um. Is quite valuable, but I’ll also take this into a hyperscaler direction and say, no. [00:18:46] Ashleigh Vogstad: Here audiences, 75% of it buyers are going to be Gen Z by 2030. They have 12 trillion in spending power. I was in Silicon Valley yesterday, uh, helping a customer with a wind story. They did a $12 million transaction through Marketplace. Now that’s very impressive, but it would’ve been more impressive two years ago. [00:19:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: There are more and more, 10 million plus. Deals happening through marketplace. And so if you look at that Gen Z and start to understand them and their buying behavior, like another example is, I think it’s 80%, no, no half, sorry, half of Gen Z last month made a purchase via Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. They are used to making these online transactions and average purchase price is going up. [00:19:35] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, $500,000 plus is starting to be the average in some of these enterprise selling platforms. So as a marketing team, how are we kind of going in and leading the marketplace? Conversation I think is really critical and there’s technical elements to that. [00:19:52] Marc Monday: Maybe the caveman view of that would be, um, the other side, which is I think someone earlier said, we have to know where our customer is at. [00:20:00] Marc Monday: And a lot of our, we are very lucky. We live in this very insular tech bubble and we’re thinking about, you know, where we are 10 years from now and the customer’s gonna are gonna get there eventually, and it’s gonna happen faster. But I would say in marketing, I mean the two easiest use cases right now are around localization. [00:20:16] Marc Monday: Language localization and then specific market localization, like we don’t have to solve world hunger right now. There are some steps and those steps are some of the easy things. Localization probably is a big component of your marketing budget. That’s something that you can get really good, really fast language localization, addition market localization. [00:20:35] Marc Monday: This market is a healthcare market. This market is an SMB market. Those are two areas where that through partner marketing motion can to get accelerated very quickly and has a tremendous ROI. [00:20:47] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Great one. Nina, you had a question [00:20:50] Audience Question: three Mark. You, you just, you just hit on part of it is that value proposition message is, it’s really easy in AI to, to fine tune that. [00:20:59] Audience Question: The other thing that I’ll be very transparent about, um, at least in my organization and America’s partner, we only work with um, third party. Marketing vendors now that are AI first period. [00:21:12] Audience Question: Nice. We [00:21:12] Audience Question: completely cleaned out who the vendors are that we will approve to work with. Wow. Um, so because we can also see the cost reduction, but it is a mindset change. [00:21:22] Audience Question: They have to, they, if, if they’re gonna be positioning this, it has to be inherent. It has to be part of their culture of, at. [00:21:29] Marc Monday: Ashley made a really wonderful point. I mean, this bad first draft is so key and so, you know, in the past we would’ve spent. A couple days or maybe even a week on a really bad first draft. [00:21:40] Marc Monday: And the bad first draft is just to generate feedback. You can generate a bad, a good, bad first draft in a couple of minutes with the right prompts. [00:21:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah, good. Point. Point questions to the back, Steven. [00:21:55] Audience Question: Mark, as you guys are building out agents, the orchestration to manage them, is that taking you into workflows outside of ServiceNow? [00:22:05] Audience Question: Yes. [00:22:07] Vince Menzione: Repeat the question, sorry. Yeah. Just in case people aren’t getting [00:22:09] Marc Monday: Yes. The question is, um, for ServiceNow specifically, um, is that taking you out of your traditional business? And I think he, he means it’s probably business in it, and the answer is yes. So our value promise is that we can go north, south, east, west, across the estate. [00:22:24] Marc Monday: Regardless of the workflow. So there are scenarios where we are expanding. Of course, we have a commitment to driving the CRM business, moving beyond just customer service management, but all the way through the process to CPQ and we’ll productize many of those things. But the reality is, if the workflow touches, let’s say. [00:22:42] Marc Monday: Uh, a, a big database, you know, from one of your known providers, uh, an HCM system, your our traditional IT system. This is maybe around service delivery of a particular set of kit to a new employee for onboarding or offboarding across a number of those systems of record. Yes, we’ll continue to do that, and honestly, it’s the value promise for us that because we are capable of working with. [00:23:06] Marc Monday: Every hyperscaler, every application, every data set, we can go up and down and across the state. [00:23:12] Audience Question: Hi everyone. I’m Jen Pauls. Hey, Jen. I have a um, I have a question for you. So when you’re incorporating AI, and also you mentioned trust, how do you make sure that the offerings that you’re coating on are feasible specifically for that whole individual partner and client? [00:23:34] Audience Question: And you’re not repeating. Something. Does that make sense to you? Yeah. Like how do you make sure that there is an individualized component that is original in thought, even though you’re feeding this pipeline, all these combined thoughts? [00:23:51] Marc Monday: I, I don’t wanna push back on the premise, but I do think in some instances, partners, implementers will have competing solutions that do effectively the same thing. [00:23:59] Marc Monday: Ideally they’re differentiated, but I do think publishing a, a standard. Particularly from a security and a reliability perspective, what that traditionally we would’ve called that API standard, and then a level of validation, either via human validation or systemic AI validation is really key. Um, the solution that gets marketed, let’s say, in our marketplace should work and it should be secure and it should be reliable. [00:24:25] Marc Monday: So we processes to manage that, if that’s the question. [00:24:29] Audience Question: Right? Well, it would, you know, yes. Yes. But. Um, when you’re trying to create a dispute or an offering, right, that’s specific to that particular partner, this is where I’m going. How do you make sure that the thoughts that are coming in are specifically, I guess, individualized for that one partner and what they’re doing and how they’re going to make a new, um, new, uh, track or a new journey in what you’re selling? [00:24:57] Ashleigh Vogstad: I mean, I would answer that I think with differentiation is still really important. And if anything, if we had an 80 20 rule for 80% of the lift is coming from ai, we’re all still here and employed because there is a rule for the, the human, at least currently in that 20%. And I would say. Running teams who are often building new offers and products, both on the ISV and SI side of things. [00:25:25] Ashleigh Vogstad: Getting that unique differentiation is critically important. Like that’s where a lot of value is created. Or you could look at, I mean Nabil probably has stories about this all day in the MSP world is it’s really challenging for MSPs to differentiate on top of their core offering, but that is where value creation happens. [00:25:43] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. Nina more, I’ll [00:25:44] Audience Question: just piggyback on that. My recommendation to a lot of, of our partners today is build out agents at that 80% watermark. Right? And that’s a little bit what you were talking about, the 80, 20, 80% of that functionality. Quite honestly, if you’re looking at an call center or something, is something that can be ported. [00:26:05] Audience Question: The, the magic is working with the partner on what X 20 is that differentiates their business, their experience, how, uh, the applicability to. So I, I will, I, to your point about ology, the premise, I mean it, to me, I think repeatability is, is awesome. It’s a superpower. It’s gonna get us there faster. It’s in that 20%. [00:26:31] Audience Question: Yeah. [00:26:34] Vince Menzione: Thank, perfect, thank you. [00:26:36] Marc Monday: Maybe I’ll close with with one really simple use case just for all of us that are in the partner profession and we work in alliances or partner management. The easiest and best, most effective use case for us as power users today is a shared business plan. Here are the goals and objectives of us as a vendor or a platform provider. [00:26:57] Marc Monday: Here are the goals and objectives of us as the implementer or a resell partner. Um, and in the past I used to describe this as a really complicated bow tie. On one side, you’d have our goals, and on the other side you’d have the, the, the implementer’s goals. And you’d spend all this time weaving together a knot and try to tie it together. [00:27:16] Marc Monday: That activity can happen in about five seconds with the right prompt. And you can very quickly say, oh, you guys think about a CV. We think about a RR Oh, your fiscal year is, is offset. Your fiscal year isn’t, oh, you call this product something different. Um, we care about platform revenue. We care about services revenue. [00:27:35] Marc Monday: You can reconcile that into a pretty darn good shared scorecard and business plan in a matter of seconds. Yeah, and that is a huge time saver. I [00:27:45] Vince Menzione: love that. [00:27:47] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s just an ama uh, it just thumbs up for me because that joint business planning just doesn’t happen enough. I, I’m in some of the biggest alliances on, on the planet really, and it’s shocking to me how little joint business planning is done. [00:28:00] Ashleigh Vogstad: And for the marketing question, Shannon, like how can marketers lean in? I mean, market development funds are made available based on things like joint business plugs. [00:28:09] Vince Menzione: That’s right. Yeah, really great point. Great voice. Thank you so much. So good to have you finally have you here. Thank you, mark and Ash. [00:28:17] Vince Menzione: Thank you so much [00:28:18] Audience Question: Owens. [00:28:19] Vince Menzione: Don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.

At Conga Connect 2026 in Orlando, Conga made one thing clear: it wants to be seen as more than a CPQ or CLM vendor. In this episode, Frank Sohn shares his high-level takeaways from the event, including Conga's new brand direction, what the company's "connected commerce" message means, and why the future of its three CPQ paths matters for customers and prospects alike. Frank also looks at the emerging split between Advantage and PROS CPQ, Conga's iFrame-based approach to surfacing Advantage capabilities inside its Salesforce-based product, and why price optimization and AiMe stood out as important parts of the story. The result is a balanced, practical debrief for anyone trying to understand where Conga appears to be heading — and what buyers should watch next. Note: We go on a short spring break and will be back by April 5

It's a solo episode this week — interview scheduling has been unusually tough this year, so I'm using the opportunity to talk about something that's top of mind for many teams early in the year: CPQ selection. In this episode, I share the six questions that fix most CPQ shortlists before demos start: business model, biggest challenge, CRM fit, ERP fit, go-live speed, and company complexity. The goal isn't to rank vendors — it's to get to a realistic shortlist faster, using a repeatable framework grounded in high-quality briefing research. I also tease a new way I'm building to help teams decide which CPQ briefings to read first — without showing the app. If you tell me your preferred tone (more neutral/analyst vs more conversational), I can tighten this into a single final description that matches your usual intro style exactly.

Jack sits down with Paul Calf (Salesforce Release Manager at Standard Life, and Gearset DevOps Leader for 2026) to talk through a decade-long Salesforce journey that took him from accidental admin to release manager. Paul gets candid about the failed audit that forced his team to get serious about governance, what it looked like to build a compliant release process from scratch, and why cherry-picking components in VS Code nearly broke him (and the team).The conversation goes beyond tooling. Paul opens up about the culture-first approach his team takes to collaboration, from daily standups to blameless post-mortems, and what happens when someone accidentally data loads the wrong file into prod. He also shares his take on evaluating DevOps tools, approval bottlenecks, and how his financial services org is treading carefully, but deliberately, into AI territory.About DevOps Diaries: Salesforce DevOps Advocate Jack McCurdy chats to members of the Salesforce community about their experience in the Salesforce ecosystem. Expect to hear and learn from inspirational stories of personal growth and business success, whilst discovering all the trials, tribulations, and joy that comes with delivering Salesforce for companies of all shapes and sizes. New episodes bi-weekly on YouTube as well as on your preferred podcast platform.Podcast produced and sponsored by Gearset. Learn more about Gearset: https://grst.co/4iCnas2About Gearset: Gearset is the leading Salesforce DevOps platform, with powerful solutions for metadata and CPQ deployments, CI/CD, automated testing, sandbox seeding and backups. It helps Salesforce teams apply DevOps best practices to their development and release process, so they can rapidly and securely deliver higher-quality projects. Get full access to all of Gearset's features for free with a 30-day trial: https://grst.co/4iKysKWChapters:00:00 – Intro & Meet Paul Calf02:00 – The Accidental Admin Origin Story03:44 – The Audit That Changed Everything05:28 – Building a Release Process from Scratch08:00 – From Change Sets to Gearset09:34 – Tackling Approval Bottlenecks12:43 – Breaking Down Silos & Building a Collaborative Culture15:42 – Blameless Culture & Owning Your Mistakes18:55 – Lessons from Building a DevOps Pipeline22:29 – Cherry Picking: A Horror Story25:40 – How to Evaluate DevOps Tooling28:11 – Continuous Improvement as a Mindset30:15 – Approaching AI in a Regulated Industry33:46 – Final Advice for Salesforce & DevOps Teams37:20 – Wrapping Up

In this episode of the CPQ Podcast, Sergey Jermakov joins Frank Sohn to explore how CLARITY is moving beyond classic Quote-to-Cash into intelligent revenue operations management—a broader approach that connects CPQ with billing, revenue processes, and monetization models. Sergey explains how his role has shifted from "sales leader" to Revenue Architect, focused on designing scalable solution architectures and packaged delivery. They discuss CLARITY's focus on mid-market to enterprise organizations (now often $50M+ revenue) in high tech and hybrid product + services businesses, plus their expanded delivery footprint across Europe, North America, and Asia. A major theme is AI: not as magic, but as an accelerator. Sergey shares where AI adoption is strongest today (especially sales and marketing) and how AI can help with document-heavy work and data-driven pricing support—while also exposing weaknesses in process and data readiness. They also dig into why CPQ projects fail—reactive architecture, over-customization, and unclear ownership—and why CLARITY increasingly favors implementation packages over open-ended custom projects to drive faster time-to-value and more controlled releases. Finally, Sergey outlines why many SAP customers are moving from Quote 1.0 to SAP Quote 2.0, with performance and scalability as major drivers. Topics: CPQ, AI in CPQ, revenue operations, SAP Quote 2.0, CPQ implementation best practices, solution architecture, packaged delivery, hybrid selling.

In this episode of the CPQ Podcast, we sit down with Dustin Anglen, Strategic Partnerships Manager at PandaDoc, to discuss how PandaDoc CPQ supports faster quoting for SMB teams (roughly 5–500 employees). PandaDoc is widely known for proposals and eSignature, and Dustin explains why CPQ is a natural extension—especially for organizations that want a practical, easy-to-administer approach without heavy configuration overhead. We cover where PandaDoc CPQ fits best (including SaaS, software & technology, professional services, and education) and how customers typically use it alongside their CRM. Dustin outlines PandaDoc's API-forward SaaSapproach and its key integrations with HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Salesforce. We also discuss what's available today—and what's still evolving—such as ERP connectivity (currently not a standard integration, with MVP work underway) and common customer expectations around implementation, which is often 8–12 weeks. On the capability side, Dustin shares the top requests he sees from the market: product configuration, contract-based pricing, and CRM integration. We talk about product structure support (including bundles), pricing flexibility across segments and regions, usage-based pricing, and how PandaDoc positions its CPQ as a rules engine that is largely no-code (with options for more advanced logic when needed). We also dig into PandaDoc's AI direction—template generation, OCR and document intelligence, metadata-driven automation, and an admin-focused AI feature for helping set up product and pricing rules (currently in testing, with broader availability expected later this year). You'll also hear a few personal moments from Dustin—from his early career in the Salesforce ecosystem (including starting at Apttus in 2014), to an unexpected chapter running a beekeeping business in Santa Barbara, to his passion for freediving near San Diego. A PandaDoc CPQ free trial is available on PandaDoc's website.

What happens when you deploy to prod on a Friday and it starts firing emails to every customer? Dan Barckley has lived it — and it's why he's now a DevOps believer. In this episode: accidental admin origins, why simple beats complex every time, Agentforce skepticism, and the leadership mindset that changes everything.About DevOps Diaries: Salesforce DevOps Advocate Jack McCurdy chats to members of the Salesforce community about their experience in the Salesforce ecosystem. Expect to hear and learn from inspirational stories of personal growth and business success, whilst discovering all the trials, tribulations, and joy that comes with delivering Salesforce for companies of all shapes and sizes. New episodes bi-weekly on YouTube as well as on your preferred podcast platform.Podcast produced and sponsored by Gearset. Learn more about Gearset: https://grst.co/4iCnas2About Gearset: Gearset is the leading Salesforce DevOps platform, with powerful solutions for metadata and CPQ deployments, CI/CD, automated testing, sandbox seeding and backups. It helps Salesforce teams apply DevOps best practices to their development and release process, so they can rapidly and securely deliver higher-quality projects. Get full access to all of Gearset's features for free with a 30-day trial: https://grst.co/4iKysKWChapters:01:36 Introducing Daniel Barckley: A Journey in Salesforce04:16 The Joy of Problem Solving in DevOps07:05 Learning from Mistakes: The Accidental Admin09:35 Tinkering and Innovation: Building in Salesforce12:37 The Importance of Mentorship and Leadership15:21 Characteristics of Great Leaders18:18 Navigating the Salesforce Ecosystem20:46 The Future of Salesforce: AI and Automation23:46 Data Management and Business Continuity26:43 Iterative Development and Continuous Improvement29:19 Embracing Change in the Tech World32:11 Closing Thoughts: Lead with Curiosity

Industrial Talk is talking to Klaus Andersen and Nils Olsson with Tacton about "Redefining buyers engagement for manufactures of complex products". Scott Mackenzie introduces Elevo Tech, a company offering ERP, EAM, and business intelligence solutions, and then transitions to discussing Tacton, a Swedish company specializing in advanced manufacturing configuration. Tacton's CPQ solutions help customers configure complex equipment, supporting both direct sales and omnichannel interactions. The platform integrates with existing systems like CRM, PLM, and ERP, aiming to increase win rates, efficiency, and reduce errors. Tacton's AI capabilities can cut configuration time by up to 80% by structuring unstructured product data. Implementation times vary, typically between six months and a year, depending on the project's scope. Outline Introduction to Elevotec and Industrial Talk Podcast Scott Mackenzie introduces Elevotec, highlighting their ERP, EAM, and business intelligence solutions.Scott Mackenzie welcomes listeners to the Industrial Talk Podcast, emphasizing the importance of celebrating industry professionals.Scott Mackenzie introduces Klaus and Nils from Tacton, discussing their platform and its solutions for today's challenges.Scott Mackenzie expresses excitement about the renaissance in industrial solutions and the importance of human-to-human connection in marketing. Challenges and Solutions in Advanced Manufacturing Nils explains Tacton's specialization in configuring complex equipment, comparing it to configuring consumer products like computers or cars.Klaus describes Tacton's CPQ solutions for advanced manufacturing, supporting both direct sales and omnichannel support.Scott Mackenzie and Klaus discuss the importance of making the configuration process easy for customers while ensuring technical accuracy.Nils emphasizes the need for a buyer-centric smart factory, making it easy for customers to navigate the solution space without technical expertise. Integration and Flexibility of Tacton's Solutions Scott Mackenzie inquires about Tacton's integration with existing IT systems like CRM, PLM, and ERP.Nils explains that Tacton is an agnostic player, able to augment existing systems without complete reconfiguration.Scott Mackenzie and Nils discuss the financial benefits of Tacton's solutions, including increased win rates, efficiency, and reduced errors.Klaus highlights the importance of accurate quotes and the impact of errors on warranty costs and rework. Customer-Centric Pricing and Data Management Scott Mackenzie asks about the flexibility of Tacton's pricing methods, including value-based pricing and detailed bill of materials.Nils explains that Tacton supports various pricing methods, depending on the business needs.Scott Mackenzie inquires about how Tacton ensures the system stays updated with the latest product changes and data.Nils describes the typical setup of connecting PLM and CPQ systems to ensure data accuracy and timeliness. Implementation Time and AI Integration Scott Mackenzie asks about the implementation time for Tacton's solutions.Klaus estimates the implementation time to be between six months and a year, depending on the project's scope.Scott Mackenzie inquires about Tacton's use of AI in their solutions.Nils explains that AI is used to structure unstructured product data, significantly reducing the time required for configuration. Future Challenges and Market Reception Scott Mackenzie asks about the future challenges and opportunities for Tacton.Klaus and Nils discuss the...

In this CPQ Podcast episode, Frank Sohn sits down with Nils Olsson, Chief Strategy, Product, and Customer Officer at Tacton, to discuss how Tacton is evolving beyond traditional CPQ into a broader platform for configurable products. Nils shares his unique perspective as a former Tacton customer who joined the company in 2015, and explains why staying close to manufacturing customers—through regular conversations across North America, Europe, and Japan—is central to Tacton's strategy. He outlines why 2026 will be a transformative year, with new offerings planned not only for CPQ, but also for engineering, order fulfillment, and services. The conversation also explores how customers are responding to Tacton's recent acquisitions of Variantum and Serenytics, and where AI is delivering real value today. Rather than replacing core CPQ logic, AI is primarily being used to support product modeling, helping customers turn unstructured data into usable configuration knowledge faster and with less effort. Additional topics include hybrid sales models in manufacturing, the shift from ETO to CTO, and why trust, security, and enterprise certifications matter more than ever. Topics covered: The shift from CPQ to end-to-end configurability AI adoption in real-world CPQ projects Manufacturing sales and automation trends What's next for Tacton in 2026 A must-listen for anyone tracking the future of CPQ, configurable products, and manufacturing transformation.

2025 was full of CPQ and Quote-to-Cash headlines: AI agents, platform transitions, consolidation, and promises of faster execution. Following those announcements is important — but it rarely tells the full story. In this episode, I look at what often gets lost between public messaging and real-world CPQ decisions. Drawing on patterns observed throughout 2025, I explore where market narratives diverged from evaluation and delivery reality — and why that gap becomes even more important as we head into 2026. The discussion covers AI and agent-based capabilities, platform transitions, consolidation, and delivery constraints — not to judge vendors or predict winners, but to explain how execution, readiness, and sequencing shape actual outcomes. If you're involved in CPQ as a buyer, vendor, system integrator, or investor, this episode offers a practical lens for reading headlines without mistaking them for reality. Contact Frank at Frank.Sohn@NovusCPQ.com for any questions LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/franksohn/ 

Send us a textSalesforce demand dropped 37% in 2024, but the 2026 recovery is already leaving "average" Admins behind. Are you catching the wave, or getting crushed by the coral?In this episode of The Hiring Edge, host Josh Matthews and 27x Certified Architect Scott Stafford break down the "75% Delta of Pain" currently hitting the ecosystem. We move past the Reddit rants and look at the actual data: who is getting hired, who is getting $25k premiums, and why "manual configuration" is a career dead-end.Key Insights for your 2026 Career Plan:The Surfing Strategy: Why you must match the speed of the AI wave before it hits you.The "Jimmy" Trap: How a negative mindset is costing professionals more opportunities than the economy is.The Premium Pivot: Why RevCloud, CPQ, and MuleSoft are the "safe havens" for $150k+ roles right now.AI Orchestration: Moving from "builder" to "architect" in the age of Agentforce.Featured Guest: Scott Stafford, 27x Certified Salesforce Architect.Stop guessing about your career. Listen now to get the 2026 Talent Roadmap.

It's the beginning of the year — a common time when companies evaluate a new CPQ or Revenue Management solution, or consider replacing what they have. If you've started researching and feel more confused than before, you're not alone. In this solo episode, Frank Sohn explains why CPQ selection is uniquely challenging: there are 125+ CPQ vendors, plus analyst rankings, review sites, partner input, Reddit threads, and now AI tools — all creating information overload. In this episode, you'll learn: Why there are so many CPQ vendors (and what that really means) The difference between CPQ and Revenue Lifecycle Management Why CPQ is a system decision, not just a sales tool What a unified data model is — and why it matters for AI Why subscriptions, amendments, and usage-based pricing change requirements How to build a smarter shortlist without relying on demos or rankings alone If you're in the market for CPQ — first-time or replacement — this episode will help you cut through the noise and focus on what matters. Any questions: Send an email to Frank.Sohn@NovusCPQ.com  Check out our CPQ Briefing Subscription @ https://novuscpq.com/cpq-briefing-subscription/  Check out our CPQ Sales Report @ https://novuscpq.com/cpq-sales-report/ 

Synopsis Dans l'épisode 0x285, Patrick, Steve, Jacques et Richer se retrouvent pour un tour d'horizon des sujets cyber et vie privée qui ont marqué la semaine. Entre actualités de sécurité, tendances ransomware, et signaux faibles qui deviennent des signaux d'alarme, l'équipe met en contexte ce qui compte vraiment, et pourquoi. On parle aussi d'événements à venir, notamment la Semaine de la protection des données (26 au 30 janvier 2026), des conférences et rendez-vous au Québec, et des enjeux très concrets autour du cloud et de la souveraineté numérique. Côté menaces, on revient sur l'évolution des ransomwares, l'industrialisation des attaques, et ce qui change avec l'IA dans l'outillage et les scénarios. Enfin, l'épisode aborde plusieurs dossiers d'actualité, dont la protection des données, les campagnes de phishing qui s'adaptent, des incidents d'infrastructure, et des débats sur l'accès aux technologies, la régulation et la confiance. Une écoute utile pour rester aligné sur les risques, et sur les décisions qui en découlent. Nouvelles Richer Richer veut savoir Jacques Ransomware activity never dies, it multiplies Cybersecurity spending keeps rising, so why is business impact still hard to explain? Microsoft shuts down RedVDS cybercrime subscription service tied to millions in fraud losses Steve 20260126, Google agrees to pay $68 million to settle voice recording lawsuit 20260126, China hacked Downing Street phones for years 20260122, Phishing kits adapt to the script of callers 20260120, XTC Mobile, Le pari audacieux de la souveraineté numérique avec le LynX Phone 20260120, VoidLink, Evidence That the Era of Advanced AI-Generated Malware Has Begun 20260126, Europe Prepares for a Nightmare Scenario, The U.S. Blocking Access to Tech 20260124, Cartes de crédit, attention à cette faille de sécurité chez Visa et Mastercard 20260123, Des voitures espionnes de la Chine, mythe ou réalité? 20260126, Massive Data Leak, 48M Gmail and 6.5M Instagram Entries Found in Open Database 20260126, Russian state hackers likely behind wiper malware attack on Poland's power grid 20260123, ESET Research, Sandworm behind cyberattack on Poland's power grid in late 2025 20260126, Data center power outage took out TikTok first weekend under US ownership 20260121, EU unveils new plans to tackle Huawei, ZTE as China alleges protectionism 20260123, Microsoft Gave FBI Keys To Unlock Encrypted Data, Exposing Major Privacy Flaw Crew Patrick Mathieu Steve Waterhouse Richer Dinelle Jacques Sauvé Shamelessplug Join Hackfest/La French Connection Discord #La-French-Connection Join Hackfest us on Masodon POLAR - Québec - 29 Octobre 2026 Hackfest - Québec - 29-30-31 Octobre 2026 Événements 26-30 janvier 2026, Semaine de la protection des données Privacy Day 2026, Ne laissez pas le cloud décider pour vos données, 28 janvier 2026 CICC, The Coming AI avec Bruce Schneier, 29 janvier 2026 DEL, Défense, saisir les opportunités d'un marché stratégique, 20 février 2026 ALTSECCON, 9-10 avril 2026 CYBERECO, 28-29 avril 2026 NorthSEC, 11-17 mai 2026 ITSEC Devolution, 2026 Matinée conférence CPQ, 29 mai 2026 Conférence 2026 du Consortium national pour la cybersécurité, 16-19 juin 2026 Crédits Montage audio par Hackfest Communication Music par Dynamic Range – Acid - Acid Locaux virtuels par Streamyard

In this CPQ Podcast episode, Frank Sohn sits down with Vinay Toomu, who leads both ScaleFluidly (CPQ / quote-to-order platform) and CommerceCX (a systems integrator working with Salesforce and Conga). Since Vinay's last appearance in 2023, ScaleFluidly has matured into a full quote-to-order revenue orchestration platform—built on a composable core engine that customers can extend with their own apps. Vinay shares what he sees across real implementations: the biggest wins come from improving adoption, reducing friction for sales teams, and putting the right governance in place. They discuss support for direct sales, partner sales, and ecommerce, ScaleFluidly's low-code/no-code approach, and how their architecture differs for SMB (multi-tenant)versus enterprise (environment separation). The episode also covers newer capabilities like role-based controls, security certifications (ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type 2), and a Chrome assistant designed to streamline CRM workflows. Finally, they unpack ScaleFluidly's practical view of AI in CPQ—where it works today, what's harder at enterprise scale, and how consolidation in the CPQ market could influence innovation.

Mark Walker, CEO of NUE, joins Jeff Mains to discuss how modern SaaS companies can transform revenue operations from fragmented systems into a unified lifecycle. With $30M in funding and customers like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Jasper, NUE is redefining quote-to-cash by treating revenue as a continuous flow rather than disconnected handoffs. Mark shares insights on disrupting entrenched markets, building high-performance cultures, and why speed and flexibility have become the ultimate competitive advantages in an AI-driven world.Key Takeaways0:54 - The hidden complexity tax4:42 - Curiosity as a career compass8:59 - Skating to where the puck is going11:44 - The unified truth14:26 - The $2M discovery18:03 - Speed as strategy21:29 - Flexibility unlocks enterprise deals26:45 - The Trojan horse strategy28:09 - Productized implementation29:56 - Lightning-fast deployments38:21 - Market disruption wisdom45:47 - Culture starts at the top46:16 - NUE's three core valuesTweetable Quotes"The purpose of producing quotes isn't to produce quotes—it's to produce bills. Contracts are just a step toward invoicing and collecting money." - Mark Walker"If it takes you a year to stand up a system, how long will it take you to change it? Once you set that system up, changing it can often take longer than setting it up the first time." - Mark Walker"We have a saying at NUE: This is so hard not to love it. If you don't actually love working here, you should go." - Mark Walker"If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy. If you want to be respected, be respectful. If you want great partnership, be a great partner." - Mark Walker"The fastest-moving companies are over-indexing on what they don't know, whereas everybody else is buying systems based on what they think they know." - Mark WalkerSaaS Leadership Lessons1. Treat Revenue as a Lifecycle, Not a TransactionStop thinking of quoting, billing, and invoicing as separate steps. They're part of one continuous flow. When these systems are disconnected, you bleed 3-5% of ARR annually (per MGI research) and create unnecessary friction for customers and teams.2. Speed and Flexibility Trump Feature CompletenessIn a world where the pace of change has changed, the most critical attributes in technology partners are speed, flexibility, and time to value. Companies that can implement and iterate quickly have a massive competitive advantage over those locked into rigid, year-long implementations.3. Use a "Trojan Horse" Strategy—But Make It GoldWhen attacking entrenched markets, find a wedge product that serves as your entry point. But that wedge must be exceptional on its own merits. NUE's CPQ is so good that customers buy it standalone, then discover the billing platform inside.4. Build for Where Customers Are Going, Not Where They AreNUE targeted the hardest problems first—multi-attribute pricing, complex enterprise scenarios—because they wanted to help companies grow. If you're good at where customers are headed, small companies can use your platform to compete with giants.5. Culture Is What You Tolerate, Not What You PostValues on the wall mean nothing if leadership...

In this episode of Talk Commerce, Tim Baynes, CEO and founder of Compatio, discusses the complexities of selling configurable products and the evolution of CPQ (Configure Price Quote) systems. He shares insights on how Compatio addresses the challenges of product compatibility and configuration, particularly in B2B markets. The conversation also explores the role of AI in modern configurators, the trends in digital transformation within B2B commerce, and the importance of guided selling in enhancing customer experience.Chapters00:00 Introduction to Compatio AI and Tim Baynes02:04 Tim's Journey and Background in CPQ Systems05:31 Understanding Complex Product Configuration10:28 The Evolution of CPQ Systems and Market Focus14:34 The Role of AI in Modern Configuration19:12 Guided Selling and Digital Transformation in B2B23:48 Closing Thoughts and Future of Compatio

Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, spoke with Raj Darji, Founder & CEO of Aarav Solutions, about the company's launch of two generative AI accelerators—InsightForge and Omni360—designed to help communications service providers modernize billing operations, sales workflows, and customer engagement. Aarav Solutions is a long-standing Oracle Communications implementation partner with more than a decade of domain expertise across Oracle BRM and related telecom platforms. Darji explained that this deep operational knowledge is embedded directly into Aarav's GenAI accelerators, enabling CSPs to adopt AI without disrupting existing infrastructure. “We are not experimenting with AI—we are applying it where telecom operators feel the most pain, inside billing and operations,” said Darji. InsightForge is a GenAI accelerator purpose-built for Oracle BRM that allows business, finance, and operations teams to query complex billing data using natural language—without writing SQL or relying on back-office specialists. By translating plain-language questions into database queries, InsightForge delivers real-time visibility into invoices, balances, taxes, and discrepancies, significantly reducing operational dependencies and response times. Omni360 extends this capability with an AI-driven CRM and CPQ platform tightly integrated with BRM. Designed for mid-market CSPs, MVNOs, and enterprise connectivity providers, Omni360 unifies CRM and billing into a single pane of glass and enables sales teams to generate products, pricing, and quotes through natural-language prompts. Introduced at Mobile World Congress, both solutions drew strong interest for demonstrating how GenAI can deliver immediate, practical value rather than remain a conceptual buzzword. Learn more about Aarav Solutions at https://www.aaravsolutions.com/. Software Mind Telco Days 2025: On-demand online conference Engaging Customers, Harnessing Data

In this CPQ Podcast episode, Frank Sohn talks with Calvin Chow, Senior Director at Slalom Consulting, about what it really takes to move from Salesforce CPQ to Salesforce Revenue Cloud (RCA/ARM). Calvin has hands-on experience with multiple CPQ platforms — including PROS, Apttus (now Conga), Salesforce CPQ / Revenue Cloud, Zuora CPQ, and Vlocity — and shares what he wishes he had known about the end-to-end quote-to-cash process earlier in his career. Calvin explains how Slalom supports mid-size to Fortune 500 customers with strategy, process improvement, data management, and CPQ/Billing transformations, and walks through lessons learned from nearly 10 Salesforce CPQ to RCA/ARM migration projects. He highlights why RCA is more complex than many teams expect, why data migration is the single most critical success factor, and how to rethink processes when moving to usage-based and consumption billing models. The conversation also explores the growing role of AI, agents, and Agentforce in Revenue Cloud. Calvin shares real use cases where agents help create quotes, support renewals, and provide product and pricing recommendations — and why he believes AI will augment sales teams rather than replace them, with over 50% of Slalom's recent projectsnow involving AI and Agentforce. On a lighter note, Calvin also reveals his passion as a coffee connoisseur and aspiring future barista, adding a personal touch to a highly practical, insight-rich episode for anyone serious about CPQ, quote-to-cash, and Salesforce Revenue Cloud migrations.

In this CPQ Podcast episode, Frank talks with Max from Prodly about the shift from Salesforce CPQ to Revenue Cloud Advanced (now Agentforce Revenue Management, ARM) and what it really takes to manage that transition successfully. They look at how Salesforce is moving customers to ARM, why this is not a simple upgrade but a separate implementation project, and what that means for CPQ teams, partners, and customers. Max reflects on the early Steelbrick days and how it helped democratize CPQ, his path from engineer and product manager to founder, and why he had to learn marketing, sales, and go-to-market the hard way. He also shares a few personal stories, including a 48-hour round-trip flight to Munich for a four-hour meeting, and his view on the coming agentic revolution in enterprise software. You'll also hear how Prodly has grown into an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) / DevOps platform for Salesforce with ~35–40 employees and a global, mostly North American, customer base. Max explains how Prodly helps larger organizations automate complex CPQ and quote-to-cash deployments (configuration, price rules, discount schedules, install base data, etc.), and why one of their biggest differentiators is that the platform is not limited to CPQ—it also supports use cases like field service, e-commerce, and rebate management. Today, Prodly works with any CPQ solution built on the Salesforce platform, with plans to expand beyond Salesforce in the future. Topics covered: Salesforce CPQ, Revenue Cloud Advanced, Agentforce Revenue Management (ARM), CPQ migration strategy, Salesforce DevOps, application lifecycle management (ALM), Prodly, Steelbrick, quote-to-cash, agentic revolution in enterprise software.

Glean started as a Kleiner Perkins incubation and is now a $7B, $200m ARR Enterprise AI leader. Now KP has tapped its own podcaster to lead it's next big swing.From building go-to-market the hard way in startups (and scaling Palo Alto Networks' public cloud business) to joining Kleiner Perkins to help technical founders turn product edge into repeatable revenue, Joubin Mirzadegan has spent the last decade obsessing over one thing: distribution and how ideas actually spread, sell, and compound. That obsession took him from launching the CRO-only podcast Grit (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRiWZFltuYPF8A6UGm74K2q29UwU-Kk9k) as a hiring wedge, to working alongside breakout companies like Glean and Windsurf, to now incubating Roadrunner which is an AI-native rethink of CPQ and quoting workflows as pricing models collapse from “seats” into consumption, bundles, renewals, and SKU sprawl.We sat down with Joubin to dig into the real mechanics of making conversations feel human (rolling early, never sending questions, temperature + lighting hacks), what Windsurf got right about “Google-class product and Salesforce-class distribution,” how to hire early sales leaders without getting fooled by shiny logos, why CPQ is quietly breaking the back of modern revenue teams, and his thesis for his new company and KP incubation Roadrunner (https://www.roadrunner.ai/): rebuild the data model from the ground up, co-develop with the hairiest design partners, and eventually use LLMs to recommend deal structures the way the best reps do without the Slack-channel chaos of deal desk.We discuss:* How to make guests instantly comfortable: rolling early, no “are you ready?”, temperature, lighting, and room dynamics* Why Joubin refuses to send questions in advance (and when you might have to anyway)* The origin of the CRO-only podcast: using media as a hiring wedge and relationship engine* The “commit to 100 episodes” mindset: why most shows die before they find their voice* Founder vs exec interviews: why CEOs can speak more freely (and what it unlocks in conversation)* What Glean taught him about enterprise AI: permissions, trust, and overcoming “category is dead” skepticism* Design partners as the real unlock: why early believers matter and how co-development actually works* Windsurf's breakout: what it means to be serious about “Google-class product + Salesforce-class distribution”* Why technical founders struggle with GTM and how KP built a team around sales, customer access, and demand gen* Hiring early sales leaders: anti-patterns (logos), what to screen for (motivation), and why stage-fit is everything* The CPQ problem & Roadrunner's thesis: rebuilding CPQ/quoting from the data model up for modern complexity* How “rules + SKUs + approvals” create a brittle graph and what it takes to model it without tipping over* The two-year window: incumbents rebuilding slowly vs startups out-sprinting with AI-native architecture* Where AI actually helps: quote generation, policy enforcement, approval routing, and deal recommendation loops—Joubin* X: https://x.com/Joubinmir* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joubin-mirzadegan-66186854/Where to find Latent Space* X: https://x.com/latentspacepodFull Video EpisodeTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction and the Zuck Interview Experience00:03:26 The Genesis of the Grit Podcast: Hiring CROs Through Content00:13:20 Podcast Philosophy: Creating Authentic Conversations00:15:44 Working with Arvind at Glean: The Enterprise Search Breakthrough00:26:20 Windsurf's Sales Machine: Google-Class Product Meets Salesforce-Class Distribution00:30:28 Hiring Sales Leaders: Anti-Patterns and First Principles00:39:02 The CPQ Problem: Why Salesforce and Legacy Tools Are Breaking00:43:40 Introducing Roadrunner: Solving Enterprise Pricing with AI00:49:19 Building Roadrunner: Team, Design Partners, and Data Model Challenges00:59:35 High Performance Philosophy: Working Out Every Day and Reducing Friction01:06:28 Defining Grit: Passion Plus Perseverance Get full access to Latent.Space at www.latent.space/subscribe

Glean started as a Kleiner Perkins incubation and is now a $7B, $200m ARR Enterprise AI leader. Now KP has tapped its own podcaster to lead it's next big swing. From building go-to-market the hard way in startups (and scaling Palo Alto Networks' public cloud business) to joining Kleiner Perkins to help technical founders turn product edge into repeatable revenue, Joubin Mirzadegan has spent the last decade obsessing over one thing: distribution and how ideas actually spread, sell, and compound. That obsession took him from launching the CRO-only podcast Grit (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRiWZFltuYPF8A6UGm74K2q29UwU-Kk9k) as a hiring wedge, to working alongside breakout companies like Glean and Windsurf, to now incubating Roadrunner which is an AI-native rethink of CPQ and quoting workflows as pricing models collapse from “seats” into consumption, bundles, renewals, and SKU sprawl. We sat down with Joubin to dig into the real mechanics of making conversations feel human (rolling early, never sending questions, temperature + lighting hacks), what Windsurf got right about “Google-class product and Salesforce-class distribution,” how to hire early sales leaders without getting fooled by shiny logos, why CPQ is quietly breaking the back of modern revenue teams, and his thesis for his new company and KP incubation Roadrunner (https://www.roadrunner.ai/): rebuild the data model from the ground up, co-develop with the hairiest design partners, and eventually use LLMs to recommend deal structures the way the best reps do without the Slack-channel chaos of deal desk. We discuss: How to make guests instantly comfortable: rolling early, no “are you ready?”, temperature, lighting, and room dynamics Why Joubin refuses to send questions in advance (and when you might have to anyway) The origin of the CRO-only podcast: using media as a hiring wedge and relationship engine The “commit to 100 episodes” mindset: why most shows die before they find their voice Founder vs exec interviews: why CEOs can speak more freely (and what it unlocks in conversation) What Glean taught him about enterprise AI: permissions, trust, and overcoming “category is dead” skepticism Design partners as the real unlock: why early believers matter and how co-development actually works Windsurf's breakout: what it means to be serious about “Google-class product + Salesforce-class distribution” Why technical founders struggle with GTM and how KP built a team around sales, customer access, and demand gen Hiring early sales leaders: anti-patterns (logos), what to screen for (motivation), and why stage-fit is everything The CPQ problem & Roadrunner's thesis: rebuilding CPQ/quoting from the data model up for modern complexity How “rules + SKUs + approvals” create a brittle graph and what it takes to model it without tipping over The two-year window: incumbents rebuilding slowly vs startups out-sprinting with AI-native architecture Where AI actually helps: quote generation, policy enforcement, approval routing, and deal recommendation loops — Joubin X: https://x.com/Joubinmir LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joubin-mirzadegan-66186854/ Where to find Latent Space X: https://x.com/latentspacepod Substack: https://www.latent.space/ Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction and the Zuck Interview Experience 00:03:26 The Genesis of the Grit Podcast: Hiring CROs Through Content 00:13:20 Podcast Philosophy: Creating Authentic Conversations 00:15:44 Working with Arvind at Glean: The Enterprise Search Breakthrough 00:26:20 Windsurf's Sales Machine: Google-Class Product Meets Salesforce-Class Distribution 00:30:28 Hiring Sales Leaders: Anti-Patterns and First Principles 00:39:02 The CPQ Problem: Why Salesforce and Legacy Tools Are Breaking 00:43:40 Introducing Roadrunner: Solving Enterprise Pricing with AI 00:49:19 Building Roadrunner: Team, Design Partners, and Data Model Challenges 00:59:35 High Performance Philosophy: Working Out Every Day and Reducing Friction 01:06:28 Defining Grit: Passion Plus Perseverance

What does it take to go from advising founders to becoming one?On this week's special Reverse Grit episode, we flip the script and put our Grit podcast host Joubin Mirzadegan in the guest seat.Joubin recently founded Roadrunner, where he is now co-founder & CEO. Roadrunner is building an AI‑native CPQ to modernize the quote‑to‑cash stack, drawing on years of conversations he's had with enterprise revenue leaders.Stepping into the host role, Mamoon Hamid joins Joubin to talk about his transition from sales leader to founder, how Roadrunner came together, and why it became our first incubation since Glean.Roadrunner is hiring! Check them out: https://www.roadrunner.ai/Guest: Joubin Mirzadegan, Partner, Kleiner Perkins​Connect with MamoonXLinkedInConnect with JoubinXLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com​Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

In this CPQ Podcast episode, host Frank Sohn talks with Andreas Westling, CEO and co-founder of Ignize, about how modern AI pricing and CPQ help B2B manufacturers increase EBIT, improve price fairness, and react faster to market volatility. Drawing on more than 20 years of pricing experience,  including his time as CEO of Navetti (acquired by Vendavo). Andreas explains why pricing fundamentals haven't changed, but the way manufacturers execute pricing has transformed. He also shares how Ignize supports mid-market and enterprise manufacturers with complex, multinational pricing operations that require both speed and precision. Andreas introduces Ignize's concept of Generative Precision Pricing (GPP) and the role of the Ignizer, a modern engine that turns pricing expertise into data-driven, explainable recommendations. You'll also hear how Ignize integrates with CRM systems such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, ERP systems including SAP, Oracle, and legacy platforms, and CPQ solutions like Tacton to deliver consistent, value-based pricing across the commercial stack. We discuss why black-box AI pricing often fails in B2B manufacturing, and why explainability and transparency are essential to earn trust from pricing teams, product managers, sales, and customers. Andreas also outlines what manufacturers can expect from an Ignize implementation. From 8–12 week quick-start value phases to broader enterprise rollouts, and how modern pricing platforms help companies navigate tariffs, commodity swings, currency shifts, and other forms of market disruption. Ignize also operates on an enterprise-grade security foundation, backed by ISO 27001:2013 certification and SOC 2 Type II compliance, ensuring that sensitive pricing and commercial data is handled with the highest standards of information security and compliance. If you're interested in CPQ, B2B pricing, or how AI can strengthen price quality, win rates, and overall financial performance, this episode is for you.

In this episode of the CPQ Podcast, Frank Sohn sits down with Suren Reddy, founder of Cloudely, for a deep dive into where Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) is heading—especially inside the Salesforce ecosystem. If you're evaluating Salesforce CPQ, or wondering what Revenue Cloud Advanced really changes, this conversation is for you. Suren breaks down Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced (RCA) and Revenue Cloud Billing (RCB) in practical terms: why Salesforce is positioning them as the next-gen replacement for traditional CPQ, what's new in product, pricing, and catalog architecture, and how quote-to-cash is becoming a single, unified revenue platform. He shares real implementation expectations too—why RCA projects are now trending closer to 4–8 months due to expanded analysis and design, and how that tradeoff can pay off in fewer downstream touchpoints and stronger ROI. The discussion also explores the fast-moving AI layer around CPQ. Suren explains Salesforce's move toward multi-agent workflows through Agentforce, the role of Model Context Protocol (MCP) as an open standard for secure tool/data interaction, and what "Agentforce Vibes" (agentic development) could mean for accelerating CPQ and revenue applications. You'll hear a concrete AI use case he's seeing today: the Margin Optimization Agent, designed to recommend profitable product bundles while improving customer outcomes. Finally, Suren shares what he's hearing from customers about the Conga/PROS acquisition, why many are re-evaluating their CPQ options, and what demand signals he expects to rebound in 2026. Plus, a look at Cloudely's growth in India and emerging verticals like dairy, cement, and textiles. Tune in for a grounded, forward-looking CPQ conversation packed with Salesforce Revenue Cloud insights, AI realism, and customer-driven market perspective. Subscribe to the CPQ Podcast for more interviews on CPQ software, quote-to-cash, pricing, and revenue transformation.

Evaluating Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) solutions and drowning in buzzwords, vendor decks, and generic analyst reports? In this solo episode of the CPQ Podcast, Frank walks you through something he has been building for exactly that problem: the CPQ Sales Report from Novus CPQ. This is not a sales pitch. Think of this episode as a reference guide you can come back to whenever you need to shortlist CPQ vendors, support a sales cycle, or explain a solution to your internal stakeholders. You'll learn: What the CPQ Sales Report is and who it's for (buyers, system integrators, and CPQ vendors) What's inside each 20+ page, vendor-specific report and how it adds value to real sales cycles When to use a report for shortlisting, internal alignment, business cases, and partner enablement How the CPQ Sales Report differs from the CPQ Briefing Subscription Which vendors are currently covered: camos Software, Bit2win, XaitCPQ, Engineering Intent, SAP (CPQ-related), Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced, Nue.io – plus an upcoming report on Revalize Frank also shares what's new (including the updated XaitCPQ report), what's coming next, and how these reports stay vendor-neutral, fact-based, and practical—so you can make better CPQ decisions without rewriting everything yourself.

In this episode, Frank Sohn talks with Hiren Shah, founder of B2B-Matrix, about how small and mid-sized manufacturers and distributors are modernizing their sales processes through AI-driven CPQ, CRM, and ERP integration. Hiren, a former SAP America consultant turned Salesforce expert, shares his perspective on the future of Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ), Revenue Cloud, and AI in sales automation. He explains B2B-Matrix's three-phase Salesforce AI project, where automation is already reducing clicks, quote times, and approval delays—and how the final phase will connect directly to ERP and internet data. You'll also hear his insights on: When and why companies should migrate from Salesforce CPQ to Revenue Cloud Advanced (RCA) The "death of middleware" and how modern APIs enable seamless CRM-CPQ-ERP integration The top three customer priorities today: AI, master data cleanup, and faster transaction velocity Why CPQ customers typically replace systems every eight years How B2B-Matrix white-labels its services for larger consulting firms and delivers sub-$100K CPQ projects for SMBs Beyond business, Hiren also shares his personal passion for Pilates and Hot Yoga, a balance that keeps him focused as he leads digital transformation projects for manufacturers across North America. Whether you're interested in Salesforce Revenue Cloud, CPQ modernization, AI in sales, or integration strategy, this episode offers practical, real-world insights from someone who's bridging enterprise architecture, business process design, and cloud innovation.

Do you actually need a Release Engineer to manage Salesforce DevOps? Ana Moreno joins Jack to share her incredible (and truly accidental) journey from the world of art history to the heart of tech. Before they dive into release management, Jack derails the conversation to hear all about the fascinating world of art fraud, including tales of Man Ray's lost negatives and fake Victorian photographs.Once back on track, Ana pulls back the curtain on what it really takes to manage a complex, high-stakes Salesforce release process at a company that lives and breathes DevOps.Tune in to learn:- What the day-to-day life of a dedicated Release Engineer actually looks like.- How GitLab manages weekly Salesforce releases with a 30+ person team across five pods.- Strategies for handling merge conflicts as a "necessary evil."- Ana's top advice for teams looking to overhaul their process (Hint: It's not just about buying a tool).- The practical role AI is playing in their DevOps cycle today.About DevOps Diaries: Salesforce DevOps Advocate Jack McCurdy chats to members of the Salesforce community about their experience in the Salesforce ecosystem. Expect to hear and learn from inspirational stories of personal growth and business success, whilst discovering all the trials, tribulations, and joy that comes with delivering Salesforce for companies of all shapes and sizes. New episodes bi-weekly on YouTube as well as on your preferred podcast platform.Podcast produced and sponsored by Gearset. Learn more about Gearset: https://grst.co/4iCnas2Subscribe to Gearset's YouTube channel: https://grst.co/4cTAAxmLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gearsetX/Twitter: https://x.com/GearsetHQFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/gearsethqAbout Gearset: Gearset is the leading Salesforce DevOps platform, with powerful solutions for metadata and CPQ deployments, CI/CD, automated testing, sandbox seeding and backups. It helps Salesforce teams apply DevOps best practices to their development and release process, so they can rapidly and securely deliver higher-quality projects. Get full access to all of Gearset's features for free with a 30-day trial: https://grst.co/4iKysKWChapters:00:00 Welcome Ana Moreno, Salesforce Release Engineer at GitLab02:36 Ana's journey: The "Accidental Admin"03:30 From art history to tech09:33 Let's talk about art fraud!15:14 From Admin to Release Engineer22:35 What does a Release Engineer actually do all day?25:48 Inside GitLab's weekly Salesforce release cycle28:09 The challenge of managing 1,000+ Apex tests33:07 Taming the "necessary evil" of merge conflicts38:41 Key advice for teams overhauling their DevOps process46:12 The real-world future of AI in the DevOps pipeline50:57 Ana's Final Mantra

Confused by all the CPQ options out there? You're not alone — with more than 135 vendors and endless marketing claims, figuring out where to start can feel impossible. In this episode, host Frank Sohn (Novus CPQ Consulting) breaks down the CPQ landscape in under 15 minutes and shows you a smarter way to learn it. You'll hear how the CPQ Briefing Subscription helps you cut through the noise with short, fact-based reports based on real demos — not hype. Learn how analysts, students, and business leaders use these briefings to understand capabilities, compare vendors, and explore the market with AI tools like ChatGPT.

How do you prove CPQ value in CFO terms—not hype? In this episode, Cameron Marsh, Analyst at Nucleus Research, breaks down how their ROI Case Study and Value Matrix quantify CPQ outcomes customers feel every day: faster quote cycles, higher throughput with the same team, better margins from pricing, and fewer back-and-forth revisions thanks to visualization. We also dig into why data quality—not model magic—decides CPQ AI success, and where channel vs. direct CPQ returns really land. Key Takeaways: Quantifying ROI like a CFO: Nucleus standardizes benefits into save time, save money, make more money—and they're NASBA-certified in how they measure value. Quote Cycle Efficiency: Typical improvements of 60–80%—from hours to minutes—plus 20–30% more quote throughput with the same headcount. Pricing > Cross/Upsell: Price optimization usually creates more value than cross/upsell alone by protecting margin. Payback Windows: Average CPQ payback in 9–12 months; channel CPQ often sees faster first-year payback, while direct CPQ compounds larger value longer-term. What's Beating AI (for now): Visualization (≈ 25% reduction in quote revisions), Deal Desk Automation (≈ 85% reduction in manual review time), and eSignature are delivering immediate, measurable wins. AI's Real Bottleneck: Inconsistent rules, outdated/fragmented price lists, and weak integrations. Bad data = bad outputs. Market View: Strongest traction in North America enterprise, with growing momentum across Europe and APAC. Vendor Advice: Lead with customer value and usability, not feature lists.

"Data loss" is a phrase that strikes fear into the heart of every Salesforce professional. But what if you could face a data incident with calm and confidence?Jack speaks with Aga Peryie, Senior Product Manager at Gearset, about building a solid data management strategy. They discuss the vital role of understanding customer needs, the challenges of data backup, and why so many teams are vulnerable to simple user errors.This conversation is a masterclass in shifting from anxiety to control.Tune in to learn:- Why most teams are unprepared for the most common cause of data loss: user error.- The key to reducing anxiety: regularly testing your recovery process before you need it.- Practical strategies for archiving data to manage Salesforce storage limits effectively.- How to build a backup solution truly tailored to the complexities of Salesforce.- Why a "set it and forget it" backup plan is a recipe for disaster.About DevOps Diaries: Salesforce DevOps Advocate Jack McCurdy chats to members of the Salesforce community about their experience in the Salesforce ecosystem. Expect to hear and learn from inspirational stories of personal growth and business success, whilst discovering all the trials, tribulations, and joy that comes with delivering Salesforce for companies of all shapes and sizes. New episodes bi-weekly on YouTube as well as on your preferred podcast platform.Podcast produced and sponsored by Gearset. Learn more about Gearset: https://grst.co/4iCnas2Subscribe to Gearset's YouTube channel: https://grst.co/4cTAAxmLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gearsetX/Twitter: https://x.com/GearsetHQFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/gearsethqAbout Gearset: Gearset is the leading Salesforce DevOps platform, with powerful solutions for metadata and CPQ deployments, CI/CD, automated testing, sandbox seeding and backups. It helps Salesforce teams apply DevOps best practices to their development and release process, so they can rapidly and securely deliver higher-quality projects. Get full access to all of Gearset's features for free with a 30-day trial: https://grst.co/4iKysKWChapters:00:00 Introduction to Product Management at Gearset02:52 The Importance of Customer-Centric Product Management05:15 Understanding Customer Needs and Asking 'Why'08:00 Data Backup Solutions: Common Practices and Misconceptions10:54 Assessing the Importance of Data and Trust13:35 Identifying Data Loss and Recovery Strategies16:16 Best Practices for Data Restoration19:09 Archiving Strategies for Salesforce Data21:47 The Role of Data in AI and Customer Experience24:39 The Benefits of Backup and Archiving Solutions27:28 Creating a Culture of Data Awareness29:58 Final Thoughts on Data Backup and Recovery

Send us a textThe CRM needs of large enterprises are shaped by scale, complexity, and stringent governance demands that go far beyond what smaller organizations require. These businesses operate across multiple geographies, currencies, and regulatory environments, making territory management, multi-level forecasting, and compliance core to their CRM strategy. Unlike smaller firms that prioritize ease of use, large enterprises demand robust systems capable of managing global data consolidation, advanced security, and enterprise-grade scalability. Their CRMs must seamlessly integrate with ERP, CPQ, marketing, and analytics ecosystems while maintaining strict data sovereignty and access control standards. With decision-making dispersed across regions and divisions, AI-driven insights, predictive forecasting, and centralized reporting become essential. Ultimately, for large enterprises, a CRM is not just a sales tool—it's a governance and intelligence engine powering global alignment, operational efficiency, and strategic execution.In this episode, our host Sam Gupta discusses the top 10 Large Company CRMs in 2025. He also discusses several variables that influence the rankings of these Large Company CRMs. Finally, he shares the pros and cons of each CRM system.Background Soundtrack: Away From You – Mauro SommFor more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs. rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform. 

In this CPQ Podcast episode, Frank Sohn talks with Martin Johansen, founder of Mercura, a Denmark-based CPQ vendor focused on small to mid-sized manufacturers. With a background in finance and international business, Martin started Mercura straight out of college—initially building a configurator “by accident” for a customer request—and has since grown it into a SaaS platform used across Europe. We discuss Mercura's no-code setup and short implementation cycles (often 1–2 months), its support for cost-plus pricing, and partner/distributor workflows where channel users can upload and manage their own price lists. Martin explains how Mercura's in-browser 3D visualization enables room planning, snap-to placement, and collision detection in real time. While Mercura doesn't connect directly to CAD suites, customers can supply STEP files or drawings for CPQ-side visualization. A big portion of the conversation covers integrations—especially Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Business Central—plus experience with PIM solutions and HubSpot. Martin shares how Mercura applies AI on the admin side to speed configuration/rules setup, why headless is not a near-term priority, and the company's focus on manufacturers in sectors like playground equipment and healthcare (typical 5–200 users). We also touch on his sales mindset, weekly tennis/soccer routine, and how the book Work the System shapes Mercura's process discipline. Listen in for practical insights on delivering an easy-to-implement CPQ with modern visualization and tight Microsoft integrations.

Send us a textThe mid-market CRM buyer occupies a distinct and often underestimated space between simplicity and scale. Unlike startups that seek rapid deployment or small businesses focused on cost efficiency, mid-sized organizations require systems that can support growing operational complexity without the burden of enterprise-grade bureaucracy. Their CRM priorities revolve around robust workflow automation, stronger data security, and cross-departmental collaboration across sales, marketing, service, and operations. With multiple product lines or regional divisions, they need a platform that offers deeper analytics, moderate ERP or CPQ integration, and flexible reporting capabilities for managerial insight and planning. Yet, they're not contending with the global consolidation, multi-currency, or data sovereignty challenges faced by large enterprises. Instead, their goal is to scale efficiently—to deploy a CRM that's powerful enough to grow with the business but still agile enough to adapt quickly to evolving market and organizational dynamics.In this episode, our host Sam Gupta discusses the top 10 Mid-Sized CRMs in 2025. He also discusses several variables that influence the rankings of these Mid-Sized CRMs. Finally, he shares the pros and cons of each CRM system.Background Soundtrack: Away From You – Mauro SommFor more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs. rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform. 

Host Frank Sohn welcomes Marc de Mey of Merkato Group—the team behind Merkato CPQ and brands Quootz, CPQ Belgium, Sell It Easy, CPQing Solutions, and DOK.legal. Marc shares his path from aircraft mechanics to CPQ leadership and explains how Merkato's low-code/no-code, API-first, headless architecture helps manufacturers move from complex requirements to accurate quotes fast. We compare hands-off vs. hands-on implementation models across the group, and why an external ecosystem of Merkato experts accelerates adoption. You'll hear practical integration patterns with Salesforce, SAP, Epicor, Infor, Odoo, Zoho and CAD tools like PTC Creo and Solidworks. We also cover three buying drivers—capturing hard product knowledge, creating a single source of truth that eliminates double entry, and delivering modern visualization. Best for manufacturers, OEMs, distributors, and EPCs (50–1000 employees), primarily in Europe but with global reach.

What's the most overlooked element in a successful DevOps strategy? According to Salesforce Architect and community leader Raksha Sanganee, it's culture.In this powerful episode of DevOps Diaries, Jack McCurdy sits down with Raksha to uncover her remarkable journey from a school finance officer to a respected DevOps consultant. She shares the invaluable lessons learned while training over 300 people in Salesforce for free and unpacks her core principles for transforming a team's software delivery lifecycle.Tune in to learn why "seeing is believing" is the key to overcoming client skepticism, how to build unbreakable trust, and why you should never, ever forget your backups!About DevOps Diaries: Salesforce DevOps Advocate Jack McCurdy chats to members of the Salesforce community about their experience in the Salesforce ecosystem. Expect to hear and learn from inspirational stories of personal growth and business success, whilst discovering all the trials, tribulations, and joy that comes with delivering Salesforce for companies of all shapes and sizes. New episodes bi-weekly on YouTube as well as on your preferred podcast platform.Podcast produced and sponsored by Gearset. Learn more about Gearset: https://grst.co/4iCnas2Subscribe to Gearset's YouTube channel: https://grst.co/4cTAAxmLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gearsetX/Twitter: https://x.com/GearsetHQFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/gearsethqAbout Gearset: Gearset is the leading Salesforce DevOps platform, with powerful solutions for metadata and CPQ deployments, CI/CD, automated testing, sandbox seeding and backups. It helps Salesforce teams apply DevOps best practices to their development and release process, so they can rapidly and securely deliver higher-quality projects. Get full access to all of Gearset's features for free with a 30-day trial: https://grst.co/4iKysKWChapters:00:00 Introduction to Raksha Her Journey04:23 Transitioning to Salesforce and Community Impact09:13 Understanding DevOps: Culture and Trust13:41 Common Mistakes in DevOps and Importance of Automation18:24 Building Trust with Clients and Overcoming Skepticism23:02 The Role of Training and Demos in DevOps27:29 Data Strategy and Best Practices in Salesforce32:00 The Importance of Community and Continuous Learning36:31 Parting Wisdom and Final Thoughts

Headed to Dreamforce (Oct 14–16)? In 30 minutes, Salesforce's David Beebe breaks down: RCA now: 6 releases, faster UX, upgraded constraint builder Revenue Cloud Billing: what's new + why demand is spiking Unified CPQ + Billing: fewer errors, faster cycle time Pricing & AI/Agents: usage-based, analytics, interoperability Sessions to add: RC Keynote, Consumption Models, Invoice-to-Cash Listen Oct 12 to plan your week!

In this episode of the CPQ Podcast, Frank Sohn welcomes Adam Wainright, a veteran with 15+ years in the Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) space, now helping lead HubSpot's CPQ and revenue strategy. Adam shares his career journey across Selectica/Determine, CallidusCloud, Clari, Cacheflow (acquired by HubSpot), and beyond. Adam discusses: HubSpot's CPQ launch at INBOUND and how it delivers speed, visibility, and control to sellers and revenue operations teams. Why their North Star is Revenue Operations—and how HubSpot is building a complete Revenue Lifecycle Management solution. Lessons learned from scaling companies from $7M to $200M in revenue, navigating multiple M&As, and leading global sales teams. His “Supersonic Sales Process” philosophy, with the mantra: Don't pitch product—pitch process. The role of AI in CPQ, from conversational quote builders to revenue governance. Personal insights on leadership, active listening, and balancing life in Marina, CA with family, running, and hiking Big Sur. If you're interested in HubSpot CPQ, Revenue Operations, or the future of Revenue Lifecycle Management, this episode offers valuable insights into strategy, technology, and customer success.

In this CPQ Podcast episode, host Frank Sohn speaks with Tarak Patel, Sr. Vice President of Product and Technology at Aleran Software, about how Aleran is bringing sustainable innovation to Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) and digital commerce. Aleran's Connected Commerce platform is designed for mid-size manufacturers ($20M–$1B) and their channel partners. Built on headless, API-first, cloud-native architecture, the platform integrates with leading ERP systems(SAP, Epicor, Microsoft Dynamics, Infor, Acumatica and more) and CRM solutions (Salesforce, SugarCRM). It also offers native eCommerce, pre-built connectors, Avalara tax, payment gateways, and shipping integrations—helping companies move beyond spreadsheets and home-grown tools. Tarak explains how Aleran supports CTO and ETO products, with a feature- and rules-based configuration engine, plus AI-driven guided selling and automated product content generation. With low-code/no-code flexibility and an average 2-month implementation, manufacturers can achieve fast ROI. Beyond technology, Tarak shares insights on trust-based leadership, Aleran's rapid growth, and how his philosophy of “sustainable innovation” drives both the company and his personal life—including golfing with his two teenage sons.

In this episode of the CPQ Podcast, host Frank Sohn sits down with Matthias Radner of Resolto, a Festo company, to discuss his journey from face-to-face mattress sales to enterprise CPQ software. Matthias shares how early lessons in customer interaction shaped his approach to selling Configure, Price, Quote solutions, and why patience is key in long sales cycles—like when a customer signed an offer he created four years earlier. Listeners will hear about Resolto's Configon CPQ platform, designed for both SMB plug-and-play deployments (with average implementation times of just four weeks) and enterprise-level projects worth €400K–€500K. Matthias explains the importance of CAD integration via Cadenas, their unique use of Google Blockly-style rule building, and how Resolto works closely with parent company Festo to shape its roadmap, including upcoming AI-driven innovations. Beyond technology, Matthias opens up about his personal passions—from competing in international hip hop dance championships to playing tennis for relaxation today. The conversation also explores Resolto's growing footprint across DACH, Italy, the Netherlands, the US, and Japan, and why industries like machine engineering and electrical devices are key focus areas. If you're interested in visual product configurators, CAD-driven CPQ solutions, and strategies for simplifying complex product sales, this episode offers valuable insights into the evolving world of CPQ.