Comparison
Comparing Vendavo & Zilliant
Which solution is right for your B2B business?
Feature comparison
Leaders of B2B enterprises know that optimizing their selling and pricing processes to improve their bottom line is no longer a “nice to have” but rather an urgent need. Maximizing margins and efficiency is a must to stay ahead of competition in challenging, expanding markets.
But it can be dizzying to differentiate among all the options. Many pricing and selling solution providers boast similar capabilities and promise extraordinary outcomes. Looking below the surface and understanding what’s important for your business can reveal some stark contrasts. This article compares Vendavo and Zilliant to help you determine the best fit for your organization.
Expertise and experience
Enterprise pricing solutions for manufacturing and distribution
As a leader in enterprise pricing solutions for over two decades, Vendavo has tackled an array of complex challenges with our customers, from economic downturns to transforming how Fortune 500 companies price their products to achieve bottom-line revenue growth.
Vendavo’s pricing industry experience and ability to handle complex pricing and configuration requirements is a key advantage over Zilliant’s offerings when it comes to serving B2B enterprises. Vendavo has a long history serving manufacturers and distributors and has developed deep expertise in pricing strategy, data analytics, and deal management. This expertise allows Vendavo to provide optimized commercial processes that meet the specific needs of each B2B organization, regardless of its size or complexity. Not to mention Vendavo provides the ability to scale up as your business grows.
Complex pricing structures
Vendavo’s ability to handle complex pricing requirements sets it apart from other pricing optimization software solutions, including Zilliant. One Zilliant user notes Zilliant “might not be a great fit for enterprises.” Vendavo’s platform is designed to handle complex pricing structures, including multi-tiered pricing, complex discounts, and volume-based pricing. This is particularly important for B2B enterprises, which often have complex pricing structures that are difficult to manage using traditional pricing methods.
Vendavo’s clear process helps you win
Beyond the technology itself, Vendavo’s continuing engagement with its customers is outlined in an easy-to-understand process that focuses on ongoing success, long past onboarding, emphasizing measurable outcomes and continual improvement. This clear approach ensures customers achieve their commercial goals, understand the path to reach them, and removes the risk – and headaches- often associated with transformative projects. Compare this to the experience of Zilliant customers who have referenced “[needing] technical resources” and called it “a complex solution to implement.”
Profitability solutions
While Zilliant touts the benefits of their AI and data science in pricing, experienced pricers know that artificial intelligence is table stakes. Every pricing tool integrates AI and the real question is how it’s implemented.
Zilliant’s AI algorithms lack transparency, making it difficult for businesses to understand how pricing recommendations are being made and make informed decisions about their pricing decisions. Additionally, industry analyst IDC cautions “implementing Zilliant’s AI strategy may be challenging for businesses, particularly those with limited resources or technical expertise. This can lead to delays in implementation or ineffective use of the platform.”
Vendavo’s focus on explainable AI allows businesses to better understand the guidance, establishing confidence in its recommendations from pricers, sellers, and leadership.
Vendavo’s Centaur AI is designed to allow pricing experts to work in collaboration with AI algorithms, creating a human-AI partnership that leverages the best of both worlds. This approach enables businesses to combine the expertise of pricing professionals while harnessing the power of AI, resulting in more effective and accurate pricing decisions. In contrast, Zilliant’s AI relies too heavily on black box algorithms, leaving pricers scratching their heads when recommendations don’t align with their own expertise.
Native CPQ vs. Partner CPQ
Optimized pricing is useless without a way to make certain sellers are using the pricing guidance in their deals. Effective selling requires a sales tool that can quickly and seamlessly surface recommended prices while integrating with your business’ other existing commercial processes.
One of the key advantages of Vendavo’s native Intelligent CPQ is its tight integration with Vendavo’s pricing optimization. With Intelligent CPQ, B2B enterprises can effortlessly integrate their pricing strategies into their CPQ workflows, ensuring that their pricing decisions are always data-driven and based on real-time insights. This level of integration is not possible with Zilliant’s partnership with Conga, which requires businesses to integrate their pricing strategies with a third-party CPQ solution. As one Zilliant customer remarked “compared to other CPQ tools, it has a long way to go.”
In addition, Zilliant’s selling and deal management tools lean heavily on Salesforce’s platform. Customers using other CRMs have described Zilliant as “more of a Salesforce shop” and integrating with Microsoft Dynamic’s CRM as “choppy.” Conversely, Vendavo’s Intelligent CPQ is platform agnostic, offering out of the box integrations to the industry-leading CRMs including Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and Infor as well as offering a comprehensive API for tight integration with other commercial processes.
Designed to work with a wide range of product and services, Intelligent CPQ is also highly configurable, allowing businesses to tailor their pricing and selling strategies to meet their specific needs, making it a flexible solution for enterprises with large or complex products or service offerings.
Choose the Right Fit for Your Business
A lot of factors go into choosing the right partner to help improve your business’ growth and profitability but none are more important than the outcomes the partnership drives. Consider the following:
What are your KPIs?
What people must be in place to succeed?
What process should you follow?
What technologies work best?
How will you progress from contract to realizing revenue?
Is a Zilliant alternative right for you?
With Vendavo’s comprehensive pricing and selling solutions, a long track record of helping manufacturers and distributors accomplish their commercial objectives, and established expertise in tackling the unique challenges of complex pricing and selling processes at scale, you can rest easy knowing you’re on the right path and have help at each step along the way –from onboarding to value realization