Tough time ahead - Anonymous employee Vendavo Employee Review

Vendavo has let a few people go recently and so there will be some bitter reviews, therefore keen to make this objective. My first observation would be to question the market for pricing solutions; whilst pricing is a critical function of any business, it is generally managed by a few people hiding in the wings and not any army of people that needs collaborate globally. Spreadsheets pretty much do the job, which is why perhaps, PriceFx are dominating the market as their solutions are glorified Excel that are straight forward to implement. In a downturn, there are going to be bigger fish to fry that will consume IT dollars and so big, expense projects with questionable value will be pushed to the back of the queue. Combine that with the fact that Vendavo hasn’t really modernized their solutions and now lag in the market, means some tough times ahead. The CPQ market of which Vendavo is a minor player has been devoured by Salesforce and the Price Guidance market is increasingly being developed by specialist vertically aligned A.I. solution providers who have dozens of data scientists and not just a handful. Secondly, pricing solutions are a complex value led and emotive purchase, they are not a commodity and so take 18-24 months for sales cycles to evolve. This conflicts with the PE ownership model which is driven in three month cycles and sadly you can’t “accelerate” these deals to three months; if anything deal cycles take longer in a down turn and so trying to switch to a commodity sales model will fail. This long deal cycle time means that decisions made two years are now coming home to roost (CRO and CMO hires and fires) and will take another two years to fix. Blaming and firing competent individual contributors will only make the situation worse. Anyone joining now will be in for a bumpy ride, but there are a lot of talented people and so I am sure it will turn around.