Campfire Interactive Reviews

My use cases for Campfire Interactive involve using it as a tool to help forecast and predict the market of the current automotive industry, and in turn, it helps me create opportunities and evaluate what is worth quoting and what can be worthwhile versus what is not.

What I appreciate most about Campfire Interactive is that it is very easy to update the interface. Previously, if I were to update IHS in the old software, there would be a lot of issues and problems, but with Campfire Interactive, it is an easy-to-use tool and solution.

Campfire Interactive has changed the way our organization functions in a swap-in, swap-out manner. We are able to quote more frequently and get more opportunities.

One of the things I dislike regarding Campfire Interactive is the mass upload feature. I have to export data to Excel, make changes there, and then bring it back and upload it. It would be much easier if I could do a mass update directly in the browser within Campfire Interactive itself. Having to export to Excel, make changes there, and then upload it can still lead to issues.

Regarding the role-based access controls of Campfire Interactive, I am always in admin mode, so I cannot tell you how it works on an individual basis. When I am not in admin mode, I basically cannot see anything, which is problematic because access is locked by individual salespersons and I cannot see what exists. Since my role is in business development and quoting rather than sales, it would show that there are no sales for the company. That is why I keep it in admin mode because I can see everything.

I have been working with Campfire Interactive for approximately a year and a half.

The overall stability of Campfire Interactive is great. There is no lag, crashes, or lengthy upload times.

Regarding stability, I have seen some bugs during the integration process, but I do not believe these bugs are in Campfire Interactive itself. The bugs occurred in the integration process.

I have not had to contact technical support for Campfire Interactive. We have bi-weekly meetings where we discuss all the problems that arise during the week, and nothing has been urgent enough to require immediate attention.

I have used the old software as a comparison to Campfire Interactive. In terms of an RFQ system tracker, they are roughly equivalent. Campfire Interactive has slightly worse notification settings, but in terms of forecasting ability, Campfire Interactive is significantly better.

The initial deployment of Campfire Interactive went through several phases. Launching the software and testing it went well, but getting it live presented challenges. There are aspects that need to be worked out in our own system, but Campfire Interactive can update it for us and then it works.

Regarding the pricing of Campfire Interactive, from what I have been told, it is quite expensive in comparison to the previous software, but it also has many more features. I think it is positioned in the higher range of the current market.

If a colleague at another company is evaluating project management or opportunity software solutions in the automotive industry, I would suggest they look at Campfire Interactive and try to get a demo to see if it works for them. However, for other segments, I would not know how it correlates and translates.

Campfire Interactive requires maintenance. Monthly uploads of new IHS software are necessary. It is not an automated process where it will download from a site and upload itself with all changes applied. There is still a lot of manual maintenance required.

We use the Business Intelligence reporting with Campfire Interactive, but not the material component.

Our real-time reporting with Campfire Interactive allows us to make critical decisions based on our findings. The reporting enables us to make crucial decisions regarding what is worth pursuing and what is not.

Campfire Interactive has very good forecast accuracy because I constantly update IHS. As long as the data I input is valid, the forecasting will be accurate.

For the Opportunity Management and Sales Forecasting module, that system is good, running smoothly, and is well-suited for our needs. However, for the current rolling forecast, I still reference my old Excel file because that is what our general managers are accustomed to. From a forecasting and business planning perspective, there is not much use for that aspect.

For workflow management, we do not use Campfire Interactive extensively. It is primarily used for opportunities and sales forecasting.

I would rate this review a seven out of ten.

Building a sales forecasting and quote management tool is the main use case for Campfire Interactive. The primary use case for me is to export reports of the current forecast and use that to perform analysis and see the progress of our current forecasting, what we have in our pipeline, and what our new projects are.

Campfire Interactive allows sales teams to manage forecasting in a more efficient, streamlined way, and the quoting portion flows directly into the sales forecasting, which allows for better data security and data accuracy for our sales forecasting and quote management in my day-to-day work.

The best features Campfire Interactive offers are the straightforward sales forecasting capability and its ability to serve as a one-stop shop for both forecasting and quoting.

What makes Campfire Interactive's sales forecasting feature stand out for me is that it is browser-based, making it a unified program solution for forecasting, viewing actuals, analyzing short-term trends, and using that information to create long-term strategies.

Campfire Interactive has positively impacted our organization by bringing new change to how we approach our forecasting processes and by enabling us to build a global process.

Since using Campfire Interactive, there have been improvements in efficiency, and each sales person can manage their own forecast in a more streamlined manner.

Communication is important when discussing how Campfire Interactive can be improved.

Another potential improvement would be more thorough testing on the Campfire side before features are released to customers.

We have been using and working with Campfire Interactive for approximately two years.

Campfire Interactive is stable.

Campfire Interactive demonstrates good scalability with efficient performance.

I experienced great customer support with Campfire Interactive, as I had easy access to the project manager and the Campfire team, along with constant collaboration.

Positive

We previously used SAP and decided to switch in order to obtain a more efficient solution.

I was not involved in the pricing, setup cost, and licensing aspects of the integration.

There is definitely a return on investment in terms of time saved.

The Power BI report is very important because it provides clarity that we may not see in our own reports regarding Campfire Interactive's material index management and integrated business intelligence reporting.

Campfire Interactive's forecast accuracy is high and delivered without any delay or inaccurate numbers.

Although we do not have metrics at this time, the forecast accuracy has contributed to cost savings for our organization.

Campfire Interactive's ability to manage data through business processes and workflows is important for our organization because it creates a closed loop that allows us to always trace information back to its original source.

The Opportunity Management and Sales Forecasting module is a valuable tool that Campfire can customize to meet your company's specific needs, which is a very nice feature.

My advice to others considering Campfire Interactive is that you should thoroughly understand the tool and ask as many questions as possible to the Campfire team from the start.

I would rate this review a perfect ten out of ten.

My main use case for Campfire Interactive is opportunity management, reporting, and planning. A specific example of how I use it for opportunity management reporting and planning is budgeting and forecasting as well as acquisition pipeline tracking and reporting.

The best features Campfire Interactive offers include the opportunity to have a closed loop system from the start of a quote or opportunity through planning and the end of production on a program.

Having that closed loop system helps my team and my process by providing a single source of truth and a one-stop shop for the sales team for sales reporting and for revenue recognition.

Campfire Interactive has not positively impacted my organization at this point, as we do not have the full system implemented. I suspect that once the full system is implemented, we will see positive change.

The positive changes I am expecting once the full system is implemented include reporting efficiencies, accountability to numbers, and accountability to where we quoted versus the actuals that are coming in.

Campfire Interactive can be improved as I would like a few things to be more user-friendly. The user interface is slightly dated, the reporting features are also dated, and for our specific business, it is not customizable enough.

I have been using Campfire Interactive in my day-to-day work for four months.

Campfire Interactive is stable.

The customer support is great.

I previously used a different solution, which was a homegrown system that did not allow for a closed loop from quote to production.

It took over a year to implement the solution with Campfire Interactive's in-house implementation team's assistance because of internal and external reasons.

I worked with Campfire Interactive's in-house implementation team, and my experience with them was that the team is very helpful and very responsive.

I did evaluate other options before choosing Campfire Interactive, but I was not involved in that evaluation.

The ability to manage data through business processes and workflows in Campfire Interactive is extremely important, as the quote process involves quite a bit of approvals, workflows, and similar processes.

I would rate Campfire Interactive a seven on a scale of one to ten. I chose a seven because overall systemically, it allows you to plan for opportunities, although there are still definite improvements that need to be made.

My advice to others looking into using Campfire Interactive is to give it consideration but make sure that you understand the full capabilities of the system and how your business can adapt to those capabilities. My overall review rating for Campfire Interactive is seven.

The primary use case for Campfire Interactive is for tracking and sales forecasting for the automotive industry, specifically for all the products that our company sells to that market.

When I look at project management, I'm looking at having an engineer or a program manager or somebody who has dates and deliverables and milestones for developing a part, designing it, tooling up for it, doing sample parts, doing production runs, and then going into production. That's what I consider to be project management. We do not use Campfire Interactive for any of those tools.

At the time we launched Campfire Interactive in 2012, we were three companies coming together with three different systems. It took some time to build the infrastructure to populate the Campfire Interactive tool, which was about a three to six-month process. As we went through each of our manufacturing plants' implementations, it took additional time. The overall time to launch was about 2 years. It was a very time-intensive process because we could not launch all 12 plants at the same time. We were able to realize its benefits or acknowledge the benefits at the time of the development to define what attributes our company needed within the Campfire Interactive tool, along with the outputs that came from it once we started to report on the data. The standardized work that we had and the master data management that we had were extremely valuable, almost immediately.

When it comes to opportunity management and sales forecasting, I have recommended Campfire Interactive to at least 10 companies over my career, including some of the largest Tier 1 automotive customer suppliers in the world. Different companies have adopted different aspects of Campfire Interactive and have been happy with the solution. In general, I would highly recommend their solution.

The overall forecast accuracy is dependent upon the accuracy of the inputs into their system. They're not forecasting experts, they're just a software tool. In terms of the mathematics or the algorithms that are used within the Campfire Interactive tool, the tool works very well.

I've had recent discussions with the leadership team at Campfire Interactive about several issues. They're fully aware of my displeasure with certain things. Some concerns are not related to the tool itself, although there are some aspects that could be better with the tool. The issues are more related to technical service, specifically when we have an issue or problem with the tool, the communication gap, and the follow-through on issues that need improvement. They're fully aware of that concern, and they're doing things to address it.

From a technical standpoint, there are some limitations within the tool that are somewhat out of Campfire Interactive's control because it's a complicated industry to try and have one solution that fits all vendors. There are times when we go to execute reports from their system, and the data does not generate as expected. When that happens, we have to inform the Campfire Interactive IT or Support group what the failure is. They have to research and come back to us. In the meantime, we have 2, 4, 6, maybe 12 hours of downtime where people around the world are trying to use the system. Though it affects less than 50 people, these instances are frustrating.

I've been using Campfire Interactive since 2012.

The stability of Campfire Interactive has mostly been good. There have been some instances where we've reached a capacity issue or a memory issue with the size of the server or the space on the server that's been allocated to the Campfire Interactive tool. Some of that falls on Campfire Interactive in making sure that we're aware of the limitations or the requirements. Some of that also falls on our own IT organization to manage those things effectively. In general, there haven't been many crashes. If there is something that they feel is a bug or needs a fix that needs to be pushed through, we're able to work with them effectively to schedule those things and not be disruptive to the business.

We started off with about a dozen different forecasts that we were managing 12-13 years ago. We're up to about 20 now, so we've almost doubled some of the work that we do, or the complexity. There haven't been any issues with that. If we go the route that I'm hoping we do, through the proposal I mentioned earlier, and we merge with this other company, and Campfire Interactive gets adopted by their organization as well, I don't have any concerns about scaling up for that. The concerns are more about implementation than scalability.

For technical support, there are two aspects to consider. The effectiveness of communication, follow-up, timely support, not relying upon only one or two people, and having a team of people. In that regard, I would give them a five. When it comes to the actual technical knowledge and solutions of the tool and how to go about resolving the issues themselves, I would give them an eight out of ten.

Neutral

Prior to adopting Campfire Interactive, there were three different companies or divisions coming together. The tool being used was a homegrown, internally-developed software solution. There were some features about the original, homegrown project that could not be transferred or translated into the Campfire Interactive solution due to too much complexity in the original solution. However, the majority of the rules and capabilities that we needed were solved by Campfire Interactive.

I worked for a period of 3 years outside of this company at a different automotive supplier where I introduced Campfire Interactive to the organization. We went through an implementation from scratch. At this other company, we decided to implement two systems: sales forecasting and the quoting tool, which they refer to as business processing. That was a very painful development process. Some of it was self-inflicted, but much of it was a challenge for resources from Campfire Interactive that could execute the needs of that company. I left that company in 2022, and as of that time, that module had still not been implemented after 2 years. It's my understanding that while some features of that tool were eventually adopted, most of the tool was decided to be scrapped because it didn't work to the company's needs.

I don't get too involved in the overall scope of the pricing. I know what it costs generally, though I'm not an IT system or cost evaluator to say that's good or bad. We had a negotiation with them back in March of this year to extend our contract for 1 year. They were willing to work with us to negotiate different terms and a different cost of production. They were asking for a certain percentage increase, and we said that was not acceptable. They were willing to settle on a different number.

We only did a 1 year contract, as opposed to a longer term, because our organization is in the process of merging with another company, which has a completely different tool or system that they use for the same purpose. We are going through an evaluation process this summer to determine if we continue with Campfire Interactive or if we go a different route. We were very transparent with them in February and March to communicate that this change was going to happen in our business. It was something that was publicly announced, so it wasn't confidential in any way. They know that for the next 6 months, perhaps maybe 9 months, they have to prove that their capabilities are worth keeping compared to the alternative solution.

Setting aside some of the IT Support issues that I've mentioned, which I know that they're working on, I would rate Campfire Interactive an eight overall for everything.

We use it primarily to project our global sales forecast. They offer several solutions, but we only utilize the opportunity management system. Sales forecasting is the main focus, complemented by what we call a hunting list. Essentially, we examine the targets for the upcoming years, which are part of the forecast. So, sales forecasting is our primary use case.

We implemented the software shortly before COVID happened. Before that, everything we did was Excel-based or used another system. Notably during a global event like COVID, our previous methods would have taken weeks for forecasting. Let's assume across the globe we saw a 20% decline in vehicle volume. People would have had to go in and make the modifications, and then we would have had to globally consolidate all this information again. It would have taken weeks to make an adjustment to project the new forecast based on what was happening with COVID. With the new system, using the latest IHS information, projections became instantaneous. We were able to project what was going on in the market and see the decline in volume globally, and within hours.

We are Chinese-owned, and there are a lot of investment opportunities in our company. We constantly get asked questions about the forecast, target, bookings, and so on and so forth. We have about 150 users in the system around the globe, and because everybody is using the system globally, it is much easier to consolidate that data. Previously, it was sometimes on people's personal computers, and we would have had to ask everybody individually. Because of the standardization and the global nature of the product, we are now able to get to global information based on the executive questions in a few days, and sometimes in hours. That is a big benefit. For example, we can see what's going on in Japan, so they maintain the opportunities. We give the guidelines globally for how they have to maintain the opportunities and when they have to maintain them. I can now go into the system and see that people do their work, that they go in, that they really change, and pull that information out at any time.

We now have a lot more standardization which is beneficial. We do see the same information globally.

It is not the tool itself that ensures accuracy, but rather the data we input into the system. The combination Campfire uses for the automotive sector, particularly the IHS forecast, offers unique predictive capabilities. Few companies provide this. This is why we do not use our ERP system, SAP, for forecasting. Their reliance on EDI limits forecasts to six to twelve months, whereas Campfire provides longer forecast periods.

I appreciate the flexibility of the company more than any specific software feature. I have worked with SAP and other software providers before, and since it is still a smaller company, there is a very personal exchange. If we have a simple need that does not require coding, the company is willing to make changes overnight or even within hours. They are truly flexible and customer-oriented.

I recently discussed with them the need for better KPI measurements in the automotive world. A big KPI in the automotive world is the bookings of the future years, and we measure that not in annual revenue but in the lifetime of any given vehicle. Let's say, on average, a vehicle is in the market for five years, so we add up the five years of revenue that is generated with that vehicle. Every region and every account has targets where they have to say, "I'm going to source amount x in the upcoming year." This LOP calculation is not easily done because IHS also has limitations, so right now, it only projects out till 2031 or 2032. For instance, if we launch a program in 2028 that starts in 2030, only two years of data can be seen, and I cannot calculate the life of program revenue. We discussed it with them. They are looking into AI to make longer projections possible and to also improve the quality of the data that we have in the system to calculate this LOP based on historical data or IHS information.

They had people who trained our staff, and some people, even though located in the US, were working 24/7 to accommodate our needs in Asia or Europe. These same people also had to implement the system and not just train, which I thought was a bit too much for people to handle. I told them that it would be beneficial to have someone in Asia or Europe to do those types of training during the time when those regions are working. They can have a hotline for simple questions. Sometimes, simple questions disrupt complex tasks. Having dedicated resources for basic inquiries could alleviate this issue. Additionally, it could be beneficial to have training videos within the system to handle routine questions instead of constantly bugging the people who are supposed to do way more complex things than that.

I have been using it for almost six years. It will be six years in April.

More modules are available that could enhance the system significantly for our company. However, due to our current financial situation, we are not opting to purchase additional software. The existing modules make a lot of sense, and we can add them at any time.

Overall, customer service is good. However, the workforce is relatively small, especially the team developing and rolling out the software. They are expanding into India to find new hires. When they secure many new contracts, the staff can be stretched thin to meet deadlines. Sometimes, it took longer than expected to fulfill promises. Considering the tool's cost and the times they provided additional development support at no extra cost, we could not complain. However, companies with higher demands might encounter issues.

Positive

I reviewed an alternative a few months ago during contract negotiations, but I have not used any other.

Every software rollout is difficult, and we still have difficulties, but that is not a Campfire issue. It is an overall acceptance issue and cultural issue, but the support that they gave us for the implementation was outstanding.

In the beginning, it took us several steps just to run a report. Although the system was not used to its full capacity early on, within three to four months, it became more stable. By the second year, the budget process was significantly more stable. We still improve the system. That will always be the case because we are trying to make it better and better train the people who use the system. Overall, in a year, it was relatively stable.

Initially, more people were involved, some of whom had worked for my company before transitioning to Campfire. These two gentlemen remained on the team to support us consistently. Over time, additional people were added in high-level roles to regularly check in on progress. 

They do maintenance on their end, so we do not have any IT people working. We used to have somebody who was working with Campfire on our side, but now, IT involvement is required only as needed. Although we do not have dedicated IT personnel working regularly with Campfire, connections are made with our IT team as necessary, such as for setting up interfaces with our PLM system. We need our IT people to establish that exchange of data.

Compared to everything else I have seen, it is very fair.

I would definitely recommend using this solution and also suggest evaluating other options to ensure the best fit. Overall, I would recommend it. The implementation was supported by a substantial team from Campfire. However, with many new customers, they occasionally became overwhelmed, leading to slowdowns due to the busy workforce. Overall, my experience has been positive.

I would rate Campfire Interactive an eight out of ten.

We're using Campfire Interactive for opportunity management.

The forecast accuracy of Campfire Interactive is extremely good. We compared it to our internal sales forecast, and once everything was properly configured, it matched very closely.

The dashboard will enhance our ability to present to management, senior leadership, and shareholders through dashboards that instantly show where we stand with booked sales, targeted sales, replacement business, and additional new opportunities. Previously, using Excel made this process more complicated and time-consuming.

Campfire Interactive’s ability to manage data through business processes and workflows is crucial for our organization.

Campfire Interactive’s ability to provide flexibility and configurability in managing data based on our organizational needs is good. I would rate it an eight out of ten for that.

I appreciate the dashboard features and widget features of Campfire Interactive because it has the ability to consolidate data in bar graphs or pie charts, making it very easy to visualize the situation with new opportunities. 

The Campfire team was able to tweak everything that we felt needed improvement to better suit our needs.

One aspect that could be simplified with Campfire Interactive is the process of entering opportunities into the portal. Currently, if we receive a quotation for 20 parts, we can enter one opportunity in our homegrown system that allows us to list all 20 parts within that single opportunity, but Campfire Interactive requires creating separate opportunities for each part. That's the only downfall I observe.

We started using Campfire Interactive around January of this year, approximately five months ago. The actual solid usage has been about a month and a half to two months at most.

The stability of Campfire Interactive rates as a ten out of ten. It is very stable.

In terms of scalability, Campfire Interactive rates as either a nine out of ten.

We currently have ten seats for Campfire Interactive, shared between the sales team and business development team, with potential needs for expansion in the future.

I would rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

We used our internal home grown system prior to switching to CampFire OMSF.

It's moderate in terms of complexity. The implementation took approximately three months. While we're not fully up to speed, progress is steady.

It requires minimal maintenance, with updates occurring approximately once a month.

Campfire Interactive's in-house implementation team is excellent. They are thorough, answer all questions, and come prepared.

Campfire Interactive has already helped save time and indirectly save costs since we aren't paying people to compile data and create pie charts. Though we haven't quantified these savings yet, the time savings will eventually show a direct correlation to cost reduction.

Each quarter, we used to spend three to four days compiling information for presentations. Now, instead of doing it quarterly, we can do it monthly. Previously, our younger team members would spend three to four days on data entry to compile information that we can now access instantly with Campfire Interactive.

Campfire Interactive is on the expensive side.

The opportunity management sales forecasting is effective, though we're still navigating the learning curve and launch phase. The Campfire Interactive team has been accommodating in making tweaks to adapt it to our needs. It's becoming equivalent to our homegrown system and surpasses it due to the dashboard capabilities.

At this point, it's still fairly new to us, but I would recommend Campfire Interactive to other users based on its professional appearance and ease of data entry.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

I'm responsible for different tasks at Campfire Interactive. From one side, I'm a business manager, so I use it to create new business opportunities for the company. On the other side, I'm a Campfire Interactive administrator too, so I'm involved in actual mappings, month-end processes, and everything that is done regarding the upload from IHS in data. All those administrative tasks, and I also add someone new coming in, and I normally have a one or two-hour training so that the people understand how Campfire Interactive works, and that's more or less the tasks I'm involved in. We have role access management, where specific individuals are only able to view certain aspects of the solution. Having designated access rights is great and quite important because we have control over what some people can do or cannot do to avoid any mistakes or failures. Sometimes that happens, and it has happened in our case. For example, we used to have one of the features available for everyone, and then we realized that sometimes with that feature, we made other users make mistakes because they didn't know how to use it, and it wasn't really needed. So we took that opportunity away from the people.

We work with IHS with S&P Global; we upload data from there, and then we have the opportunity to manage different rates or any other changes. It's quite good. One thing that I see, for example, now we are working with medium-heavy trucks and also with light vehicles, and we're just starting to get data from IHS for the medium-heavy trucks. We've seen that we need to have separate forecasts for all those things. I believe there should be some points of improvement there to manage everything together. Many times we reach out to the Campfire Interactive team for support, and we may find out that there are things we didn't even think would work, and Campfire Interactive knows how to do it.

The opportunity management and sales forecasting module is quite useful. Sometimes I think the fields are a little bit repetitive to fill in. We are working with the Campfire Interactive team to improve that. It's not wrong at Campfire Interactive because I know this can be improved or changed or managed. Having that option is really interesting because we can personalize the different features and different fields. It's really good how it works because it has the price tab, the volume tab for us to manage different volumes and the take rates. It's a way to have everything in one place. It gives us the opportunity to track the different statuses that each opportunity goes through. This is something we need to do; we need to make reports to understand the business, to understand trends, and it's a very powerful tool for that. Maybe 40 people work with Campfire Interactive.

I don't have too much experience with different tools. In fact, the only similar tool I used in previous positions was Excel, but I think Campfire is much better. We have all the IHS information, we get to combine it with other information coming from our finance, for example, all the sales and the actual sales that we have; we can include them in Campfire Interactive and see everything together, and make the reporting quite useful too. Creating opportunities and things are very useful, but that's something that many people work with in an Excel file. The most important feature from Campfire Interactive is its ability to work together with other different applications that we use in our company, and I think that's one of the best features it has. The opportunity management and sales forecasting module is quite useful. It gives us the opportunity to track the different statuses that each opportunity goes through. This is something we need to do; we need to make reports to understand the business, to understand trends, and it's a very powerful tool for that.

It could be a little bit more user-friendly. I know that there is a version that is more user-friendly than the one we are using, but for different circumstances, we haven't moved to the new version yet. That's something I'm eager to see soon. We sometimes face trouble with space because there is a lot of information saved there, and the system sometimes gets stuck, but I don't think it's a problem from Campfire Interactive itself. It's more about all the applications that are feeding information into Campfire Interactive. Optimizing that would be very useful. For the rest of the things, I've seen the team working closely with us every time we need or request help to make changes or to do things differently, and I really enjoy working with them.

I have been using the solution for around five years.

I would rate the stability as an eight; it's not perfect, but it's good enough.

Managing data through business processes and workflows is 100% required. We really need the stability to have trustful data and information, tracking whatever we need to track for stability is essential for us, especially because we have Campfire Interactive connected with other applications we use in the company.

I would rate the technical support a nine. Sometimes we want to get answers immediately, but we understand that it's not always possible. I must say that sometimes we need technical support even on weekends, and we get the help we requested. That's really something I appreciate.

I don't know how Campfire Interactive changed the way my organization functions because I've only been working with it for five years, and I think we have had Campfire Interactive for much more than five years. At the moment that there was a change from the previous status to the starting of Campfire Interactive use, I was not involved. I know many people who had worked before with Excel files, and Campfire Interactive is more accurate, safer, and has the ability to bring everything together. I think it's a nice improvement, but I haven't experienced that because I started this job with Campfire Interactive.

I cannot answer that because I don't know how much we paid for those licenses. That's managed by the purchasing department.

I don't know any other vendor.

Once you get to know it, it's more or less easy, but I would prefer something friendlier for people who are new to Campfire Interactive. I've been working with it for some years, and I understand it, but for people coming new to the company needing training in Campfire Interactive, sometimes they see there are so many things, and it's not so friendly to use. There are aspects that can be repetitive when filling in those things every time. I would recommend Campfire Interactive to other users, especially if they are working with Excel. I would recommend moving to the Campfire Interactive application because it's much safer, better for tracking, and better for reporting everything from the application. I don't think Excel has the same stability that an application system like Campfire Interactive can have. Overall, I would rate Campfire Interactive an eight out of ten.

I started using it in 2011 when we purchased the Opportunity Management and Sales Forecasting module for forecast purposes, specifically for sales forecasts. We purchased it at a regional level in North America and then, in 2015, expanded it to all of our regions, including Europe and China.

We all speak the same language now. We talk about PLM programs, opportunity IDs, and RFQ IDs and use these as our touchpoints instead of everyone using their own jargon and comments. This is more uniform, and everyone knows exactly what they are referring to when using these terms.

On the Opportunity Management side, there is a database source where we can bring in a third-party vendor, which we use in two of our forecasts. We have not integrated anything else. We just enter the information manually.

Campfire Interactive gives us a good starting point for forecasting. It is as accurate as the data that is provided there. Overall, we base a lot of our decisions on the forecast and review it on a quarterly basis to make sure that it stays as accurate as possible based on our own business intelligence.

Campfire Interactive has saved us time because the data that we are collecting is the same. We used to spend extra time clarifying questions, but now, all the attributes are there for the information we need. From a time perspective, there have been savings, but I do not know about the cost savings.

We were able to see its benefits after some time as an organization. People are resistant to change, but we definitely saw the value at the regional level and wanted to replicate that at the global level. It took a little bit of time, but there was definitely value in it.

I like the visibility of global opportunities. Prior to using Campfire Interactive, we would conduct Excel-based reporting and sales meetings with everyone bringing their information. Now, we can check it daily, look at the reports daily, and see what is coming into the system and what needs to be managed. Our Requests for Quotes in the BP process are wonderful. We have global meetings related to this every week to prioritize the business and opportunities coming in. All of that is helping us daily to manage our business better.

Because we use a multitude of modules, some of the interactions from one module to the other are not as seamless or fluid. I would like to see some more fluidness from one module to the other.

We started with a module from the product offering in, I believe, the early 2000s, probably 2007, and then added additional modules over time.

We have had minimal issues. It is stable.

Certain modules are better than others.

We have a crisis-type customer support number, but we do not use that too often. We have their customer success team that we meet with regularly to make sure that everything is flowing the way it needs to. It is for just touch-point questions and answers.

Overall, their support is good to excellent, but if the issue is a little more complex, it can take a little longer. I would rate them a nine out of ten. They are responsive. They cannot sometimes give us the result we want, but they are responsive.

Positive

We did use another solution. 

I have used Campfire-like software at a previous company. I have found Campfire Interactive to be comparable and even better because of the fact that it is global and easy to use.

It is user-friendly. They do most of the maintenance. We provide feedback, but they maintain.

To those who are evaluating project management or opportunity software solutions, I would say that the Opportunity Management and Sale Forecasting (OMSF) module is a value add. The data is consistent. It is in a format that is easy to manage, and the visibility is worthy.

The best thing is to look at every module and see how they are interconnected so that when you are putting data in, it satisfies not just the one that you are working on but also the other modules going forward. 

It is very user-friendly, although certain modules are more user-friendly than others. The more you use, the better you get. I was a heavy user, so I learned rather quickly. We have some users who are only in and out of the software on a weekly basis, and they tend to need a little bit of a refresher on where to go, but overall, it is easy to use.

I do not use all the modules on a daily basis. Based on the modules I use, it is an eight out of ten.