Horizon Software has two versions of software. CPS (Custom Proposal Software) and SCPS (Smart-Partner Custom Proposal Software).
It sounds like you were asking about the original CPS software which costs about $1,200.00. This is the software that DDeca spoke highly of. SCPS is a subscription software that costs $200.00 a month plus a buy-in (to catch up with those who’ve paid $200/month since its inception).
Firstly, I can’t speak highly enough of Jim Engandela, the Principle of Horizon. Not only is he a talented software developer, but he was the successful owner of a chain of high-end A/V stores (which provided custom installation), that he sold so that he could focus his energy on Horizon. He knows this business and its challenges.
If you want to get started with a proven software package that really works, then you can’t go wrong with CPS. Once you take the time to set it up correctly, you can create templates that will allow you to duplicate and modify complex proposals within minutes.
SCPS is a much more comprehensive software package. It will cost you a chunk of change to buy-in, if it’s still open in your area. I feel that even though there are hiccups sometimes, it is still the best available. We’ve used it for almost two years with excellent results (after having been long-time CPS users and short-time D-Tools users in-between).
Before switching over to SCPS we spent somewhere between $12-to-$16K on D-Tools, and although I didn’t use it directly; my General Manager just couldn’t get it to work efficiently after several months of battling. He has an above average IQ and I allowed him to spend all of his time on the software (8hrs. a day). Every problem we had could only be solved by spending several more thousand dollars, and even then, things were frustrating at best. If we wanted to modify or customize something we had the choice of either buying more software applications such as Crystal Reports or hiring D-Tools at a huge expense to make what seemed like simple cosmetic changes. Every software module also came at a cost – per every seat – and every upgrade also cost heavily – per every seat! It is really a drawing program that creates proposals, which we found makes it clumsy to use. After we realized that we had signed on as prisoners of a “one-armed-bandit-money-sucking-machine” (and other manufacturers such as Lutron felt the same way), we decided to cut our losses and stop using the software. We tried to get our money back but finally decided to give up. This is only our experience; although I know that there are many out there who have had better luck.
In conclusion, back to the question of this thread, with twenty-years in this industry behind me and after using proposal software ranging from Excel/Word cut-and-paste to PageMaker one-offs to CPS to Guru to D-Tools; I highly recommend Horizon Software. No matter what you do, however, this type of software take a significant investment of time to set up correctly and maintain. None of this software is 110% perfect, at least in my opinion. So get ready to assign somebody to this task or spend several weeks on this project yourself. Otherwise just stick with Word and Excel if you already have a reasonable system working now. Just like everything in life, nothing is easy. Good luck.
