Considering vantage purchase, request comments

Yahoo Archive
1
I wholeheartedly agree with Brian. Our implementation team was composed of
people representing the entire workflow struture of the company. As the MIS
guy, I took the lead and handled much of the conversion and implementation
plan - but the plan was developed by the group and many of the day to day
processes were retooled to fit with Vantage.

Our final software picks were three: Vantage, Visual, and Made to Manage.
By far, Vantage had the most potential and the salesperson we dealt with
(Tom Dean) had excellent product knowledge and integrety. If Tom did not
know the answer, he said so but promised to find out and ALWAYS folllowed
thru on his word. Our final selection process include an extended onsite
demonstration, up to 2 weeks, where many employees were brought in to try
out the software and test against our requirements and verify correct
operation. Amoung the recurring problems with Visual included system crashes
and inconsistant accounting procedures. Made to Manage had the inside track
with several members on the committee until the final demo where we found
tooooooo many weaknesses in the accounting package. I am glad we decided on
Vantage - it has proven to be a stable, maintainace free platform that has
performed extremely well for us. Problems? - to be sure there are some
nagging little problems and I don't like the module and license pricing (we
are 3-4 licenses short also), but overall, I would endorse the product.

Regards
Jim Stetter
Snow Filtration

-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Davis [mailto:bdavis@...]
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 6:13 PM
To: 'vantage@egroups.com'
Subject: RE: [Vantage] Considering vantage purchase, request comments


I could write a long essay about my experiences with Integrated ERP, but
suffice it to say that I have used several different packages, and
implemented three myself. One of them (Avante, which is also from Epicor)
I
implemented three times, at three different companies. Now I am working
with an existing implementation of Vantage (about 3 years old). Based on
this experience, I would probably recommend Vantage (although I don't know
the particulars about the company, and I missed the beginning of this
string). I have come to expect that none of these systems are really very
good. I think this is probably true of the larger ones too (Oracle, SAP,
BON), although I don't have the background to know for sure.

I think the success or failure of an ERP system in any given company is
more
dependant on the implementation than the software. A lot of companies
just
give the project to their IS manager, or their Controller, and expect it
to
get installed and turned on. It is REALLY important to take the
opportunity
to thoroughly analyze all of your business processes during the
implementation. Implementations that I have seen work the best have been
based on the general premise that the business processes will be redefined
to match the software. This can't be a strict rule, only a rule-of-thumb.
But every process should be considered for it. This takes firm support
from
the top and ALL of the departments.

I would go out on a limb here, and say that I would expect that the vast
majority of negative responses you get will be due to poor
implementations.
Users who benefit from well managed implementations will only have minor
complaints about quirkiness or minor bugs.

Good luck...B

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Wirtz [mailto:SWirtz@...]
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 3:48 PM
To: 'vantage@egroups.com'
Subject: RE: [Vantage] Considering vantage purchase, request comments


Walt,

We purchased vantage approximately one year ago. I have been on this
e-group about three weeks now. If you had been reading the messages for
the past two weeks, you would probably never buy Vantage or any other
similar product. However, several people here have supported Vantage as
being superior to all the other products in the similar price range,
even if it has some shortcomings and doesn't do everything we think it
should.

When I joined DMD they had looked at different software (other than
Vantage) and were about to sign on the bottom line with Visual
Manufacturing from Lilly. I felt we hadn't done the homework we should,
so we looked at four more systems and compared them to Visual. The
Vantage senior salesperson, Randy Stone, is very good with excellent
product knowledge. There were two primary reasons we selected Vantage
over Visual.

First, was the customer references. The references Randy Stone gave us
raved about Vantage and the support their Epicor (DataWorks) personnel
gave them, as you would expect. I felt they were telling the truth as
they also mentioned several things Vantage didn't do all that well. The
big one was when I finally got to talk with a visual customer. They
advised me not to consider Visual at all and they wished they could get
their money back. We had not been especially pleased what Visual's
scheduling program could actually do. The sales representatives
couldn't answer the questions we had and their customer said they could
only reschedule jobs overnight!

Second, was support. The way Lilly and their sales teams are structured
didn't give us much comfort factor. Their sales force are privately
owned distributorships who are also supposed to be "owners"
participating in the larger company, yet they admitted that if you had a
problem, you had to contact Lilly for support, a totally unknown entity.
After they got their commission for the big bucks software sale up
front, they really had no incentive or other source of income to sustain
supporting us as a customer. We had almost bought because of the good
quality locally owned sales organization.

In general, I think Vantage should be better for the money, but I'm not
sure I'm qualified to compare all the systems and pricing from a few
thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. You probably
can't get much better for the money at this time. I think with proper
priority Epicor can fix most of their customer's concerns. But since
the recent acquisition, I think their priorities are probably more in
systems integration instead of fixing what they have. They do come out
with frequent upgrades and think they are the best of the software we
reviewed. Given we don't know about new players in the field, we would
probably buy Vantage again. All Epicor customer support people have
been professional, courteous and prompt in getting answers back to us.
Had their been better competition, we would have negotiated for a better
package than we got.

I hope this was a help to you.

Steve
.

-----Original Message-----
From: admin [SMTP:admin@...]
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 4:36 PM
To: vantage@egroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Considering vantage purchase, request
comments

Hi all,

We are considering purchasing vantage & we're at the 2 finalist
stage; the other
contender being visual manufacturing from lilly software.

I would like to get comments both pro & con concerning your
satisfaction with
the functionality, performance & flexibility of vantage.

If anyone has purchased the source code & done some programming,
I would
especially like to hear your views. Also, if anyone has
recently purchased
vantage
& had visual manufacturing on their short list, please tell me
why you chose
vantage.

And finally, the ultimate question: if you had it to do all
over again today,
would
you choose vantage again?

Post responses here or feel free to email me directly:
admin@...

Thanks a million in advance,

Walt Nosek, MIS Manager



-------------------------- eGroups Sponsor

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try it, go to www.egroups.com, login and be sure to save your password,
choose My Groups, choose Vantage, then choose Files. If you save the
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to
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Groups,
choose Vantage, then choose Files. If you save the password, the link
above
will work the next time you try it.)

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Groups, choose Vantage, then choose Files. If you save the password, the
link above will work the next time you try it.)



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
2
Hi all,

We are considering purchasing vantage & we're at the 2 finalist stage; the other
contender being visual manufacturing from lilly software.

I would like to get comments both pro & con concerning your satisfaction with
the functionality, performance & flexibility of vantage.

If anyone has purchased the source code & done some programming, I would
especially like to hear your views. Also, if anyone has recently purchased
vantage
& had visual manufacturing on their short list, please tell me why you chose
vantage.

And finally, the ultimate question: if you had it to do all over again today,
would
you choose vantage again?

Post responses here or feel free to email me directly: admin@...

Thanks a million in advance,

Walt Nosek, MIS Manager
3
Wow, tough choice. Actually our last two on the list were lilly software and
Vantage. I believe the main reason why we did not go with lilly soft was
there handling of sub-assemblies. I can't recall exactly what, but i do
remember when we had someone from liily soft come in their presentation was
dispicable. They couldn't answer half our questions and it seemed like the
software couldn't do what vantage does. Regardless if i had to do it again i
would purchase Vantage. Most of our problems don't stem from the software.
It's the people behind the software (garbage in, garbage out) Vantage is a
good product, Yes they have flaws, but i think that they are headed in the
right direction.

Good luck on your choice, Its definitley a hard one.

-----Original Message-----
From: admin [mailto:admin@...]
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 3:36 PM
To: vantage@egroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Considering vantage purchase, request comments


Hi all,

We are considering purchasing vantage & we're at the 2 finalist stage; the
other
contender being visual manufacturing from lilly software.

I would like to get comments both pro & con concerning your satisfaction
with
the functionality, performance & flexibility of vantage.

If anyone has purchased the source code & done some programming, I would
especially like to hear your views. Also, if anyone has recently purchased
vantage
& had visual manufacturing on their short list, please tell me why you chose
vantage.

And finally, the ultimate question: if you had it to do all over again
today,
would
you choose vantage again?

Post responses here or feel free to email me directly:
admin@...

Thanks a million in advance,

Walt Nosek, MIS Manager




We no longer allow attachments to files. To access/share Report Files,
please go to the following link: http://www.egroups.com/files/vantage/
(Note: If this link does not work for you the first time you try it, go to
www.egroups.com, login and be sure to save your password, choose My Groups,
choose Vantage, then choose Files. If you save the password, the link above
will work the next time you try it.)
4
I'd be interested to see the replies you get. I'd ask anyone
replying to do so to the e-groups.
Thanks
5
Walt,

We purchased vantage approximately one year ago. I have been on this
e-group about three weeks now. If you had been reading the messages for
the past two weeks, you would probably never buy Vantage or any other
similar product. However, several people here have supported Vantage as
being superior to all the other products in the similar price range,
even if it has some shortcomings and doesn't do everything we think it
should.

When I joined DMD they had looked at different software (other than
Vantage) and were about to sign on the bottom line with Visual
Manufacturing from Lilly. I felt we hadn't done the homework we should,
so we looked at four more systems and compared them to Visual. The
Vantage senior salesperson, Randy Stone, is very good with excellent
product knowledge. There were two primary reasons we selected Vantage
over Visual.

First, was the customer references. The references Randy Stone gave us
raved about Vantage and the support their Epicor (DataWorks) personnel
gave them, as you would expect. I felt they were telling the truth as
they also mentioned several things Vantage didn't do all that well. The
big one was when I finally got to talk with a visual customer. They
advised me not to consider Visual at all and they wished they could get
their money back. We had not been especially pleased what Visual's
scheduling program could actually do. The sales representatives
couldn't answer the questions we had and their customer said they could
only reschedule jobs overnight!

Second, was support. The way Lilly and their sales teams are structured
didn't give us much comfort factor. Their sales force are privately
owned distributorships who are also supposed to be "owners"
participating in the larger company, yet they admitted that if you had a
problem, you had to contact Lilly for support, a totally unknown entity.
After they got their commission for the big bucks software sale up
front, they really had no incentive or other source of income to sustain
supporting us as a customer. We had almost bought because of the good
quality locally owned sales organization.

In general, I think Vantage should be better for the money, but I'm not
sure I'm qualified to compare all the systems and pricing from a few
thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. You probably
can't get much better for the money at this time. I think with proper
priority Epicor can fix most of their customer's concerns. But since
the recent acquisition, I think their priorities are probably more in
systems integration instead of fixing what they have. They do come out
with frequent upgrades and think they are the best of the software we
reviewed. Given we don't know about new players in the field, we would
probably buy Vantage again. All Epicor customer support people have
been professional, courteous and prompt in getting answers back to us.
Had their been better competition, we would have negotiated for a better
package than we got.

I hope this was a help to you.

Steve
.

-----Original Message-----
From: admin [SMTP:admin@...]
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 4:36 PM
To: vantage@egroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Considering vantage purchase, request
comments

Hi all,

We are considering purchasing vantage & we're at the 2 finalist
stage; the other
contender being visual manufacturing from lilly software.

I would like to get comments both pro & con concerning your
satisfaction with
the functionality, performance & flexibility of vantage.

If anyone has purchased the source code & done some programming,
I would
especially like to hear your views. Also, if anyone has
recently purchased
vantage
& had visual manufacturing on their short list, please tell me
why you chose
vantage.

And finally, the ultimate question: if you had it to do all
over again today,
would
you choose vantage again?

Post responses here or feel free to email me directly:
admin@...

Thanks a million in advance,

Walt Nosek, MIS Manager



-------------------------- eGroups Sponsor

We no longer allow attachments to files. To access/share Report
Files, please go to the following link:
http://www.egroups.com/files/vantage/
(Note: If this link does not work for you the first time you
try it, go to www.egroups.com, login and be sure to save your password,
choose My Groups, choose Vantage, then choose Files. If you save the
password, the link above will work the next time you try it.)
6
I could write a long essay about my experiences with Integrated ERP, but
suffice it to say that I have used several different packages, and
implemented three myself. One of them (Avante, which is also from Epicor) I
implemented three times, at three different companies. Now I am working
with an existing implementation of Vantage (about 3 years old). Based on
this experience, I would probably recommend Vantage (although I don't know
the particulars about the company, and I missed the beginning of this
string). I have come to expect that none of these systems are really very
good. I think this is probably true of the larger ones too (Oracle, SAP,
BON), although I don't have the background to know for sure.

I think the success or failure of an ERP system in any given company is more
dependant on the implementation than the software. A lot of companies just
give the project to their IS manager, or their Controller, and expect it to
get installed and turned on. It is REALLY important to take the opportunity
to thoroughly analyze all of your business processes during the
implementation. Implementations that I have seen work the best have been
based on the general premise that the business processes will be redefined
to match the software. This can't be a strict rule, only a rule-of-thumb.
But every process should be considered for it. This takes firm support from
the top and ALL of the departments.

I would go out on a limb here, and say that I would expect that the vast
majority of negative responses you get will be due to poor implementations.
Users who benefit from well managed implementations will only have minor
complaints about quirkiness or minor bugs.

Good luck...B

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Wirtz [mailto:SWirtz@...]
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 3:48 PM
To: 'vantage@egroups.com'
Subject: RE: [Vantage] Considering vantage purchase, request comments


Walt,

We purchased vantage approximately one year ago. I have been on this
e-group about three weeks now. If you had been reading the messages for
the past two weeks, you would probably never buy Vantage or any other
similar product. However, several people here have supported Vantage as
being superior to all the other products in the similar price range,
even if it has some shortcomings and doesn't do everything we think it
should.

When I joined DMD they had looked at different software (other than
Vantage) and were about to sign on the bottom line with Visual
Manufacturing from Lilly. I felt we hadn't done the homework we should,
so we looked at four more systems and compared them to Visual. The
Vantage senior salesperson, Randy Stone, is very good with excellent
product knowledge. There were two primary reasons we selected Vantage
over Visual.

First, was the customer references. The references Randy Stone gave us
raved about Vantage and the support their Epicor (DataWorks) personnel
gave them, as you would expect. I felt they were telling the truth as
they also mentioned several things Vantage didn't do all that well. The
big one was when I finally got to talk with a visual customer. They
advised me not to consider Visual at all and they wished they could get
their money back. We had not been especially pleased what Visual's
scheduling program could actually do. The sales representatives
couldn't answer the questions we had and their customer said they could
only reschedule jobs overnight!

Second, was support. The way Lilly and their sales teams are structured
didn't give us much comfort factor. Their sales force are privately
owned distributorships who are also supposed to be "owners"
participating in the larger company, yet they admitted that if you had a
problem, you had to contact Lilly for support, a totally unknown entity.
After they got their commission for the big bucks software sale up
front, they really had no incentive or other source of income to sustain
supporting us as a customer. We had almost bought because of the good
quality locally owned sales organization.

In general, I think Vantage should be better for the money, but I'm not
sure I'm qualified to compare all the systems and pricing from a few
thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. You probably
can't get much better for the money at this time. I think with proper
priority Epicor can fix most of their customer's concerns. But since
the recent acquisition, I think their priorities are probably more in
systems integration instead of fixing what they have. They do come out
with frequent upgrades and think they are the best of the software we
reviewed. Given we don't know about new players in the field, we would
probably buy Vantage again. All Epicor customer support people have
been professional, courteous and prompt in getting answers back to us.
Had their been better competition, we would have negotiated for a better
package than we got.

I hope this was a help to you.

Steve
.

-----Original Message-----
From: admin [SMTP:admin@...]
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 4:36 PM
To: vantage@egroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Considering vantage purchase, request
comments

Hi all,

We are considering purchasing vantage & we're at the 2 finalist
stage; the other
contender being visual manufacturing from lilly software.

I would like to get comments both pro & con concerning your
satisfaction with
the functionality, performance & flexibility of vantage.

If anyone has purchased the source code & done some programming,
I would
especially like to hear your views. Also, if anyone has
recently purchased
vantage
& had visual manufacturing on their short list, please tell me
why you chose
vantage.

And finally, the ultimate question: if you had it to do all
over again today,
would
you choose vantage again?

Post responses here or feel free to email me directly:
admin@...

Thanks a million in advance,

Walt Nosek, MIS Manager



-------------------------- eGroups Sponsor

We no longer allow attachments to files. To access/share Report
Files, please go to the following link:
http://www.egroups.com/files/vantage/
(Note: If this link does not work for you the first time you
try it, go to www.egroups.com, login and be sure to save your password,
choose My Groups, choose Vantage, then choose Files. If you save the
password, the link above will work the next time you try it.)


We no longer allow attachments to files. To access/share Report Files,
please go to the following link: http://www.egroups.com/files/vantage/
(Note: If this link does not work for you the first time you try it, go to
www.egroups.com, login and be sure to save your password, choose My Groups,
choose Vantage, then choose Files. If you save the password, the link above
will work the next time you try it.)
7
we have been on vantage since 4/99. our software eval process eliminited
visual, fourth shift and a few others in the early rounds. we came down to
symix and vantage and chose vantage- mostly because of cost. if memory
serves, we may have slightly perfered the symix product, but it was really
designed for larger mfg's and was expensive.

my opinion is that vantage is a good product and by and large supported by
good people. our calls, emails and voice mails to support are all handled
professionally and promptly. epicor's training for vantage is done in
limited locations (none close to denver) and can be expensive. that being
said, the training is very effective and i'd rather incur some travel and
education expense for quality learning rather than have incompetents waste
my time in denver. beware of the software vendor that sells all kinds of
applications (and lord forbid, harware too) and promises local training
expertise on everything they sell. they won't have a clue about detail
issues and probably be unable to understand issues well enough to
communicate them back to the software developer. at least epicor
understands issues pretty well, they just may simply choose to ignore some,
in my opinion.

you will see traffic on the one list (a huge resource for the user's. could
be a great resource for epicor, but i'm not sure they have figured that out
yet) that voices discontent, dismay and yes, disgust with epicor over thier
unwillingness to address certain issues in the software. for our part, we
have very few unresolved issues to gripe about which may only indicate that
vantage was and still is a very good fit for what we do.

epicor was willing to negotiate over initial sales prices, but you lose that
ability once your shop has deployed vantage- they get ya good for additional
licenses, training, annual support (my favorite sales pitch from epicor
"upgrades are free"). i'm not sure, however, that they differ in this
regard from other software developers. so- get everything you can up-front
(there was a great comment on this on the one-list today, maybe someone
would repost it?).

at this time, we have not purchased code nor custom programing as it has not
been necessary in our shop.

hope all this helps

-----Original Message-----
From: admin [mailto:admin@...]
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 2:36 PM
To: vantage@egroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Considering vantage purchase, request comments


Hi all,

We are considering purchasing vantage & we're at the 2 finalist stage; the
other
contender being visual manufacturing from lilly software.
8
Walt,
My company purchased Vantage in January 1998 but didn't go live until
January 1999. It took us that long to figure out how we were going to adapt
our processes to use Vantage. And if you're thinking that the software
should be flexible enough to conform to the way you do business, think
again. I can tell you from experience that every "packaged" software
solution will require your company to change some things about how you do
business. Even the "big boys" like Baan or PeopleSoft will require changes
regardless of what the salespeople tell you.

Our biggest hurdle was part numbers. Being a job shop, we had never used
part numbers before. Everything was referenced by the work order, and it
took us nearly seven months to reach a consensus on how we would number the
parts. This wasn't a bad thing: having part numbers allowed our stock of
extras to suddenly become visible and made tracking "when we had made the
same part before" a much more reasonable proposition.

If you were to ask most employees here, I imagine that they would tell you
how horrible Vantage is. They were used to using the same custom-built
software solution that they had been using for the last ten years. Vantage
was a big change and some employees still don't "get it." Personally, as
the CIO, I think that its a pretty good product, probably the best in its
field, but getting Epicor to respond to problems has been problematic. They
keep making noise about listening to what their customers want and then
promptly turn around and do something completely different. Search the
eGroups archives for "bug" or "enhancement request" and you're likely to see
some lively discussions on the subject!!

When we bought Vantage, we also purchased the Progress development tools and
invested the time and money required for training. There are very few
Progress programmers available on the market and the good ones certainly
ain't cheap!! We did not buy the source code from Epicor (DataWorks at the
time) but we needed to build our own custom modules to handle chemistry and
mechanical certifications.

After being "live" for several months we figured out that Vantage could not
perform a task that was critical to our operation (that we had been told it
could handle). Another year of negotiations with Epicor and we ended up
with the source code for Vantage. So here's my comments on that subject:
Usually, the code is well written but poorly documented (ooh, big surprise!
programmers who don't like to document their code). There seems to be no
shop standards for object or variable naming conventions. They make
extensive use of code libraries which cuts down on the amount of code you
need to write but can also make debugging tougher than normal.

There is a substantial learning curve for the Progress language itself, but
also for Epicor's programming tips and tricks. Its certainly not
insurmountable, but the time it takes to get proficient certainly depends on
how much of your day you devote to programming for Vantage.

The other BIG issue with customizing their programs is the time required to
integrate your changes with the new source code for patches and upgrades.
We went from a policy of implementing nearly every patch that Epicor
released (pre-source code modification days) to our current policy of
implementing a patch only when absolutely required. It takes several weeks
to integrate all the changes!!

Good luck on your decision and future implementation!!
================
Steve Sanders
Delta Centrifugal Corp.

-----Original Message-----
From: admin [mailto:admin@...]
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 3:36 PM
To: vantage@egroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Considering vantage purchase, request comments


Hi all,

We are considering purchasing vantage & we're at the 2 finalist stage; the
other
contender being visual manufacturing from lilly software.

I would like to get comments both pro & con concerning your satisfaction
with
the functionality, performance & flexibility of vantage.

If anyone has purchased the source code & done some programming, I would
especially like to hear your views. Also, if anyone has recently
purchased
vantage
& had visual manufacturing on their short list, please tell me why you
chose
vantage.

And finally, the ultimate question: if you had it to do all over again
today,
would
you choose vantage again?

Post responses here or feel free to email me directly:
admin@...

Thanks a million in advance,

Walt Nosek, MIS Manager



eGroups Sponsor


We no longer allow attachments to files. To access/share Report Files,
please go to the following link: http://www.egroups.com/files/vantage/
(Note: If this link does not work for you the first time you try it, go
to www.egroups.com, login and be sure to save your password, choose My
Groups, choose Vantage, then choose Files. If you save the password, the
link above will work the next time you try it.)



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
9
Hi Walt,
Really good question to ask... We went with Vantage last October. Management is now seriously considering dumping Vantage for another package (not a small decision considering hundreds of thousands that went into Vantage). To keep it short, here are our biggest compelling reasons for considering dropping Vantage all together after using it completely for over a year.

When asked, "Can Vantage do this, and this and this?" They said, "yes, yes, yes." But the real truth is that many of the features we were looking for were/are in infancy stage. MRP is the prime example. EDI is another. Splitting labor between machines? A joke. Flexibility? (ie. custom programming), terribly expensive, and has to be redone each time you upgrade. Upgrades included in price? Wrong. We were told MRP would be part of 3.0. It didn't come out till 4.0 and still doesn't do what our old system did in terms of powerful Materials management. Plus 4.0 meant thousands more to upgrade to. We keep hearing now: "That should be in place in Cairo (version 5.0)" Based on history, I don't expect to see it.

Besides feeling somewhat misled or lied to, (depending on how strong the words should be), Vantage just does not fit our company. We have had to change so many ways we do things to fit Vantage.

On the positive side. I have always been very pleased with Tech Support. They know their stuff (as far as how to get what Vantage DOES do working properly for us), are quick in their response time and have gotten me out of many jams. They are also very knowledgable about the other companies that integrate with Vantage, like the Merant ODBC drivers, and Progress itself. Egroups has been a great resource, but usually I just call Epicor and get an answer over the phone, along with a walk-through if necessary.




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10
We have been live with Vantage since January 1997. My error/bug/event log
for Vantage amounts to about one page per year, not bad for software of this
magnitude. When I've been able to get our people to USE it they wind up
loving it. Tech support.... I would describe its performance as.....
Stellar, nuf said. Functionally, we had to adapt some, and we've adapted
Vantage to some degree without custom programing. I think we do some things
with some areas of Vantage that are different from Epicors original intent.

On a philosophical note, Epicor's management seems to think that once they
have they have you forever, not so. Technology marches on, new niches are
created. In the three years that we have had Vantage our total expenditures
for it have been about $200,000.00, thats all things purchased from
Dataworks and Epicor. We are a $10,000,000.00 a year company. I need 5
licences and at the $5,500.00 price tag $27,500 it is a pretty hard sell to
my management. Granted, we have had sale oportunities for licences that we
passed on. Right now for the forseeable future we wont upgrade until we are
desperate. I feel squeezed. I feel that on going pricing is UNFAIR. Maybe
there is no better software out there because it is good stuff. But I don't
like being turned into cash cow for the Multi Billion dollar Epicor
corporation, but then again we put ourselves there. So what about it
Epicor, do you even CARE how your users feel about pricing. We LIKE
Vantage, WE LIKE the people we deal with, but DAMN guys its really starting
to hurt, how about a little relief huh?

Shirley H. Graver
Systems Administrator
Rubber Associates Inc. (Certified to QS9000/ISO9002)
Cleveland/Akron, Ohio




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
11
Shirley et. al.

Ditto. I wouldn't be surprised if we went to new software technology if
Epicor doesn't allow us to buy additional licenses for the same price we
paid last year when we went live. If there was decent competition out
there, we probably would have free licenses just for the commitment of
annual license maintenance fees.

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: Shirley Graver [SMTP:shirleyg@...]
Sent: Friday, October 13, 2000 7:30 AM
To: vantage@egroups.com
Subject: RE: [Vantage] Considering vantage purchase,
request comments

We have been live with Vantage since January 1997. My
error/bug/event log
for Vantage amounts to about one page per year, not bad for
software of this
magnitude. When I've been able to get our people to USE it they
wind up
loving it. Tech support.... I would describe its performance
as.....
Stellar, nuf said. Functionally, we had to adapt some, and
we've adapted
Vantage to some degree without custom programing. I think we do
some things
with some areas of Vantage that are different from Epicors
original intent.

On a philosophical note, Epicor's management seems to think that
once they
have they have you forever, not so. Technology marches on, new
niches are
created. In the three years that we have had Vantage our total
expenditures
for it have been about $200,000.00, thats all things purchased
from
Dataworks and Epicor. We are a $10,000,000.00 a year company.
I need 5
licences and at the $5,500.00 price tag $27,500 it is a pretty
hard sell to
my management. Granted, we have had sale oportunities for
licences that we
passed on. Right now for the forseeable future we wont upgrade
until we are
desperate. I feel squeezed. I feel that on going pricing is
UNFAIR. Maybe
there is no better software out there because it is good stuff.
But I don't
like being turned into cash cow for the Multi Billion dollar
Epicor
corporation, but then again we put ourselves there. So what
about it
Epicor, do you even CARE how your users feel about pricing. We
LIKE
Vantage, WE LIKE the people we deal with, but DAMN guys its
really starting
to hurt, how about a little relief huh?

Shirley H. Graver
Systems Administrator
Rubber Associates Inc. (Certified to QS9000/ISO9002)
Cleveland/Akron, Ohio




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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12
We also had Visual in our final cut. Primarily because it was founded by
Dick Lilly the same person that Started our old software package. Visual had
a lot of similarities with his old companies. As I recall some of the
concern we had with Visual were based on what we saw happen at his last
company. There was a tendency to take the user one direction i.e Oracle, and
then abandon the course after users had made significant investments. They
were extremely slow to bring upgrades on the existing product to market we
waited sometimes 1-3 years. They would instead be off pursuing some fringe
package like EDI, when the reality is that the vast majority of user have no
need for EDI. My understanding of Visual is that it consist of a lot of
re-liscensed third part application. Sales will tell you otherwise. We felt
that this might potential effect Visual ability to control their product.
Visual is sold and supported by a local dealer network. We felt this added
another additional layer of cost to the product we also had some concerns
about the viability and capabilities off the local Visual V.A.R. Visual is
more robust then Vantage and therefore more complex and possibly harder to
implement. In conclusion if MRP and scheduling are hot issues for you I
would suggest Visual that has always been Dick Lillys forte sometimes at the
expense of other modules i.e financials. However I think if you took an
honest assessment of manufactures most would say that MRP and scheduling
are on the wish list for their organizations, but very few have ever
successfully implement either. Perhaps due to the dynamics of the real
world. We are based in Minneapolis and strong local support was very high on
list. I have no complaints with Vantage support. If you would like to talk
further off line please feel free to contact me directly.



Good luck with your decision.


Dan Shallbetter
States Electric Mfg.
763-588-0536


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
13
We were in the exact same situation, as we were also using Profitkey at the
time we decided to move forward to a new windows based system (1998). I
wanted a strong scheduling package but was gun shy of Visual for the exact
same reasons Dan mentioned. We have still not been able to make Vantage's
scheduling work for us and have tried extremely hard to do this but I have
been very satisfied with Vantage in all other regards (other than cost). Dan
couldn't have expressed my feelings about Visual any better. If you would
like to discuss this further, please feel free to give me a call.

Peter McGuire
Lovejoy Chaplet Corp.
pmcguire@...
(518) 686-5232
Fax: 686-4919


-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Shallbetter [mailto:dans@...]
Sent: Friday, October 13, 2000 8:02 AM
To: pmcguire@...
Subject: RE: [Vantage] Considering vantage purchase, request comments


We also had Visual in our final cut. Primarily because it was founded by
Dick Lilly the same person that Started our old software package. Visual had
a lot of similarities with his old companies. As I recall some of the
concern we had with Visual were based on what we saw happen at his last
company. There was a tendency to take the user one direction i.e Oracle, and
then abandon the course after users had made significant investments. They
were extremely slow to bring upgrades on the existing product to market we
waited sometimes 1-3 years. They would instead be off pursuing some fringe
package like EDI, when the reality is that the vast majority of user have no
need for EDI. My understanding of Visual is that it consist of a lot of
re-liscensed third part application. Sales will tell you otherwise. We felt
that this might potential effect Visual ability to control their product.
Visual is sold and supported by a local dealer network. We felt this added
another additional layer of cost to the product we also had some concerns
about the viability and capabilities off the local Visual V.A.R. Visual is
more robust then Vantage and therefore more complex and possibly harder to
implement. In conclusion if MRP and scheduling are hot issues for you I
would suggest Visual that has always been Dick Lillys forte sometimes at the
expense of other modules i.e financials. However I think if you took an
honest assessment of manufactures most would say that MRP and scheduling
are on the wish list for their organizations, but very few have ever
successfully implement either. Perhaps due to the dynamics of the real
world. We are based in Minneapolis and strong local support was very high on
list. I have no complaints with Vantage support. If you would like to talk
further off line please feel free to contact me directly.



Good luck with your decision.


Dan Shallbetter
States Electric Mfg.
763-588-0536


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



We no longer allow attachments to files. To access/share Report Files,
please go to the following link: http://www.egroups.com/files/vantage/
(Note: If this link does not work for you the first time you try it, go to
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choose Vantage, then choose Files. If you save the password, the link above
will work the next time you try it.)
14
I sent a response to this subject yesterday, but I wanted to take a moment
to contradict myself after reading this message from Troy Funte. There is a
real problem with MRP, if you do repetitive manufacturing, or if you ship
from stock for the most part. If your company fits the MRP profile, I would
not recommend Vantage. MRP is an invaluable tool for many companies, and it
simply isn't strong enough in Vantage.

EDI on the other hand, is something you should completely remove from your
specifications. There are no "canned" ERP packages that include an EDI
module that can be practically implemented. Don't buy it from Epicor,
Lilly, or any other ERP software company in this price range.

B

-----Original Message-----
From: Troy Funte [mailto:tfunte@...]
Sent: Friday, October 13, 2000 12:28 AM
To: vantage@egroups.com
Subject: Re: [Vantage] Considering vantage purchase, request comments


Hi Walt,
Really good question to ask... We went with Vantage last October.
Management is now seriously considering dumping Vantage for another package
(not a small decision considering hundreds of thousands that went into
Vantage). To keep it short, here are our biggest compelling reasons for
considering dropping Vantage all together after using it completely for over
a year.

When asked, "Can Vantage do this, and this and this?" They said, "yes, yes,
yes." But the real truth is that many of the features we were looking for
were/are in infancy stage. MRP is the prime example. EDI is another.
Splitting labor between machines? A joke. Flexibility? (ie. custom
programming), terribly expensive, and has to be redone each time you
upgrade. Upgrades included in price? Wrong. We were told MRP would be part
of 3.0. It didn't come out till 4.0 and still doesn't do what our old system
did in terms of powerful Materials management. Plus 4.0 meant thousands
more to upgrade to. We keep hearing now: "That should be in place in Cairo
(version 5.0)" Based on history, I don't expect to see it.

Besides feeling somewhat misled or lied to, (depending on how strong the
words should be), Vantage just does not fit our company. We have had to
change so many ways we do things to fit Vantage.

On the positive side. I have always been very pleased with Tech Support.
They know their stuff (as far as how to get what Vantage DOES do working
properly for us), are quick in their response time and have gotten me out of
many jams. They are also very knowledgable about the other companies that
integrate with Vantage, like the Merant ODBC drivers, and Progress itself.
Egroups has been a great resource, but usually I just call Epicor and get an
answer over the phone, along with a walk-through if necessary.




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



We no longer allow attachments to files. To access/share Report Files,
please go to the following link: http://www.egroups.com/files/vantage/
(Note: If this link does not work for you the first time you try it, go to
www.egroups.com, login and be sure to save your password, choose My Groups,
choose Vantage, then choose Files. If you save the password, the link above
will work the next time you try it.)
15
Walt,
Brian Davis posted what I think is the single most critical issue
about ANY ERP implementation: Corporate buy-in. In most cases, firms that
give the Vantage implementation to their IS department to "make it work" are
doomed to failure. It can't be one group pushing the implementation; nobody
in the organization knows enough about all of the business processes by
themselves.
In our case, I started out looking at general features from 70-80
midrange ERP vendors (I attended a show called SoftEx in Manufacturing),
sent detailed RFIs to 13, asked 5 vendors in for full-day demos (Epicor,
Lilly, Made2Manage, Qube Connections, and Axapta), and then 2 finalists
(Epicor and Axapta) for more demos. In every demo, we had representatives
from Operations, Accounting, Sales, and Manufacturing (our staff-level
managers). It was a lot of work, but I think we made the right choice
despite the frustrations you hear on list with some of Epicor's customer
service practices.
No ERP system is going to solve all of your business problems, but
you're fooling yourself if you don't use the implementation of your chosen
ERP system as a chance to seriously examine and challenge your business
practices. Sure, people will tell you "that's the way we've always done it,"
but they say that because people are naturally change-resistant. Our
president gave me and my implementation team a clear charter: Find the best
system possible, look at our business practices critically, and find the
best way to streamline the process to maximize profitability.
It was six months of pain to choose a system, and six more to go
live. But don't fall into the trap of implementing what you already do;
choose to implement what you SHOULD BE doing.
Good luck!

Kenneth E. Urban
Manager, Information Systems & Technology
Major Industries, Inc.
7120 Stewart Avenue
Wausau, WI 54401
(715) 842-4616 voice
kurban@...

-----Original Message-----
From: admin [mailto:admin@...]
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 3:36 PM
To: vantage@egroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Considering vantage purchase, request comments


Hi all,

We are considering purchasing vantage & we're at the 2 finalist stage; the
other
contender being visual manufacturing from lilly software.
16
Naturally, there are always things we like and don't like. Then there are
fixes for some folks which damage the functionality to others. Oh how I
miss those zero dollar transactions we had in version 3.0 and the ability to
have standard costs at zero and zeroing out quantities without creating
inventory adjustments!!!!! But some of that is due to the variety of
customers to whom Vantage appeals. For example there are companies with jobs
or orders of one thousand or more pieces vs. companies like us with many
jobs less than 10 pieces!!

My view point is from the financial side. We use Vantage as a fully
integrated product. I cannot speak from the production standpoint of view
or quality. But I do know that the Payroll, A/R, and A/P modules work
great for us, for example. Are there changes and enhancements to the
product that I would like to have? Yes. I would prefer to see more stock or
canned reports that are NOT time sensitive for purposes of reconciling the
general ledger to subledger detailed information. Personally, I do not like
the A/P clearing account. I do not like seeing the clearing G/L account
number on transactions in A/P when entering invoices or using trackers. I
would prefer to see the costs transferred to job costs from A/P rather than
the Purchasing module which eliminates the need for the A/P clearing account
altogether. But these are details - overall, the integration of Vantage
modules eliminates much duplicative work.

One of the things I do like best about Epicor is their knowledgeable
technical support staff. If they don't know the answer, they find someone
who does. They have good response time. Being able to get help when having
trouble is VERY important. I also like the memo fields for internal
messages within the company. It's a great way to keep a history.

Epicor provides good training and good support on implementation too.

Deb
Reeder & Kline Machine Company, Inc.




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
17
VERY WELL STATED!!!!

-----Original Message-----
From: Urban, Kenneth [mailto:kurban@...]
Sent: Friday, October 13, 2000 9:07 AM

Walt,
Brian Davis posted what I think is the single most critical issue
about ANY ERP implementation: Corporate buy-in. In most cases, firms that
give the Vantage implementation to their IS department to "make it work" are
doomed to failure. It can't be one group pushing the implementation; nobody
in the organization knows enough about all of the business processes by
themselves.

No ERP system is going to solve all of your business problems, but
you're fooling yourself if you don't use the implementation of your chosen
ERP system as a chance to seriously examine and challenge your business
practices. Sure, people will tell you "that's the way we've always done it,"
but they say that because people are naturally change-resistant. Our
president gave me and my implementation team a clear charter: Find the best
system possible, look at our business practices critically, and find the
best way to streamline the process to maximize profitability.
It was six months of pain to choose a system, and six more to go
live. But don't fall into the trap of implementing what you already do;
choose to implement what you SHOULD BE doing.
Good luck!

Kenneth E. Urban
Manager, Information Systems & Technology
Major Industries, Inc.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]