ERP Systems and greener grass

Just asking for a friend: Have you seen any non-Epicor ERP systems or features lately that make you a bit envious?

Thanks!

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Infor Visual perhaps

As for ERP Epicor vs NetSuite, SAP, Sage, Infor, OpenBravo, AS400, Dynamics… Epicor shines strong! It really is pushing the bar.

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Oh man… I pity the other poor souls out there using something else then :joy:

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I miss Blanket Purchase orders…

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If that’s any relation of the late un-lamented Infor Syteline, even a distant cousin or adopted half-stepsister, no way.

Warts and all, and even though the price / stability ratio is wacky, Epicor beats Infor hands down.

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What I tell people (mostly users) about ERP systems …

“No one loves their ERP system. And few actually like it.”

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Why can’t they just get this in there… It is such an awesome capability.

Woohoo! This is so much fun!

Dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s

Looking for a needle in a haystack

Playing whack-a-mole

Yep, it’s not glamorous, but databases run the whole world now. You’re welcome, Earth.

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There’s a whole subset of (uninformed) people who think “if we just had a different system, all our problems would go away” too

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As someone changing TO Epicor from another ERP, I have to counter the ‘Grass is Greener’. Familiarity with existing systems, even when seriously flawed, is hard to combat.

One thing I would absolutely love is some enhancements to the customization tools as they feel like an IDE I would have been using in early 90’s. It would be nice to be able to just open up the toolbox, add a button on a form and just double click the button and have the code for event handling added for you, rather than having to go into the event wizard, etc. Also, delete the button and have it remove the event handler so that the code doesn’t error out.
Remove the Ctrl+Shift shortcut for alignment in code editor. I still can’t get my removal of that to remain permanent and I usually use it many times a day for copying and pasting portions of code.
It’s the little things like that that drive me batty.
I guess this will all become a thing of the past soon as we’re going to be all web soon… yeah? :hot_face:

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Thank you all for the comments. I will forward them to my friend for consideration.

Looking at the Epicor pros and cons on SelectHub; the cons are what is killing Epicor at my friends place of employment major time:

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Vote for this:
Blanket Purchase Orders | Epicor ERP Ideas (aha.io)

So how is this different than Contract PO’s?
(that is Epicor’s response to this Idea)

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Having just upgraded from a system from 2003, I can say I’m enjoying the new grass!

On your graphic, I 100% agree with inside consulting. Definitely look around and find some outside consultants that can help with the implementation.

For the most part, I figure out the problem before the support team does. I usually can fix our issue with a uBAQ/DMT. But sometimes I come across bugs that I cannot fix and I have to wait for fixes. (I have been waiting for a development Problem Number since August). But I digress…

When shopping ERP systems, we looked at a long list of “wants” and “needs” to determine the best fit. Epicor is the only one that provides everything we need and most of what we want either out of the box, or it gives us the ability to provide those solutions via customizations.

The biggest issue is getting buy-in from team members that processes need to change in order to get the most out of any ERP system. If you spend a lot of resources making the new system work in the same way as the old one did, you’ve wasted time and money upgrading.

Bottom line, despite it’s negative reviews (which I agree with), I believe it is the best ERP system for us.

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Pretty fascinating summary. Seems fairly accurate.

I have to muse on implementation for a minute.

On the one hand I agree with every word. Ours was awful, and the consulting was miserable as well.

On the other hand, we went from no ERP to a real ERP and I really have to suspect that our miserable implementation was 99% due to:

  • OUR data inconsistencies
  • OUR utter lack of procedure and organization
  • OUR umm… lack of familiarity with modern or lean practices
  • OUR stubbornness to entertain a different way of doing things

Epicor is doing well for us now, but because WE changed. Not so much to fit Epicor, but we changed to fit the 21st century.

My point in saying all that is, I have no idea where other companies come from before migrating to Epicor, but perhaps their stories are like ours.

Epicor is cheaper than others. So it’s small companies that start out with Epicor as their first real ERP system (a guess). A company that has its act together already is probably larger and not looking at Epicor at all.

I think this is one of those things where the cause is not what it seems.

Beat me to it, but you said that better than I could have.

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I’ve always been jealous of anything running on IBM System Z. But I think that’s because if you actually have the budget to buy one you also have the budget to make sure it works.

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I’ll gladly add my unasked-for 2 cents to this…and tie to other comments as well.

I was an IT applications manager running a global implementation of PeopleSoft - a strong tier-1 application, completely web-based with plenty of tools to modify anything you’d wish…which is enough to get you into severe trouble when you decide the way you do your common business processes (order-to-cash, procure-to-pay etc.) outweighs the software vendor’s processes…and you decide to embark on a modification frenzy that makes upgrades an impossible nightmare - stranding you at an old release.

I led an implementation project here that moved us off Infor/MAPICS to Epicor - and the beauty of the project was our management team whole-heartedly accepted their lead roles as change agents; we changed business processes to adapt to the software, and not attempt to change the software itself.

This was a tremendous shift, and I give all credit to the team and our execs for understanding this project was a business project, NOT an IT project.

Having said that, I have been impressed by Epicor and their direction. In my mind, this application is really turning out to be a fully-featured, tier-1 application. We have seen our share of quirks, but the capabilities of dashboard creation to identify issues has helped us move to exception-based processing. I’m really looking forward to getting back to a web-based application, and getting rid of client overhead.

As for features, one I’d love would be for screen ‘collections’ to be DB view-based. We have several areas in generic Epicor applications where just one added date field (missing from a collection) would short-circuit a bunch of busy work.

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Upgrades are so easy I do 2 daily just for fun :slight_smile:

As for the implementation that is the absolute fault of the corporation… No Processes, shooting from the hip… no accountability and no buy-in from execs… and unrealistic expectations… and lets customize for the user and not the process… STOP!

If your CEO is not going to send an email that says “Support the project or get the F out” then you are already setup for failure because everyone hates change.

The Ultimate failure is “We want Epicor to do what our old system did”… (stay on the old system) :slight_smile:

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Change your Process first… before even thinking of changing the Software. And TRAINING TRAINING TRAINING.

We have some requests like “Warn if this field is empty”… WHY? Train the user and stop hiring folks from Craigslist who have no attention to detail, they have no business being Inside Sales Engineers.

Can you hide this checkbox, when we accidently click it - Cycle count includes 0 qty on hand… umm no… double check you have 2 eyes… its 1 form with 3 checkboxes… You will make the mistake once… :slight_smile:

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Probably a topic for a new thread, but I wish there was a built-in way to manage the “Save Defaults” on print forms. If the base form has a box checked that you don’t normally want checked, it’s easy enough to uncheck it and use Save Defaults. But what happens when someone else runs it with different “Save Defaults” settings.

I guess I want a dashboard that allows me to see the base settings, and the changes each person has saved as their defaults. Would also be nice to allow setting “Company Defaults”, to have a set specific to your compnay - which might not match the out of the box settings.

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Yes, doesn’t that make all the difference in the world?

I do believe E10 has opened up and improved things A LOT… for developers.
I’m not so sure the average end user has much love for any ERP systems.

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