Is the upgrade worth it

No one can answer this question for you, you'll need to evaluate the pros and cons for yourself. When we upgraded from 6.1 to 8.00, we had a lot of reasons for change. The initial implementation of Vantage was extremely rushed due to new company acquisition and pending contracts. After a few years, it was clear things weren't working as they should. The system was a black hole, data were entered but only the bare minimum information could be retrieved. Reporting was limited to the standard reports and no one understood how to generate custom reports. Users didn't understand the full flow of the transactions and features went under utilized. Few departments were satisfied with the system and all were keen on improvement.

We decided to do a full reimplementation with a clean database. We performed a full business process review, paid for the Epicor training on the key people on the key modules, entered the data, tested the system, created custom reports, and reconfigured our processes in less than 6 months. We had an Epicor consultant to assist with the implementation.

After it's all said and done, I'd say we are much better off. Although I would only attribute a small portion of that to the actual software upgrade. Most of the gain came from the learning experience. That's not to say it was all smooth sailing or that everyone is happy but on the whole we are in a better position to deal with the problems.

A few random questions and by no means an exclusive list...

Are you completely satisfied with 6.1?

Does it meet all of your business needs?

If not, what issues are you having?

What works well, what doesn't?

When was the last time you did a business process review?

Are you drowning, just surviving, or are you thriving?

Can you afford to have your key people at least 25% dedicated to the upgrade process for the next 6 months?

What are the key features of the newer version that most appealing?

Are the key people in your organization ready for change?

Would an ERP upgrade fit in to your organizational goals and objectives?

Can you afford to spend the money right now?

With the problems you're having, can you afford NOT to upgrade?

And if you decide to upgrade, be careful on your version selection. We went 8.00 back in 2007 and we are still on that same version today (although we are patched up) and with no plans to upgrade in the near future (despite my best efforts).

Good luck,
Chris Clunn


--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, warren klug <pirateofthemagothy@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> I am seeing users with problems in 9.x related to performance and general buggy code. I am currently on Vantage 6.1. Can anyone provide valid reasons to upgrade to 8.x or 9.x? I can stick with 6.1 and have a sluggish system or spend a lot of time and money to upgrade to a system plagued with a new set of problems. I would like to hear from anyone that upgraded and try to determine if it is worthwhile adventure.
> Â
> Â
> Â
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
We are in the process of converting from Vantage 6.1 to Epiocr 9.05. After data conversion the opening balances for all our balance sheet accounts is showing as zero for the current fiscal year and previous fiscal years. I have run Rebuild Display GL and Verify Balances in 9.05 and this had made no difference. Transactions from one version to the other appear to be correct however. Has anybody else experienced this problem and if so how did you resolve it ?

Jill Ribbons
I am seeing users with problems in 9.x related to performance and general buggy code. I am currently on Vantage 6.1. Can anyone provide valid reasons to upgrade to 8.x or 9.x? I can stick with 6.1 and have a sluggish system or spend a lot of time and money to upgrade to a system plagued with a new set of problems. I would like to hear from anyone that upgraded and try to determine if it is worthwhile adventure.
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Â




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Not there yet, so I cant offer anything yet. We just got our first data pass/upgrade from Epicor to test, so I will let the group know how things go.

The reasons driving our upgrade were many, but the primary driver was to improve scheduling using the new modules (APS and AMM) and wanting to take advantage of the newer G/L ( although I'm not so sure we couldn't accomplish what we need to accomplish with the current G/L, but thats another story).


----- Original Message -----
From: warren klug
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2010 2:20 PM
Subject: [Vantage] Is the upgrade worth it





I am seeing users with problems in 9.x related to performance and general buggy code. I am currently on Vantage 6.1. Can anyone provide valid reasons to upgrade to 8.x or 9.x? I can stick with 6.1 and have a sluggish system or spend a lot of time and money to upgrade to a system plagued with a new set of problems. I would like to hear from anyone that upgraded and try to determine if it is worthwhile adventure.




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





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Sorry, originally responded to the wrong topic...

We upgraded from 6.1 to 8.03.408 and went live on Jan. 1 this year.
Although we definitely had some issues to work through immediately after we went
live, I will say that our experience went much more smoothly than a lot of the
posts I have seen in this group. I don't know if that was pure luck that we
picked a release that is more stable than some of the other ones or it could be
that some of the main bugs in .408 my be in modules or functionality we don't
use.

Now that we have been live for a year, I can't imagine having to go back to 6.1!
Now that we have begun to take advantage of the functionality gains using
customizations, BPM's and report gains utilizing dashboards, I would definitely
recommend an upgrade to anyone still on 6.1. Although, I'm sure there are plenty
of people out there ready to disagree with me based on their experience!

We avoided many of the data conversion headaches because we did not bring over
our data from 6.1. By not bringing over our data, it gave us the opportunity to
clean up much of the old set-up in 6.1 that was either incorrect or no longer
applied to our business. We still have 6.1 running and accessible if anyone
needs to access the archived information.

We chose to upgrade to 8.03 instead of going to E9 because right now we are not
planning on taking advantage of any functionality in E9 that does not exist in
8.03 and I was concerned about the usual problems that always seem to come with
implementing Epicor's latest & greatest. I am perfectly happy to hang back and
let others have the fun of upgrading to the latest as soon as it is available.

HTH,

Virginia Joseph
Deep Hole Specialists
440-543-8157



--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, warren klug <pirateofthemagothy@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> I am seeing users with problems in 9.x related to performance and general buggy code. I am currently on Vantage 6.1. Can anyone provide valid reasons to upgrade to 8.x or 9.x? I can stick with 6.1 and have a sluggish system or spend a lot of time and money to upgrade to a system plagued with a new set of problems. I would like to hear from anyone that upgraded and try to determine if it is worthwhile adventure.
> Â
> Â
> Â
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
It doesn't matter if it is worth it at some point you will need to replace hardware and software. Are you going to give up all the advantages and improvements in new hardware and software to maintain an old unsupported ERP system?
Good Day Terry:

You are 100% corect- theoretically; but after you spend months if
not a year hammering away at an implementation, it doesn't seem quite so
clear. But, the answer is still yes it is worth it because obsolescence
will become more of a problem every year.


len.hartka@...

________________________________

From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Terry
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2010 4:38 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Re: Is the upgrade worth it




It doesn't matter if it is worth it at some point you will need to
replace hardware and software. Are you going to give up all the
advantages and improvements in new hardware and software to maintain an
old unsupported ERP system?






This e-mail and any attachments may contain proprietary and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail or at 410-472-2900 and then delete the message without using, disseminating, or copying this message or any portion thereof. With e-mail communications you are urged to protect against viruses.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Does software go obsolete? How many of your PC's are running DOS 6.22?
Do you have any licensed copies of Harvard Graphics or dBase III+ ??



I still run Windows for Workgroups in my company. (j/k)





:-)



________________________________

From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of cooner_55421
Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2010 10:58 AM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Re: Is the upgrade worth it






> clear. But, the answer is still yes it is worth it because
>obsolescence will become more of a problem every year.
>
Does software really go obsolete?
I thought it just goes out of fashion.
Then the skills to work with it start drying up.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
I think the question was more about the worth of upgrading from V8.05 to 9, and we went from 6.1 to 8.03.305 and then to 9.04. And, 9.05 has now been out for 6 months or so, and is becoming more solid.

The big differences between V8x and V9 are the financials and the tools. the financials are completely rewritten in 9, and allow multiple books, lost of international accounting features etc. If you're not a multinational company, probably not a reason to move.

On the tools side, there are advancements in BAQ's, BPM's etc., and in 9.05 you have 'sizzle' like updatable dashboards. Any one of this may not be a reason to upgrade, however taken as a whole, you end up with a richer environment for customizations.

One thing to be aware of is that Epicor is releasing more an more features related to performance issues. For instance, Crystal is pretty slow and Epicor has announced the use of SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Service) and currently that doesn't mean they're abandoning Crystal, but if you are in a heavy reporting environment, this is a good thing to be aware of.

Lastly, you're wise to sit back and let others be on the 'bleeding' edge - however Epicor 9.04 is pretty solid, and there are more and more people live on 9.05. As usual, you should do the upgrade in a test environment and test test test. It's performance has everything to do with your environment, size of db, etc. Are there people happy staying back on 6.1 or lower? Absolutely. Windows 3.1 was fast and worked pretty well too. However, it gets harder and harder to find hardware that runs this stuff....

Jeff Glaze
No, it definitely is not only for SQL installations. With Epicor 9 came the
ability to replicated the DB from Progress to SQL and allow reporting to be
done on a separate server.

This feature is great because it does allow you to take advantage of SQL
Servers reporting capabilities which can go well beyond those of Crystal and
can be implemented much quicker as well. It can also allow you to offload a
lot of the work from the Application server out to that report server which
can help with servers that are a little bit slower.



-----Original Message-----
From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
cooner_55421
Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2010 2:54 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Re: Is the upgrade worth it

Hi Jeff,

>SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Service)
Just wondering if you have any more details on this?
Especially if this is only for SQL databases?

Thanks,

Bruce



------------------------------------

Useful links for the Yahoo!Groups Vantage Board are: ( Note: You must have
already linked your email address to a yahoo id to enable access. )
(1) To access the Files Section of our Yahoo!Group for Report Builder and
Crystal Reports and other 'goodies', please goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/files/.
(2) To search through old msg's goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/messages
(3) To view links to Vendors that provide Vantage services goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/linksYahoo! Groups Links
Jill,
you need to run the 'Verify Balance' out of the GL general operations
good luck
motty


--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, "bedford615" <jribbons@...> wrote:
>
> We are in the process of converting from Vantage 6.1 to Epiocr 9.05. After data conversion the opening balances for all our balance sheet accounts is showing as zero for the current fiscal year and previous fiscal years. I have run Rebuild Display GL and Verify Balances in 9.05 and this had made no difference. Transactions from one version to the other appear to be correct however. Has anybody else experienced this problem and if so how did you resolve it ?
>
> Jill Ribbons
>
Good Day Vic:

True, but you are talking real software. We are talking about ERP
software - and not just Epicor - all of them.

More important point is that support stops, and for ERP that leaves
you up the creek without a Patch..


len.hartka@...

________________________________

From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Vic Drecchio
Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2010 12:31 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [Vantage] Re: Is the upgrade worth it




Does software go obsolete? How many of your PC's are running DOS 6.22?
Do you have any licensed copies of Harvard Graphics or dBase III+ ??

I still run Windows for Workgroups in my company. (j/k)

:-)

________________________________

From: vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com>
[mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com> ] On
Behalf
Of cooner_55421
Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2010 10:58 AM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [Vantage] Re: Is the upgrade worth it

> clear. But, the answer is still yes it is worth it because
>obsolescence will become more of a problem every year.
>
Does software really go obsolete?
I thought it just goes out of fashion.
Then the skills to work with it start drying up.

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






This e-mail and any attachments may contain proprietary and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail or at 410-472-2900 and then delete the message without using, disseminating, or copying this message or any portion thereof. With e-mail communications you are urged to protect against viruses.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Good Day Jeff:

Have you written any UBAQ's ( updatable). They did not work in 500C.


601 was suppose to fix, but I have not tried then yet - did patch
last week.
They have limited usefulness since you cannot copy\paste, or even
change a bunch at one time since you have to answer some prompts for
each one.

We have now been 'trained' on all the tools. In the last Web-ex
training on Crystal we found that there is no way to do a Prompt with
wildcards except in Crystal. So nothing on 9.05 allows a wild card
Prompt\Search. This is a problem since best practice for speed is to
filter records as early as possible to reduce the amount of 'writing' of
the selected records. Big disappointment for me. I do not consider
"starts with" or "Ends with" a wild card.

We decided not to use service-connect because it seemd to
complicated to have a good ROI.

Sun is go-live on 11/1 on 9.05.601B



len.hartka@...

________________________________

From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of jglaze8582
Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2010 2:35 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Re: Is the upgrade worth it





I think the question was more about the worth of upgrading from V8.05 to
9, and we went from 6.1 to 8.03.305 and then to 9.04. And, 9.05 has now
been out for 6 months or so, and is becoming more solid.

The big differences between V8x and V9 are the financials and the tools.
the financials are completely rewritten in 9, and allow multiple books,
lost of international accounting features etc. If you're not a
multinational company, probably not a reason to move.

On the tools side, there are advancements in BAQ's, BPM's etc., and in
9.05 you have 'sizzle' like updatable dashboards. Any one of this may
not be a reason to upgrade, however taken as a whole, you end up with a
richer environment for customizations.

One thing to be aware of is that Epicor is releasing more an more
features related to performance issues. For instance, Crystal is pretty
slow and Epicor has announced the use of SSRS (SQL Server Reporting
Service) and currently that doesn't mean they're abandoning Crystal, but
if you are in a heavy reporting environment, this is a good thing to be
aware of.

Lastly, you're wise to sit back and let others be on the 'bleeding' edge
- however Epicor 9.04 is pretty solid, and there are more and more
people live on 9.05. As usual, you should do the upgrade in a test
environment and test test test. It's performance has everything to do
with your environment, size of db, etc. Are there people happy staying
back on 6.1 or lower? Absolutely. Windows 3.1 was fast and worked pretty
well too. However, it gets harder and harder to find hardware that runs
this stuff....

Jeff Glaze






This e-mail and any attachments may contain proprietary and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail or at 410-472-2900 and then delete the message without using, disseminating, or copying this message or any portion thereof. With e-mail communications you are urged to protect against viruses.


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

> No, it definitely is not only for SQL installations. With Epicor 9 came the
> ability to replicated the DB from Progress to SQL and allow reporting to be
> done on a separate server.

That's correct that Epicor 9 brings a way to replicate to SQL Server
but just to be clear, it's not free. You would also need Replication
Server if you want to take advantage of Enterprise Search as that will
not work directly on your Progress Database.

I noticed a support charge for Enterprise Search on our most recent
support bill (upgraded to premium) even though it's something we can't
use.

:-/

Mark W.
I thought I heard that the Epicor Replication product was available for
Vantage 8 and Epicor 9. Anyone out there know anything about it?



John



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