Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
3.7/5 (68 reviews)Pros
- very powerful and thorough functionalities for all manufacturing operations
- extremely good costing capabilities (all financial features are quite good, actually)
- can be customized to a great extent
- many tools for reporting and data analysis
- integrates with tools such as MES, bar code reader, is ready for EDI
Cons
- it's a bit more slow that I wish it were
- customer support is very bureaucratic, it takes from a couple of days to weeks to get any issue solved (to be fair, they do solve them)
- learning curve is steep. It's not that easy to use so people who are not tech-savy get a bit intimidated by this tool
- instruction manuals and help menu are only available in English
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Epicor is a mid-market software for companies that are under 100 employees (roughly) and more than 50 who need an ERP. Version 10 is by far the cleanest version. Given the choices at this size of a company's growth, it is a viable choice. Just be careful that the VAR doesn't walk you down a road to heavy customizations that get in the way of future upgrades and cost you yearly in re-working them when you upgrade or patch the ERP. Stick to custom reports, custom user screens, and use the Business Objects provided to interface with and all should be well.
Pros
Ease of use, E10 is cloud based, support (when in US) is good, Short learning curve, fairly flexible, highly customizable
Cons
Highly customizable tends to get pushed to overly customized which = a mini-new ERP project with every upgrade to fix broken customizations, VAR network: some are great, some not, support for down-rev version falls off quickly, plan on extended cost of ownership, import/export functionality is limited unless add-on products are purchased, Field Service module is the weakest link in the product.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Over the years Epicor (and former Vantage product) has grown from a simple Job Shop system to a full blown ERP powerhouse that brings the flexibility to address most any manufacturing or distribution company.
Pros
Built-in customization tools are very powerful - allowing detailed tailoring to company needs without direct coding. BPMs now allow excellent logic branching and very nice built in features such as email alerts. Publish & Subscribe dashboards are a great reporting option with drill down capability. Form customizations are also very easy. SQL Server DB is a big improvement over Progress and MUCH faster.
Cons
Reliance on SSRS for reporting - although Crystal Reports still works. Does not handle really complex BoM/MoM situations well for jobs with thousands of assembly levels and hundreds of branches or indents. Projects module isn't quite robust enough to be used for complex jobs/orders.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
We use Epicor to run a $5M machining business. The software allowed us to do almost everything we wanted with the exception of scheduling each machine accurately. While the software has a powerful scheduling module, because many of our parts were processed on more than one machine, we were not able to accurately reflect our actual process in their scheduling module. Standard reports were also lacking so we used Crystal Reports and created custom reports on a regular basis. The ability to easily create dashboards was great and allowed us to create screens that showed specific metrics that we wanted to monitor. Shop floor access was acceptable - allowing workers to log into/out of jobs, clock in/out, etc. on a daily basis. Overall a good package that can easily grow with a small company.
Pros
Ability to create custom 'dashboard' screens to see things that we want to monitor.
Extensive functionality for small to medium sized manufacturing companies.
Good shop floor usability.
Job costing provided real times access to allow you to monitor costs and flag overages.
Cons
Standard reports were ok but not great.
Scheduling module was not adaptable to our process - would have required some modifications that we did not want to spend the money to make.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
I've been using this system in some variation for 20 years. It has been great to see it develop into the great product we have today. Epicor seems to be committed to staying on the edge of emerging technology trends that can only help all of their customers.
Pros
Quote to cash navigation using the Open With functionality throughout the software, BPM wizards that allow you to do simple If\Then type triggers with no custom programming, BAQ functionality with subqueries, Education Courses, much easier path for version and patch updates
Cons
Application support desk for certain modules, debugging options for customization (compile) errors, training of some of support staff seems to be lacking. 50% of time I end up figuring out the issue myself and feeling like I'm teaching their staff.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Pros
The software interface resembles a Microsoft product which helps end users pick up the basics of navigation.
Epicor 10.1 represents a significant improvement over legacy versions of the software and performance is much better.
Cons
Support is poor. First line support team members are really just called takers and it is difficult to get to someone who actually knows the software and who might be able to assist you with the problem you are experiencing. Most times, it seems like the first line support tech's job is to find out if you have customized the software so that they can use that as a reason not to provide support, which is frustrating since the Epicor sales pitch emphasizes ease of customization.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Pros
you can control al you company with this software, from Sales to Shipments and billing, you can also control you shop floor (Manufacturing) know in what part of the process your finish goods are, inventory, wip, purchasing all your supply chain is cover with this software, very powerful tool.
Cons
Extremely difficult to setup, and not very user friendly, you have to open a lot of windows to get some information, MES tool is not very friendly user has to enter a lot of data manually if you want to control all your process, causing users not to feed the system correctly.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Pros
modular, you can add components to be what you want to use. The biggest pro is it has a really good BOM system for manufacturing - this is usually missed in ERPs
Cons
it is expensive, and there is so much customization you can do so it becomes difficult to use. I have also worked with a system that Epicor bought, the product support on that was not very good because they were phasing the system out. Would have been better to upgrade us as the customer so they could provide better support.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Recommended for growing manufacturers who are not sure just how large they may grow. This product scales well with best practices built in that will allow you to grow without adding people and overhead.
Pros
Easy to use. Very deep in functionality - you will likely be able to use the whole system out of the box.
Cons
Need to manage your scope for an implementation project - it is easy to take on more given the wide capability it has. Best to manage scope.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Pros
I like how you are able to customize things to the aspect of your company. The ability to make things unique to your own is a great feature. It's great for tracking inventory too.
Cons
There is always a problem with any update that happens. I do not like the ticket process because it takes forever to get a response and most times the problem could be solved in a few minutes instead of being dragged out for a few weeks.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Epicor buys up companies that can add value and functionality to the software, ever increasing the usefulness.
Pros
The ease to customize multiple areas and still be able to update the software without losing everything you customized already!
Cons
When you update the server, the client also use be updated. If the user doesn't have admin rights on the pc, this could be a problem. I've recently heard they fixed this in a future release of the software
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Consolidation program / process in Epicor still not working right after promises to be better in version 10.1. Excel Connect, as reporting tool, works well but lacks proper security capabilities.
Pros
Very configurable software which is both good and bad. Software has a lot of capability to flex to our needs.
Cons
Support and training for implementation was very poor, we kicked out 3 different consultants before we found one that could understand our needs and work with us. The initial assessment program by Epicor was a waste of time and money. The program management at Epicor also did not add much for the cost.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Pros
Flexible to your business processes. Stable application. Option of cloud and on-premise. Handles quote to cash without the need for a 3rd party financial package.
Cons
Weak technical support in the past, but we've seen improvements over the last few months. Responds well to outages, but if you require escalation for a non-emergent issue, you might wait a while.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Pros
Epicor has a ton of functionality and seems to be receptive to adapting to user customization. Provides a huge benefit for tracking multiple different things and works will in conjunction with other software.
Cons
Seems to be a little clunky and slow at times. It also can be hard to find information needed in the system on occasion.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
The attractiveness of an all in one software makes Epicor a real deal.
Customizations don't interfere with updates and a recently enhanced operating system provide the best of ERP.
Pros
Easy to update or customize to fit our needs
Cons
Needs better integration to send emails using internal functionality.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Pros
We were only ever able to implement the payroll part of this package. It worked great but was probably the worlds most expensive payroll solution.
Cons
We were never able to fully implement this solution. We met several times with consultants but were never able to get a concrete plan to train and implement.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Pros
You can only purchase the modules you need, which should keep costs down, but the modules that you do need are very costly. Good for a medium company 50-100 employees, but wouldn't recommend for a small company.
Cons
Implementation of the product was very difficult. It wasn't as easy to implement as other ERP systems. Maybe we were too cheap and tried to do more on our own without the help of training. Reporting was hard to figure out and complicated for the average Joe.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Pros
it is a very complete ERP software, it has a lot of great functionalities and very customizable it works great for manufacturing and purchasing
Cons
it is too expensive and the support it is really poor, you never get a real solution and it takes more than one call to get an answer. the support is really poor
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Epicor continues to make efforts to improve. No software is perfect, but Epicor is better than many
Pros
versatile- can do almost anything with the tools. It is useable in many different industries and levels of knowledge
Cons
Too versatile - just because you can do something with it does not mean you should. You should use help in configuring it.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Outstanding for the manufacturing world.
Pros
Epicor is very simple to navigate and understand. Bringing new people in and getting them up to speed is extremely simple.
Cons
Old version is pretty slow. The new version appears to be much faster. The support group still needs some work, however they are make progress.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Love the product, so easy to use, and has several 3rd party software that plug into it, making life easier.
Pros
Easy to use, Great Product Configurator, and company continues to move forward with new abilities, mobility!
Cons
Inventory module is a little clunky, doesn't make it easy to do inventory if you use phantom assemblies.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Overall a good product!
Pros
Easily customizable to your environment! Uses SQL Server as the database. Flows well with Microsoft products.
Cons
May need to adjust the stock reports. Support is challenging at times. Will require a specialist of sorts to manage.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
Pros
Easy to use, easy to train, very customizable to your specific business needs. Easy to upgrade as needed.
Cons
System has some bug as all systems do but we don't seem to be able to easily get fixes without waiting for full upgrade.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
My company thought we were moving up in the world. Our last system only did half what we needed and had a lot of bugs, but it was cheap. The sales team at Epicor really sold us on what this will do, told me I would not spend nearly as much time in the office and could be out running my company more. HA! I spend 3 times as much time in the office and still can't work this program half the time despite months of expensive training. And this program doesn't do half what the sales team said. We used to have hand written invoices we manually entered into QuickBooks. I would take that again over Epicor in a heartbeat. I don't even want my money back. I just want to convince my business partners to ditch this mistake! I wish I read more reviews. I have never reviewed ANYTHING online before but I had to for this.
Pros
Written for hardware stores.
Sales people really do their job well.
Cons
I am not a hardware store. This program is a nightmare. If you make a mistake be prepared to spend hours fixing it. Epicor's own help pages have fixes that do not exist in the program. This program has been overwritten so many times it makes no sense to use. Not at all intuitive. Incredibly expensive monthly support for absolute garbage!
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
We're a small manufacturing company that does mostly custom jobs for our clients. In 2005 we had been on our old system for almost 10 years. It was very out-of-date and pieced together of separate programs with little to no integration between them, necessitating multiple entries in multiple systems for the same order, using other tools like Excel & email to keep track of orders from module-to-module. In short, a very inefficient and human-error prone system.
We searched among the ERP vendors and narrowed it down to three, Epicor being one of them. We chose Epicor because of integration from Quote-to-Cash with fully functional accounting system, inventory management, order/quote management, job tracking, and shipping modules. We started on Vantage 8.0 and have upgraded twice since then and are now on their Epicor 9 product. New features and capabilities have been added to Vantage/Epicor 9 over the years making the product even better.
Our initial implementation took about a year. There were bumps in the road as always when doing such a major software rollout, but overall it was a pretty smooth rollout. The main thing is to look at the new system functionality and efficiencies in their flow and adapt our business to fit the system and not try and make the system fit our business. We had Epicor do some training onsite so our users knew how to use the system before rollout so it was not a total shock.
Comprehensive ERP solution for shops & small manufacturers
I believe Epicor is an excellent tool for manufacturing. I can not give it 5 starts really because of the time it takes to get an issue solved once it's placed with customer support. They have however, improved in the last couple of years now that they started using an online ticketing system, which seems to run a lot better now. Its reporting capabilities are amazing, for any module in the ERP. I do believe the experience is better for customers in the Americas than in other parts of the world, since there are a lot more experts, consultants, users, etc. in the States and Latin America than I've seen in Asia or Europe. The implementation is complex, so being paired with the right consultants can make it or break it - it really is a very good software!