ACTouch Technologies Pvt. Ltd. vs. IFS Applications vs. M1

Not every Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System does not cover all the industry verticals and all the functionalities and requirements for a specific industry as built-in features. Although IFS Applications does not completely cover all the requirements and all the industry verticals, it can be implemented for any industrial company with minimum configurations and customization, which is very good when implementing an ERP system. Since it supports web and mobile versions of the application as well, the users ind it easy to use.

Incentivized

Implementation is by far the weakest link in the ECI/M1 process. Although the tool is powerful, the client is expected to drive the process of learning the tool, planning the meetings with consultants, identifying risks and making mitigation plans, etc. without any samples, guidance or assistance on the part of ECI. The tool is best suited to high volume, standard product manufacturers who build to inventory or to order without much variation. The shop floor routing and time tracking are straightforward if you can master the convoluted Unit Of Measure calculations. The tool is either hosted locally or accessed through Remote Desktop. Shop floor is web enabled but the main desktop for M1 is still a relay which makes connectivity a potential issue. Moving this platform to a truly web hosted environment would substantially improve connectivity and eliminate compatibility issues with Apple products

Incentivized

• Accounting
• Finance
• Complex Inventory

• Manage inventory counts. Good precision on quantities in and out, through shipping, MI, MR, and receipts.
• Job costing shows great details on labor, operations, and materials to be used. I wished that would do better in outside operations that would return, but we still think it is great.
• Ability to track changes (changelog), showing all changes that had in a particular place. Such as where, when, and by whom a line item unit price was changed in a PO.
• Link, traceability, keeping history. If done correctly, it is amazing to keep the history of a part/lot.
• The amount of user rights/customization is unbelievable. It can be hard to set up in the beginning, but it is great that you can give some very specific access to a user, and it is not (in general) as a package.

Incentivized

• Project Budget control other than Procurement
• Customer Advance settlement process should be Manual rather then Auto Adjustment
• IFS GSO Support should be more proactive

• Some of the functions are pretty detailed - and so they take a while to generate screens and pages in reports.
• We actually use it for 2 companies we own - and it would be nice if the inter company communication was a little smoother. It's hard to share some data, and not everything is possible to be shared.
• Customized reports need to backed up before any updates to M1 or they're lost. It seems M1 overwrites the report folders everytime you run an update - so you have to keep track of what you've changed in Crystal Reports and restore it.

Incentivized

In overall, the companies get many advantages, where we can forget most of the things which can be considered for room for improvement. The user interface is good. It supports mobile versions an has several mobile applications for specific areas with Android, IOS and Windows versions. It allows several deployment options such as remote hosting, IFS Cloud hosting and on-premise hosting of the servers. IFS Applications can be easily and safely integrated with other systems.

Incentivized

Because it would be helpful if ECI would provide better documentation, communication and workflows to understand how each field interacts within the system and how each of those touch other areas within M1. It would also be useful if ECI would provide prescheduled training for how to customize things with M1 through Design Studio

Incentivized

We have been unable to get answers to our questions, solutions to our problems, and they don't seem interested in working in the construction industry.

Support has been great and timely

Incentivized

Microsoft AX, QAD (in continuation of our previous ERP), Sage X3 was an out of the box ERP that was part of initial RFP. We have chosen IFS based on the compromise between costs & budget, functionality, technical features, and feedback from similar customers that gave their feedback. The project manager team and qualification level of technical or consultant teams were differentiating factors too. Finally IFS application was named in the Gartner’s mid-market ERP Magic Quadrant, along with SAP, and helped us to finalize our choice

Incentivized

Our customization requirements were not that high and based on a price/cost benefit M1 was the winner. SAP was considered but the upfront costs and challenging learning curve together with the lack of flexibility in the SAP HANA public cloud version made the M1 choice more natural. SAP Services is usually more expensive compared to M1.

Incentivized

• Positive impact in terms of global process alignment.
• Positive impact in terms of a single system of truth and reporting.

Incentivized

• Time savings having to only enter certain information once and have it follow through the entire order process from quote to cash

Incentivized