Acumatica vs. Viewpoint Spectrum

I'm so new to it. I mean it has a lot of capabilities. So I'm used to working with Infor products, so I'm used to large ERP systems and I haven't seen anything that makes me question Acumatica. It seems like I can customize anything and have the system to do what I need. So I mean that's one advantage point why we selected Acumatica is because it can be tailored to our business and to what we need and the way we want to do it

Incentivized

The Installation team is amazing. They provide clear guidance at the beginning of the process regarding what is expected and what needs to be done. The implementation manager follows up monthly with you to make sure you are on track and if you need additional help. They are very helpful and responsive in resolving issues.

Incentivized

• Streamlines our processes and simplifies our systems. Previously, we had to manage two software systems to handle an order and get it out the door with proper shipping documentation. Now, we were able to deploy the shipping document creation inline with the sales order process and streamline our process. This allows us to save about $3K a year just on time savings alone (in creating shipping documentation). This was a nice win for us for this project.
• Financial Reporting is simplified and flexible for our needs. We are estimating a time savings of around $14.5K per year in time spent creating reports through manual manipulation. The reporting capabilities are much more flexible and allow for greater visibility than our previous ERP.

Incentivized

• Job Costing - Viewpoint Spectrum handles job costing per project, per work order, per site, and gives us an up to date analysis of the project.
• HR - helps to keep all of the training certifications and HR incidents in a consistent and manageable order for all Managers to use.

Incentivized

• Manufacturing suite. You have all the time. So for the Manufacturing edition, you're able to have negative issues that are unlimited and are not balanced into a job that needs to be improved. The mobile app itself for warehouse picking and management sets the default item to one. This is not how most warehouses that I've ever worked at operate. Bomb hierarchy and respectful of child elements. These are nitty gritty elements, but these are kind of down-and-dirty items that need to improve. But overall it's pretty good.

Incentivized

• Support isn't readily available. You can submit a ticket and wait days before it's picked up. Even critical issues (system outages) can wait an hour or two before someone responds.
• Large companies will feel limited. This product wasn't designed to handle large amounts of data, and performance seems to slow when there are more than 80 concurrent users.
• The new developments are limited. HR Management is less robust than a third-party product specializing in HR Management. Viewpoint Analytics is nowhere near as robust as Power BI or Tableau.

Incentivized

We aren’t going to switch at this point! It’s a great system and we are looking forward to realizing the full potential of the system once we can find a VAR who has a bench that can support us.

Incentivized

The product is working for us and the cost to implement a new system does not warrant the expense.

Incentivized

Most "things" are intuitive which makes the software nice. A few other "things" make no sense and come from a programmers mind, not a users experience.

Incentivized

There's a little bit of a learning curve, but once you've been working in the system for a while, it becomes second nature. I would say that out of all of the other software that I've personally used, Spectrum has been the easiest one to pick up and learn quickly

Incentivized

I've never seen Spectrum down

there have been some performance issues

Incentivized

For the most part the product is very reliable. Since we are hosted we sometimes have connectivity issues but I would say that is more our ISP than Spectrum.

Incentivized

We used Acumatica Support directly for the first year or so. Overall it's pretty good, but sometimes the support staff wasn't educated on the customizations we had, nor was I as the Customer as I couldn't remember which things were customized and which things were out of the box, so when there was an error, there were some misunderstandings.

Incentivized

The support has recently changed. Last year, you could call in and get an immediate response. Now that doesn't seem possible unless you have an urgent situation with access to the software, payroll or payables. I have found that using chat or e-mail works nicely for the most part, but sometimes I feel it would be easier if someone from support would jump on our site and take a first-hand look rather than going back and forth

Incentivized

Our trainer was excellent and navigated the time zone differences expertly. She gave us test assignments to complete and was available for questions at any time.

Incentivized

I'd say the partner selection is critically important. I think the software is very easy to implement. It's very customizable to your business. Finding a partner that will work with you to understand your business and your needs is the critical piece to make sure that the system goes along with it.

Incentivized

My only insight would be to take time in your implementation and training process; ours was six weeks from start to finish.

Incentivized

Well, we decided to go with Acumatica and I believe it was a really good decision. The VAR was a big part of that as well because of their insights and knowledge, but I just felt Acumatica was the right fit for us in size and it had the capabilities we needed, but it also wasn't overkill.

Incentivized

I have previously used Sage Masterbuilder, another construction industry software. This has been a number of years ago. The company I am working for already had Spectrum and have been using it for as long as it has been around when it was known as Forefront. Based on conversations I've had with the personnel that were here at the time of purchase, Spectrum clicked off all the boxes they were looking for.

Incentivized

You can grant user specific access which is nice. Project managers do not need all the same modules as Accounting. But Accounting does need access to PM modules as well

• Definitely positive because we're able to give data to the end users much quicker. Were they able to make more accurate and timely financial decisions and kind of know where they're at, and how much money do I have left to spend for the month? Things like that. And our CFO is able to utilize the data more quickly.

Incentivized

• [In my opinion,] it takes at LEAST twice as long to do our jobs now.
• [I feel like] we are paranoid about something not being printed correctly because of [what I believe are] buggy text fields.
• [In my experience,] we still have to refer to a physical file cabinet with paper, even though a main point of switching was to go paperless.
• [In our experience,] screens can now be "locked", so we can't see something if our coworker is also looking at it.
• [I believe that] the financial hit our company took from this switch was astronomical. [In my opinion:] Beware!