Aptean Made2Manage ERP vs. Microsoft Dynamics 365

For parts sales, M2M is not a good program. There are too many glitches that happen between the sales order process and the shipping process. At the same time, we have to work with outside vendors to make certain functions work in the program. Or it has to work outside the program and communicate back to the main software. Way too clunky.

Incentivized

Provides our company access to manage and customize the folds tailored to our needs. We needed to have certain paragraphs on certain paperwork per customer. MD 365 has those options to customize where needed and remove when not. The system is easy to navigate, and training can be done in a matter of days, even without prior knowledge of the system or similar systems.

Incentivized

• Made2Manage has been consistent since I began supporting it in terms of data input and the user interface.

Incentivized

• Best to use for AP - like in our organization, there are plenty of AP bills, so with Dynamics, we can quickly enter the same into the Excel utility, which means CSV-based upload, and then we can easily upload the same to the software. It's a time saver.
• Best for Bank reconciliation - MS Dynamics makes Bank reconciliation easy. Banks can easily sync with software and easily get reconciled.
• Generating invoices to customers and directly sending them to their inbox is easy with this software.

Incentivized

• The management interface for users is not straightforward.
• Managing permissions for users is difficult outside of copying permissions.
• It still has lots of issues that can cause significant downtime.

Incentivized

• Small learning curve, obviously. You won't figure this out in a day, a week, or even a month. But given time, you can learn to be an expert. Or you can always get a consultant or hire in somebody. But learning the tool isn't out of the questions by any means.
• Licensing can be confusing at times and isn't cheap, but it is cheaper than Salesforce. Plus no additional fees for data calls to better integrate your D365 CE data with other systems.
• The Classic user interface left a bit to be desired, but now with the much-improved Unified Interface, the web client and the mobile client look the same, much more modern, and have more flexibility and power behind them for customizers as well.

Incentivized

I am not in the decision making group any more for this product. When I was, I along with many other managers, voted to go with a competitive product software vs re-subscribing to Aptean for this product. We were convinced by certain parties at our work that the new product was head and shoulders above the old product. While they freshened up a few things and there was an increase in some functionality areas, it was still tired.

Incentivized

CRM has allowed us to keep all of our data in one place that is easy for all users within the company to view. I came into the company after they had been using CRM for about 4 years. They have all said that since we have used this it has helped us control work processes better, it has allowed us to be able to track things so much better, and has been something that has helped unite many processes that used to be all over the place. We are currently using CRM 4.0 and are planning on upgrading in the next 18 months to the 2011 version. Support for 4.0 is almost all but dried up. Understandably so. Some of the customization we have done, and a plugins we use, are now contained within the 2011 version so we are looking forward to that upgrade. We use an email marketing company as well, and they primarily support the 2011 version, but their product connects and is integrated within CRM. This is a great benefit as well so that all of our marketing information can be contained in one location.

This software is not user-friendly nor easy to train on. I train people for various departments and had argued for the company to go with another company. I was not alone. When the time came for us to do an upgrade (necessitated by the advent of Windows 10 compatibility issues), a number of managers at our organization wanted to seek out other vendors due to the difficulty in training people to use the software. Then have to deal with so many of the user issues and lack of functionality created by the need for using an outside software programmer to bring in software that interpreted what M2M was doing and then translate it back into the program so that we had an end-user solution. This software should be robust enough to do it all. It is not. I hate to be so negative about it but anyone that has spent as many years using this software as I have should find something good to say about the platform and I struggle to do that. I had asked for the warranty section that would tie into the return authorization process. I was told it would happen. It didn't. Bad karma.

Incentivized

The usability is easily adopted for users familiar with other Microsoft products. Dynamics 365 has several interfaces that cross over browsers and tablets. These multiple interfaces will be phased out and updated to a single unified interface eventually to provide the same usability across all devices. The backend configurations is slowly improving with the introduction of PowerApps compared to pre-D365 Online versions

Incentivized

I go back to the warranty segment of the program to help track expenses that were generated by returns and zero-dollar sales orders to resolve customer issues. I feel like I was lied to by the company. They said they would have it in there on the new release. They told the purchasing manager it would be on the new release. The purchasing manager assured me it would be on there. They even showed 'warranty loading' on the screen when you signed in. However, there was no additional component of the return material authorization process for warranty adaptation. I even challenged our upload team about it and they had no answer. It does a few functions well but in my personal experience, buy something else.

Incentivized

Our partner, Ledgeview Partners has been FANTASTIC to work with. They are always timely in their response and have taken time to understand our business and our specific needs. We've made a lot of advanced customizations and they have been a great help in making those updates.

Incentivized

The actual implementation was no worse or better than other software updates. There were days of pain and additional training helped overcome a lot of the learning curve associated with that. However, that training came from our own internal staff vs anyone from Aptean.

Incentivized

We used a data warehouse to house our data, and our IT team and implementation vendor worked diligently ahead of time to construct idea implementation plans. Out of millions of records- we had less than a dozen errors, which is remarkable. My major insight is simply having a group of completely devoted individuals working towards your goal who fully understand the desired outcome. Focused resources for implementation season are critical to success.

They worked in a similar manner. I was not an admin when I used Oracle though.

Incentivized

Microsoft Dynamics was part of a system overhaul for a local school, and we looked at many products. If we had used it for a company with low turnover, then it might have been more feasible. They needed something a new person could learn quickly, someone who might also be learning marketing terms at the same time - especially if there is nobody to train the individual now expected to know the system. Similar issues occurred with all of these programs (we called it being too big for their britches), and one of the bigger things we liked was that it is more compatible with MS Office products in both technical and visual appeal. If you have a steady employees who use a CRM consistently, low turnover, and those who are very familiar with Office products, Dynamics would be the smartest option for you. Unfortunately, this was just not true for the school environment

Incentivized

On our purchase, I'd been interrogated about our usage. Our needs are met by Microsoft Dynamics 365, which is simple to use. With so much data and information available, we must ensure that it is presented correctly to managers. Due to a lack of use, we don't have to spend as much money on Salesforce.

My company's preferred program right now is Microsoft Dynamics 365. We use it to keep track of customers and important sales metrics in a streamlined manner. Anyone familiar with CRMs will find the tool extremely useful. Considering that we have a good turnover, this product will be used for its basic segments. As a result, there are few chances of error with Microsoft dynamics because it is so easy to use. Many options for recording data on these leads are available. It meets our needs and pays off.

• I came on board after M2M was implemented so I'm not sure how it has changed from previous software. However, I do know it has the ability to grow with the company.

Incentivized

• For those without a centralized, all in one solution for major HR, Finance and other departments, Microsoft Dynamics 365 has vastly improved employee time utilization and profit.
• Migrating clients from on-premise to the cloud has reaped benefits including better security, no unscheduled downtime and frequent updates to functionality.
• Those transferring from cheaper solutions have lost money in the aim to be better integrated with other Microsoft products and AI they don't really utilize.

Incentivized