Aptean Ross ERP vs. Infor VISUAL

Ross ERP was designed for and excels in process manufacturing environments. It is best leveraged in companies with strong management support for technology with a strong understanding of the business and manufacturing processes and a willingness to engage in the design and operation of the system. It is less suited for organizations looking for cut and paste solutions that don't' require input from the users and management. It is whatever you make of it.

Incentivized

I struggle to identify a scenario where VISUAL is an appropriate solution. We used VISUAL because it was a legacy system and the cost/complexity of changeover seemed daunting. The user interface is poor as is the interconnectedness of the various screens and menus. This might be an acceptable piece of software for a continuous manufacturing environment with little variation of basic design, but we have had to write multiple add-on macros in order to get VISUAL to work effectively for us.

Incentivized

• Management short-dated ingredients FIFO.
• Ease of pulling past production material handling information.
• Managing of inventory needs MRP.

• Infor Visual has a standard way of addressing business operations: sales orders, invoicing, reporting. It is easy to train operators used to using a manual or other ERP system.
• Material control is easy for production runs, R&D material lists and repairs. The process of receiving, issuing and returning material to inventory is facilitated by standard interfaces that are easily learned by material control operators.
• Engineering changes to bills of material are facilitated by the "engineering Master" flexible editing capability. The version control for the BOM's can be as detailed or vague as the process designed dictates. One item of a BOM or the entire BOM can be changed quickly and approved for production that day.

Incentivized

• The user interface is under constant improvement, but its a difficult balance between flexibility and ease of use. They have made great strides in recent releases, but have room to grow.
• Built in reporting and analytics. Again, they are making great improvements over the last several releases, but have room to keep improving.

Incentivized

• VTA has been extremely unreliable. I would not recommend it. It is not customizable at all. There is no logical way to handle shift differentials which is a huge issue with a company that runs 24/7.
• If you do not have a schedule set up, they cannot clock in. This poses a problem for anyone that gets called in on a shift they don't normally work on.

Incentivized

Good Technical and Customer Support during and after implementation tasks. Good Project Plan and Management support for implementation and post implementation. Financial functionality could be more comprehensive particularly with Budgeting and Cash Management. Inventory Management capability was adequate but could be more comprehensive as well. "Out of the Box" functionality was adequate but requested add-ons and enhancements seemed to be a bit pricey.

Because of use cases and easy implementation and the vertical and horizontal scaling.

Incentivized

As we have seen the live environment and the use cases where we implement.

Incentivized

Could have used more hands-on approach. There are multiple webinars and information sessions but until you actually use the system, these are not very helpful.

Incentivized

Ross by and far has the most features and support for what is out there. Where most ERP systems everything is add ons, Ross builds those for the most part directly into their applications

We unfortunately did not evaluate any other ERP software. VISUAL was a legacy system and we determined that changing systems would be too difficult, and not cost effective. We reached out to our local VISUAL rep who knew how the software functioned, but not how to apply it more appropriately to our business model, so we continued on with what we had rather than looking elsewhere.

Incentivized

• I don't have hard numbers on ROI. For our business, ERP is a requirement, and Ross has excelled at meeting those requirements. We have nearly doubled the business, with perhaps a 20% increase in headcount managing those orders and invoices. We would not have been able to do that without the efficiencies of process we gained with Ross.

Incentivized

• I cannot comment on business impact.

Incentivized