Aptean Ross ERP vs. JobBOSS²

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 would recommend JobBoss to any colleague in small—to medium-sized manufacturing firms. Although I am not convinced that it will be able to handle advanced data from larger firms, it should be able to handle everything small—to medium-sized businesses require. JobBoss is great.

Incentivized

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

• Estimating is great once you learn how to use it, and it makes repeat estimates easier than ever.
• Time tracking is amazing for us. It has taken some time to figure out exactly how we want to use the tracking parts, but it's only because it has multiple ways to do the same thing and finding out what works best for us took some time.
• Billing and Purchasing are a breeze. The full package is worth the money to fully integrate the entire business into JobBOSS² since it can handle it all.

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

• quoting - limited functionality currently
• costing of jobs and parts - there is very limited information on how their calculations work and limited customization of costing. Most of the job costing or margin reports are inaccurate. Costing is a black box with Jobboss2 that doesn't allow you to better understand how they are calculating nor the ability to tweak the variables of those calculations to align their reports and models with the way your organization costs and prices jobs.
• Raw material inventory and resource tracking for jobs - we don't even use the raw material function because it's inflexible. When you quote raw material, oftentimes you ask for one size diameter of raw material...but the vendor may not have it and often the next best size instead. When/if this happens, you'd have to delete or re-add the raw material to jobboss2 and re-assign that size to every part that's used. You'd, in theory, have to have every possible size of raw material and every spec of raw material that you use in Jobboss2, and you'd still have to re-assign it all of the time to different parts when you couldn't find the ideal size of material. This is a huge gap.
• Automatically logs you out while using the platform, even with only one tab open. We'll be actively using jobboss2, and even within a minute of login, you click on a module of jobboss2, and it will ask you to log in again. Very frustrating.
• Inability to open multiple tabs in Jobboss2. We need to crossreference information all of the time, comparing inventory, last jobs routings & dates, and costs which we try to pull up multiple tabs in jobboss2, but it does not effectively allow you to do this. It's slightly possible, but oftentimes will log you out of your session as soon as you open a new tab.
• Blanket orders and consignment - Jobboss2 is ineffective at allowing efficient tracking of blanket orders or parts on consignment. There's no functionality for consignment tracking of parts as you try to track replenishment buckets.
• Customizable reports with more field and table selections - reports can be customized but only with the fields that Jobboss2 provides for that specific report. We need to link other tables from the database to be able to see the information that we need, and jobboss2 does not easily allow you to link a new table into reports to add additional fields that you want or need to see. For example, in Salesforce...you can pick specific tables that you want to link together and pull any field that you need. Jobboss2 only allows you to see the specific tables that they pre-built for reports. If you need another field that's missing on the report, you'd have to know SQL in order to add it vs. a user-friendly report builder that anyone non-technical would be able to use, which is standard in most other software platforms for ERP or CRM.
• material/inventory forecasting to plan when you need the next job - this is incredibly limited. We typically look out for 2-12 months to plan when we'll need the next lot for a particular part. Jobboss2 material forecast will only let you look at the next 4 months as 4 columns and then it groups any months beyond that into one 5th column. You should be able to set a specific time horizon (i.e. from today to 12 months out and see the stock level and orders needed for each of those next 12 months. As a result, we still have to use manual spreadsheets to plan our production and scheduling jobs.
• jobboss2 upcharges for most new features or modules that you want to add. For example, they've built reports that would be incredibly useful for the majority of their customers, but they charge to add one simple report because it's considered a customization.

Incentivized

Jobboss tends to have a very steep learning curve and isnt always useable for a lot of manufacturing staff. Buy-in to utilize the software was and continues to be a challenge as staff needs to track & input components so that info on Jobboss is up to date and reliable

It is extremely easy to learn and use E2 Shop System. It provides everything a manufacturing company might be looking for, starting from entering a new PO to shipping parts. Routers that get created from E2 Shop System also help track parts on the shop floor and is accessible from every where. E2 Shop System also now has an app, which is great when it comes to scanning router steps directly from your phone.

Incentivized

Have had no issues with availability

Incentivized

Have only had minimal issues with slow processing

Incentivized

The initial training leaves a little to be desired because it's done by people who know the generalities of the system. However, once you get into one-on-one trainings and tech support calls, they do a tremendous job in these aspects. They go above and beyond to make sure you get what you need.

Incentivized

Our trainer was very knowledgeable and helpful.

Incentivized

The videos and live seminars were helpful but not all were as in-depth as needed.

Incentivized

I assumed there would be more assistance from JobBoss for implementation of the software. I felt it was very independent on my part and I felt unsure a lot of the time

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 really didn't compare too many other ERP systems. Unfortunately, I was not involved in the decision at the time it was made. We used to have E2 but we were kind of forced into upgrading because E2 would no longer do software updates. Very fluent transition from E2 to JobBOSS².

Incentivized

Ability to add individual data collection seats instead of purchasing in bundles

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

• We have seen improved visibility of our jobs and on how we quote our products to our customers.
• It is nice to be able to see what is running on each station, who is running it and what part of the process the job is currently at.
• I also like the Data Collection module as I can see in real time what all the employees are currently doing.

Incentivized