Benchmark Estimating Software vs. Sage 100

I have used it for bulk earthworks, for roadworks, stormwater drainage, sewer reticulation, water reticulation, and associated works. It's easy to use a process called subcontractor manager to get multiple sub-contractor prices into your estimate for quick comparison, then pick the one that you really want to use in the estimate. It also has a process called auto allocation which can almost fully automate your estimating process, bringing in Items from the library that match the items in your bid. Haven't found a scenario that it's less appropriate, it all comes down to how detailed you set up your initial item library and resource library.

Incentivized

Sage 100 has been well suited for running the monthly accounts receivable and accounts payable aging reports. This helps us track our accounts that need to be collected and payments that need to be made. Our field operations team has been slow and unwanting to adopt the Sage Field Ops just because they're resistant to change and technology. It's less appropriate for really detailed accounting reports spanning for long periods of time with all accounts because it takes a very long time to run and process.

Incentivized

• Progress Claims
• Standard quotes

Incentivized

• Simple to implement and use. Operation very intuitive so new employees are quickly trained.
• It is very flexible with many modules and many features allows for easy customization to suit particular needs of any department or company.
• Context sensitive help, training and support make it easy for a company to operate with out a lot of additional outside tech support.
• Scalable plenty of room to grow as the business grows without being bloated.
• Pricing is very reasonable.

Incentivized

• I haven't found anything yet. Benchmark is constantly evolving and adding new processes, I believe it keeps up to date with what it's users want.

Incentivized

• Sage 100 at times will simply not connect to our server, we get remote support & all is well but, that issue tends to happen 2-3X a year.
• Other than the above, I really can't complain. Coming from a more custom U.V. type database that used a whole bunch of codes to navigate, I think Sage 100 is 10x easier to use.

Incentivized

I would put this out to bid, if I were at the same organization. There have been a lot of improvements and changes in enterprise software and my preference would be to find a good web-based or cloud-based tool. Lower overall cost of ownership and improved efficiency would be my target criteria for a rebid of this.

Incentivized

Overall Sage 100 has been pretty user friendly. If we have a question on anything, we are able to contact our implementation rep who helps us right away. Some of the Sage Field Operations may not be as intuitive for our field personnel to use. I wish the reports ran faster so that we could run and put together many reports quickly at once.

Incentivized

The support guys were always helping and sorted out issues we had very quickly.

Incentivized

Sage Support is very good. I usually get a person on the phone in a short time frame and usually get my issues fixed in one called.

Incentivized

We had an advantage in implementing the tool in that our director of Ops had been part of the team implementing the ERP for other users so we knew what to expect and were able to avoid a lot of the challenges people sometimes face with implementations. However, the process still took far longer than desired.

Incentivized

I have always found that Benchmark allows for a more rapid compilation of the estimate through the library system. It can also allow for easy duplication of an estimate for a second stage etc, using the original rates in the resources, or at a click of a button, reverting to updated resources from the library. I have found that other systems rely on a great number of spreadsheet type operations that can easily be changed in the estimate and can lead to errors if copied to another estimate.

Incentivized

I didn't choose Sage 100 ERP -- it was already in use when I started at the organization over five years ago. It has the same types of pros and cons as other big hulking software suites meant to power the infrastructure of corporations. It's slow, tough to customize, and doesn't connect well with other software. It does bring all the information into one place, which is great

Incentivized

• Benchmark has created standardisation in quotes and tenders.
• Created standard progress claims.

Incentivized

• Sage 100 overall had a very positive overall ROI for the business. All users were making decisions based on the same information and valuable time was no longer spent trying to analyze data from a number of sources.
• Moving the warehouses to using Sage 100 reduced the operating expense of the distribution side of the business by 5% on an annual basis (~$100K).

Incentivized