Birdview vs. Microsoft Dynamics SL

Each member of our team can choose their own view, so they can see only what is relevant to them. Plus, we can keep track of everyone's progress without bothering them. Our team loves that everyone can have a different view, so they see only what's important to them. In addition, we can keep tabs on everyone's progress without pestering them. The user interface has some nice quality of life features, such as the different views for different members of our team.

Incentivized

For a small to mid-size business, MS Dynamics SL is effective. We are capable of managing our finances with a very low risk of error. We have worked with MS Dynamics for almost 15 years and have more than doubled the size of our business in that time with very few issues from the program. We have exponentially increased our revenue and reporting demands and have found SL to be very dependable and stable. The program does have the occasional glitch and those are sometimes outside of the realm of expertise of our IT department. SL support is excellent, but their timeliness is not as urgent as ours.

Incentivized

• Easy Projects has a really nice UI. It's really easy [to] work there and make our projects easy to follow.
• Great support. A few times I had to talk with support about API connections and they answered me quickly and kindly.
• It's stable. I cannot remember a day when Easy Projects' platform [was] down, so it's really STABLE.
• Charts and reports are very easy to use

• Provides flexibility for complex project based cost accounting
• Strong and flexible allocation processer for cost allocations, markups, and pricing
• A "Flexible Billing" module under the project controller series that allows for multiple billing formats ranging from fixed price schedule of values, T&M or Cost Plus, and scheduled billing.
• Flexible reporting with options using Crystal Reports, SSRS, a Quick Query tool, and ability to tie into MS Office tools such as MS Access and MS Excel
• Tight integration with Financials, but also the ability to integrate with modules such as Sales Order, Inventory, and Field Service
• Customization abilities ranging from a VBA (visual basic for application) foundation to allow customizing existing forms to the ability to use the SDK (Software Development Kit) to build more complex customizations that integrate with Dynamics SL.

Incentivized

• Easy Projects has some problems when it comes to accessing the site via different methods/browsers. It is either very slow or never works on a tablet. It is not smart-phone friendly. And it stopped working for us in Firefox -- all we could use is Safari or Chrome (we are a Mac-based office).
• Easy Projects' email notifications are overwhelming. I turned them off completely since I was getting messages every time one little detail was added or changed.
• While the reports are great, they are somewhat hard to pull. It takes a lot of trial and error -- I would not say the reports are an "intuitive area."
• The biggest by far is what we fondly call "the screen of death." When you mark the last open task associated with a job as complete, a screen pops up that asks if you want to close the overall job, as well. The "yes" field is pre-selected, so if you are overzealous and click through quickly, it automatically closes the job. I don't know why they think this feature is helpful. We have so many staffers that complain they suddenly can't find their open job -- well, it's been marked completed and goes into the archive.

Incentivized

• Reporting in the Project module is lacking functionality. I understand that most companies have specific needs when it comes to tracking project information but the standard reports are not good.
• I would recommend a product like Management Reporter that is for Projects only. Project Reporter should allow users to pull in all Project related data into reports.
• Fixing suspended batches. Obviously all of us users have experienced this mess. SL knows what needs to be corrected and there could be some step by step fixes in a separate repair module to do the steps we do in Query Analyzer.

Incentivized

EP is great but could be better. EP has been a wonderful tool within our organization, it has helped us control expenses, resources, and the time needed to invest in each project, however when it comes to presenting reports and details it is a bit weak, there are more tools specialized in data visualization, and it would be good to make some kind of integration between EP and the other market alternatives

Unfortunately, Dynamics' lack of ability to smoothly integrate with our CRM system is causing us to look at other solutions. The efficiencies that we gain by using Dynamics for our day to day accounting are lost in the constant headaches of getting sales quotes to import properly into the system for invoicing. Another major issue for us has been budgeting and reporting. We currently do all of our budgeting and board reporting in Excel, which is too time consuming and inefficient, especially when a system as robust as Dynamics should easily be able to handle this relatively simple task.

Incentivized

EP is easy to use and adaptable, its menu is intuitive and the design is pleasant.

I rate it a 10 because we have removed the fields we don't need so users can really crank the data into the system. The software was designed for the professional services firm in mind but does a tremendous job for construction firms and "blended" companies that are both distribution firms but project centric as well. Perhaps they drop ship inventory to a project where their employees or subs need to work on a project for example.

Incentivized

We have had only one unplanned outage for 2 hours in the last 30 months. We shut down for 30 min to 1 hour once a month, but that is for Microsoft OS updates to the servers. Being a 24/7 world wide operation, the reliability is really important. We do get an 8 hour window on the weekend that we can be down for a short period to install Microsoft Dynamics SL updates, but we do not have many of those. On our last version upgrade, we shut the users out at 9:30 am and were fully operational in less than 6 hours. The upgrade was New SQL server, New SL server and 2 new Citrix servers.

Incentivized

In my personal experience, I only needed EP support once and the truth is that they attended me very well and very quickly, they helped me with what I needed, it was a question regarding the use of WebServices, they solved my doubt and then they contacted me another agent to verify that everything was resolved and if they could help me with anything else

Support is only used when needed, so unfortunately ,they get all the odd issues. It's a difficult business, but Microsoft and our firm do a great job of meeting customer needs. We get routine feedback that our support services are very good.

Incentivized

I am really satisfied with the implementation of EP in our organization, since it is a very useful tool in our day-to-day work

Just to let it take its course. The implementation for me once I became a part of my former organization was pretty seamless. Just get to know the basics and call the support team to ask questions if you need help on an issue, should they arise. They are ready, willing, and able to help!

Incentivized

East Projects integrates with other financial systems such as NetSuite and Compass, which allows a great financial view into the existing and future projects and overall financial health of our resourcing. Other systems, such as Wrike and MS Projects, just focus on project/task management, whereas this is a one-stop shop. It also allows us to manage internal resources.

Of the comparable mid-range ERP systems, Dynamics SL competes at the lower end based on price, but also above the high-end based on flexibility, data, and reporting. Being able to stay with the same core accounting from a $100 million dollar company to a $3 billion dollar company shows the range of capabilities.

Incentivized

Since the backbone of the database is MS SQLServer, the database can be easily scaled.

Incentivized

• Increased team collaboration improved the results significantly, because we managed to reduce the amount of time wasted on unnecessary iterations, therefore reducing costs.
• The reasonable pricing enabled us to enjoy the service we needed with with less impact on our budget than we've expected.

• More time is spent on manipulating reports which can and should be automated.
• Lack of electronic invoicing process and other green technology features creates more cost on printing and storage costs.
• The lack of a user friendly interface requires more training and a bigger learning curve for staff.

Incentivized