Certinia ERP Cloud vs. IFS Cloud

For accounting systems, users and/or evaluators often want to see some type of matrix or "heads up" comparisons of specific features and functionality of a system in key areas such as: 1) General Ledger 2) Order to Cash cycle 3) Purchase to Pay cycle 4) Cash management 5) Inventory and/or Cost Accounting (Projects/Jobs, etc) 6) Revenue Recognition 7) Fixed Assets management 8) Budgets 9) Tax 10) Reports and Analysis It would be great if this kind of matrix existed to be filled in by reviewers so that others could benefit from their perspectives about the applications and how they address or handle the specific features/functionality. With respect to FinancialForce, the company has found that nearly all the key features it needed were available from the application.

The IFS Cloud has well suited to keeping track from beginning to end and engages from the internal team to the external team very well. It takes everything with them and helps them to grow at a wide pace. It creates a systematic workflow process which helps in achieving the goal more fast and friendly environment

Incentivized

• User interface is more modern and user-friendly than other software
• Dashboards allow for good visual interpretation
• Reports are able to be customized to better fit users' needs

Incentivized

• Integration with other third-party application is easy and reliable
• Product documentation is easy to follow for the new users
• Web-based product

Incentivized

• Since SalesForce was not made with accounting in mind, building FinancialForce as a module on top of SalesForce gives problems because the overarching architect of SalesForce cannot facilitate all the accounting requirements.
• The FinancialForce integration team was not very good, and did not help us set up our FinancialForce very well. Their customer support is also lacking and takes a long time to respond and troubleshoot our problems.
• FinancialForce doesn't actually build financial statement reports. We were only able to run a trial balance, and we had to build the statements ourselves in Excel.

Incentivized

• Easy options to upload data from excel to IFS Cloud
• AI capabilities
• Better help functionality

Incentivized

The company has now converted its legacy, "home grown" operations system and built it on the force.com platform, and the integration between it and FinancialForce is deeply entrenched. No other application would be able to replicate this functionality, and the company will be able to scale and leverage the force.com platform as it grows.

Change management is always an issue, but the evidence of the application's usability is that both long-time employees (used to the legacy systems for many years) and newer employees have been able to learn the system and improve their business processes.

I will give a full rating to this software as it has helped me in achieving the Goal faster than expected and has created a systematic work flow that helps us to increase our work productivity and have track of each and every section. It has one product that changes your organization's environment better to perfect.

Incentivized

Unless the internet is completely unavailable - which has not happened yet - the application is always accessible. Since FinancialForce is built on the force.com platform, it's uptime is tied to Salesforce security and system performance standards

If Visualforce pages are enabled, they sometimes slow down the load time.

The response time for FinancialForce is exemplary. Immediate acknowledgement of the support request by automatically logging a case/ticket on the provider side, then less than 24-hour follow up by a support team member with specific questions, information or resolution for the issue.

IFS Support for IFS Cloud product has different levels of support agreement with the customers, including 24*7 support service for the product. Since the customers have the option of selecting IFS-managed cloud for the implementation, all of the responsivities for maintaining the managed services can be handed over to IFS.

Incentivized

Through its Xtra login website available to its customers, FinancialForce offers a complete set of online, video tutorials, training and documentation. Each tutorial is "bite-sized", meaning it imparts instructional, step-by-step information in 2-3 minute narrated videos. For a particular cycle or process, like invoices to payments for example, each tutorial builds on the last so that the user can get a complete picture of the steps and process in less than 10 minutes.

The company decided to run parallel for three months in order to soften the impact of the change from the legacy "system" - which users had been interfacing with for over a decade - to FinancialForce. While not recommended, this did provide time for the in-house "super user" team of 2 people to become completely familiar with the application, and thus provide hands-on training and be a resource for the users who would be processing the daily accounting transactions.

FinancialForce Subscription & Usage Billing has more features, more useability, and manages higher numbers of customers. The systems I have used in the past are easier to navigate but couldn't handle this number of customers.

Incentivized

IFS Cloud is an upgrade of IFS Applications. IFS Applications solution is under extended support and would eventually be replaced by cloud solution in coming years.

Incentivized

• Beneficial to easily be able to track impact of fluctuating currencies.
• Integration with Salesforce.com reduced/elimintated manual entry which saves various colleagues time.
• Increased visibility over the entire sales cycle because of the integration between Salesforce.com & FinancialForce Accounting.

Incentivized

• Reduced the time taken for the users to prepare and generate reports since most are automatic with IFS Cloud
• Increased the reliability and visibility of the inventory of the products from procurement of raw materials through the manufacturing of final product to delivering to customer's place
• Took a considerable time configuring the roles and access of the users while implementation

Incentivized