Certinia ERP Cloud automates financial management on the Salesforce platform. The customer-centric ERP software includes a general ledger, automated billing processes, and financial intelligence.
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Oracle PeopleSoft ERP
Score 6.7 out of 10
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Oracle's PeopleSoft ERP (or PeopleSoft FSCM) is a software solution used to reduce costs by automating and centralizing global transactional processes and the enterprise entire supply chain. Oracle states they have extended support for PeopleSoft to 2034.
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.
You really need a big enterprise to take advantage of PeopleSoft. It is not entirely user-friendly, and it often requires massive amounts of customization to make it work for layers if you will. Business experts can figure it out, but if you are expecting someone to easily learn how to use the timekeeping modules without heavy customization, it's really not for you. You need to know going in, that this is not for a small business at all, and not even a medium-sized enterprise. It's geared to massive organizations that need to integrate business processes over geographic areas and multiple departments.
One of the best thing it does is it is customizable. You can implement any business logic you need. This is one of the very key assets of PeopleSoft Financials.
PeopleSoft Financials's accounting methods are in line with industry standards. You can use the process as is and ledger will be taken care of.
It supports multiple ways to integrate with other systems.
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.
PeopleSoft Financials does not address the needs of small organizations that do not have a large enough staff to maintain the software or utilize the features it provides as it requires a moderate staff to keep track of all of the transactions and processing
PeopleSoft licensing costs are significant, which are relative to the features provided but in many cases those features may not be necessary
PeopleSoft licensing structures can be frustrating at times when certain modules would allow you to perform the complex task needed but it would require the entire module to be licensed for just that one feature (e.g. Cash Management for loading bank statements in certain formats)
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.
PRISM is a great tool to track and watch numerous financial documents. I would like to see more of an integration platform that would control tracking for specific project details. There is currently only a little section for job notes which I would like to see improve. I think navigation could be improved, but isn't the worst compared to some platforms I have worked with as it provides a tree like structure on the backend which helps synchronize information together for fiscal financials.
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 am aware of better systems, but this is what the employer I work for has to offer. Overall, there are fewer negatives than positives so I would support the usability. New staff members can quickly obtain access and go through a 5-10 minute training video that we build in house. The speed at which someone can become a proficient user speaks to the usability of ePro.
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
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.
I can't give them a perfect rating because it does often take a long time and usually more [expensive] to resolve trying issues that cannot be solved by our in-house team. PeopleSoft is complicated, and the mix and match of user-created and stock modules cause problems very often. These usually require more customization to completely fix, requiring more money spent with
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.
I recommend that everyone pay special attention to developing a solid testing and training plan if you are even thinking of implementing PeopleSoft. Be ready to obtain good trainers and developers, otherwise, your journey can be unnecessarily painful and much more expensive. Try to stay with an implementation partner who really has your needs at heart, and actually takes the time to understand your organization!
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.
PeopleSoft is much more appropriate for large organizations than the software programs listed here. I'm involved in a project to bring billing and accounts receivable functions out of "shadow systems" like those listed here and into PeopleSoft, and PeopleSoft is more robust, flexible, and standardizable. We've found it to be an excellent solution.
Provides better controls to ensure that spend does not increase beyond the PO amount.
sPro reverse invoicing provides a mechanism to only pay our staff aug firms for only the hours that entered into PeopleSoft. There is no more reconciliation between the vendor invoices and the hours that were charged within the internal time tracking system.
PeopleSoft Financials increases employee efficiency through the use of dashboards and work centers.
