Cin7, headqduartered in Auckland, aims to make complex retail and wholesale simple with all-in-one cloud inventory, POS, EDI and 3PL. Cin7 allows users to manage sales channels, inventory, point of sale and supply chain in one central, cloud-based software. Cin7 offers integrations using third party logistics (3PL) interface and electronic data interchange (EDI), catering for businesses increasing trend to sell globally.
$295
per month
Epicor Prophet 21
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Epicor Prophet 21 is an ERP for distributors, allowing companies to manage their supply chain with one ERP, with industry-specific functionality, cloud-based applications to modernize operations, connected ecosystems to ensure visibility across the organization and AI-infused solutions to drive efficiencies.
Cin7 is great because a business can set up quickly without having to invest in hardware/servers, and the business does not need to be concerned about backing up data. Cin7 software is easy and intuitive to use. The pricing was competitive for cloud-based software that can be customized to each business. The software is constantly updated so a business does not have to worry about paying for updates or paying a large lump sum to purchase new updated software. However, Cin7 is able to increase its fees at any time. We experienced a significant price increase after 1 year. With purchased software, a business would not have to worry about unexpected pricing changes. Cin7 offers a useful integration with BigCommerce. Unfortunately, their own B2B website is lacking in features and ultimately not useful to our company. Cin7 does not provide the most useful customer service, as they only offer paid access to phone support. Most of our issue with the software were caused by updates in the software that were not announced, and they could only be fixed via email or tickets the next day.
Good for distribution organizations with warehousing. Can also support both Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable, although a more thorough Accounting package is recommended. Is strong when it comes to integrating bar codes and scanners, particularly for warehouse maintenance. Prophet 21 does include a basic CRM offering. However, it is very basic, and for any real Customer Resource management, a third-party tool is best (even recommended by Epicor.)
Onboarding could be improved. We worked with a programmer who was not as familiar with our business needs. Additionally, the person in charge of our onboarding was initially difficult to schedule time with until we reached out to a manager.
Cin7 occasionally makes updates to the software that causes the software to not work properly. For example, we would experience new errors on a CVS file import for products that had worked previously to the update. Additionally, our custom field implementations would be reverted to original and require set up again.
We experienced semi-frequent outages of the software. The software would not be accessible for up to 1 hour at a time. I believe they took steps to address this and reduce down time.
Prophet 21 could use better management tools for its own data. The database has a tendency to bloat and over time can grow exceedingly large without administrative intervention.
The UI can be cluttered at times and the windows tend to jump into focus or drop from focus when it isn't expected causing user confusion and data entry errors.
Branding on forms and the UI is almost nonexistent. Customizations of screen aesthetics and form layout options should be easier and not require custom programming.
I've used Epicor Prophet 21 for about 12 years (in various iterations). It started out as CommerceCenter by Prophet 21 then became Prophet 21 by Activant and then Prophet 21 by Epicor. So frequently, when a software company is acquired, it stops being great. That has not been the case with Epicor Prophet 21. Over the years they've been under Epicor, the product has just gotten better and better, with major extensibility enhancements and new mobile components coming online.
I don't believe there is much you can't do in Epicor Prophet 21. Some of the processes, though, are fairly rigid with customizations and would either need to be tailored for another approach or the internal process would need to be changed to match how Epicor Prophet 21 is designed.
When hosted locally, you don't have to worry about outages unless the power goes out and the battery backups fail. It can also be hosted in the cloud which is as reliable as your internet connection. There's really no concern for outages in the software by itself. Outages are controlled by external factors.
I do feel like there are some screens and reports that could be streamlined. Prophet 21 likes to load features all at once when going into a program but a quicker load time into order entry, for example, is worth having a little latency while a non-essential tab that doesn't get used very often is opened.
The Cin7 support team has never let us down, even if they weren't able to completely solve our problem. They are willing to have conference calls, video chats, whatever works to help fix your issue.
The support is some of the worst I've seen across all the 122 software vendors we work with. Everything is offshore and it is always vague answers, links to wiki's that don't apply, and when we pay for project support they charge $200 an hour for someone who works remote from Mexico to call you on a poor quality VoIP connection that isn't all that well trained and often doesn't have basic IT skills
The on-site training was great. I give it a 9 because the trainer was a chain smoker who had to excuse herself a lot to smoke. Kind of unprofessional. She was a very good trainer though.
I had a great time with the online training. Most of the online trainings were live which meant you had opportunity to interact with instructors. I liked trying to derail them by posting funny comments to the chat window. The only complaint I had about these is they weren't recorded for later use. Well, another complaint is that they were sometimes too short.
The overall implementation is smooth. Prophet 21 sends someone on-site for as many days as you need them to step through the initial implementation. Data conversion is the biggest trick. Make sure you get help with that portion of implementation. Also, be sure to offer plenty of training incentives to keep people coming back for more training. A little money spent up front will save you tons of headaches later.
As a wholesale focused business, we found Vend to be tailored to retail businesses. TradeGecko was well suited for our wholesale business, however, lacked the full range of capabilities that Cin7 offered (B2B website, POS). Fishbowl had many features that we would not need. OMS Office Master System offered the wholesale capabilities we needed, however, the software could use an update. Cin7 was a perfect balance in terms of features and pricing for our company.
I have not looked at them in detail, but have received a lot of positive comments through out the industry, we're on the fence in regards to viability of cloud based solutions, but from the information we have received it seems like NetSuite has developed a good solution for the industry.
Prophet 21 is very reliable. The database is robust and well designed. The application is also hard to break. If there's one feature I don't like, it's that they haven't accounted for the dreaded single quote. That's kind of the bane of Microsoft SQL's existence. They need to escape that character in every field that will accept it in the system. Otherwise, the system throws all kinds of errors and many times will crash.
