Deltek's Ajera is an integrated project management and accounting suite for architectural and engineering (A & E) companies that includes light payroll functionality and also can integrate with third-party payroll providers (ADP, Paychex, Quickbooks, etc.). The product was acquired with original developer Axium in June 2014. CRM functionality can also be added via integration with the Deltek Ajera CRM.
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Oracle E-Business Suite
Score 8.0 out of 10
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Oracle E-Business Suite is a comprehensive suite of integrated, global business applications. The suite includes cross-industry capabilities spanning ERP, CRM and supply chain planning.
For small to medium engineering and architecture firms, Ajera appears to be the right size. Beyond the engineering software, Deltek Ajera has all the features a small to medium firm will need for smooth operation. AR, AP, Payroll, reporting, project management are all in one package. We chose to self-host because the licensing was more cost effective for us, but cloud hosting is also available.
Oracle eBusiness Suite is the best combination of CRM and ERP. Oracle helps us in managing the entire process of Sales and Marketing. The best feature is that it is highly user-friendly. We can easily manage the entire process of marketing from running a campaign to managing it and getting an interesting prospect than making a lead to making an opportunity by recording each and every conversation from day 1 to last day so that customer feels its valued by the company after that finally getting a business from the prospect.
Widgets are the best feature of Ajera. Designers can make tiny reports for the entire company, or for one or two individuals. These little reports are the first things that the employee sees when they log in. Viewers of the reports are able to filter, sort, group, print or export the widget without impacting the other users. Deltek has been releasing new features that allow the editing of data in widgets. You can now create new projects or edit timesheets from the widgets.
Credit card importing and credit card reconciliation in Ajera has greatly decreased time spent by administration. You can import credit card transactions from your credit cards. It saves on data entry, and it is easy to see what receipts you are missing when you get the statement.
Mobile timesheets and expense reports help engineers or other users enter their time and expenses as they are on the go. They can take pictures or receipts or submit their timesheet from home.
The Project Command Center is a one stop fountain of information. Everything the project manager wants to know about a project can be found here. You can also add custom fields that allow you to tract addition information.
The EBS Oracle Order Management and Shipping Execution solution allows the creation of an integrated, seamless order-to-cash process and accurately capture of customer orders across multiple channels.
Orchestration of order details for seamless fulfillment execution.
Efficient shipment planning and confirmation.
Communication of order status information to customers throughout the order lifecycle.
Because the application is working globally, it sometimes hangs and the connection is dropped.
It should have more shortcuts to make it easier to develop macros. I create many macros and use the "sendkeys" command in VBA, due to the lack of these shortcuts, it is not possible to automate the process.
For now I can not think of other areas that require improvement.
After almost 5 years, we have a full control of this ERP System. We are able to implement new functionalities and modules without any major "consulting" expenses. As of today we are making almost 90% of the personalization/customization and implementation all in house. Once [it] is tuned, [it] keeps running very well with no major issues.
The various forms - like order entry forms that allow the uses to enter sales orders and the ability to personalize the views based on end user needs - are easy to use and follow standard business processes. The new release has a big focus on usability and forms now have a familiar web look and feel which has increased usability considerably.
Because of the transactional nature of the system this software is available 24 X 7, and IT is responsible for making sure the system is available during normal business hours.
The performance of the product is very good. Given the transactional nature of the system one of the key focus areas for IT is to make sure performance is not affected for internal reasons. This can also depend on the server configuration and setup. For example, performance on Exadata machine is far superior to other Linux custom systems that companies choose to deploy. In general though, as already pointed out, the platform is now very stable and has few bugs. Whenever there are any issues, the cause is usually customizations that we have made to the platform, rather than out-of-the-box standard functionality.
In general, support has not been great - particularly standard (non premium) support . The main issue is that our IT staff has been using this platform for years and is very knowledgeable Whenever something goes wrong, we usually have a very precise idea of what the problem is. We are skilled at problem diagnosis. But the Oracle support process is very rigid and slow. Typically, we are required to go through a lengthy diagnosis process where they ask us multiple questions sometimes over several days and we are obliged to talk to different people with differing levels of knowledge. Since we already know what the problem is, we really just want a patch or a bug fix, but it takes days to get there instead of minutes. This can be very frustrating. This is a big part of the reason why we pay for premium support. But it's still a bit disappointing.
The key success factors for the implementation was project management, in-house expertise in IT and time. The implementation process started with the initial evaluation with the initial upgrade on a test system and mapping out the gaps and requirements. We did work with Oracle to understand the new functionality R12 had to offer and did another upgrade and researched solutions. With the use of software development cycle procedures there were conference room pilots with IT, business users. We then refined the project plan to the core key details, performed mock go-live implementations and finally upgraded the software. Overall, this was a very successful process.
The previous systems were essentially timesheet systems only with very basic accounting. It's mostly the accounting subsystem that made us select Ajera.
We explored Coupa, SAP, PeopleSoft, Salesforce. We chose Oracle based on value for money, features it offers and the easy availability of vast talent pool in the market. There are many trained Oracle product specialists readily available in the market. This helps us to tap experts when needed easily. Coupa does not have a Project Accounting module. SAP was too expensive. PeopleSoft is more catered towards to human resources software, while Salesforce is for CRM. Oracle has better financials and project portfolio management suite when compared to the competition and this what we needed.
