Deltek Vision is enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for project based companies.
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Epicor Kinetic
Score 7.4 out of 10
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Epicor Kinetic (the name of the former Epicor ERP) presents a wide feature breadth, customizability, and scalability, typical product-centric cloud ERP offerings. It is meant as a single, end-to-end software solution for businesses, and is available on-premise, hosted, or in the cloud as a software as a service (SaaS) solution.
It is very well suited for Project Accounting - we have thousands of Project codes in the system. I wish it were easier to make changes to data already entered. You have to jump through hoops to make any changes or corrections and timing is everything.
Epicor is an excellent system for most manufacturing customers and offers several features previously only offered on the very large (e.g. Oracle, PeopleSoft, etc) level platforms. Yet the pricing is mid-level, and the expandability through additional modules provides a great opportunity for future business growth. The architecture is easily scalable, fast, and offers great options for both on premise and hosted systems. Epicor is flexible, and large enough that regular updates and enhancements continue to be adopted to improve functionality and effectiveness. It is however, not for everyone. Competition in this sector is very good, with several mid-level systems being available at a similar price point. If you are considering adopting a new ERP system and are in the plastics space, you also owe it to yourself and your team to consider IQMS, which is becoming a de-facto standard in this segment. Also, for specific medical sectors, you will find that Epicor software validation for CFR Part 11 compliance can be quite costly-- although the software is capable of supporting this with modification. Overall, Epicor is a solid choice. Ultimately, it will be up to your team to determine what works best for your needs. You won't be disappointed with Epicor if you do the due diligence and take the time needed to properly review and demo the product. Remember though, demos are typically "best case" staged, so be sure to throw several curveballs at your vendor and bring out the unique requirements of your business.
Deltek is a very integrated system for accounting purposes. It stores documents as support for postings (e.g. AP invoices) so you can easily access the source information.
Time tracking for our consultants is a must and Deltek has a good platform for tracking time and for accounting for time.
Deltek has the ability to run almost any kind of report that you could possibly think of! There are fields for almost everything and if there aren't specific fields you can add them.
Epicor has the best product configurator that I have seen on the market. This was one of the main reasons we went with Epicor, and have not been disappointed at all.
Epicor is also one of the easiest ERP system to learn, and has many ways for users to get training. Epicor University, on-line courses, or class room settings, also user conference every year, and user support groups.
The Enterprise search ability in Epicor is great, can find parts, customers, suppliers, etc. so easily. And if you can't remember where a report or task that you want to do is on the menu, you can search for that also.
Deltek Vision's use of the desktop browser interfaces could use some major upgrades. It's not very user-friendly. When a field is left blank it would prevent the user from saving the timesheet but would not clearly inform the user where the error has occurred.
Deltek Vision should provide a simple method to print summaries like have its own built-in pdf export program instead of relying on a 3rd party program like Adobe.
It's on the verge of being awesome. Right now it's a matter of money -- if you have the money to hire consultants round the clock, yeah this is awesome.
If the answer to your problem is not readily available in an answer book, your response or solution will take months, if you get one at all. Problems need to be sent to support and duplicated by them before they try to fix it. This is extremely frustrating because you have to prove to Epicor that you are having an issue. If by some miracle you get by this barrier, your problem is submitted to development for review. You can't speak to them or communicate in any way directly. This group appears to be completely unconcerned about user issues or customer service. Our experiences have been negative across the board.
We have used Deltek Vision and previous versions (names) of the product since the early 1990's. We are engaged in the system and are committed to the continued use of the product. I have long supported the value added to our company and benefits realized by our users.
Everyone at our organization really appreciated "made 2 manage" because of all of the quick access and some of the capabilities in accounting. So far, Epicor is much more advanced but the two can stand side by side. These two programs cannot really be compared just because it's just not fair to compare an on-site server ERP system to a cloud-based one.
The software is pretty easy to use. Things are pretty clear on how to do them and if you don't know how to do something they have instructions on how to do them or you get an error code telling you exactly what to do. I have been satisfied with my overall experience.
We went from using a DOS-based accounting system that all the management had to go to Accounting for a weekly printout of status reports, and there wasn't much visibility into the network. Deltek Vision gave our PMs and management information at their fingertips, without having to wait on someone else to get the info.
A lot of quality control was handled outside of an electronic system through Microsoft Excel forms. With Deltek Vision's user-defined functions, we were able to bring those functions into a system that could then be reported on, send automatic reminders, and create dashboards. This has been hugely beneficial in not losing sight of action items etc.
The ROI can be hard to quantify. We spend more time setting up and entering information up front, but we spend less time than before trying to track project costs so that evens out. Purchasing the system and implementing it was very expensive, but the benefit is the the better information can save money on projects as we know where best to spend our time and identify potential problems earlier on a project. We believe it will have a positive impact, but I'd say it will take a few years (3-4) to be worth it.
