ECI e-automate vs. IFS Field Service Management

ECI e-automate is a very stable on-prem application. The cloud version has yet to be tested and determined, but I have heard ok reviews. It is scalable for any size business to get started and then to add features; it functions as it should and is a robust tool with several features that can easily allow any entity to run their business.

Incentivized

IFS Field Service Management is well suited for ad-hoc reporting and querying of your dataset(s). It also is great for inventory management, processing orders, and handling EDI transaction sets to third party partners and suppliers.

Incentivized

• Inventory control.
• Technician tracking.
• Quoting.
• Integration with 3rd party software.

Incentivized

• Order Placement - IFS makes placing orders quite easy. From the simple interface down to selecting inventory, the experience is simple and clean
• Reporting - Querying database records is straightforward and easy to do. Queries can then be drilled down to individual records or exported to excel for further manipulation and analysis.
• Customer Creation - Creating new customers and managing and maintaining existing records is a simple and easily repeatable exercise

Incentivized

• Allowing multiple, movable windows within the program so you can bounce between screens.
• More friendly integration with third party apps.

Incentivized

• Field Customization - Adding fields or inputs to particular entities is not very easy. In a world of point and click development, IFS is behind the curve
• Order Automation - for bulk order placement it would be nice to have an easy mechanism to upload orders via an Excel or csv template. We've written some custom programs to perform this, but a more user friendly, "out of box" solution would be welcomed.

Incentivized

Sometimes when you need answers quickly, a voice on the phone is far better than having to wait for email support or a callback. I have found this to have delays and feel ECI e-automate should invest more in its support infrastructure.

Incentivized

Unfortunately, in the copy/print side of things, e-automate is the software to use, so our options were very limited when shopping around. When we decided to implement the IT side of the company, we didn't want to track the revenue, etc from the IT in a different application like Quickbooks, etc. so we had to make e-automate fit our needs.

Incentivized

I was not part of the software selection process and cannot provide insight into any of the alternatives in this arena at this time.

Incentivized

• It has given us better insights into how our IT side is growing.
• It took a lot of man-hours on our side to make it work for the IT side.
• Inventory is still a very manual process.

Incentivized

• Positive - streamlined order processing has allowed our business to scale without requiring additional bodies for that specific need.
• Positive - Reporting has allowed valuable insight into historic business trends which has allowed us to be proactive instead of reactive in many areas.
• Negative - Customizations have proved costly and cumbersome when upgrading to the next version of the software.

Incentivized