Epicor CMS vs. M1

CMS is well suited for automotive manufacturing businesses.

Incentivized

Implementation is by far the weakest link in the ECI/M1 process. Although the tool is powerful, the client is expected to drive the process of learning the tool, planning the meetings with consultants, identifying risks and making mitigation plans, etc. without any samples, guidance or assistance on the part of ECI. The tool is best suited to high volume, standard product manufacturers who build to inventory or to order without much variation. The shop floor routing and time tracking are straightforward if you can master the convoluted Unit Of Measure calculations. The tool is either hosted locally or accessed through Remote Desktop. Shop floor is web enabled but the main desktop for M1 is still a relay which makes connectivity a potential issue. Moving this platform to a truly web hosted environment would substantially improve connectivity and eliminate compatibility issues with Apple products

Incentivized

• EDI Order Processing
• Serialized Inventory Tracking
• Order Processing

Incentivized

• Manage inventory counts. Good precision on quantities in and out, through shipping, MI, MR, and receipts.
• Job costing shows great details on labor, operations, and materials to be used. I wished that would do better in outside operations that would return, but we still think it is great.
• Ability to track changes (changelog), showing all changes that had in a particular place. Such as where, when, and by whom a line item unit price was changed in a PO.
• Link, traceability, keeping history. If done correctly, it is amazing to keep the history of a part/lot.
• The amount of user rights/customization is unbelievable. It can be hard to set up in the beginning, but it is great that you can give some very specific access to a user, and it is not (in general) as a package.

Incentivized

• Visual interface
• Report Customization

Incentivized

• Some of the functions are pretty detailed - and so they take a while to generate screens and pages in reports.
• We actually use it for 2 companies we own - and it would be nice if the inter company communication was a little smoother. It's hard to share some data, and not everything is possible to be shared.
• Customized reports need to backed up before any updates to M1 or they're lost. It seems M1 overwrites the report folders everytime you run an update - so you have to keep track of what you've changed in Crystal Reports and restore it.

Incentivized

CMS takes time to learn and use the menu driven green screen. However, once you are familiar it makes for fast navigation.

Incentivized

M1 is highly customizable in my experience. The grids are very easy to customize as long as the user has a basic understanding of relational databases. The reports are also very customizable but are a little more difficult without being a heavy Crystal Report user. Also, the field names, input forms, etc. can be customized as well, but this requires advanced programming knowledge. I would recommend using M1's professional support staff to make any of these types of customizations.

Incentivized

Support is getting better but can still be slow to respond.

Incentivized

Support has been great and timely

Incentivized

We have more control over the backend of CMS and the fact it runs on a 5250 emulator it run a lot faster for data entry.

Incentivized

M1 does a good job of being able to handle our requirements. Some of our assemblies and sub-assemblies require a significant amount of detail and different levels in order to complete - and M1 handles that. Some of the other products I've used, or implemented else where fall short in being able to go as deep or as detailed as M1 is able to do.

Incentivized

• Inventory tracibility
• Order Processing
• Customer Integration
• EDI Processing

Incentivized

• Time savings having to only enter certain information once and have it follow through the entire order process from quote to cash

Incentivized