The Epicor Eagle N Series is Epicor's present comprehensive retail software system built around features such as multichannel sales, a point-of-sale system, and inventory and merchandising management.
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Epicor Prophet 21
Score 7.9 out of 10
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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.
My area covers our general ledger accounting. Let me tell you how much I appreciate that Eagle will fully track the entire journal entry of a sales transaction! Our previous ERP provider did not track the Cost of Goods Sold and Sales Tax portion of a sales. It was really labor-intensive to fill the missing gaps. Switching to Eagle N Series has saved the company up to 40% in various labor costs because the reporting is accurate and detailed.
Epicor seems to handle order management very well. The process flows from start to finish smoothly and is easy to learn. Regarding service orders and related jobs, the process is not intuitive and is very clunky. Locating all the details of a service order is difficult and definitely requires training from someone experienced with the system to learn how to navigate it. Ensuring everything is entered for billing and/or follow-up needs for service orders isn't always easy, from what I have seen. I don't work much with the service orders side of our operations, but what I have seen has given me the solid impression that there are areas for improvement.
Mobile applications like Mobile Manager, Mobile Lookup, and Pricing Planner put resources in the palm of your hand to use in the store, at trade shows, or at your competition.
Eagle N has powerful promotional tools with Dynamic Promotions to keep your Marketing fresh and current.
By combining Compass Analytics with Eagle N you can create almost any query, simple of difficult. This powerful tool lets you simplify difficult research, you can easily find a customer's receipt from ten years ago.
Functions like ITR (Inventory Tracking Record) ICL (Inventory Change Log) let you quickly determine the electronic history of a sku. It allows you to see what, why, how and who changed a record.
Some background technologies are still a bit behind the current development technologies in the market.
Only started offering a Web-based front end to Prophet 21 in the past year, and it still has a number of limitations not present in the client-based program
When new iterations/version are released, there are often significant bugs that require opening Support Requests
Epicor (P21) Support is still not the most responsive or efficient
Eagle N series is a great tool. It really compliments the Eagle 4 Windows. The additional features are really nice to have. You can never have too much information. It helps me make better, wiser decisions. Eagle N allows compass functions without having to leave what function I'm in and see the additional information. GREAT TOOL!
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.
There is a lot of information provided in Epicor. From Simple viewers to detailed information for the owner of the company, there is a lot of information. Also, let me mention, the Audit information. From a simple sku change to deletions, everything is recorded in an audit trail. It really helps to stop a thief or simply help you see what you did so you can undo it. Epicor also has a great security system. Their security bits allow you to decide who can perform what function. There are a lot of options to the funtions. This allows you to customize functions to your operation. We are not all alike!
Too many tabs and hard for users to understand where to click - took a year to get comfortable entering sales orders, and I'm pretty good with technology - I can't imagine for others who aren't as comfortable. Not clear who to go to for help - limited help files, especially for process transactions.
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.
When I call in for support, they connect to my problem, view my computer with me and walk me through a solution and fixing the problem. They educate you and explain in simple terms what they are doing, how and why they fix it. This way, you understand and feel more confident moving forward and I am more efficient using the functions next time. They really are very patient.
Many times, I am asked the same questions I already put in the case. Or am given a KB to look at that I've already tried. Or other times I do not understand what the technician is asking me to do so I will ask for help repeatedly going back and forth. Contacting us and setting up a call is easiest but sometimes the scheduling takes time and the case just sits there stagnant. They have usually solved most of my cases though
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 process, from my point of view, was handled very well. It was a smooth transaction with lots of support both on site and by phone. All questions were answered and everything was explained each step of the way. A lot of information and support were provided including decisions on options and securities.
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.
We were already Eagle customers when a guru from our parent company recommended we switch some of the computers on the system over to N Series. Now that I primarily use N Series, it is especially when I find myself on a computer that does not have it, that I realize how much more intuitive N Series seems to be set up.
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.
Epicor does provide almost a real time reporting dashboard so we have insight into our sales data and numbers necessary to make price changes if needed that have affected our bottom line and GM.
Our insight into certain products and the cost drivers continues to improve with the GM detail capabilities in business advisor.
