Epicor Eagle vs. Microsoft BI (MSBI)

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.

Incentivized

Microsoft BI has a lot of features and is a very powerful tool, especially if you have folks on your team that know how to utilize all of its capabilities. To truly unlock all that it can do, it does require people to have a deep understanding of its capabilities. That's where the software really shines. If you are looking for a simpler, more basic reporting tool, there are other programs available that do not require such a steep learning curve.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Comparatively easy to use compared to other data analytics solutions, collaborating with other colleagues on data work is simple.
• Using Visual Studio for database, ETL, reporting, and analytics development save time and money.
• Transfer of data from one application to another via Excel and comparison of data attributes between applications
• Dashboard functionality, as well as Python support, are available, allowing you to add additional charts and graphs.

Incentivized

• Adding the same SKU in 2 different lines does not work in Eagle N Series.
• In the IMU function, I would like to have the SKU field drill down to show the last 5 SKUs I was working on.
• I would like to see the check printing feature simplified.
• I would like to have more choices of fields that could print on our invoices.
• In POS, it would be nice to have an easy viewer available to see what A/R customers owe.

Incentivized

• MSBI designs can work on increasing data processing capabilities enough to handle the huge datasets etc.
• It would be a lot better if it is a little low on cost.
• it needs to create opportunities little more than they do regarding customization of some very unique visualization effects

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!

Incentivized

Microsoft BI is fundamental to our suite of BI applications. That being said, Northcraft Analytics is focused on delighting our customers, so if the underlying factors of our decision change, we would choose to re-write our BI applications on a different stack. Luckily, mathematics are the fundamental IP of our technology... and is portable across all BI platforms for the foreseeable future.

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!

Incentivized

The Microsoft BI tools have great usability for both developers and end users alike. For developers familiar with Visual Studio, there is little learning curve. For those not, the single Visual Studio IDE means not having to learn separate tools for each component. For end-users, the web interface for SSRS is simple to navigate with intuitive controls. For ad-hoc analysis, Excel can connect directly to SSAS and provide a pivot table like experience which is familiar to many users. For database development, there is beginning to be some confusion, as there are now three tool choices (VS, SSMS, Azure Data Studio) for developers. I would like to see Azure Data Studio become the superset of SSMS and eventually supplant it.

Incentivized

The product has been reliable.

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) can drag at times. We created two report servers and placed them under an F5 load balancer. This configuration has worked well. We have seen sluggish performance at times due to the Windows Firewall.

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.

Incentivized

MSBI natively has a site that allows you to vote on user enhancements and bug fixes. This allows the largest nagging issues to float to the top and the development team can prioritize accordingly. As mentioned earlier, the large community base of MSBI developers assist technical resources in handling technical questions.

Incentivized

This training was more directed toward what the product was capable of rather than actual programming.

I have used on-line training from Microsoft and from Pragmatic Works. I would recommend Pragmatic Works as the best way to get up to speed quickly, and then use the Microsoft on-line training to deep dive into specific features that you need to get depth with.

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.

Incentivized

We are a consulting firm and as such our best resources are always billing on client projects. Our internal implementation has weaknesses, but that's true for any company like ours. My rating is based on the product's ease of implementation.

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.

Incentivized

We have used the built in ConnectWise Manager reports and custom reports. The reports provide static data. PowerBI shows us live data we can drill down into and easily adjust parameters. It's much more useful than a static PDF report.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• As a SaaS provider we see being able to provide self-service BI to our client users as a competitive advantage. In fact the MSSQL enabled BI is a contributing factor to many winning RFPs we have done for prospective client organisations.
• However MSSQL BI requires extensive knowledge and skills to design and develop data warehouses & data models as a foundation to support business analysts and users to interrogate data effectively and efficiently. Often times we find having strong in-house MSSQL expertise is a bless.

Incentivized