Epicor Eclipse is an end-to-end business system for wholesale distributors, as well as electrical, HVAC, plumbing and PVF businesses.
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Infor M3
Score 6.6 out of 10
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Infor M3 is designed for medium to large global manufacturers, distributors, and after-sales service providers—delivering flexibility to manage mixed-mode and complex value chains. M3 is designed with industry-specific functionality and flexible deployment options, and presents a multi-company, multi-country, and multi-site enterprise resource planning (ERP) cloud solution platform.
M3 was originally developed by Intentia, which merged with Lawson (2005), and which in turn was acquired by…
Eclipse is well suited for quick order entry where the source is a formal purchase order document or a phone call with a known customer. In these scenarios the order entry process is quick, and order processing is smooth even if the customer has a lot of "special" requests like shipping part today and holding the rest or shipping some of the order to other addresses. Eclipse also works well if you have a good database of products, especially in searching for products where only partial information is known or finding existing orders where all you know for sure is the customer. It is not particularly well suited for Point of Sale where a walk-in customer who doesn't have an account wants products for which part numbers are not known, due to the requirements to release an order for a customer with no credit.
Manufacturing: Infor M3 is designed specifically for manufacturers and provides robust production planning and supply chain management features. The software can help optimize production processes, improve inventory management, and automate purchasing and order fulfillment.Distribution: Infor M3 offers advanced supply chain management capabilities, including inventory management and order tracking, making it an ideal solution for distribution companies.Large Organizations: Infor M3 is a scalable solution that can accommodate the needs of large organizations with complex supply chain and production requirements. The software's modular design allows organizations to customize their implementation to their specific needs.Global Operations: Infor M3 provides multi-language and multi-currency support, making it a suitable solution for organizations with global operations.
Sales Order tracking, even returns are strengths of Epicor Eclipse. It can be set up to match returns to previous orders so that the correct credits are applied. It is capable of setting up contract pricing as well as matrix level pricing according to sales velocity or individual customer buyer programs.
Purchasing can be set up to work by full line buys or short buys while still maintaining a balanced inventory level of vendor line product.
Vendor Invoices and purchase orders are easily matched up for payment and the diverse reporting features are able to provide multi-faceted views of Product Sales, Items with No Sales, or Sales or Purchasing trends, just to name a few.
It is also tracking warehouse operation in both RF and non-RF environments, or a combination of the two.
Very stable product. Some of its weaknesses are also its strengths. The lack of web services seems to actually increase stability.
No software vendor in this space is perfect. Lawson does perform as advertised.
Again, a weakness of this (limited functionality) is a hidden strength as well. In software there is a complexity/feature tradeoff. Where Lawson lacks in features, it does give you a more simple setup for your organization.
I use it every day and can't see a reason why I would stop unless I started a new job. If I were to leave my present position, the new job would be much more attractive if they were Eclipse users.
This is very easy to use for someone that hasn't ever used the system before. Despite any preconceived notions about how a system should function they can learn this and become efficient with really not a lot of effort. I have used many systems and this is probably one of the easiest I have ever had to learn to navigate and use.
This is a highly configurable product. Where all available support provided by [Information] is very good and exceeds our expectations! The investment in this product by Infor continues to be significant and is showing results! Infor is going a long way and is here to stay! No doubt about that!
I haven't experienced any outages in the two years I have been using the system. It is always available as long as the computer is up. The only time I have seen it not be available was on occasions where we lost internet, or power and then we lost access to everything, not just Epicor Eclipse.
Everything in this system moves fairly quickly, that may be in part because we are a small company with only 21 users on the system at a time, or it may just be a the way the Epicor Eclipse works for any size company with any number of users. I can only speak for what I know and say that it is fast for our purposes.
The tier 1 support is trying, and sometimes they are successful. Sometimes they aren't. This topic isn't as black and white as the questions might suggest. Currently their Tier 1 support team is over seas, all items automatically go to Tier 1 and then when they can't help they either escalate it or tell me they need to check with someone else and they will get back to me. If they escalate me to Tier 2, then the issue comes back to the States and the support is usually at a higher knowledge/experience level and it can get resolved fairly quickly. If they don't escalate, then it might take weeks and multiple follow ups on my part before I either get a satisfactory resolution or finally get escalated.
The support is satisfactory, given the large user base of the product. We had no issues to meet our reporting deadlines with Lawson. The organizational support team internally are well trained and hence only on exceptional basis issues are escalated to Lawson support team. We had no negative experience so far with the support of Lawson.
The training classes that I have attended have been top notch. The presenters are extremely knowledgeable on their subject matter, including real-world application of the system. They aren't just software techs training end users, they seem to be end users that have become experts in the over functionality and capabilities of the system.
The on-line training is very good, and it is taught by the same people that do the live in-person training sessions. The difficult part of it is, asking questions about your specific company's nuances or special circumstances. I don't remember if you can access the on-line training sessions after you have taken them for reminders purposes, but if so that is a great asset.
I don't really know about the implementation, it was back in 1998 and I didn't start here until 2016. By the time I started here they had been running it for a number of years and most of the people that were here when it was implemented are no longer here, and the ones that are don't really have much to say about how the implementation went either bad or good.
Most of my experience has been with Epicor's Prophet 21. For most distribution verticals, Prophet 21 is the only way to go. The comparison I've drawn is this: Prophet 21 is like a ferrari. Epicor Eclipse is like a reliable donkey. Both get you from point A to point B but Prophet 21 is going to get you there much quicker and with the kind of insight into your business that will help you thrive.
I don't really know about the scalability. It's the same as it was when I started, I do know that you can buy more user licenses, but I think they come in packs of 5, which can be a problem if you only need 1 and will never use the other 4. But, again I'm not sure on that.
One of the main positive ROI impacts has been the constant upgrading and adding of new features to keep the software user friendly, relative, and robust.
Our credit manager has said it has made their job easier with daily reports to catch pricing discrepancies and straighten out before they go to invoice makes us look better.
With the addition of sale analytics it has given our sales force tools and new approaches to our customer base which has raised profitability.
I wish Infor M3 (formerly Lawson Intentia) were more detailed. But, this actually may be a weakness of my employer and not Infor M3 (formerly Lawson Intentia).
