Epicor Kinetic (the name of the former Epicor ERP) presents a wide feature breadth, customizability, and scalability, typical product-centric cloud ERP offerings. It is meant as a single, end-to-end software solution for businesses, and is available on-premise, hosted, or in the cloud as a software as a service (SaaS) solution.
N/A
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
An integrated solution, designed for small or medium-sized businesses, bringing together the productivity of Microsoft Office with advanced security capabilities to help
safeguard data from external threats and help protect against data leaks.
With Microsoft 365 Business Premium, users can empower employees to be productive
anywhere on any device. Get more done with AI built into the Office apps. Work
better together with a hub for teamwork bringing your tools and people together
in one place.…
N/A
Pricing
Epicor Kinetic
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Epicor Kinetic
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Must contact sales team for pricing.
—
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Epicor Kinetic
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Considered Both Products
Epicor Kinetic
Verified User
Employee
Chose Epicor Kinetic
Can’t really compare the 2. This is not a good representation because one is for parts management and the other for expenses that occur with the every day of being a business.
Epicor is an excellent system for most manufacturing customers and offers several features previously only offered on the very large (e.g. Oracle, PeopleSoft, etc) level platforms. Yet the pricing is mid-level, and the expandability through additional modules provides a great opportunity for future business growth. The architecture is easily scalable, fast, and offers great options for both on premise and hosted systems. Epicor is flexible, and large enough that regular updates and enhancements continue to be adopted to improve functionality and effectiveness. It is however, not for everyone. Competition in this sector is very good, with several mid-level systems being available at a similar price point. If you are considering adopting a new ERP system and are in the plastics space, you also owe it to yourself and your team to consider IQMS, which is becoming a de-facto standard in this segment. Also, for specific medical sectors, you will find that Epicor software validation for CFR Part 11 compliance can be quite costly-- although the software is capable of supporting this with modification. Overall, Epicor is a solid choice. Ultimately, it will be up to your team to determine what works best for your needs. You won't be disappointed with Epicor if you do the due diligence and take the time needed to properly review and demo the product. Remember though, demos are typically "best case" staged, so be sure to throw several curveballs at your vendor and bring out the unique requirements of your business.
Well-Suited Scenarios:Collaborative Work Environment:Scenario: Your organization relies heavily on collaboration, and you need a platform that integrates email, chat, document sharing, and online meetings seamlessly.Usage: Microsoft 365 Business Premium provides tools like Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive, fostering a collaborative work environment.Professional Communication:Scenario: Your business requires professional email communication with a custom domain, and you need advanced email security features.Usage: Microsoft 365 includes Exchange Online for business-class email, with features like anti-malware and anti-spam protection.Document Management and Sharing:Scenario: You have a need for centralized document storage, version control, and secure sharing within and outside the organization.Usage: OneDrive for Business and SharePoint allow for secure document storage, versioning, and controlled access to files.
Epicor has the best product configurator that I have seen on the market. This was one of the main reasons we went with Epicor, and have not been disappointed at all.
Epicor is also one of the easiest ERP system to learn, and has many ways for users to get training. Epicor University, on-line courses, or class room settings, also user conference every year, and user support groups.
The Enterprise search ability in Epicor is great, can find parts, customers, suppliers, etc. so easily. And if you can't remember where a report or task that you want to do is on the menu, you can search for that also.
The only thing that is a bit cumbersome is that it doesn't seem that you can save files directly to programs like one drive if you aren't using a Microsoft program to generate the document. An example of this would be if I am working in a PDF in our PDF Program I have to first save it to my desktop and then drag it into one drive. I end up with duplicates and that can sometimes make it hard to remember which is the most up-to-date.
The basic apps are straightforward and easy to use, especially since they have been around so long. I'm referring to the basic apps like Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, OneNote, etc. Other features such as Microsoft Teams and Sharepoint Sites, Sharepoint Lists, Sharepoint Groups, etc. all require a higher level of knowledge to both implement and use properly
In the last 5 years, Microsoft has come a long way. The performance of the products has become more and more user-friendly and it seems that the feedback provided by the user community is being listened to and worked on. The processes are very fast and seamless. There are negligible errors and doesn't slow the systems down.
If the answer to your problem is not readily available in an answer book, your response or solution will take months, if you get one at all. Problems need to be sent to support and duplicated by them before they try to fix it. This is extremely frustrating because you have to prove to Epicor that you are having an issue. If by some miracle you get by this barrier, your problem is submitted to development for review. You can't speak to them or communicate in any way directly. This group appears to be completely unconcerned about user issues or customer service. Our experiences have been negative across the board.
As mentioned elsewhere in the review, Microsoft has historically paid attention to community feedback and issues, but timeliness can improve, and so can the addressing of long-standing issues about which many users have said "I have this issue too!" but no official solution exists. For issues that do have a solution, however, the solution is usually not difficult to find, and the explanation of features on Microsoft's website can mitigate many problems.
Everyone at our organization really appreciated "made 2 manage" because of all of the quick access and some of the capabilities in accounting. So far, Epicor is much more advanced but the two can stand side by side. These two programs cannot really be compared just because it's just not fair to compare an on-site server ERP system to a cloud-based one.
Before migrating to Microsoft 365 Business Premium, we possessed an in-house exchange server. Therefore, it was difficult for us to look at alternatives to Microsoft for a solution – we did look at the Google Suite of products, but the transition for us seemed less cumbersome to stay with Microsoft from a staff and administrative perspective. While the G Suite does offer us many outstanding products and services, we also didn’t feel that Gmail is up-to-par as a corporate solution the way Exchange/Outlook/OWA are – this alone was also a driving force for our end-users, as there was minimal transition for them to move from an on-premise solution to an off-premise solution. The additional features of SharePoint, Teams, Project, and so many other applications within Microsoft 365 also helped us make a strong case to stay with Microsoft and expand what we were using. The end-user and mobile protections of InTune have also put us at ease when issuing laptops and mobile phones to an almost fully-remote end-user base.
The software is pretty easy to use. Things are pretty clear on how to do them and if you don't know how to do something they have instructions on how to do them or you get an error code telling you exactly what to do. I have been satisfied with my overall experience.
The ROI can be hard to quantify. We spend more time setting up and entering information up front, but we spend less time than before trying to track project costs so that evens out. Purchasing the system and implementing it was very expensive, but the benefit is the the better information can save money on projects as we know where best to spend our time and identify potential problems earlier on a project. We believe it will have a positive impact, but I'd say it will take a few years (3-4) to be worth it.
Teams has streamlined our chats within each department so its easy to help out each other when problems or issues arise as well as having chat conversations in real time instead of the slower email option. This is especially handy when peopel are not working in the same space and cannot use a phone.
All of our major communications, are done through Outlook email keeping everyone on the same page of issues within our organization or updates coming out for example
Excel provides a simple system for creating our schedules, Tracking customer issues, project boards etc. having all these readily available minimizes time spent looking for information and grants more time for customer interaction and increasing service and sales.
