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.
Exact Global is extensively used at EWS as a strategic tool of importance for managing our core Financial processes like Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, General Ledger accounts, Financial entries, Transactions etc. It is a critical tool for EWS and integrated with our ERP for a seamless operations of financial processes in the enterprise
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.
Exact offers a large range of user defined fields, which is especially useful once you've built a base on the system and need to customize certain aspects. Just last week we added the ability to track customer training by model using custom UDFs.
Engineering bills of material are tracked in Exact and the engineering BOM module is pretty intuitive and easy to use. Modification and drill down/up is not difficult once you figure out he basics.
Inventory control is fairly simple and offers a lot of information and options to track different kinds of products. We use bulk and each UOMs primarily, but others are used regularly depending on application.
Exact Global is a strategic tool for financial core processes operations at EWS. It is integrated with ERP to seamlessly deliver key processes like O2C, P2P etc. and very well liked by users for its ease of use and flexibility of data moving across different systems. Exact Global is a part of EWS’s enterprise architecture and roadmap aligned to PACE strategy for achieving business objectives
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.
Receive Great support from Exact Global team. Timely response and resolution by the vendor and never breach on SLAs - it’s a support team’s dream to support Exact Global.
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.
I've used other ERP systems in large organizations, one custom and one SAP. SAP is a very powerful suite of software, but comes at a price point that is unobtainable for many smaller companies. Exact is more realistic and accessible for smaller companies that are not necessarily global commodities, but instead smaller manufacturers in niche markets. I haven't had the opportunity to review many other options in this size range.
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.
