Epicor Kinetic is a customizable, scalable, product-centric cloud ERP designed specifically for manufacturers.
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QAD Adaptive ERP
Score 7.2 out of 10
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QAD Adaptive ERP supports the core business processes and operations of global manufacturers, reducing the number of required add-ons and thereby lowering software costs. The platform is presented as ideal for medium to large-sized companies. QAD Adaptive ERP focuses on the six industries QAD serves: automotive, consumer products, food and beverage, industrial, high-tech and life…
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.
If you're setting up operations where you have to manage manufacturing builds from raw components to finished goods, I would recommend QAD. It's nice to have subassemblies part numbers for your builds and enter in the number of accepted quantities and rejects. QAD is very helpful if you have a lot of parts floating around. I would not buy QAD if you only have to manage less than ~20 parts... just use Excel.
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 QAD Enterprise application is great, we only started using this application a few years ago. The Master Scheduling Workbench has been a great improvement to our daily operations.
The Web-based QAD Supplier Portal has also been implemented recently in our company and has been a huge help to our purchasing and materials department.
The QAD support that we receive has helped our company grow and is a major asset in upcoming projects.
The cost / benefit of changing to a different ERP will create a high cost and low benefit that's why I believe that we'll continue renewing QAD for a long time.
It is easy to use and can be used by multiple departments in our company. However every so often something goes wrong with the system and nothing runs. When that happens, a lot of works stops because we need the system to be re-booted by our IT department. Also sometimes managers want a specific type of report that Epicor Kinetic does not have. Therefore our Epicor Kinetic trained employees have to create the report and need help and they will have to contact technical help at Epicor Kinetic and that can take a bit of time.
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.
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.
QAD is very easy to use once it's set up. It's basically an Excel sheet that can handle a lot more data points and faster. It's nice that you can dump the data stored in QAD to a CSV file and analyze in Excel. Careful narrow down the data searches to a limited number of points or Excel will crash. QAD is much easier to set up than Arena and SAP. And the numbering systems you can create in QAD is more customizable.
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.
