Epicor Kinetic is a customizable, scalable, product-centric cloud ERP designed specifically for manufacturers.
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Samsara Equipment Monitoring
Score 8.3 out of 10
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Samsara offers an Equipment Monitoring suite for companies across industries, to provide visibility into asset usage, location, security, maintenance, and with billing and job costing utilities.
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.
The best part about the software is its openness to integration. With a flexible API, we integrated a lot of modules with the software, thus ensuring the safety of history/records as per our needs without having to pay more for customization. The system is not only user-friendly but well thought out. The ease of access to the system leads to lower training costs and ensures that the team is chunking out savings and driving efficiencies throughout. Since Samsara does not discriminate on the minimum number of vehicles/assets that are to be tracked, it makes it far easier to utilize. However, on things to improve - Samsara can have the software tweaked to cater to more than the construction industry, whereby companies such as us who are into multiple domains can benefit from the same. Also, if there were a one-time cost for availing services, it would mean the world to clients like us!
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.
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.
Great software for managing and tracking assets, identifying maintenance/breakdowns in assets, and ensuring the best productivity per asset. Cost analysis benefit / Service provision for 1 unit as well - which is good enough for testing purposes Ease of use, dashboards are easy to view and understand Comprehensive collection of data - presentation of information in required format Limitation on flexible use of API, thus leading to repetition of information/data leading to inefficient hours Flexibility in the units provided/not much to do in terms of modification of assets, its just a plug and play system.
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.
