Prophet 21 from Epicor is a distribution ERP providing SCM capabilities (warehouse, inventory) as well as the ability to streamline quote-to-cash cycle, improve margins, and fulfill orders.
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NetSuite ERP
Score 8.0 out of 10
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NetSuite is a suite of ERP and accounting modules which is sold in various editions aimed at different size customers. The multi-country, multi-currency version is an additional module called OneWorld. Netsuite is a SaaS system and is not offered in an on-premise edition.
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Pricing
Epicor Prophet 21
NetSuite ERP
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Epicor Prophet 21
NetSuite ERP
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
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Users subscribe to NetSuite for an annual license fee. The license is made up of three main components: core platform, optional modules and the number of users. There is also a one-time implementation fee for initial setup. New modules and users and can be added as a business grows.
It is very useful for a distributor that is handling inventory and customer data. Epicor Prophet 21 gives easy access to their database and it is reasonably priced.
Verified User
Executive
Chose Epicor Prophet 21
I have not looked at them in detail, but have received a lot of positive comments through out the industry, we're on the fence in regards to viability of cloud based solutions, but from the information we have received it seems like NetSuite has developed a good solution for …
NetSuite ERP is user friendly and allows for us to implement and deploy solutions without much help from the IT department. It also is a "fluid" solution that utilizes a relational database which allows for transactions and records to be connected.
Good for distribution organizations with warehousing. Can also support both Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable, although a more thorough Accounting package is recommended. Is strong when it comes to integrating bar codes and scanners, particularly for warehouse maintenance. Prophet 21 does include a basic CRM offering. However, it is very basic, and for any real Customer Resource management, a third-party tool is best (even recommended by Epicor.)
Really in this hybrid environment, being up in the cloud and being able to securely access the data and work from anywhere, I think it's a real game changer for my team. So I really like the fact that NetSuite keeps up with security features and allows users to access it from anywhere.
They do reporting very well. I love the ability to have control over how the information flows through my NetSuite, my user roles, and my responsibilities. I can assign certain tasks to certain people, and they do that and then also have the control to approve that and make sure it's done correctly.
Just being able to drill down into a particular GL account or into a particular line item and see what really makes that up and what's driving our certain costs.
Prophet 21 could use better management tools for its own data. The database has a tendency to bloat and over time can grow exceedingly large without administrative intervention.
The UI can be cluttered at times and the windows tend to jump into focus or drop from focus when it isn't expected causing user confusion and data entry errors.
Branding on forms and the UI is almost nonexistent. Customizations of screen aesthetics and form layout options should be easier and not require custom programming.
Honestly, right now, my biggest pain point is kind of our own doing, but I would appreciate a little bit more support and help in the area of performance management and kind of understanding how our application is built, what are the best choices for customizing or solving a problem in terms of performance, because our company is rather large, we have a lot of data coming in and out, and that has been an issue for us recently.
I've used Epicor Prophet 21 for about 12 years (in various iterations). It started out as CommerceCenter by Prophet 21 then became Prophet 21 by Activant and then Prophet 21 by Epicor. So frequently, when a software company is acquired, it stops being great. That has not been the case with Epicor Prophet 21. Over the years they've been under Epicor, the product has just gotten better and better, with major extensibility enhancements and new mobile components coming online.
NetSuite is able to cover all of our needs, spanning multiple departments and managerial levels. We use it daily for a multitude of functions, including creating promotions, estimating inventory, pulling historical reports, forecasting sales, and more. Overall, we're very satisfied with NetSuite as an ERP solution and recommend it to medium to large businesses.
Overall, I love using Prophet 21. With a few rare exceptions, functions within the application have been streamlined so they can be used with as few clicks and key presses as possible. That's not to say they've given up any functionality. The platform is incredibly powerful; just easy to use.
I have given this rating due to below use cases: - Order Management - Advanced Revenue Management - Invoicing - Automated Billing - Inbound and Outbound Integrations with applications such as Salesforce, Zip, Stripe, Mavenlink, Avalara, Floquast - Project management and billing - Training -Customer Support - Knowledge Article Support
When hosted locally, you don't have to worry about outages unless the power goes out and the battery backups fail. It can also be hosted in the cloud which is as reliable as your internet connection. There's really no concern for outages in the software by itself. Outages are controlled by external factors.
It has been very reliable. I can only think of 1-2 times in 4.5 years that we have had issues getting in, and in each case were able to get back in within 1 hour. There has not been a major downtime
I do feel like there are some screens and reports that could be streamlined. Prophet 21 likes to load features all at once when going into a program but a quicker load time into order entry, for example, is worth having a little latency while a non-essential tab that doesn't get used very often is opened.
Most of the time the performance is very good. Pages load in a few seconds; financial reports take less than 5 seconds; basic searches take a few seconds. But performance can be sporadic throughout the day and cause the run time to triple.
The support is some of the worst I've seen across all the 122 software vendors we work with. Everything is offshore and it is always vague answers, links to wiki's that don't apply, and when we pay for project support they charge $200 an hour for someone who works remote from Mexico to call you on a poor quality VoIP connection that isn't all that well trained and often doesn't have basic IT skills
The account rep changes quite often, which requires restarting. Suite Answers is a very good tool but can be hard to use for somebody who is not fully confident with Netsuite. Asking questions that are not already answered in Suite Answers can be rough. Training is readily available, but most of the time stays on the surface and doesn't answer medium to more advanced questions.
The on-site training was great. I give it a 9 because the trainer was a chain smoker who had to excuse herself a lot to smoke. Kind of unprofessional. She was a very good trainer though.
I had in person training for a day when first got the software. The training was good. The challenge was that there was a large gap between training and when we went live so we forgot quite a lot
I had a great time with the online training. Most of the online trainings were live which meant you had opportunity to interact with instructors. I liked trying to derail them by posting funny comments to the chat window. The only complaint I had about these is they weren't recorded for later use. Well, another complaint is that they were sometimes too short.
The overall implementation is smooth. Prophet 21 sends someone on-site for as many days as you need them to step through the initial implementation. Data conversion is the biggest trick. Make sure you get help with that portion of implementation. Also, be sure to offer plenty of training incentives to keep people coming back for more training. A little money spent up front will save you tons of headaches later.
I felt NetSuite Professional Services did an excellent job of guiding us in the implementation. I also felt our internal teams were a little resistant to the change and engagement of new software. Had we performed better engaging and buying into the new software, I would be able to rate the implementation better. Therefore, the lower number should not be viewed as a deficiency with the software or the professional services teams, but as an reminder of how important complete buy-in from the local users is.
I have not looked at them in detail, but have received a lot of positive comments through out the industry, we're on the fence in regards to viability of cloud based solutions, but from the information we have received it seems like NetSuite has developed a good solution for the industry.
Well, the reason why I'm with NetSuite is because obviously it beats out those other options quite considerably. It gave us the whole ecosystem that gave us everything we needed. I didn't need a dedicated administrator whose full-time job is to deal with it like our current system would need to really be useful. I can find people or train people how to use it right away. So for us, that really beats it out compared to the Sage and QuickBooks where we were looking at it from a perspective of, yeah, we can find people who are experts in those fields. They don't scale up to the size that we need as we're going to really quickly go from R&D company into doing tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue and activities. So that's where it beats us out over say Sage or QuickBooks is it's got that complete scalability. We can go to multiple subsidiaries, foreign currency, not a problem. It's got that full functionality.
Prophet 21 is very reliable. The database is robust and well designed. The application is also hard to break. If there's one feature I don't like, it's that they haven't accounted for the dreaded single quote. That's kind of the bane of Microsoft SQL's existence. They need to escape that character in every field that will accept it in the system. Otherwise, the system throws all kinds of errors and many times will crash.
We have been able to scale our business 25X without any major overhaul with Netsuite. Its dashboard setup makes onboarding new employees very easy and allows data to be shared across multiple offices. Its cloud setup does not put any pressure on IT to scale servers or other infrastructure. We have been able to become much more efficient in all aspects of the business.
Positive impact, again, it's our source of truth, so we are able to not have questions about how much money we have in the bank or do we have enough material to build this job. Being able to know those things immediately is super valuable.
I mean it's the grease that skids the wheels that gets us to accomplish the things that we do in our business.
