Likelihood to Recommend Esker On Demand is great for Sales Order Processing order creation. We use it with web services. It can make table read calls, test order creations (simulate order), and help with order creation. They are also working on change order management, but if you have multiple order entry methods or touch points, this feature may not be usable for your company.
Read full review Square 9 Softworks is great in data management and flow. For us, they've done an excellent job with the Health Screening Tools, Cloud Storage/Management and Online Applications. It seems to be a very diverse product. I think because of that, you can talk with Square 9 Softworks about what you are envisioning to see if they are capable of it. I would not do that with many other products - they just don't have that flex.
Read full review Pros Esker makes automated invoice sending very easy Esker tracks the sending of documents & records whether or not the message was successful Esker offers various reports that can be very helpful Esker stores all of our customers' contact info on the cloud, and it can be accessed from anywhere Read full review Fast Manual indexing with what we consider the best in point-n-click OCR indexing. Webserver that incorporates Full-Text Content Searching, Workflow Queues, Full Document Management and Live document Signing on any mobile device or location. Fast workflow designers for rapid implementation Broad range of capture and information processing tools, easy to configure Loaded with essential security options Low price, and about 10X more powerful than MS SharePoint right out of the box. Multi-database support for a very low price with disaster recovery licensing, this is very rare in the industry. Read full review Cons We can't enter credit memos in Esker. Need to enter in SAP and then link. PO invoices that were trained to go into the PO bucket, route into the non-PO buckets. Freight invoices that have had hundreds going into the non-PO bucket have a tendency to route to the PO-bucket because a PO number is referenced on page 7. Read full review Some of the administrative/security configuration with Windows Active Directory can be tricky when managed by separate corporate IT personnel (alignment in strategy) User adoption with any new process can be challenging, but overall user friendly menus As Database sizes grow (200,000+ records) paging through records can be cumbersome, probably need to migrate to an archive process to offload some of the data. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We absolutely can't imagine not continuing software maintenance as there are always new additions that improve the system not to mention the excellent tech support when issues are encountered. Response times for troubleshooting are very quick and usually, my issue is resolved in less than an hour after connecting with support.
Read full review Usability Esker does everything that it promises to do, but it is very hard to figure out. I am a very tech-savvy person, but I needed extensive training to be able to use the basic functions of Esker. Once you know what you're doing, it's not too hard, but I don't understand why they couldn't make it easier to use.
Read full review Super simple software to operate and configure. Very granular permissions and controls. Browser based setup with everything and very intuitive visual workflow building makes it easy to set things up. Troubleshooting document workflow issues is also made easy via the batch manager when you can track each document as it moves through the workflow.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Square-9 can get this product out to you in almost the same hour your order it. We got ours very fast.
Read full review Performance With the PDF projected viewer, the document retrieval-to-display can drag for a second more than some systems, and the capture workflow if you overload a server array can also drag, but those are the only two issues we've ever seen with this product, and they are not serious issues at all.
Read full review Support Rating They have been very helpful and the online support site is awesome. They keep the site up to date with the latest changes and present challenges to keep learning the new updates to keep things entertaining. They are overall a great crew to work with
Read full review The support we received from Square 9 Softworks was exceptional. From deployment to implementation, we always felt supported. The team we worked with had patience and exceptional response time. They were amazing to work with, I always felt supported. No matter how simple or complex my question was they always delivered.
Read full review In-Person Training It would have been higher, but the training is a bit muted for the lesser qualified office equipment vendors who signed up as partners to sell and support it. The more experienced ECM vendors and customer end-users will find the training very good, but a bit slow.
Read full review Implementation Rating I think the implementation could have gone a little smoother than it did. Now that I know how to use the software, I could do it myself. I feel that as an organization, we could have been a little better prepared. If the consultant was more aware of what we were looking for, they could have assisted in setting up some workflows for us as per the contract. But because we were not prepared, the initial implementation process was a little painful. That said, adding a document management system to ANY business kinda means everyone has to re-think the way they do their work which can be difficult for some staff.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I have listed a few that we considered but there were many more in the initial assessment, Esker was priced well and had the best user interface. Was really easy to use and the implementation process was well designed. It was a system that could handle a two tiered delegations of authority for project expenditure and operational expenditure.
Read full review A similar product I have used was Time Matters. For a Law Firm, I think Time Matters is more useful as it keeps track of everything for a client, including billing. However, since I now work for a legal department of a corporation, SmartSearch is definitley more useful. It is not possible to seperate the documents we have internally in neat client files. We have various miscellaneous documents for many different services and customers or vendors. SmartSearch allows us to organize in broad categories that make sense to internal employees using it and to make sure security is set on specific documents. Time Matters would not have been sufficient for our managers to have access to, since it uploads all documents to the file - some of which are confidential.
Read full review Scalability The scale-ability is quite good actually, but you need competent sales/support folks providing it to you, so the scale is set right for the demands of your system use. Some resellers are not good at doing this, some are fantastic. If you are scaled correctly at first implementation, you'll be very happy with this system.
Read full review Return on Investment We now have reporting available down to the individual field level (changes, errors, etc) and can calculate cost to serve. It replaced on-premise hardware with cloud SaaS that is more cost effective and risk adverse. It is more intuitive; we can put new hires on order entry and experience less user errors. As a solution owner who fixes problems and answers questions, I don't find myself having to "think" about Esker and it has become a smaller part of my job now that end-users are more self-sufficient. Read full review OCR capabilities allow users to quickly and accurately index files without data errors from manually keying in data Administrators can update users access through active directory without ever opening Square 9 and without generating accounts in yet another system Users can find files needed without ever leaving their desk Read full review ScreenShots Square 9 Softworks Screenshots