Genius Solutions delivers a complete enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, including software, implementation services, and field expertise for small to mid-sized custom manufacturers across the US and Canada. Genius ERP is built for SME manufacturers handling make-to-order, engineer-to-order, custom-to-order, and assemble-to-order manufacturing. Genius ERP provides custom manufacturers with the tools they need to reduce costs, increase productivity, and improve the performance…
$1,500
per user for one year
M1
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
M1, from ECI Software Solutions headquartered in Ft. Worth, is an all-in-one manufacturing ERP software solution, built for small and medium-sized discrete manufacturers.
Genius is great for analysis data using Microsoft products like Power BI or Excel as it links directly to them. Genius has also helped the work flow of our company a lot by streamlining processes. One process that helps our company a lot is the ability to print all work orders and fabrication/assembly plans in their batch printing module. Printing these would take up to five hours per assembly in Quickbooks and it now takes 10 minutes.
Implementation is by far the weakest link in the ECI/M1 process. Although the tool is powerful, the client is expected to drive the process of learning the tool, planning the meetings with consultants, identifying risks and making mitigation plans, etc. without any samples, guidance or assistance on the part of ECI. The tool is best suited to high volume, standard product manufacturers who build to inventory or to order without much variation. The shop floor routing and time tracking are straightforward if you can master the convoluted Unit Of Measure calculations. The tool is either hosted locally or accessed through Remote Desktop. Shop floor is web enabled but the main desktop for M1 is still a relay which makes connectivity a potential issue. Moving this platform to a truly web hosted environment would substantially improve connectivity and eliminate compatibility issues with Apple products
Manage inventory counts. Good precision on quantities in and out, through shipping, MI, MR, and receipts.
Job costing shows great details on labor, operations, and materials to be used. I wished that would do better in outside operations that would return, but we still think it is great.
Ability to track changes (changelog), showing all changes that had in a particular place. Such as where, when, and by whom a line item unit price was changed in a PO.
Link, traceability, keeping history. If done correctly, it is amazing to keep the history of a part/lot.
The amount of user rights/customization is unbelievable. It can be hard to set up in the beginning, but it is great that you can give some very specific access to a user, and it is not (in general) as a package.
Some of the functions are pretty detailed - and so they take a while to generate screens and pages in reports.
We actually use it for 2 companies we own - and it would be nice if the inter company communication was a little smoother. It's hard to share some data, and not everything is possible to be shared.
Customized reports need to backed up before any updates to M1 or they're lost. It seems M1 overwrites the report folders everytime you run an update - so you have to keep track of what you've changed in Crystal Reports and restore it.
Genius is easy to use but you have to male sure it's set up properly. You also have to make sure you understand what an ERP should do to know the right questions to ask when you contact customer support.
M1 is highly customizable in my experience. The grids are very easy to customize as long as the user has a basic understanding of relational databases. The reports are also very customizable but are a little more difficult without being a heavy Crystal Report user. Also, the field names, input forms, etc. can be customized as well, but this requires advanced programming knowledge. I would recommend using M1's professional support staff to make any of these types of customizations.
Genius had a far better implementation team and had everything we were looking for without having to super customize a product. The implementation was also far easier than expected due to their ability to manipulate spreadsheets and import them in. We are glad we went with Genius due to the flow of the software and the syncable database. The main thing missed about Quickbooks is the ability to easily fix mistakes by deleting transactions or edit them even after they posted. This however made financials less reliable
M1 does a good job of being able to handle our requirements. Some of our assemblies and sub-assemblies require a significant amount of detail and different levels in order to complete - and M1 handles that. Some of the other products I've used, or implemented else where fall short in being able to go as deep or as detailed as M1 is able to do.
