Likelihood to Recommend Order to cash processes and scenario are implemented natively in IFS. An HR module exists for career management also (objectives, comportments, training, mobility) but may be improved in terms of workflow validation (e.g. training to validate by a manager) or reporting.
Read full review The Installation team is amazing. They provide clear guidance at the beginning of the process regarding what is expected and what needs to be done. The implementation manager follows up monthly with you to make sure you are on track and if you need additional help. They are very helpful and responsive in resolving issues.
Read full review Pros Accounting Finance Complex Inventory Read full review Job Costing - Viewpoint Spectrum handles job costing per project, per work order, per site, and gives us an up to date analysis of the project. HR - helps to keep all of the training certifications and HR incidents in a consistent and manageable order for all Managers to use. Read full review Cons The speed of bug fixes should be improved by the IFS after sales teams. We saw the difference of responsiveness prior to Go Live and after Go Live, with a change of teams. IFS France is working on that point, and strategically wants to innovate by acting now with two other third-party companies in early 2017, to improve the after sales experience for customers. There is no license model between the full licenses, which gives access to all IFS features, and the light licenses, to get access to a specific module like expense sheet. As a consequence, you must acquire a full access license for one team working only with a dedicated module (e.g. general ledger). Maybe an intermediate type license would be welcome to balance the budget. IFS tries to make prices competitive but you have to consider full upgrades of the product too, where requiring full licenses can be hard on the budget. When you have an Active Directory ecosystem with a trust relationship, users from domain B can't natively access IFS, even if AD sync is in place with domain A. It's important to improve that functionality because many companies have a merge and acquisition context, with SOX constraints sometimes, and avoiding maintaining contacts or local accounts simplifies SOX compliance, or to management of accounts within the company. Read full review Support isn't readily available. You can submit a ticket and wait days before it's picked up. Even critical issues (system outages) can wait an hour or two before someone responds. Large companies will feel limited. This product wasn't designed to handle large amounts of data, and performance seems to slow when there are more than 80 concurrent users. The new developments are limited. HR Management is less robust than a third-party product specializing in HR Management. Viewpoint Analytics is nowhere near as robust as Power BI or Tableau. Read full review Likelihood to Renew The product is working for us and the cost to implement a new system does not warrant the expense.
Read full review Usability The system is very difficult to use, overly complex, and difficult to learn. It also has limitations that are hard to overcome.
Read full review There's a little bit of a learning curve, but once you've been working in the system for a while, it becomes second nature. I would say that out of all of the other software that I've personally used, Spectrum has been the easiest one to pick up and learn quickly
Read full review Reliability and Availability I've never seen Spectrum down
Read full review Performance For the most part the product is very reliable. Since we are hosted we sometimes have connectivity issues but I would say that is more our ISP than Spectrum.
Read full review Support Rating We have been unable to get answers to our questions, solutions to our problems, and they don't seem interested in working in the construction industry.
Read full review The support has recently changed. Last year, you could call in and get an immediate response. Now that doesn't seem possible unless you have an urgent situation with access to the software, payroll or payables. I have found that using chat or e-mail works nicely for the most part, but sometimes I feel it would be easier if someone from support would jump on our site and take a first-hand look rather than going back and forth
Read full review Online Training Our trainer was excellent and navigated the time zone differences expertly. She gave us test assignments to complete and was available for questions at any time.
Read full review Implementation Rating My only insight would be to take time in your implementation and training process; ours was six weeks from start to finish.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Microsoft AX, QAD (in continuation of our previous ERP), Sage X3 was an out of the box ERP that was part of initial RFP. We have chosen IFS based on the compromise between costs & budget, functionality, technical features, and feedback from similar customers that gave their feedback. The project manager team and qualification level of technical or consultant teams were differentiating factors too. Finally IFS application was named in the Gartner’s mid-market ERP Magic Quadrant, along with SAP, and helped us to finalize our choice
Read full review I have previously used Sage Masterbuilder, another construction industry software. This has been a number of years ago. The company I am working for already had Spectrum and have been using it for as long as it has been around when it was known as Forefront. Based on conversations I've had with the personnel that were here at the time of purchase, Spectrum clicked off all the boxes they were looking for.
Read full review Scalability You can grant user specific access which is nice. Project managers do not need all the same modules as Accounting. But Accounting does need access to PM modules as well
Read full review Return on Investment Reporting is now centralized and managed. Previously, reports were outside the information systems and there was a risk of incoherence. Accounting controls are now in place on the overall processes, including production, which helped the company to reduce closing periods or to produce more easily official mandatory accounting files yearly. Interfaces between the CRM forecast tool and IFS helped to keep the tools in sync, and to decrease the processing times prior to production launch. Read full review [In my opinion,] it takes at LEAST twice as long to do our jobs now. [I feel like] we are paranoid about something not being printed correctly because of [what I believe are] buggy text fields. [In my experience,] we still have to refer to a physical file cabinet with paper, even though a main point of switching was to go paperless. [In our experience,] screens can now be "locked", so we can't see something if our coworker is also looking at it. [I believe that] the financial hit our company took from this switch was astronomical. [In my opinion:] Beware! Read full review ScreenShots IFS Applications Screenshots