inFlow Inventory vs. Microsoft Dynamics AX (discontinued)

inFlow Inventory is a very useful tool for any and every e-commerce business that wishes to have a more efficient and seamless means of managing their inventory. It is particularly well suited to small businesses such as mine who need the extra hand and a products-based business that has goods to track.

It integrates fully with the other Microsoft software we use daily, and this coordination speeds up our work and gives us the agility to run easily. For example, in a purchase inquiry, the customer, after submitting a request, identifies the teams that should work on the project, and if they need further review by other people, they are added to the process, and everything is managed seamlessly rather than the sales process. Get the result as fast as possible.

Incentivized

• The ease of use is phenomenal. Unlike other software where the dealer comes and sets up the whole system, you can do this all by yourself.
• You can upload multiple items detail in inventory via CSV file rather than enter each item detail.
• It gives you features to which you can change the virtual location of any item.
• We are an eCommerce Business. Therefore, we want the status for each item which is available in our stock, whether it was returned from a customer or rejected by the vendor. In addition, inFlow gives you all these functionalities on a single platform.
• It's a user-friendly application which doesn't require an expert to configure it.
• You can integrate InFlow with eCommerce solution i.e. Magento & Shopify.

Incentivized

• Microsoft Dynamics AX's scalability to meet our regional office needs provide flexibility to the team's requirements.
• Combined with Citrix Xenapp, the application offers seamless access for users on high latency unreliable network connection to the application.
• Application maintenance and updates are easy which makes it possible for us to manage remotely considering the servers are located in a remote Asia site.

Incentivized

• Lag - The software lags a bit while communicating with server. It causes a little delay and frustration for certain features
• Reporting - Although the reporting is good enough it lacks a certain amount of customization for reports
• Integrations - While the software integrates smoothly with a lot of accounting softwares, it sometimes creates issues with certain l2c erp systems

Incentivized

• MRP can be slow to adapt to changes in actual production or supply chain transactions.
• Setting up number sequences seems a trivial matter, but these numbers ID transactions once they are in the ledger and are key--easy to miss this point in the implementation process.
• Bank rec being easily automated and able to quickly plug into a bank back end to get data is not the best.
• Payment processing can be 'clunky' based on checks, ACH, Wires...as some of these items are not triggered out of the box in AX, bur are easily added --talking ACH and Wires specifically.

Incentivized

Microsoft Dynamics continues to evolve by bringing more functionality to the customer. Also there are several independent software providers that offer a wide range of solutions for vertical markets.

Incentivized

Overall the product does what we need it to do in order for us to function as a company. While there are some concerns over ongoing costs, the belief is, once we have it fully acclimated to our business the cost should settle into alignment with our original expectations. The new features that are consistently being added do add value to the product as they are usually customer request directed.

Incentivized

Some integration and high volume ramping challenges, particularly with BizTalk and SQL Server, but getting sorted out. Outages over time appeared to be more dependent on integration complexity than AX MES.

Some integration and high volume ramping challenges, particularly with BizTalk and SQL Server, but getting sorted out. Outages over time appeared to be more dependent on integration complexity than AX MES.

We use a 3rd-party Microsoft Partner for the system. They are responsive and very knowledgeable. While costs have been mentioned several times in this review they are very aware of costs and have developers who are more economical they use to help offset the level of work required to meet our changes and fix our issues.

Incentivized

It took a lot of work, but Microsoft ultimately did a good job with in-person training, including being onsite in multiple global locations for extended periods.

Our solution deviated from a number of key out-of-the-box standards that were included in Online training. We just used that for introduction to the general functionality.

Some rough spots, but ultimately worked out. The contract didn't appear to be structured to support the level of overlapping facility deployments required to meet timeline commitments. Merging cultures on the program was also challenging. Overall, not an easy implementation by any stretch. Everyone did the best they could.

I haven’t used any other inventory management system before using inFlow Inventory, I feel very lucky to have found a software that does what I need it to do without the need to try any other software prior. It meets my eCommerce small business needs and I’m very satisfied with the customer service I receive from this app.

I was not part of the decision making process to select Microsoft Dynamics AX, however, I do know that an exhaustive search was done and many options were considered alongside Microsoft Dynamics AX and I feel that the right decision was made in choosing this solution.

Incentivized

• inFlow has a lot of important inventory management features, but I like the easy import tool that adds stock to the database in less than a minute.
• You can keep track of inventory, purchase orders, modify items, and generate reports of sales, salesperson, product, statistics. The possibilities are endless with this tool.
• The software is very easy to work with and see real-time updates. Everything from transferring stock to pulling stock and inputting new products is done with ease.

Incentivized

• With the robust built-in reporting we were able to drop an external reporting platform that costed about $40,000.
• API integrations have saved manual entry and reduced having to hire 2-3 people to manage data.
• Several administrators and developers are required for this which costs about 200-300 thousand in employee costs.

Incentivized