Infor Distribution SX.e vs. Infor VISUAL

Overall management of companies operations including sales, inventory control, warehousing, accounting (ar, ap, and gl). We are able to take a customers order, provide information if the product is in stock, send the order to the warehouse, pick the order, deliver the order using our custom routing program built inside SX.e, invoice the order upon receiving shipping feedback, and then collecting payment within SX.e. We also use SX.e for our purchasing of products from our vendors, tracking the products, entering the products into inventory, and then updating each location with the current inventory. We also are able to track pricing and vendor rebates as well as special price adjustments within SX.e.

Incentivized

I struggle to identify a scenario where VISUAL is an appropriate solution. We used VISUAL because it was a legacy system and the cost/complexity of changeover seemed daunting. The user interface is poor as is the interconnectedness of the various screens and menus. This might be an acceptable piece of software for a continuous manufacturing environment with little variation of basic design, but we have had to write multiple add-on macros in order to get VISUAL to work effectively for us.

Incentivized

• Integrates with supported 3rd party solutions
• Very customizeable
• Robust

Incentivized

• Infor Visual has a standard way of addressing business operations: sales orders, invoicing, reporting. It is easy to train operators used to using a manual or other ERP system.
• Material control is easy for production runs, R&D material lists and repairs. The process of receiving, issuing and returning material to inventory is facilitated by standard interfaces that are easily learned by material control operators.
• Engineering changes to bills of material are facilitated by the "engineering Master" flexible editing capability. The version control for the BOM's can be as detailed or vague as the process designed dictates. One item of a BOM or the entire BOM can be changed quickly and approved for production that day.

Incentivized

• User Interface customizability
• Q&D programming
• Database management

Incentivized

• VTA has been extremely unreliable. I would not recommend it. It is not customizable at all. There is no logical way to handle shift differentials which is a huge issue with a company that runs 24/7.
• If you do not have a schedule set up, they cannot clock in. This poses a problem for anyone that gets called in on a shift they don't normally work on.

Incentivized

Good Technical and Customer Support during and after implementation tasks. Good Project Plan and Management support for implementation and post implementation. Financial functionality could be more comprehensive particularly with Budgeting and Cash Management. Inventory Management capability was adequate but could be more comprehensive as well. "Out of the Box" functionality was adequate but requested add-ons and enhancements seemed to be a bit pricey.

It is very customizable and has lots of scalabilities. However, it can get out of control if not contained with proper business process control.

Incentivized

Because of use cases and easy implementation and the vertical and horizontal scaling.

Incentivized

We use a Channel Partner and don't interact with Infor directly for support.

Incentivized

As we have seen the live environment and the use cases where we implement.

Incentivized

Could have used more hands-on approach. There are multiple webinars and information sessions but until you actually use the system, these are not very helpful.

Incentivized

SXe fit our distribution model and it allowed us to customize it to our specific needs that were not available in the other solutions. The 3rd party integration was also a nice benefit as we use multiple solutions that were not part of the SXe Suite.

Incentivized

We unfortunately did not evaluate any other ERP software. VISUAL was a legacy system and we determined that changing systems would be too difficult, and not cost effective. We reached out to our local VISUAL rep who knew how the software functioned, but not how to apply it more appropriately to our business model, so we continued on with what we had rather than looking elsewhere.

Incentivized

• Ability to stay on top of Inventory as not to carry too much overhead
• Keep Inventory set to FIFO
• Manage deliveries to keep cost per stops to a minimum

Incentivized

• I cannot comment on business impact.

Incentivized