Likelihood to Recommend It is well suited for accountants that know what information they need for accounting transactions and financial reports. It is well suited for manufacturing since the progress from raw materials to finished goods is easy to track and analyze. The software is well suited to handle individual jobs but then roll up reporting for families of products that are similar.
Read full review For a small to mid-size business, MS Dynamics SL is effective. We are capable of managing our finances with a very low risk of error. We have worked with MS Dynamics for almost 15 years and have more than doubled the size of our business in that time with very few issues from the program. We have exponentially increased our revenue and reporting demands and have found SL to be very dependable and stable. The program does have the occasional glitch and those are sometimes outside of the realm of expertise of our IT department. SL support is excellent, but their timeliness is not as urgent as ours.
Read full review Pros It is one of the simplest products on the market. Very user friendly and in my opinion not complicated and busy wit unnecessary tools. We usually do a very short training for new hires and they pick it up promptly. Data processing is fast and results are always on time. Good amount of ready made reports for our needs. Read full review Provides flexibility for complex project based cost accounting Strong and flexible allocation processer for cost allocations, markups, and pricing A "Flexible Billing" module under the project controller series that allows for multiple billing formats ranging from fixed price schedule of values, T&M or Cost Plus, and scheduled billing. Flexible reporting with options using Crystal Reports, SSRS, a Quick Query tool, and ability to tie into MS Office tools such as MS Access and MS Excel Tight integration with Financials, but also the ability to integrate with modules such as Sales Order, Inventory, and Field Service Customization abilities ranging from a VBA (visual basic for application) foundation to allow customizing existing forms to the ability to use the SDK (Software Development Kit) to build more complex customizations that integrate with Dynamics SL. Read full review Cons Infor ERP is a great stand alone ERP system but add-on software packages are often needed to attain a greater level of detail. Our organization has recently teamed up with ScottTech to implement a warehouse management system called PickPro. PickPro will provide us with up-to-the-minute inventory information driven by the many transactions and movement of material that occurs throughout our processes. The Human Resource module is not used by our organization as it lacks functionality. Reports and background tasks/updates often need to be run after-hours as speed is a serious issue and can hinder other parallel users. Read full review Reporting in the Project module is lacking functionality. I understand that most companies have specific needs when it comes to tracking project information but the standard reports are not good. I would recommend a product like Management Reporter that is for Projects only. Project Reporter should allow users to pull in all Project related data into reports. Fixing suspended batches. Obviously all of us users have experienced this mess. SL knows what needs to be corrected and there could be some step by step fixes in a separate repair module to do the steps we do in Query Analyzer. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Their support has been second to none. Quick to respond, knowledgeable in their help. Whenever our clients have a new need or strategy change, Infor is there to help us implement that for our client in an efficient manner. Cost continues to be a prime mover for our renewal of this product.
Read full review Unfortunately, Dynamics' lack of ability to smoothly integrate with our CRM system is causing us to look at other solutions. The efficiencies that we gain by using Dynamics for our day to day accounting are lost in the constant headaches of getting sales quotes to import properly into the system for invoicing. Another major issue for us has been budgeting and reporting. We currently do all of our budgeting and board reporting in Excel, which is too time consuming and inefficient, especially when a system as robust as Dynamics should easily be able to handle this relatively simple task.
Read full review Usability It is a user friendly, simpler and robust platform.
Read full review I rate it a 10 because we have removed the fields we don't need so users can really crank the data into the system. The software was designed for the professional services firm in mind but does a tremendous job for construction firms and "blended" companies that are both distribution firms but project centric as well. Perhaps they drop ship inventory to a project where their employees or subs need to work on a project for example.
Read full review Reliability and Availability We have had only one unplanned outage for 2 hours in the last 30 months. We shut down for 30 min to 1 hour once a month, but that is for Microsoft OS updates to the servers. Being a 24/7 world wide operation, the reliability is really important. We do get an 8 hour window on the weekend that we can be down for a short period to install Microsoft Dynamics SL updates, but we do not have many of those. On our last version upgrade, we shut the users out at 9:30 am and were fully operational in less than 6 hours. The upgrade was New SQL server, New SL server and 2 new Citrix servers.
Read full review Support Rating We always go thru our own IT team first. However, when they don't have the answer Infor support is always ready to resolve any question you would be asking, and they always get back to you promptly.
Read full review Support is only used when needed, so unfortunately ,they get all the odd issues. It's a difficult business, but Microsoft and our firm do a great job of meeting customer needs. We get routine feedback that our support services are very good.
Read full review Implementation Rating Just to let it take its course. The implementation for me once I became a part of my former organization was pretty seamless. Just get to know the basics and call the support team to ask questions if you need help on an issue, should they arise. They are ready, willing, and able to help!
Read full review Alternatives Considered In my opinion, Infor ERP lacks in a lot of customizable features and navigation through the system. I believe If you are using this for the recruitment process in your organization, the system is very slow to navigate, does not accommodate for high volume of applicants, and you can experience a lot of issues with communication between systems. In my opinion, Infor ERP does not collect or transmit data easily between other systems, even when integrated.
Read full review Of the comparable mid-range ERP systems, Dynamics SL competes at the lower end based on price, but also above the high-end based on flexibility, data, and reporting. Being able to stay with the same core accounting from a $100 million dollar company to a $3 billion dollar company shows the range of capabilities.
Read full review Scalability Since the backbone of the database is MS SQLServer, the database can be easily scaled.
Read full review Return on Investment Huge efficiency gains, faster response to customers, far reduced costs from improved effective process management, reduced labor costs - doing more with less Read full review More time is spent on manipulating reports which can and should be automated. Lack of electronic invoicing process and other green technology features creates more cost on printing and storage costs. The lack of a user friendly interface requires more training and a bigger learning curve for staff. Read full review ScreenShots