DELMIAWorks (formerly EnterpriseIQ) is an industry specific ERP from IQMS, now a Dassault Systemes brand, developed for manufacturers in the aerospace, assembly, automotive, food, general manufacturing, medical devices, plastics, rubber, metal fabrication, packaging, stamping, and similar industries.
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Epicor Prophet 21
Score 5.7 out of 10
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Prophet 21 from Epicor is a distribution ERP providing SCM capabilities (warehouse, inventory) as well as the ability to streamline quote-to-cash cycle, improve margins, and fulfill orders.
Good for distribution organizations with warehousing. Can also support both Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable, although a more thorough Accounting package is recommended. Is strong when it comes to integrating bar codes and scanners, particularly for warehouse maintenance. Prophet 21 does include a basic CRM offering. However, it is very basic, and for any real Customer Resource management, a third-party tool is best (even recommended by Epicor.)
Accounting reports: accrued receipts reporting makes it difficult to reconcile.
Fixed assets: depreciation posts to the general ledger at the asset level, generating inordinately large numbers of relatively meaningless transactions.
Process cost: PIT display lacks many useful fields, including vendor name and number.
Financial reports carry beyond two decimal places.
Report structures are not sensibly arranged, and many reports imbed data within text fields, making manipulation and reporting more time-consuming.
Prophet 21 could use better management tools for its own data. The database has a tendency to bloat and over time can grow exceedingly large without administrative intervention.
The UI can be cluttered at times and the windows tend to jump into focus or drop from focus when it isn't expected causing user confusion and data entry errors.
Branding on forms and the UI is almost nonexistent. Customizations of screen aesthetics and form layout options should be easier and not require custom programming.
I've used Epicor Prophet 21 for about 12 years (in various iterations). It started out as CommerceCenter by Prophet 21 then became Prophet 21 by Activant and then Prophet 21 by Epicor. So frequently, when a software company is acquired, it stops being great. That has not been the case with Epicor Prophet 21. Over the years they've been under Epicor, the product has just gotten better and better, with major extensibility enhancements and new mobile components coming online.
Overall, I love using Prophet 21. With a few rare exceptions, functions within the application have been streamlined so they can be used with as few clicks and key presses as possible. That's not to say they've given up any functionality. The platform is incredibly powerful; just easy to use.
When hosted locally, you don't have to worry about outages unless the power goes out and the battery backups fail. It can also be hosted in the cloud which is as reliable as your internet connection. There's really no concern for outages in the software by itself. Outages are controlled by external factors.
I do feel like there are some screens and reports that could be streamlined. Prophet 21 likes to load features all at once when going into a program but a quicker load time into order entry, for example, is worth having a little latency while a non-essential tab that doesn't get used very often is opened.
Very poor, try to call company support as a last resort as I know how much time it will take out of my day without getting a solution. It seems like the help desk does not have appropriate experience using the software. It would be nice of there was a separate support line to call for more experienced users of the software so we don't get someone just reading from the help file.
The support is some of the worst I've seen across all the 122 software vendors we work with. Everything is offshore and it is always vague answers, links to wiki's that don't apply, and when we pay for project support they charge $200 an hour for someone who works remote from Mexico to call you on a poor quality VoIP connection that isn't all that well trained and often doesn't have basic IT skills
The on-site training was great. I give it a 9 because the trainer was a chain smoker who had to excuse herself a lot to smoke. Kind of unprofessional. She was a very good trainer though.
I had a great time with the online training. Most of the online trainings were live which meant you had opportunity to interact with instructors. I liked trying to derail them by posting funny comments to the chat window. The only complaint I had about these is they weren't recorded for later use. Well, another complaint is that they were sometimes too short.
It is nice that an IQMS employee helps you with the implementation, however they were more of a technical resource than a project management resource. I wish they could provide a more off the shelf timeline given their experience in implementing the system.
The overall implementation is smooth. Prophet 21 sends someone on-site for as many days as you need them to step through the initial implementation. Data conversion is the biggest trick. Make sure you get help with that portion of implementation. Also, be sure to offer plenty of training incentives to keep people coming back for more training. A little money spent up front will save you tons of headaches later.
This is the only software that I have used so I am unable to rate it based on another type of software. My experience with IQ is extensive though, and have worked and learned in all areas and love how this program works. The many different modules are relatively easy to learn and they offer support if you need additional instruction.
I have not looked at them in detail, but have received a lot of positive comments through out the industry, we're on the fence in regards to viability of cloud based solutions, but from the information we have received it seems like NetSuite has developed a good solution for the industry.
Prophet 21 is very reliable. The database is robust and well designed. The application is also hard to break. If there's one feature I don't like, it's that they haven't accounted for the dreaded single quote. That's kind of the bane of Microsoft SQL's existence. They need to escape that character in every field that will accept it in the system. Otherwise, the system throws all kinds of errors and many times will crash.
Our implementation of warehouse management was probably the best investment our company has made recently. The control gained over our inventory is a tremendous asset and allows to see in an instant whether or not we can meet our customers' demands.
