JobBOSS² vs. Oracle PeopleSoft ERP

I would recommend JobBoss to any colleague in small—to medium-sized manufacturing firms. Although I am not convinced that it will be able to handle advanced data from larger firms, it should be able to handle everything small—to medium-sized businesses require. JobBoss is great.

Incentivized

You really need a big enterprise to take advantage of PeopleSoft. It is not entirely user-friendly, and it often requires massive amounts of customization to make it work for layers if you will. Business experts can figure it out, but if you are expecting someone to easily learn how to use the timekeeping modules without heavy customization, it's really not for you. You need to know going in, that this is not for a small business at all, and not even a medium-sized enterprise. It's geared to massive organizations that need to integrate business processes over geographic areas and multiple departments.

Incentivized

• Estimating is great once you learn how to use it, and it makes repeat estimates easier than ever.
• Time tracking is amazing for us. It has taken some time to figure out exactly how we want to use the tracking parts, but it's only because it has multiple ways to do the same thing and finding out what works best for us took some time.
• Billing and Purchasing are a breeze. The full package is worth the money to fully integrate the entire business into JobBOSS² since it can handle it all.

Incentivized

• One of the best thing it does is it is customizable. You can implement any business logic you need. This is one of the very key assets of PeopleSoft Financials.
• PeopleSoft Financials's accounting methods are in line with industry standards. You can use the process as is and ledger will be taken care of.
• It supports multiple ways to integrate with other systems.

Incentivized

• quoting - limited functionality currently
• costing of jobs and parts - there is very limited information on how their calculations work and limited customization of costing. Most of the job costing or margin reports are inaccurate. Costing is a black box with Jobboss2 that doesn't allow you to better understand how they are calculating nor the ability to tweak the variables of those calculations to align their reports and models with the way your organization costs and prices jobs.
• Raw material inventory and resource tracking for jobs - we don't even use the raw material function because it's inflexible. When you quote raw material, oftentimes you ask for one size diameter of raw material...but the vendor may not have it and often the next best size instead. When/if this happens, you'd have to delete or re-add the raw material to jobboss2 and re-assign that size to every part that's used. You'd, in theory, have to have every possible size of raw material and every spec of raw material that you use in Jobboss2, and you'd still have to re-assign it all of the time to different parts when you couldn't find the ideal size of material. This is a huge gap.
• Automatically logs you out while using the platform, even with only one tab open. We'll be actively using jobboss2, and even within a minute of login, you click on a module of jobboss2, and it will ask you to log in again. Very frustrating.
• Inability to open multiple tabs in Jobboss2. We need to crossreference information all of the time, comparing inventory, last jobs routings & dates, and costs which we try to pull up multiple tabs in jobboss2, but it does not effectively allow you to do this. It's slightly possible, but oftentimes will log you out of your session as soon as you open a new tab.
• Blanket orders and consignment - Jobboss2 is ineffective at allowing efficient tracking of blanket orders or parts on consignment. There's no functionality for consignment tracking of parts as you try to track replenishment buckets.
• Customizable reports with more field and table selections - reports can be customized but only with the fields that Jobboss2 provides for that specific report. We need to link other tables from the database to be able to see the information that we need, and jobboss2 does not easily allow you to link a new table into reports to add additional fields that you want or need to see. For example, in Salesforce...you can pick specific tables that you want to link together and pull any field that you need. Jobboss2 only allows you to see the specific tables that they pre-built for reports. If you need another field that's missing on the report, you'd have to know SQL in order to add it vs. a user-friendly report builder that anyone non-technical would be able to use, which is standard in most other software platforms for ERP or CRM.
• material/inventory forecasting to plan when you need the next job - this is incredibly limited. We typically look out for 2-12 months to plan when we'll need the next lot for a particular part. Jobboss2 material forecast will only let you look at the next 4 months as 4 columns and then it groups any months beyond that into one 5th column. You should be able to set a specific time horizon (i.e. from today to 12 months out and see the stock level and orders needed for each of those next 12 months. As a result, we still have to use manual spreadsheets to plan our production and scheduling jobs.
• jobboss2 upcharges for most new features or modules that you want to add. For example, they've built reports that would be incredibly useful for the majority of their customers, but they charge to add one simple report because it's considered a customization.

Incentivized

• PeopleSoft Financials does not address the needs of small organizations that do not have a large enough staff to maintain the software or utilize the features it provides as it requires a moderate staff to keep track of all of the transactions and processing
• PeopleSoft licensing costs are significant, which are relative to the features provided but in many cases those features may not be necessary
• PeopleSoft licensing structures can be frustrating at times when certain modules would allow you to perform the complex task needed but it would require the entire module to be licensed for just that one feature (e.g. Cash Management for loading bank statements in certain formats)

Incentivized

Jobboss tends to have a very steep learning curve and isnt always useable for a lot of manufacturing staff. Buy-in to utilize the software was and continues to be a challenge as staff needs to track & input components so that info on Jobboss is up to date and reliable

PRISM is a great tool to track and watch numerous financial documents. I would like to see more of an integration platform that would control tracking for specific project details. There is currently only a little section for job notes which I would like to see improve. I think navigation could be improved, but isn't the worst compared to some platforms I have worked with as it provides a tree like structure on the backend which helps synchronize information together for fiscal financials.

It is extremely easy to learn and use E2 Shop System. It provides everything a manufacturing company might be looking for, starting from entering a new PO to shipping parts. Routers that get created from E2 Shop System also help track parts on the shop floor and is accessible from every where. E2 Shop System also now has an app, which is great when it comes to scanning router steps directly from your phone.

Incentivized

The usability is very outdated In my opinion. The screens resemble those of Windows 3.1. Too many clicks and drop-downs or clicks to go to a new screen. The business logic also appears dated and requires an update. Overall, it does not have a pleasing User Interface and should be refreshed, or a new interface should be built from the ground up.

Incentivized

Have had no issues with availability

Incentivized

Have only had minimal issues with slow processing

Incentivized

The initial training leaves a little to be desired because it's done by people who know the generalities of the system. However, once you get into one-on-one trainings and tech support calls, they do a tremendous job in these aspects. They go above and beyond to make sure you get what you need.

Incentivized

I can't give them a perfect rating because it does often take a long time and usually more [expensive] to resolve trying issues that cannot be solved by our in-house team. PeopleSoft is complicated, and the mix and match of user-created and stock modules cause problems very often. These usually require more customization to completely fix, requiring more money spent with

Incentivized

Our trainer was very knowledgeable and helpful.

Incentivized

The videos and live seminars were helpful but not all were as in-depth as needed.

Incentivized

I assumed there would be more assistance from JobBoss for implementation of the software. I felt it was very independent on my part and I felt unsure a lot of the time

Incentivized

I recommend that everyone pay special attention to developing a solid testing and training plan if you are even thinking of implementing PeopleSoft. Be ready to obtain good trainers and developers, otherwise, your journey can be unnecessarily painful and much more expensive. Try to stay with an implementation partner who really has your needs at heart, and actually takes the time to understand your organization!

Incentivized

We really didn't compare too many other ERP systems. Unfortunately, I was not involved in the decision at the time it was made. We used to have E2 but we were kind of forced into upgrading because E2 would no longer do software updates. Very fluent transition from E2 to JobBOSS².

Incentivized

PeopleSoft is much more appropriate for large organizations than the software programs listed here. I'm involved in a project to bring billing and accounts receivable functions out of "shadow systems" like those listed here and into PeopleSoft, and PeopleSoft is more robust, flexible, and standardizable. We've found it to be an excellent solution.

Incentivized

Ability to add individual data collection seats instead of purchasing in bundles

Incentivized

• We have seen improved visibility of our jobs and on how we quote our products to our customers.
• It is nice to be able to see what is running on each station, who is running it and what part of the process the job is currently at.
• I also like the Data Collection module as I can see in real time what all the employees are currently doing.

Incentivized

• Provides better controls to ensure that spend does not increase beyond the PO amount.
• sPro reverse invoicing provides a mechanism to only pay our staff aug firms for only the hours that entered into PeopleSoft. There is no more reconciliation between the vendor invoices and the hours that were charged within the internal time tracking system.
• PeopleSoft Financials increases employee efficiency through the use of dashboards and work centers.

Incentivized