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IT Distributor using Brightpearl to grown their business
July 13, 2016

IT Distributor using Brightpearl to grown their business

Scott Dobson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Brightpearl

We used a recommended third party implementation partner and in hindsight, this was a mistake. We should have used Brightpearl themselves as it is a very broad system and needs many considerations before you begin setup. We also should have thought a little more about how we handled stock, SKU naming conventions and accounting.
We have gold support so can call up at any time for support and this works very well indeed. We did, at one point, use a third party to work with us on some accounting issues, which we solved, but all in all support is very responsive.
Cloud Distribution is a networking and security distribution business selling solutions to partners, resellers and service providers. We use Brightpearl to manage stock, multi-currency, invoicing and other accounting functions. Our sales force also uses Brightpearl to provide quotations to our clients. The real benefit we find from using the system is the simplicity of sending and tracking quotations and pipeline.
  • Quotations are very easy to stage, track and re-configure. We regularly re-use issued quotes and edit them, on the fly, which Brightpearl does really well.
  • The accounting function is bullet proof 'if' you spend time and effort ensuring your processes are logical. We spent many hours working on this element of the platform but now it's in place, it tends to provide near perfect P&L data.
  • The fact that BP is cloud based makes it simple to get your hands on important information any time, any place, any where.
  • Reporting is a well known area of Brightpearl which needs a lot of work. When creating or editing reports, the one thing you need to report on is, more often than not, missing which is very frustrating.
  • URL changes on each release make bookmarking a pain in the back side. I know there's a start URL but Brightpearl is the only platform I've ever worked with, and we work with many being a cloud distributor, which changes its underlying URL each time it releases new code. This needs to be fixed.
  • There seems to be an ongoing issue with PDF creating in the quotation engine whereby, for unknown reasons, PDFs end up being 0kb in size and are useless. We've raised this many times as I am sure others have also, but it keeps coming back.
  • Exporting and Importing products in particular is a time consuming and complex process made all the more difficult with restrictions on SKU counts and column naming issues. This needs more work for sure.
  • It has served its purpose and we are very happy with the outcome in general although we'd really like an easier API toolset so we could build relational connections to our CRM and marketing platforms.
Brightpearl was the only system we could find which didn't require PS and £10ks to implement. The other systems we looked at did invoicing, quoting and accounting very well, but not in one pane of glass. Brightpearl gives us what we need today and we hope, with further development, it will step up to the API and reporting challenges we are looking to address in the future.
It suits our business and we certainly aren't the target audience. I guess the larger you are as a business the more ERP enterprise class software you need so SMB is a good place for Brightpearl to focus.