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Looking back on 2 Years with Brightpearl
Updated October 12, 2016

Looking back on 2 Years with Brightpearl

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

Overall Satisfaction with Brightpearl

The implementation of Brightpearl went rather smoothly for the most part. That being said, we were familiar with the system previously (from our other stores) and we paid for Gold Support to have someone on call (which was great) and to do training.

I think we made a fundamental flaw when adding a brand new Brightpearl account instead of tacking on a new store to the existing account because there was no linking between our stores. This was partly due to server issues but also partly to do with our own lack of knowledge with how the system works (AKA user error).

Brightpearl was ALWAYS great at responding to us. Their customer service was quick and responsive.

Unfortunately, the responses were often that "engineers were working on it" but nothing seemed to ever come of that. I realize that Brightpearl is a large company that a lot of businesses rely on. But when you can't hit "enter" when trying to search in the front-end POS, that type of behavior should be changed very quickly and it never was. Admittedly, small things, but those annoyances tend to ultimately affect the overall experience.
We previously used Brightpearl at my current job as our backend ERP system that managed our products and inventory, PO process, accounting, order management and fulfillment, customer profiles, and backend to our online store (Magento). We switched to another system since then and it hasn't worked out well for our expanding business needs.

Our store is a multibrand store that works with nearly 60 vendors so keeping them straight is a difficult but rewarding problem. We also work in custom and made-to-order items which further complicates our small boutique. We have three locations - one in New York and two in Hong Kong, so we are global.
  • Brightpearl is strong in product and inventory management. They understand that products can be very different and institute attributes like variants etc., to account for this.
  • Brightpearl does a great job with tracking inventory changes and creating a clear pathway to what happened with your stock.
  • Brightpearl does a good job of making it easy for us to do our taxes.
  • Brightpearl's backend interface is easy to use and simple.
  • Brightpearl is nimble and adjustable - editing orders and customer profiles was quick and easy.
  • Brightpearl's POS is very poor. We often completed orders through the backend for less confusion. Also, they make creating a return unnecessarily difficult (because they link in journal entries for accounting purposes which no salesman should have to deal with).
  • Brightpearl isn't cloud based! Always a bummer as this makes accessing and using the product much more difficult. Also, for a global company like ours we had to be on two different servers so our inventory wasn't linked across stores. I see this as a fundamental flaw of BP.
  • The reporting in Brightpearl was lacking, so much so that we would export raw data in CSVs and do the reporting ourselves. Some of the basic reporting was helpful but when it came to key retail metrics, it was surprisingly deficient
  • The customer profile section wasn't very comprehensive. Yes there was a lot of information you could include but it was hardcoded and you couldn't run reports off of a lot of it.
  • POSITIVE ROI: The ability to get our business up and running in a short amount of time
  • NEGATIVE ROI: Inefficiencies when running business reports - this took way too much time.
  • POSITIVE ROI: Although it wasn't nearly perfect, the ability to link in with systems such as Magento
  • NEGATIVE ROI: The inability to access and analyze customer driven data (i.e. sell-through, inventory turnover, etc)
We selected Brightpearl because we had experience with them from our other stores. Although they weren't perfect, they were manageable and agile to a certain extent.

With respect to NetSuite, Brightpearl is not nearly as powerful unfortunately. That being said, NetSuite is aimed at a larger and more complex business customer and with that comes functionality that many users of Brightpearl might find unwanted or unneeded. BUT NetSuite is cloudbased which is a big leg up.

I don't consider Shopify Plus that much of a competitor, more of a side-by-side usage scenario. But Shopify does place a lot of emphasis on ease-of-use and a stable system, something I think Brightpearl could benefit from (especially the front end POS).

Stitch/Odoo are probably the most direct comparisons but unfortunately, I haven't used either of them directly. Odoo doesn't seem nearly as powerful or well thought out as Brightpearl. Stitch seems better from an interface and reporting standpoint.

Brightpearl is strong as an easy-to-use, easy-to-train ERP system and they have a clear track record of that. They manage records well, are reliable, and offer the resources to learn the system. They also have great partners (Magento, etc).

They start to break down when it comes to global omni-channel experiences (linking in-store and online) and there are small things that they still haven't completed yet (ironing our returns, removing bugs from the POS, allowing for more extensive reporting). That being said, I would recommend them for many small to medium size businesses that don't yet have a global presence.

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