Item: e-automate
Rating: 5
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with e-automate

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use e-automate to keep a record of customers and their devices, create purchase orders, create sales orders, keep track of inventory, place and manage service calls and records, billing, create contracts and auto increase rates, among I'm sure so much more. It is a great database for us to use for generics but has the occasional hiccup that can case weeks of additional work.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Keep track of customer database
organize service call
ease of contract input
makes POs easy

Cons

When attaching related items to equipment, it seems that you have to jump through a bunch of different hoops to make sure it shows up.
Customer service is slow and can sometimes takes weeks to respond to issues that need to be addressed, and that is only to get the ball rolling for a call to take place.
With every update, it seems that instead of just adding features they change old features so then you have to go back and relearn everything. This is especially difficult when it comes to clocking specific buttons that have moved or when words change. For example, when adding contracts, it used to say include in expiring copies and now it says exclude.
PLEASE CREATE A FUNCTION WHERE YOU CAN HAVE MORE THAN ONE TAB OPEN AT A TIME. i.e. dispatch and sales orders split screen to one another. So, you don't have to lose your spot closing out of sales ordered to put in a service call.

Return on Investment

It increases time savings for implementations you already know.
However, if there is a new feature there is an extensive learning curve to understand how to enter information so that the program will do what you want, accurately.
I am not sure how much manual work it reduces other than using a search bar instead of a filing cabinet.

Contract Management

The contract management is extremely helpful. However, we recently noticed that when we auto increased some contracts and the increase caused the cost to go out to three decimal places, when it was only set to two, the contract would not round and instead would just not increase at all. Luckily, we caught this error but there was no easy way to update all contracts to calculate to four decimal places and had to manually change each one, sometimes causing us to re do the entire contract.

All-in-One Solution

It is very nice to have one system for a variety of workflows, such as inventory, accounting, service, and contracts, all in one place instead of having to manage and grant access to a bunch of different systems and open and view a bunch of different windows. It is nice as well that all the screens interact easily with one another.

Alternatives Considered

We use them in conjunction with each other as there are things that each can do that the other cannot. They piggy back off of each other very nicely and make work very efficient for us. We greatly enjoy that both work well together and independently of each other for our needs.

Key Insights

Do you think e-automate delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with e-automate's feature set?

Yes

Did e-automate live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of e-automate go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy e-automate again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Sherpa ERP

Likelihood to Recommend

e-automate is well suited for businesses that need to keep track of customers, contracts, and inventory. It is a great database to hold lots of info and keep it organized for every aspect of your business. It is definitely best if you have lots of customers than if you don't have many or don't have many returning customers.

Using e-automate

Users and Roles

8 - We use it for placing and keeping track of service calls, billing and invoicing, creating purchase orders, keeping track of inventory, customers, devices, equipment locations, creating contracts, editing contracts, referring back to old contracts, billing, invoicing, creating purchase orders, keeping track of inventory, customers, equipment locations, creating contracts, and editing contracts.

Support Headcount Required

We typically have to go to the help desk every time there is an issue. This would be the biggest hiccup e-auto has as their response time can take days to weeks which can really hold up productivity speed and set us pretty far back until the issue is resolved.

Business Processes Supported

inventory
invoicing
dispatch

Innovative Uses

sorting customer lists
organizing vendors
searching purchase orders

Future Planned Uses

metrics
bulk updates
reports

Likelihood to Renew

Its really the only option for the industry that does enough of what we need for it to function . I'm not sure if there were better options out there if we would have to renew our subscription. With the addition of AI, hopefully something will be able to become more useful.

Evaluating e-automate and Competitors

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Integration with Other Systems

The decision to purchase e-automate relied heavily on integration with other systems in our network. If they were not compatible or able to integrate seamlessly then we would not have purchased e-automate for our business. It just so happens that they are recommended to pair together and generally work well together.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

We really did not have many other options like most companies in our field. this is the software that is recommended and works the best when it comes to integrating with other platforms we already utilize in our day to day operation. We are happy it is able to do what it does, but there is room for improvements.

e-automate Implementation

Implementation Rating

I did not participate in implementation

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Don't know

Change Management Lessons

Not sure - n/a

Implementation Issues

e-automate Training

Training Types Used

No Training

In-Person Training

Online Training

Ease of e-automate Training

No, i think training would have been very helpful, however it was an additional fee and with the high cost of e-automate already it was not a high priority.

Configuring e-automate

Product Configurability

I think the configurability of it is extremely, limited

Configuration Lessons

no, it's really a trouble shoot until you can get it to do what you want

Additional Customization Considerations

n/a

e-automate Support

Support Rating

E-automate typically has the worst support of all of the software we use. It can take days to weeks to be contacted about a ticket and that is just initial acceptance, a resolution could take upwards of months. You really have to work around their schedule. If they call and you are out to lunch or off that day- you get cycled back to the bottom of the list and hopefully are able to be available next time.

e-automate Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
None	Slow Resolution Poor followup Problems left unsolved Not kept informed Escalation required Difficult to get immediate help Need to explain problems multiple times Slow Initial Response

Premium Support

No- premium support should not be an option to fix general bugs in the system. Support should be support. It is bad customer service to ask people to pay more to help with a program that tends to be buggier the deeper and deeper you dive into it. Very disappointed that this is an option.