A Total Eclipse for Wholesale Distribution
Overall Satisfaction with Epicor Eclipse
This company is a wholesale distributor of HVAC products, 70% of which we manufacture. We use Eclipse for AP, AR, GL, Sales, and Purchasing, as well as maintaining a default inventory for all 6 branches. We even use the 'Suggested PO' features for prioritizing our manufacturing processes by the department. The 'Suggested Transfer' feature is used to prioritize loads for the 12+ semi trucks we send out each week from the mother branch IN Wichita, Kansas to our branches in KC, Denver, Omaha, Lincoln and Des Moines.
We use another product for 'Labor and Materials' when costing our manufactured product.
We use another product for 'Labor and Materials' when costing our manufactured product.
Pros
- Sales Order tracking, even returns are strengths of Epicor Eclipse. It can be set up to match returns to previous orders so that the correct credits are applied. It is capable of setting up contract pricing as well as matrix level pricing according to sales velocity or individual customer buyer programs.
- Purchasing can be set up to work by full line buys or short buys while still maintaining a balanced inventory level of vendor line product.
- Vendor Invoices and purchase orders are easily matched up for payment and the diverse reporting features are able to provide multi-faceted views of Product Sales, Items with No Sales, or Sales or Purchasing trends, just to name a few.
- It is also tracking warehouse operation in both RF and non-RF environments, or a combination of the two.
Cons
- Epicor Eclipse announced sometime back about an Advanced Cycle Count (ACC) feature that our company has waited some time for. While it does work somewhat and the dashboard board is nice, the reporting feature, while on the drop down menus, is woefully inept. It also lacks the ability to separate trouble queues, such as back orders, wrong locations, and other inventory concerns, from the ACC functionality (which in our company is done by different people).
- Customer Support is now ported to another country. We don't care who does it but it adds another step in getting needed concerns addressed and, at times, the dialects can be very hard to understand, hence complicating communication of both problems and solutions involved.
- Time management system is very basic.
Yes - A custom program called 'Sabre' which was not upgraded after Y2K.
Not sure - N/A
- Reporting features allow tracking items trending downward which can glut inventory space and dollars if not adjusted
- GMROI reports help analyze turn ratios and adjusted dollar values and margins of product lines.
- Suggested Purchase Order features allowed controlled inventory purchases which avoid lost sales while managing overall dollars invested in an acquired product with the lowest freight costs possible.
For wholesale distribution, Eclipse is, by far, a more complete package.
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