adequate,but limited
November 21, 2018

adequate,but limited

Dave Hail | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Infor VISUAL

Infor Visual was selected as as an enterprise wide tool for accounting, MRP, manufacturing process control, and inventory control for US operations. It was selected as a Y2K solution to the home-grown MRP system used at that time. The software helped the design of process control for business and manufacturing, document control for BOM design and changes as well as business information for labor and material costing to develop costing models for sales. The quality control modules were not used.
  • Infor Visual has a standard way of addressing business operations: sales orders, invoicing, reporting. It is easy to train operators used to using a manual or other ERP system.
  • Material control is easy for production runs, R&D material lists and repairs. The process of receiving, issuing and returning material to inventory is facilitated by standard interfaces that are easily learned by material control operators.
  • Engineering changes to bills of material are facilitated by the "engineering Master" flexible editing capability. The version control for the BOM's can be as detailed or vague as the process designed dictates. One item of a BOM or the entire BOM can be changed quickly and approved for production that day.
  • At times a "shadow part" is necessary in the manufacturing process. This shadow part does not require an inventory transaction but is made a as a separate process - sometimes out of sequence to the general process flow. Infor Visual ver 6.3.5 does not have that capability.
  • When generating forms for business and manufacturing operations Infor Visual ver 6.3.5 has a limited number of options. To change or add forms requires an unsupported editor. When the stock and custom options are depleted an outside programming module is required as well as programmers to develop the forms.
  • While free software upgrades to the main operations modules have been part of the maintenance agreement. One upgrade required database and hardware support not justifiable for the current business model. The system was frozen at the current version at that time.
  • There is no easy way to differentiate between engineering documentation and production documentation.
  • I cannot comment on business impact.
SAP Business One was selected for the China Division for cost and ease of training reasons. It does not have the capabilities required for the main office accounting or product engineering. It also was not available at the time of Visual Manufacturing selection.
Epicor Eclipse was not available at the time of Visual Manufacturing selection. It has many if the features lacking in Infor Visual and integrates better with SalesForce.com CRM. Epicor is one of the upgrade systems that are being considered.
SAP ERP is a large piece of software that requires long planning, implementation and training cycles. Its complexity requires a large support contingent even in a cloud implementation.
The original version of Visual Manufacturing (Lilly Software) was intended for mechanical manufacturing. It was adapted at our facility (we were not the first) to accomodate electronic manufacturing. For electronic manufacturing process control it is not ideal when referencing in-line or custom processes used to build product. For material control it is excellent unless a modification to a standard product is required (and we did this on 60% of product going out the door). The co-product feature that removes material from an assembly requires the creator of the work order to calculate the percentage of cost the removed items are from the completed product.
On the business operations side regional tax reports were difficult to extract and an external module to go into the data base and extract that had to be created.

The system itself was stable for the most part. Occasional "data collisions" corrupted transactions at times. The accounting procedures in place found them by the end of the month .where they were corrected.
For a small business with less formal processes Infor Visual can be used with little training for the operators. If the processes need a higher level of accountability and control the processes can be formalized with workflow scripts to ensure that higher level of control.

Infor VISUAL Feature Ratings

Accounts payable
8
Accounts receivable
9
Global Financial Support
9
Primary and Secondary Ledgers
9
Journals and Reconciliations
9
Configurable Accounting
9
Standardized Processes
9
Billing Management
Not Rated
Cash and Asset Management
Not Rated
Travel & Expense Management
Not Rated
Budgetary Control & Encumbrance Accounting
Not Rated
Period Close
9
Inventory tracking
10
Automatic reordering
Not Rated
Location management
7
Pricing
6
Order entry
8
Credit card processing
Not Rated
Cost of goods sold
7
Order Orchestration
Not Rated
Pay calculation
Not Rated
Benefit plan administration
Not Rated
Direct deposit files
Not Rated
Dashboards
2
Standard reports
7
Custom reports
2
Not Rated
API for custom integration
Not Rated
Plug-ins
Not Rated
Role-based user permissions
9
Single sign-on capability
9
Award Lifecycle Management
Not Rated
Budgeting and Forecasting
Not Rated
Project Costing
5
Cost Capture
8
Capital Project Management
Not Rated
Project Revenue Recognition
Not Rated
Project Planning and Scheduling
Not Rated
Definable Resource Pools
Not Rated
Not Rated
Bids Analyzed and Compared
Not Rated
Requisitions-to-Purchase Orders Integrated
Not Rated
Not Rated
Production Process Design
5
Production Management
5
Configuration Management
5
Manufacturing Costs
8
Not Rated
Forecasting
Not Rated
Inventory Planning
Not Rated