Item: Viewpoint Vista
Rating: 9
Author: Steve Bolton

Overall Satisfaction with Vista by Viewpoint

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Vista by Viewpoint is used across the company. This includes core accounting functions such as AP, AR, Payroll, GL. It is used by Operations for project cost controls and purchasing, field time collection, and progress tracking. Our service department uses the Service module for dispatching, work order logging, contract management and customer billing. An extensive Safety program has been built on the software, which allows full integration with project and employee info.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Being on a Microsoft SQL platform enables easier development and integration with 3rd party software.
It has a very flexible User Defined fields and tables system to allow customizing to the user's needs without breaking standard features.
Security management is very granular.

Cons

Its history is that most entries are transaction-based, requiring batch processing. Some of these could be moved to background batch processing so the batching would be more transparent to the user.
More data needs to be available on mobile devices. They are making a move in this direction, which is good.
Some screens allow flexibility of viewing data in grid views, but the export of this data to Excel could be improved. This is mostly seen in Workcenters.

Return on Investment

Invoice turnaround is greatly facilitated with the software.
Payroll processing time has been greatly reduced due to the electronic data collection and verification throughout the week rather than having to deal with paper time cards on payroll day.

Alternatives Considered

PENTA Construction ERP and CMiC Project Management

Penta runs on Oracle, which makes development slower and more costly. New features cannot be incorporated into the software as quickly. CMiC is very good as a primarily web based software. It seems to go too far that way, where Vista has thick client for core office programs giving it very good performance.

Support Rating

When privately owned, it was very good, then dropped when owned by Bane Capital Investments. Now that it has been bought by Trimble and has a home, support is back up again. Response time is better than most software companies, and the information provided is good. They have Chat support for quick answers, and a good Knowledge Base and video libraries.

Key Insights

Do you think Viewpoint Vista delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Viewpoint Vista's feature set?

Yes

Did Viewpoint Vista live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Viewpoint Vista go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Viewpoint Vista again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

Probably not cost-effective for very small companies. It seems to fit mid-market very well. We have 3 companies with very different needs, and it was flexible enough to work well for us in each scenario. This included a company with 20 different unions and a non-union company. Payroll supported both. Consolidation of multiple companies was easily done as the data all resided in the same database.

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Vista - A Good Tool For Your Toolbox