Aptean Made2Manage ERP vs. Red Falcon

For parts sales, M2M is not a good program. There are too many glitches that happen between the sales order process and the shipping process. At the same time, we have to work with outside vendors to make certain functions work in the program. Or it has to work outside the program and communicate back to the main software. Way too clunky.

Incentivized

We like the fact that we are able to offer our customers a professional online presence so that we can compete with the big box stores and the Amazon's of the Office Supply world. I like being able to log into the back office to see our respective pricing from both SP Richards and Essendant.

Incentivized

• Made2Manage has been consistent since I began supporting it in terms of data input and the user interface.

Incentivized

• There is good training and support to help learn the product
• Makes it easy for staff to manage inventory and see what we have in stock for hardware and computers.
• Integrates with many of the Wholesalers we use right out of the box.

Incentivized

• The management interface for users is not straightforward.
• Managing permissions for users is difficult outside of copying permissions.
• It still has lots of issues that can cause significant downtime.

Incentivized

• Would like to be able to print only unprinted orders in packing slips.
• More reporting options within Red Falcon.
• Would like to be able to search by order number under customer order history.
• Be able to do recurring orders on the back end for MISC items.

Incentivized

I am not in the decision making group any more for this product. When I was, I along with many other managers, voted to go with a competitive product software vs re-subscribing to Aptean for this product. We were convinced by certain parties at our work that the new product was head and shoulders above the old product. While they freshened up a few things and there was an increase in some functionality areas, it was still tired.

Incentivized

This software is not user-friendly nor easy to train on. I train people for various departments and had argued for the company to go with another company. I was not alone. When the time came for us to do an upgrade (necessitated by the advent of Windows 10 compatibility issues), a number of managers at our organization wanted to seek out other vendors due to the difficulty in training people to use the software. Then have to deal with so many of the user issues and lack of functionality created by the need for using an outside software programmer to bring in software that interpreted what M2M was doing and then translate it back into the program so that we had an end-user solution. This software should be robust enough to do it all. It is not. I hate to be so negative about it but anyone that has spent as many years using this software as I have should find something good to say about the platform and I struggle to do that. I had asked for the warranty section that would tie into the return authorization process. I was told it would happen. It didn't. Bad karma.

Incentivized

I feel there is a lot of clicking around to get what you need.

Incentivized

I go back to the warranty segment of the program to help track expenses that were generated by returns and zero-dollar sales orders to resolve customer issues. I feel like I was lied to by the company. They said they would have it in there on the new release. They told the purchasing manager it would be on the new release. The purchasing manager assured me it would be on there. They even showed 'warranty loading' on the screen when you signed in. However, there was no additional component of the return material authorization process for warranty adaptation. I even challenged our upload team about it and they had no answer. It does a few functions well but in my personal experience, buy something else.

Incentivized

Support is great at taking care of our questions and issues.

Incentivized

The actual implementation was no worse or better than other software updates. There were days of pain and additional training helped overcome a lot of the learning curve associated with that. However, that training came from our own internal staff vs anyone from Aptean.

Incentivized

The instructors were patient and kind but the overall implementation seemed cumbersome and lengthy.

Incentivized

They worked in a similar manner. I was not an admin when I used Oracle though.

Incentivized

We did a quick review of other companies but went with Red Falcon as we knew someone else who used and was happy with their service offerings Red Falcon does seem to be expensive but it was a little hard to compare as we did not compare all the specific pricing for other competitors Again, we mainly went with Red Falcon through word of mouth

Incentivized

• I came on board after M2M was implemented so I'm not sure how it has changed from previous software. However, I do know it has the ability to grow with the company.

Incentivized

• Red Falcon's integration with e-auto is a tremendous time and money saver on the admin side of things!
• The overall cost of Red Falcon is a bit pricey so the ROI really depends on how much e-commerce business that can be ran thru it.

Incentivized