Cetec ERP vs. Infor VISUAL

Cetec is useful for small to mid-sized companies with various levels of system complexity. It can manage having distributors and customer interfaces. It does fairly well at being a 'one-size fits all' solution. It would probably not be the best fit for large companies 100+ employees because it may not have the integration capability that is typically needed.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Usage Logs: In the Medical Device Industry, having traceability is key. With this log, the Admin can review any user to see all their activity (viewing, updating, deleting, creating, etc.)
• Flexibility of Roles: Accessibility is very important. With Cetec ERP, we are able to create our own roles to grant specific access to certain user while denying it from others. This really helps by protecting information from being manipulated by users who do not carry that permission.

• Part/BOM libraries
• Traceability from customer order to work order
• Job status representation

Incentivized

• It needs the ability to breakdown sales for multiple customers by product code.

• 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.

Incentivized

Good Technical and Customer Support during and after implementation tasks. Good Project Plan and Management support for implementation and post implementation. Financial functionality could be more comprehensive particularly with Budgeting and Cash Management. Inventory Management capability was adequate but could be more comprehensive as well. "Out of the Box" functionality was adequate but requested add-ons and enhancements seemed to be a bit pricey.

Cetec ERP is useful and fairly intuitive, but if you have a difficult time adapting to a ever-changing user interface, it may cause slight discomfort with every major update.

Incentivized

Because of use cases and easy implementation and the vertical and horizontal scaling.

Incentivized

Cetec ERP will answer support calls but depending on your level of service contract, it may cost you quick a bit per hour to solve the issues you have. E-mail support is always available and surprisingly responsive.

Incentivized

As we have seen the live environment and the use cases where we implement.

Incentivized

Could have used more hands-on approach. There are multiple webinars and information sessions but until you actually use the system, these are not very helpful.

Incentivized

We reviewed plenty of ERP Systems before we decided on Cetec ERP. Going through systems like NetSuite, MS Dynamics, and Oracle, we were able to really define how many features we wanted and what price range we wanted to be in. As a small/midsize company, we needed a system that fit our needs while still having the capability for growth. Having the system be cloud based rather than a server base, like ProfitKey, also helped us determine our choice. Another feature that we were interested in was a barcoding/mobile feature. Cetec ERP has this out of the box where ProfitKey provided this as an add-on. GSS was the last system that we reviewed in comparison to Cetec and due to its large amounts of unusable features for our company, we decided not to use GSS. The overall price for what you get, responsiveness and helpfulness from their team, and the ability to customize to fit our needs helped make our decision to choose Cetec ERP over all the other systems we reviewed.

We unfortunately did not evaluate any other ERP software. VISUAL was a legacy system and we determined that changing systems would be too difficult, and not cost effective. We reached out to our local VISUAL rep who knew how the software functioned, but not how to apply it more appropriately to our business model, so we continued on with what we had rather than looking elsewhere.

Incentivized

• We have been able to streamline costs due to the amount of data now available.

• Good Billing provided
• Easy to implement and use
• scales vertical and horizontal

Incentivized