DELMIAWorks vs. Epicor Eclipse

I think [DELMIAWORKS (formerly IQMS)] is well suited for our manufacturing side of the business. The Quality control module is great for reference and being able to stay up to par on ISO Certification. Everything in the Payroll module takes 10 steps or more just to complete a simple task. Nothing in there needs to be that complicated.

Incentivized

For medium (with growing pains!) organizations, Epicor's Eclipse software would be a great distribution and point of sale software solution and competes well with other software solutions out there. For large distributors Epicor's custom programming has the ability to tailor their software to customers exact need. I feel the cost of the system would be prohibitive to smaller distributors.

Incentivized

• As a manufacturing company, Inventory Control has to be at the top of the list. The inventory module provides flexibility, but also tracks any move that is done to inventory.
• RealTime allows our users to see the status of a machine or production run from anywhere. This also allows us to complete our production reporting process much quicker than we would without it.
• The quality modules across the board are pretty well thought out and very easy for end users to use. The layout of these modules are similar, so it makes it easy to understand and set up. Document Control is used every single day to route documents appropriately before being released.

Incentivized

• Great for retail sales and it works well with ipads, scanners, credit card machines and was easy to implement.
• Initial support, setting up Eclipse and ensuring that everything works correctly was a huge benefit. We were off running from the start.
• Epicor has continuing education on its products and offers alternatives for things they cant do.

Incentivized

• Accounting reports: accrued receipts reporting makes it difficult to reconcile.
• Fixed assets: depreciation posts to the general ledger at the asset level, generating inordinately large numbers of relatively meaningless transactions.
• Process cost: PIT display lacks many useful fields, including vendor name and number.
• Financial reports carry beyond two decimal places.
• Report structures are not sensibly arranged, and many reports imbed data within text fields, making manipulation and reporting more time-consuming.

Incentivized

• Their support has gotten worse over the years. They fired a large portion of staff in favor of cheaper new hires. It is getting slowly better over time as their support people are gaining experience, but decades of institutional knowledge was lost. Response time can vary wildly depending, which is troubling when you have an immediate need. They have made a partial mea culpa, but the situation is not fully remedied.
• The user interface is clunky. The original interface, E-term, is a terminal based system (think DOS). A few years ago they rebuilt it using Java and called the new interface Solar, which is a more point and click, windows friendly version. Solar is slower, and so has been difficult for us to get the user adoption we've needed. In addition, any customization we do doesn't work in Solar. Now they have announced a new road-map to make it all web-based. Good luck to them, but it seems they spend all their time playing catch-up instead of making deep system improvements.
• There are significant gaps in what Eclipse is able to do. Sometimes there are third party products (Proof of Delivery, E-commerce, Tax, etc.), and sometimes Epicor offers in house solutions (Job Management, EDI, etc.). In either case, there are a string of products we have to integrate and maintain to make Eclipse functional. Most of them require support contracts, and have varying degrees of support.

Incentivized

Given how invested we are it would be hard not to renew as don't want to go through another implementation.

Incentivized

I use it every day and can't see a reason why I would stop unless I started a new job. If I were to leave my present position, the new job would be much more attractive if they were Eclipse users.

Incentivized

The menu system is easy to navigate and intuitive for users. The learning curve for administrators is quite steep form setting up user permissions to creating reports for users. This is a very powerful system with many dynamics to help most companies. Expandability is always there and it comes down to how granular you would like your company to be on a data gathering/reporting and material flow process.

This is very easy to use for someone that hasn't ever used the system before. Despite any preconceived notions about how a system should function they can learn this and become efficient with really not a lot of effort. I have used many systems and this is probably one of the easiest I have ever had to learn to navigate and use.

Incentivized

I haven't experienced any outages in the two years I have been using the system. It is always available as long as the computer is up. The only time I have seen it not be available was on occasions where we lost internet, or power and then we lost access to everything, not just Epicor Eclipse.

Incentivized

Everything in this system moves fairly quickly, that may be in part because we are a small company with only 21 users on the system at a time, or it may just be a the way the Epicor Eclipse works for any size company with any number of users. I can only speak for what I know and say that it is fast for our purposes.

Incentivized

We constantly have trouble getting support. There doesn't seem to be anyone there anymore that can help with what we need.

Incentivized

The tier 1 support is trying, and sometimes they are successful. Sometimes they aren't. This topic isn't as black and white as the questions might suggest. Currently their Tier 1 support team is over seas, all items automatically go to Tier 1 and then when they can't help they either escalate it or tell me they need to check with someone else and they will get back to me. If they escalate me to Tier 2, then the issue comes back to the States and the support is usually at a higher knowledge/experience level and it can get resolved fairly quickly. If they don't escalate, then it might take weeks and multiple follow ups on my part before I either get a satisfactory resolution or finally get escalated.

Incentivized

The training classes that I have attended have been top notch. The presenters are extremely knowledgeable on their subject matter, including real-world application of the system. They aren't just software techs training end users, they seem to be end users that have become experts in the over functionality and capabilities of the system.

Incentivized

The on-line training is very good, and it is taught by the same people that do the live in-person training sessions. The difficult part of it is, asking questions about your specific company's nuances or special circumstances. I don't remember if you can access the on-line training sessions after you have taken them for reminders purposes, but if so that is a great asset.

Incentivized

It is nice that an IQMS employee helps you with the implementation, however they were more of a technical resource than a project management resource. I wish they could provide a more off the shelf timeline given their experience in implementing the system.

Incentivized

I don't really know about the implementation, it was back in 1998 and I didn't start here until 2016. By the time I started here they had been running it for a number of years and most of the people that were here when it was implemented are no longer here, and the ones that are don't really have much to say about how the implementation went either bad or good.

Incentivized

DELMIAWorks had the best overall manufacting and data gathering software for our facility. It was easy to implement coming from a 20 year old Unix based system. The DELMIAWorks had a more robust system than Global Shop and while close to Plex, had a better pricing system and the ability to have the server on site versus the cloud.

Most of my experience has been with Epicor's Prophet 21. For most distribution verticals, Prophet 21 is the only way to go. The comparison I've drawn is this: Prophet 21 is like a ferrari. Epicor Eclipse is like a reliable donkey. Both get you from point A to point B but Prophet 21 is going to get you there much quicker and with the kind of insight into your business that will help you thrive.

Incentivized

I don't really know about the scalability. It's the same as it was when I started, I do know that you can buy more user licenses, but I think they come in packs of 5, which can be a problem if you only need 1 and will never use the other 4. But, again I'm not sure on that.

Incentivized

• Enterprise IQ is so versatile that it has many different ways to get to the desired result. By using their software we are able to track problems area and shift our focus on the areas that need fixed.
• Before going to Enterprise IQ our employees used to stand for hours at a computer with a pad and pencil making manual transactions. Not all of that is done through the use of scanners. The amount of overall savings not to mention the accuracy of inventory has improved greatly.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized