Red Falcon vs. Infor VISUAL

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

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

• 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

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

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

• 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.

Very easy to maneuver throughout the system and the order processing is an easy step by step process

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

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

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 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

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

• 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

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

Incentivized