Epicor BisTrack vs. Infor VISUAL

Specifically Eipcor comes in handy daily by easily tracking manpower, deliveries, inspections, and other daily tracked items. It is well suited for day to day operations where others can fill in or pick up if somewhere were out of the office. Epicor is less appropriate in providing weekly updates to teams and customers. It is easier to extract the necessary information off of the software to generate your own reports then try to procure one using the software itself.

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

• Cross project communication
• Direct customers, subcontractors and GC's through the construction process
• Dynamically move between projects, changes and scopes

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• Easier User Interface; hard to navigate or learn
• Financial module could use improvement; i.e. the Accounts Receivable function is lacking and hard to find information easily
• More customization of the built-in reporting and analytics

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.

Epicor BisTrack is essential for those in the lumber and building materials industry, especially if they are in the wholesale/distribution side of things. I provided the rating because I feel that BisTrack has contributed a lot for my company and provided with essential information for decision-making on a day-to-day basis. The score also reflects that while BisTrack is an essential software for my business, there is also room for improvement so that the end users will be able to obtain what they need from the software.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Apologies, our company's IT department contacts support on our behalf. I have never contacted Epicor BisTrack's support myself; only through my company's IT team.

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

Epicor BisTrack helps keep track of things better and it in fact much easier to use.

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

• Increased overall efficiency in inventory management by 5%
• ROI is positive
• BisTrack provides a way for our business to conduct its day-to-day operations

Incentivized

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

Incentivized