Infor VISUAL vs. Odoo

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

Implementation was a terrible experience for us. Because it required a third party, we ended up way over budget and schedule. While Odoo advertises that it works with many systems, these third-party integrations often don't work out of the box and require extensive coding to set up. Furthermore, these "apps" can frequently break or lose integration.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• Possibility to customize the fields and some workflows is rather simple and a lot of tutorials are available on the internet.
• The community version is free as are most modules and some paying modules developped for specific purposes are available in the marketplace.
• It is easy to configure products with accounting, everything is smooth.

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

• We had to work with an implementation team to customize Odoo into something that could truly work for us.
• I would like to be able to run some reports in an easier way.
• We did have to implement the use of an iOT box as well for something like printing barcode stickers.

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.

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

Incentivized

Once you complete the training with Odoo, you have a great grasp of how the system works, and most every feature is intuitive- There is rarely a task within Odoo that I get frustrated trying to figure out- I can typically look through the system and find what I need to do, and if I ever do need support, the Odoo Support team is excellent

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Easy - there is NO SUPPORT (like in ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!!!!!). Even for legally mandatory requirements where the system MUST work, they will gladly take a month to get back to you with a NON-answer. We couldn't even get our bank statements correctly into Odoo for 2 months - leading to no reconciliation and the company accounts were a mess (still are!!) as a result - Completely irresponsible. Have not EVEN had an apology from Odoo - they couldn't care less !!

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 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

Compared to Zoho, I think Odoo lacks some clear ease of use that Zoho provides out of the box. Mainly the easy importation of leads and conversion / tracking. Additionally Zoho analytics is easier to customize the dashboard from the menus. After some tinkering I think you can get the same thing with Odoo, it's language and logic just take some geting used to. Airtable provides similarly easy to customize dashboards that are aesthetically appealing. but lacks the ability to track the customer journey as effectively as Odoo or Zoho systems.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• It has helped us improve our purchasing and sales flow, now it is more organized, we can see which product was purchased from which supplier and which price is more convenient, very good
• It helps to manage payments efficiently, and in less time than when it was managed manually, so it is a positive point that we can rescue in our organization.
• In my case, managing inventory helps me more easily locate the most specific products that I require. Currently, we do not have details of mismatches with the products, so my inventory and my stock are kept perfectly updated.

Incentivized