M1 vs. Unanet ERP GovCon

Implementation is by far the weakest link in the ECI/M1 process. Although the tool is powerful, the client is expected to drive the process of learning the tool, planning the meetings with consultants, identifying risks and making mitigation plans, etc. without any samples, guidance or assistance on the part of ECI. The tool is best suited to high volume, standard product manufacturers who build to inventory or to order without much variation. The shop floor routing and time tracking are straightforward if you can master the convoluted Unit Of Measure calculations. The tool is either hosted locally or accessed through Remote Desktop. Shop floor is web enabled but the main desktop for M1 is still a relay which makes connectivity a potential issue. Moving this platform to a truly web hosted environment would substantially improve connectivity and eliminate compatibility issues with Apple products

Incentivized

As I said, Unanet is great for timekeeping and expense reporting. It's very easy to navigate and intuitive for my staff to use. On the other hand, reports are a challenge. The ones that are "canned" only come out as PDFs so I find I waste a lot of paper each month. Customized reports are better and come in Excel, but setting them up is not that easy. We've been working with Unanet just over a year. We went "live" effective 1/1/2017 and we're still avoiding the reporting functions even though that was one of the main reasons we purchased Unanet in the first place

Incentivized

• Manage inventory counts. Good precision on quantities in and out, through shipping, MI, MR, and receipts.
• Job costing shows great details on labor, operations, and materials to be used. I wished that would do better in outside operations that would return, but we still think it is great.
• Ability to track changes (changelog), showing all changes that had in a particular place. Such as where, when, and by whom a line item unit price was changed in a PO.
• Link, traceability, keeping history. If done correctly, it is amazing to keep the history of a part/lot.
• The amount of user rights/customization is unbelievable. It can be hard to set up in the beginning, but it is great that you can give some very specific access to a user, and it is not (in general) as a package.

Incentivized

• Near real-time visibility into project financials. As soon as the employees save their time for the day, you can get a good measure of project financial performance. Work authorizations are embedded into Unanet so unintentional overruns are virtually eliminated.
• Nice integration with the Joint Travel Regulations. It is easy to import the latest rate tables for both CONUS and OCONUS destinations.
• Good customer support and highly responsive. Webinars on new features are free and broadcast on a regular basis. Feedback to suggestions for new features are addressed in a very timely fashion.
• It is easy to structure Unanet to support DCAA practices to be able to get approval for cost plus jobs.
• With exports to .csv files, it is easy to extract data for further analysis beyond the relatively rich built-in reporting features.

Incentivized

• Some of the functions are pretty detailed - and so they take a while to generate screens and pages in reports.
• We actually use it for 2 companies we own - and it would be nice if the inter company communication was a little smoother. It's hard to share some data, and not everything is possible to be shared.
• Customized reports need to backed up before any updates to M1 or they're lost. It seems M1 overwrites the report folders everytime you run an update - so you have to keep track of what you've changed in Crystal Reports and restore it.

Incentivized

• Adding hours for subcontractors must be done via import because the hours don't update on the reporting if put in via vendor invoice.
• Make posting dates less complex.
• Should be easier to figure out roles needed for managers in the organization.

Incentivized

Because it would be helpful if ECI would provide better documentation, communication and workflows to understand how each field interacts within the system and how each of those touch other areas within M1. It would also be useful if ECI would provide prescheduled training for how to customize things with M1 through Design Studio

Incentivized

Support has been great and timely

Incentivized

Every time I have reached out to customer support, they have been very helpful and resolved my issue very quickly and efficiently

Incentivized

Our customization requirements were not that high and based on a price/cost benefit M1 was the winner. SAP was considered but the upfront costs and challenging learning curve together with the lack of flexibility in the SAP HANA public cloud version made the M1 choice more natural. SAP Services is usually more expensive compared to M1.

Incentivized

We were previously using Deltek GCS. Deltek stopped the support for this software so we were forced to change to a new product. We reviewed Costpoint, a Microsoft product and Unanet. We selected Unanet because it had all of the features we were looking for in a new software and it was very user-friendly.

Incentivized

• Time savings having to only enter certain information once and have it follow through the entire order process from quote to cash

Incentivized

• Unanet has had a very significant ROI on several fronts. Our payroll department spends much less time managing and processing time in general.
• Unanet has allowed all of the project managers teams bill on a much more granular level which has saved significant time over the previous Excel based processes of gathering project level data.
• Using Unanet companywide has also saved many hours of time that were previously spent translating data from other platforms, and consolidating data via Excel for reporting purposes. Using the same tool (Unanet) with the included reports has saved significant time and hassle which has had an enormous impact on the ROI of Unanet.

Incentivized