QAD Adaptive ERP vs. Viewpoint Spectrum

Suited very well for small to medium sized organizations as it provides you everything you can expect from an ERP (without any fancy bells and whistles that SAP and some of the other ERPs provide). Works well with a lean IT organization, as the configuration and ongoing maintenance and/or analysis is pretty straightforward.

Incentivized

Viewpoint Spectrum would be fine for small to medium-sized companies. It would be great for transitioning from an in-house paper-based process, especially since it's designed with small construction companies in mind. They're making it even easier for smaller companies by offering additional features that you'd normally have to find in other products. However, companies can easily outgrow this system. We have about 15 years of data in the system, over 300 active jobs, and nearly 1,500 employees. In the past 3 years we've noticed slower performance and frequent locks in the system that require intervention from a system administrator. We moved to the cloud about 2 years ago and this has made troubleshooting even more difficult as we don't have the same access that we did before to resolve performance issues.

Incentivized

• The QAD Enterprise application is great, we only started using this application a few years ago. The Master Scheduling Workbench has been a great improvement to our daily operations.
• The Web-based QAD Supplier Portal has also been implemented recently in our company and has been a huge help to our purchasing and materials department.
• The QAD support that we receive has helped our company grow and is a major asset in upcoming projects.

Incentivized

• Dashboards make navigating to the crucial information quick and easy.
• The layout with what we affectionately call the job info bar helps our project teams to quickly get where they need to go in the system.
• Crystal reports are easily managed and integrated with Spectrum, giving us great flexibility in custom reports.
• With a little training, and I mean a little, Spectrum is user friendly. Easy to create favorites/shortcuts for ease of use.

Incentivized

• As a user and who managed the application, I have longed for a module that you don't have to go thru the entire frame to go to a certain field. They have addressed this issue on their recent release by going to a web frame.

Incentivized

• Subcontract Kiosk can be glitchy - allows subs to overbill on subcontract billing items
• Document Imaging can be glitchy - often says users do not have adequate security to view/add documents, but they do - if they sign out and back in, it works fine
• At times, support can be lacking - sometimes case responses are delayed or you get an incorrect answer

Incentivized

The cost / benefit of changing to a different ERP will create a high cost and low benefit that's why I believe that we'll continue renewing QAD for a long time.

Incentivized

It checks all of our boxes at the moment.

Incentivized

Easy to use, zero or minimum cost to maintain the database (DBA etc) , no issue with OS ( Linux), stable database

Incentivized

Some things in Spectrum are NOT that intuitive, but I think knowledge of the software just comes with time. There are still some things I need assistance with in Spectrum but I'm very comfortable with my day to day items now that I've been using it for years. However, if there is something I don't do often or haven't done before, I don't find the software to be that intuitive, I actually find the logic on some things to be a little weird but it's fine once I know how to do it.

Incentivized

Very little down time. They host our system.

Incentivized

For the most part the product is very reliable. Since we are hosted we sometimes have connectivity issues but I would say that is more our ISP than Spectrum.

Incentivized

The support has recently changed. Last year, you could call in and get an immediate response. Now that doesn't seem possible unless you have an urgent situation with access to the software, payroll or payables. I have found that using chat or e-mail works nicely for the most part, but sometimes I feel it would be easier if someone from support would jump on our site and take a first-hand look rather than going back and forth

Incentivized

Our trainer was excellent and navigated the time zone differences expertly. She gave us test assignments to complete and was available for questions at any time.

Incentivized

It is important to have a strong implementation partner. It made the transition from our old system to the new system easier.

Incentivized

QAD is very easy to use once it's set up. It's basically an Excel sheet that can handle a lot more data points and faster. It's nice that you can dump the data stored in QAD to a CSV file and analyze in Excel. Careful narrow down the data searches to a limited number of points or Excel will crash. QAD is much easier to set up than Arena and SAP. And the numbering systems you can create in QAD is more customizable.

Incentivized

Spectrum, when compared to Simply accounting, is better. It has more options, and it is easy to navigate. Spectrum meets our needs better. Spectrum, when compared to Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate, is better. Spectrum has better connectivity between its project management system compared to Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate. Spectrum, when compared to CMIC, I believe they are equal. CMiC has a better project management system, but Spectrum has an easier accounting system to navigate.

Incentivized

You can grant user specific access which is nice. Project managers do not need all the same modules as Accounting. But Accounting does need access to PM modules as well

• ROI - very high with QAD.
• Yearly maintenance cost is very low.
• Support is very good from the QAD customer service team, knowledge base web site.
• Very quick to implement the system.

Incentivized

• Viewpoint Spectrum has allowed us the opportunity to be proactive in analyzing the costs for a project in time to make a difference in the outcome of the project. It has allowed us defense in supporting our communications with the project owners.
• Viewpoint Spectrum has allowed us to become more productive with its accounting software and the cohesion between the modules. It has definitely streamlined the processing necessary to account for the business.

Incentivized