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e-automate

Score8.2 out of 10

83 Reviews and Ratings

What is e-automate?

ECI Software Solutions offers e-automate, an ERP for office technology companies to automate business workflows and increase contract profitability.

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Categories & Use Cases

Media

Screenshot of an item search, in e-automate

Screenshot of an item search, in e-automate

Who Buys & Uses e-automate

e-automate Reviews

What users are saying about e-automate.
View all e-automate reviews

Pros

  • Efficient invoicing and billing processes
  • Robust centralized customer and contract record-keeping
  • Comprehensive contract management and tracking capabilities

Cons

  • Limited API functionality hindering system integrations
  • Unintuitive data visualization requiring third-party tools
  • Lack of flexibility in editing contract invoices

E-Automate Useful but Showing its Age.

Incentivized
Verified User
Administrator in Professional Services (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use E-Automate for everything from quoting customers to sending POs, tracking service calls, and handling all of our invoicing and accounting needs. Because a lot of what we do is with different parts of the US Federal Government, we need to track hundreds of contracts with tens of thousands of pieces of equipment and supplies on order. E-Automate provides us a good framework system for the most part, though some aspects of what we need are either difficult or unnecessarily roundabout, or are locked behind additional paywalls from ECI. By and large, the system works for what we need it to do. I would just prefer to see aspects like bulk uploading of "child" customer locations (locations nested under a "parent" or primary customer) be more straightforward and simplified.

Pros

  • Entering and tracking Sales Orders.
  • Converting Sales Quotes into Orders.
  • Tracking Service Calls.

Cons

  • Linking Purchases Orders - E-Automate regularly loses line item quantity counts and won't let us link POs with the last 1-3 quantity
  • Bulk uploading of nested/"child" customers is clunky and time consuming to set up
  • Tying together all costs for contracts, service calls, etc is clunky and in many ways not possible.

Return on Investment

  • One of the things that E-Automate is best at for us is simplifying the process of tracking sales orders and purchase orders. Because you can link the POs to their respective SOs, it allows for increased visibility across multiple teams/departments.
  • Trying to bulk upload nested/"child" customer locations is unnecessarily clunky and difficult. It feels like the process was created in 2005 and never updated.

Other Software Used

Smartsheet

e-automate's contract management is extremely helpful

Incentivized
Verified User
Administrator in Corporate (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use e-automate to keep a record of customers and their devices, create purchase orders, create sales orders, keep track of inventory, place and manage service calls and records, billing, create contracts and auto increase rates, among I'm sure so much more. It is a great database for us to use for generics but has the occasional hiccup that can case weeks of additional work.

Pros

  • Keep track of customer database
  • organize service call
  • ease of contract input
  • makes POs easy

Cons

  • When attaching related items to equipment, it seems that you have to jump through a bunch of different hoops to make sure it shows up.
  • Customer service is slow and can sometimes takes weeks to respond to issues that need to be addressed, and that is only to get the ball rolling for a call to take place.
  • With every update, it seems that instead of just adding features they change old features so then you have to go back and relearn everything. This is especially difficult when it comes to clocking specific buttons that have moved or when words change. For example, when adding contracts, it used to say include in expiring copies and now it says exclude.
  • PLEASE CREATE A FUNCTION WHERE YOU CAN HAVE MORE THAN ONE TAB OPEN AT A TIME. i.e. dispatch and sales orders split screen to one another. So, you don't have to lose your spot closing out of sales ordered to put in a service call.

Return on Investment

  • It increases time savings for implementations you already know.
  • However, if there is a new feature there is an extensive learning curve to understand how to enter information so that the program will do what you want, accurately.
  • I am not sure how much manual work it reduces other than using a search bar instead of a filing cabinet.

Other Software Used

Sherpa ERP

Usability

Great all in one product.

Incentivized
Verified User
Team Lead in Information Technology (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It’s great for ticket and sales tracking. Easy to visualize where tickets are and how might be feeling overwhelmed by an abundance of calls. It’s easy to reassign and add context to allow further assistance or context when moving it to another employees call list. It’s a great tool to get new employees in the groove of the business

Pros

  • Call tracking and note taking
  • Sales order creation and item customization
  • Being available with the cloud

Cons

  • The search function in most places isn’t that robust
  • Some more uniformity of sales quote and sale order numbers
  • A more updated gui

Return on Investment

  • Increase visibility
  • Quicker support time
  • Consolidated information

E-Automate

Incentivized
Verified User
Administrative Assistant in Customer Service (1-10 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

At the company where I work, we use e-automate on a day to day basis, using the application to record sales and shipments, provide contracts to clients, and to keep track of company inventory. E-automate addresses a lot of the difficulties that come with keeping track of sensitive equipment (of both bulk and exclusive quantities) and it allows for the processing of payment for sales orders as well as tracking shipping status.

Pros

  • Clear receivables panel for taking and applying payments
  • Efficient shipping system within the application
  • Intuitive sale interface

Cons

  • Discrepancy between contract payments and sales order payments
  • set/release on hold function is unusual and unintuitive
  • Bloated amount of unnecessary tabs which can be accessed through easier methods

Return on Investment

  • High security
  • Reduced work bookkeeping
  • Some difficulties with expired cards

Alternatives Considered

GMS Accounting and Financial Management Reporting System

Other Software Used

GMS Accounting and Financial Management Reporting System

Very good program

Incentivized
Verified User
Manager in Information Technology (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it as our main software to keep track of all inventory and service calls. It helps address everything from inventory to sales.

Pros

  • keeps track of inventory
  • tracks service
  • gives sales an advantage

Cons

  • more features for inventory

Return on Investment

  • time savings
  • Cost savings for inventory