#1 most frequent
United States of America
86.9%152 installations of 175
What is e-automate?
ECI Software Solutions offers e-automate, an ERP for office technology companies to automate business workflows and increase contract profitability.
Categories & Use Cases
Media
Screenshot of an item search, in e-automate
Who Buys & Uses e-automate
#2 most frequent
Canada
4.0%7 installations of 175
#3 most frequent
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
1.7%3 installations of 175
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
My e-automate Journey
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We run our entire operation using e-automate. If it is down we are down. Invoicing A/R A/P service calls, managing service techs, managing inventory, managing techs, tracking sales activity and pushing to a 3rd party, managing service metrics, printing and e-mailing invoices to customer. etc
Pros
- Service tracking % dispatch
- Inventory management
- Collections
- managing techs
Cons
- Product is solid support needs improvement
- Pricing is way too high if I could find an alternative that would not require too much work I would switch.
- Communications upgrades etc.
- Company seems underfunded based on their response during covid. I asked to suspend our support and got threatened. I know ECI got government support like all of us but ECI was stingy.
Return on Investment
- It provided the ability to scale our business.
Alternatives Considered
Trackit and OneSaas by Quickbooks
Other Software Used
Pivot
eAutomate Review
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
we managed our printers leasing information, such as customer names, machines and parts info, contact info, all the service calls info etc. We also get meter reads fmaudit and send invoice to customers.
Pros
- get meters and supplies from fmaudit
- service call management
- customer management
- Hardware and parts mangement
Cons
- warehouse management
- accounting management
Return on Investment
- supplies warning system helps us to ship the supplies to the customer before it was run out
- Service call management makes the manager can pull all the service info base on the device. It helps the techs to troubleshoot the issues.
E-Automate Useful but Showing its Age.
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
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.
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