Epicor Prophet 21

Score3.4 out of 10

64 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Epicor Prophet 21 are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Business Problems Solved

Prophet 21 has been utilized by various departments within organizations to streamline and improve their operations. For example, Counter Staff have experienced faster and more efficient sales transactions when processing quotes and orders. The Purchasing Department has found value in using Prophet 21 to simplify the procurement process by submitting purchase orders from part vendors. Additionally, the AR and AP Departments have relied on Prophet 21 to ensure accurate and timely financial transactions, specifically by invoicing customers and paying vendors. With its integrated solution, Prophet 21 has enhanced inventory accuracy, reduced picking errors, and maintained optimal inventory levels. It has also supported various operations such as order processing, inventory management, customer information, and accounting as an ERP software. The open database structure of Prophet 21 has allowed users to access information in any format, aiding in informed decision-making. Customers have even used Prophet 21 to run their entire business, including accounting, sales, and inventory management.

Furthermore, Prophet 21 has facilitated seamless collaboration across multiple locations through its deployment throughout the organization. Pricing and purchasing management have greatly benefited from this software. With Prophet 21's help, wholesale distribution businesses have experienced growth. It has proven effective in managing wholesale stock by enabling users to efficiently process incoming and outgoing stock and inventory. Moreover, the software's compatibility with different business models has made it a valuable tool for organizations across industries.

While some users have mentioned that the software can be complicated at times, most find that it effectively manages inventory and fulfills its purpose well. The technical support provided by Epicor has been praised for being a good fit for supporting staff in resolving any issues that may arise. Prophet 21 has contributed to improved efficiency in various areas such as service order entry, machine and tooling order entry, CRM management, order entry inquiries, transaction processing, KPI tracking, decision-making support, inventory tracking across multiple warehouses, dynamic reporting dashboards, employee onboarding acceleration, rewards program creation and tracking, and consignment management. It has also proved valuable for website integration, reporting through Crystal and other third-party programs, customizing screens using Dynachange, and providing access to real-time data across all company locations. Overall, users have found Prophet 21 to be a valuable tool for their businesses, with continuous improvements based on customer feedback.

Reviews

28 Reviews

Epicor Prophet 21--great for a midsize distributor

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

May 28, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Epicor Prophet 21 replaced our existing ERP software about one year ago. As a manufacturer and distributor of industrial products, we use Epicor Prophet 21 to enter order information along with inventory management, customer information, and purchasing information. The data from Epicor Prophet 21 is used mainly by our accounting and finance department but all other departments use it when needed.

Pros

It works well with Microsoft-based products, specifically SQL Server.
It is easy to view all inventory data and customer information down to specific detail.
The software is easy to customize based on our needs.
It is not as expensive as other competing products.

Cons

It can be complicated at first to understand how to use it.
The information stored in the database can be difficult to locate or understand.
The CRM system can be slow at times and hard to navigate.
Difficult to export data from the application.

Likelihood to Recommend

Epicor Prophet 21 is great for a midsize distributor. It is great for tracking sales and inventory data along with customer and user information. Because it connects well to Microsoft-based products, we can easily use SQL to generate reports and queries for our use.

However, learning to use and modify Epicor Prophet 21 takes time and may not be great for companies that want to implement it very quickly.

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Impossible to Work With and Antiquated

Rating: 1 out of 10

Incentivized

March 20, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Prophet 21 is the ERP for our company. It is integrated into all of our systems from order entry to accounting to inventory management. Most of our invoicing and RMAs are done through P21.

Pros

Nothing, it does many things but does NONE OF THEM WELL.

Cons

There is no functionality for automating orders entering into the system.
There is no way to enter data into the system.
Nearly any change to the UI will break something. (EX P21 cant automate faxing if you put a parenthesis in the fax number which is absolutely ridiculous)
There are thousands of reference constraints on all data fields.

Likelihood to Recommend

Any company that wants to move forward into the modern age of automation should never consider using this software. You will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to automate ANYTHING which could be extremely easy if the system was less complicated. There is no chance that your company will ever even use 10 percent of what they are selling you and there is no reason for most of it to be there. The data is terrible and the software is SLOW. We can't even remove old data from our system by ourselves because deleting one row in one table affects 10 to 20 other tables. In our system, there are over 2700 tables! Of this number only 750 are used by our systems and of those 750 only 250 have more than 5 rows. There are hundreds of duplicated data rows and many tables end up with 200-300 columns where only about 15 to 30 are actually used.

Theodore Burt

Programmer in Engineering at Burt Process Equipment (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

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CRM Vehicle to Drive your Business to Success

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

April 22, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Epicor Prophet 21 is being used across our whole organizaton for Customer Relationship Management (CRM). We are a Distributor of Safety Supplies (PPE) and can easily identify stock levels and place orders for our customers. We are also able to handle all accounting and shipping functions as well. Prophet 21 allows our company to function in a well organized manner.

Pros

Houses all pertinent customer information: Address, Phone, Contacts, Ship To locations.
Allows Customer Service to enter orders for customers based on Purchase Orders.
Allows Purchasing Manager to purchase inventory to stock in warehouse as well as fulfill customers orders.
Allows the Warehouse to properly ship and track items being shipped to customers.
Allows the Accounting Department to accurately invoice and receive payments from customers.

Cons

Prophet 21 has features for every aspect of business and constantly improve software based on new technology and customer requests.

Likelihood to Recommend

As Operations Manager, I am able to log into Epicor Prophet 21 and see exactly what is being done for the day. I am able to see all Open Orders entered. I am able to see all Purchase Orders entered by the Purchasing Manager. I am able to see inventory levels in real-time. I am able to see how many shipments have been completed. I can easily identify where help is needed and move team members accordingly.

Kimberly Graham

Operations Manager at Emergent Safety Supply (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

Epicor for the Medium to Large Sized companies

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

January 14, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

This is our ERP system. We use it for ordering our products, inventory, accounting, vendor and customer information, to the sales process back to the warehouse where it prints the pick tickets and ships the products. We have other 3rd party software that can pull information from this and be used for reports and other analytics. Since it's a standard SQL database, it's easy to work with. Their technical support is a good fit with our current support staff.

Pros

Does its basic job well with growth potential
Compatible with 3rd party software

Cons

Use of AI
Reporting and Dashboards

Likelihood to Recommend

Very solid software and has the ability to run a small to large company that moves small items to large boxes with ease. It's not a small mom and pop shop software but medium to large businesses can run their entire business from this. From ordering your products to shipping them out the door and keeping track of inventory, full accounting, customers, vendors, and getting it shipped out the back door. Very professional and they are moving forward slowly with new addons and products so they are staying up with new technology. The CRM side needs some attention to keep up with other software companies that are out there.

Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

Prophet 21 helps distributors focus on, and meet, business needs

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

August 24, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our organization uses Prophet 21 across the entire organization. We are a distributor of irrigation products, with Front Counter sales as well, and Prophet 21 (P21) is used by our Counter Staff to process quotes and orders. Our Purchasing Department uses P21 to submit purchase orders from our part vendors. As well, our AR and AP Departments use P21 to both invoice customers and to pay vendors.

Prophet 21 addresses the typical problem of managing wholesale stock so that users at all facets of the organization can properly process incoming and outgoing stock, and inventory.

Pros

Comprehensive customization of many fields and screens
Offers a fairly robust API that allows external connectivity
Provides connectivity to Crystal Reports for improved reporting capabilities

Cons

Some background technologies are still a bit behind the current development technologies in the market.
Only started offering a Web-based front end to Prophet 21 in the past year, and it still has a number of limitations not present in the client-based program
When new iterations/version are released, there are often significant bugs that require opening Support Requests
Epicor (P21) Support is still not the most responsive or efficient

Likelihood to Recommend

Good for distribution organizations with warehousing. Can also support both Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable, although a more thorough Accounting package is recommended. Is strong when it comes to integrating bar codes and scanners, particularly for warehouse maintenance. Prophet 21 does include a basic CRM offering. However, it is very basic, and for any real Customer Resource management, a third-party tool is best (even recommended by Epicor.)

John Suit

System Administrator in Information Technology at North South Supply Inc (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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Customer Service and Inventory

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

May 17, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it across our entire company. It streamlines all that we do in each department. We use it for service order entry, machine and tooling order entry, CRM and so much more.

Pros

I love the Item Master Inquiry screen. Anything and everything you need to know about items can be found in one location. I like that each area has its own tab so you can quickly go to the area that you need to find. Sales History or Purchase History are two that I frequently use.
PO Requirements Generation is also a great powerful tool to utilize for purchasing. If you set up your ABC Classes, Safety Stock and utilize Up To as your replenishment method the system can basically do your purchasing for you and you can feel comfortable with the way it purchases.
I love Dynachanges and Dynachange rules. It truly allows you to customize the screens to meet your department or companies needs. You can move things around and if you have a function that is always repeated you can make it happen automatically with Dynachange rules.

Cons

PO Requirements Generation - We need the ability to add items on the fly in PORG.
In Order Entry - You have one Carrier ID for the entire order. Sometimes items need to ship different ways. It would be extremely helpful to have a Carrier by item option to be used to change one item to UPS Red, one to will call or whatever is needed. We struggle with this daily and it adds time for our takers and often due to this shipping is confused by the instructions and things are shipped incorrectly.
When doing imports if something errors out the error log is very hard to read and understand. Better descriptions and maybe not such technical wording would help us to understand it better.
When sending acknowledgments more options to select multiple contact. You can manually type them but would be nice to just select multiple contacts. Many times we are sending to more than one person so we have to manually type the email address for the second person.
When sending an email out of P21 add the ability to add an attachment on to that email.

Likelihood to Recommend

I think it works great for the distribution industry. Buying and Selling functionality works great.

Lindsey Merritt

Customer Support & Database Supervisor in Customer Service at Productivity, Inc. (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

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P21 Review

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

May 14, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using Prophet 21 across the whole organisation; it's one ERP system that gives a solution to all the company requirements and has all the required modules.

It's very vast and there is so much to learn I would say we only using 50% of what is available in there.

Pros

We can log every customer correspondence and anyone can see anytime which reduces the dependency on personnel.
Detailed reporting feature which allows you to pull out different useful reports.
Easy to learn and work.

Cons

More transferability, with more drill down techniques especially in accounting.
Better and systematic rebate functionality.
Easy alert setups on different things to remember.

Likelihood to Recommend

I would like to say P21 is very good at customer service or CRM part. And I will be recommending others as well to use P21 for the customer service part. Stock maintenance and warehouse options with the consignment options are also very handy.

Accounting needs improvement like more drill downs and easy to access and better reporting.

Varun Sachdeva

Controller India Operations in Finance and Accounting at Champion Products (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

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Epicor P21 Review

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

May 11, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

P 21 is our ERP system. It is used across the whole organization. It gives us access to all of our sales information.

Pros

P 21 integrates easily with our CRM software.
From a marketing perspective, P 21 allows us to enter prospects and convert them so we can track history.

Cons

From a marketer's perspective, it would be nice to have a way to pull contact lists directly from P 21. Now we are able to use our CRM software for this, but before CRM, I would have to ask our business systems analyst to pull customer lists.

Likelihood to Recommend

I probably use P 21 once every couple days, but in my experience, it's user-friendly and intuitive. I can usually find everything I need.

Verified User

Employee in Marketing (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

It would be a good program if issues could be resolved.

Rating: 3 out of 10

Incentivized

May 10, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our whole organization uses P21. We are a distribution company. We were looking for a faster way of getting work done. A more efficient way of getting more work done without the need to hire more people.

Pros

The system allows us to pretty much design it to work the way want it to work. It is a very flexible system for the most part.
The system doesn't let you make too many shortcuts with getting something processed. It forces you to go through the proper steps.
The system keeps track of everything and can be easily retrieved through history searches. Detailed reports, graphs, ....

Cons

CRASHING, the system crashes too frequently for me. 3-5 times a day, support can't figure out why it happens. Extremely annoying when in the middle of a transaction.
Overall support from P21 technicians is poor. If they or you can't replicate a problem, they can't help. Even if the problem is frequent.
Cycle counts are a concern. Not much of a real cycle count report to check inventory daily, we had to create our own.
Crystal Reports and how they can link with documents are challenging. Especially for packing lists and commercial invoices. As well as certs that are created for some items.

Likelihood to Recommend

P21 would be a very good program if it didn't crash, if the technical support was better, if the initial installation and set up was better.

Michael Gonzalez

Warehouse Supervisor at Q Source Inc (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

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Service and Distribution with Pixie (PXII)

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

May 9, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Prophet 21 is used across our entire company. We use it for tracking orders, a/p, a/r, purchasing, plus we use the service module for tracking technical service processes for our customers.

Pros

I process machine orders that are shipped directly to our customers. Prophet 21 allows the ordering and billing to be tied together and handled as one transaction.
We have a technical service team that services our customers in a large geographic area. The Prophet 21 service module allows us to track the serial numbers of the customer equipment and what work is being done, has been done, and should be scheduled in the future. Each technician can have their schedule available to all concerned parties.
Tracking our customers' multiple ship-to addresses is easy. Some even have different company names, but the same bill-to address. Prophet 21 handles this seamlessly.

Cons

The service module could be more integrated into the Prophet 21 program. It is a separate log-in and the orders can't be accessed from the main module.
Integrating with tasks could be easier to use.
Integrating with Outlook would be very helpful. I did look at a program while evaluating P21 that had great integration. P21 could be better.

Likelihood to Recommend

I feel I already did this previously.

Sue Dziedzic

Equipment/Project Manager in Corporate at Shrink Packaging Systems (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

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