3rd Party Reporting Tool For Epicor

[megbytes]

I am new to the Epicor ERP system. In a prior position i was able to find 3rd party reporting tools for a different ERP system (JDE). Companies like Cetova and The GL company all sold a reporting add-on product (usually with an Excel like interface) that looked at the data directly - sometimes by a direct connection and some times via a data warehouse. Their products had custom interfaces into the ERP systems data making it very easy for users to extract data using english like commands. the output was usually a pivot table like environment where the user could their what-if analysis.

Crystal reports is nice (and is suitable for most report-only needs) but its not for everybody and it is still "just" a report where as the users these days are more inclined to want the data, refreshable on demand, with the flexibility of an Excel interface.

Is there anything out there for the Epicor/Progress DB environment?

Thanks

Meg Bytes

 

[dgillz]

Crystal IS refreshable on demand, and you can export the data to Excel.

Assuming there is an ODBC connection, you could query the data directly in Excel if you desired.

Software Sales, Training, Implementation and Support for Macola, Synergy, and Crystal Reports. Check out our Macola tools:

http://www.gainfocus.biz/exceladdin.html

 

[megbytes]

I appreciate your input and yes i agree that Excel is an alternative however i am getting an error message when i try to attach to a table (customer) with access. Access link fails because there are too many indexes on Customer.

Back to my initial question - i'm coming from a tier 1 environment where all of the BI products (business objects, cognos, etc) have developed custom interfaces with the ERP system (Oracle, Peoplesoft, JDE, etc). I realize that these are very hi-end products but never the less they offer much more functionality then simply down loading data to excel. I was/am looking for the same type of product for the Epicor (tier 2) market.