Pro's and Cons to ES

[JeffMachine]

We are looking a new ERP system to replace the one we currently use (Progression). My company has different entities that either manufacture or distribute machine tools.

We will be looking at Axapta, Navision, Syspro, Epicor, Exact ES and maybe a couple of others.

My question to the Exact users is simple, what do you like or dislike about the software?

 

[dgillz]

I am an Exact reseller not a user, but I will throw my 2 cents in.

Assumming you are current on annual maintenance, the fact that you are considering anything else when Macola ES is a free upgrade speaks volumes (that is, the software itself is free, not the services). I sure hope someone at Exact is reading this.

If you have modified screens or Flexibility projects in the Progression accounting modules, they most likely will not work in ES. So you need to consider carefully the functionality provided by these customizations and how you would work around them in ES.

Also the accounting itself will require considerable training as it is nothing like Progression. Having said that you would need little training in the Distribution and Manufacturing modules which are in essence Progression Version 8.

Beyond the accounting modules, Macola ES is a grown up version of Progression, with larger item no field (30 characters), the ability to add documents to your database as blobs and attached to items, customers, vendors, etc. There is also a much tighter ms office integration including a slick excel add-in (about the only thing I like in the financial modules).

Also do not overlook adding eSynergy, which while not free is a great piece of software and is native to Macola ES. Native meaning they are the same database, not a separate integrated database.

If you have any specific concerns please post them and I'll give you an honest answer.

Software Sales, Training, Implementation and Support for Macola, eSynergy, and Crystal Reports

http://www.gainfocus.biz

"A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
" - unknown

 

[dkloepfer]

Jeff,

I am also a reseller of Exact - One of my customers is a distributor of CNC Machine Tools. They are in the process of moving from Progression to ES - they also are a power user of e-Synergy (3 years) and Field Service Modules with e-Synergy.

It is a good fit for them, and I have been speaking with other Machine tool companies about their success with Exact.

 

[pronet74]

I was a user of Progression and we then moved to ES. As the Network Admin here I played a huge role in the upgrade. To be honest when they gave us a quote for the update (we had the maintance plan so the ES software was free) but for them to come up & perform the update, training, etc.. it was over $50,000 and this was only for at max 20 people.

I then did alot of the work myself, even though Exact was upset since they never really had a customer do this much of the work, in the end the final bill was only about $8,000. Though I had alot of headaches and still have some. I will elobrate on these:

Installation: I found the initial meeting that when they came to be kinda a waste of time since they went over alot of the stuff that we already made decisions on. During the upgrade I alot great support from the SQL/Database team there. I initially did an upgrade on a backup-server (which is a must) and found the errors I made and made note of them. I must've done the upgrade (we went from 7.5 to 7.6.300 to ES in one weekend) about 20 times on the backup-server. They had major problems doing an upgrade from progression to ES 360 so we had to upgrade to 340, then onto 360. It was very frustrating & time consuming and I was quite nervous about it.

Converting from 7.5 to 7.6 took about 6 hours (processing time) and then onto ES about 8 hours. I then spent the weekend setting up users, security and running some tests.

As their support now it seems to have degraded quite a bit since we went live. It's hard to get ahold of someone and now it takes hours & even a couple of days to get someone to get back to you. We had major problems with our WMS system in two areas. With 340 we couldn't use WMS at all, and they admitted it was a bug that would be fixed in 360 but we would have to wait 2 weeks until they fixed 360 again. So we lost all scanning capabilities for two weeks. Warehouse was pissed.

Got that fixed, but had other problems that basicially amounted to a bug in progression that worked in our favor. We buy by the cartons & sell by the piece and our warehouse now have to put in a fraction for the multiplyer when shipping which takes time. I asked them about this & another situation where now our AP clerk, when she does vouchers will receive a seperate line item for each unit scanned. So if we have 5 of the same cabinets scanned 5 times, it will show up on 5 seperate lines, which makes it hard since we have orders that go over 100 line items, each with multiple quantities. We didn't have this problem in Progression. Pestering them about this, I got the answer that this is not going to be fixed anytime soon, which really has me upset.

Another issue was Order Acknowledgements. They are now done in Crystal reports. It would take upto 2 minutes (and that's if it didn't crash) for each one to print. This really slowed us down and seemed to got worse when we went from 340 to 360. I must've spent days on the phone with them on this and they were basically blaming me and that we MUST have network problems. Funny how everything else ran fast, including ES on our systems. Exact told me they couldn't duplicate the problem and they haven't heard anyone else complain. So, one day I decided to go onto the customer portal and search and low & behold I found 3 other companies that had the SAME exact problem. I talked to one of the upper managment at exact to tell her my findings.. They then admitted it was something on their end. Ugh, talk about being pissed since I spent hours on this and having management here getting upset with me. We found the issue and it had to do with the crystal reports were not pointing to the sql server. I had to go into each crystal report and re-point it from their server to ours. I will have to do this everytime we upgrade as well and then copy these .rpt files to each local client. So everyone please beaware of this!

We didn't opt to goto another 'new' system because not only of the price but the data conversion. Exact's data conversion went great however their support lately has been lacking severly. I believe they have too few people to cover all the support requests. When I call I seem to get the same people (who know what they are doing) however it's just a matter of getting ahold of them.

Their account system is completely different and it made our controller a complete mess. lol Though we got him 3 days of personal training from a CPA from Exact (who also admitted their were alot of bugs yet in ES). Though after the first month-end things went smooth, our Account is back to a comfortable state.

Also since the screens changed with ES, etc.. all my flex coding I had done in Progression had to be re-done in ES. I was able to do this while spending the 3 months doing upgrade tests on my backup-server to mess around with ES and get some of flex programming done.

Positives:

1. Data Conversion went smooth, though you must do alot of test conversions. Take notes step-by-step if you are doing this yourself

2. Support knows their product well, including backend database design. It's a relief that you don't get some foreigner who just goes through scroll-cards like they do at dell or gateway.

3. Familiarity with the product: My employees were pretty well trained by just using Progression. They had about a month to play with ES before going live. They really didn't need much training and figured alot out on their own.

4. Security is easy to setup and alot more versital then Progression.

5. ES is on a better backend. I'm alot more comfortable now, now that it's on a SQL Server Backend.

Negatives:

1. Price. Even if you have the Maintance Plan, be prepared to pay quite a bit in due to data conversion, programming, training, etc.. You also have the cost of the SQL Server software & licenses. Their support goes up as well when going with ES over Progression.

2. Getting ahold of support. It's awful and they really need to hire more people. When it takes hours or days to finally get ahold of someone then something needs to be done. I shouldn't have to feel like I'm pestering them just to get an answer to a problem I'm having.

3. QA. They had to 'fix' 360 once it was out since there were major problems with it. Their WMS system needs a re-work and they need to consider not just the big companies but the smaller ones as well. Not all of us work in the same manner as everyone else.

4. Flexibility. If you do any sort of modification, Flexibility.. well really sucks. It puts way too many limits on you and I had to actually do some Windows API programming so that I could get some things accomplished. These kind of simple things should be done with prebuilt functions that are readily available in VBA. If it's available in VB or VBA don't expect it to be available in Flex.

I hope this helps some. If I had to do it over again I would go with ES but with some changes. I know going with a whole new system would be just as hard or not harder. If you have any questions, post them here.

 

[randva]

Pronet74:

Thank you for the summary of your upgrade from 7.5 to ES360. We run 7.5 still & so I do have one question for you:

What was the main motivation to go through the expense and trouble to upgrade? That is, with only 20 users, what did you get that you did not have before?

Your thoughts on this are kindly appreciated.

 

[abaldwin]

If you are still on 7.5 it would probably behouve you to at least upgrade to 7.6.x on sql.

You will at least take advantage of the sql security etc etc and be in a better position to upgrade to ES if you desire in the future.

At this time I am running 7.6.300 and have no intention of converting this company to ES.

At least on the SQL platform I have the flexibility of keeping some important Flex in place bhind the customer screen, and users that have been on the system for 10 plus years.

Should we decide to implement synergy or upgrade we are half way there.



Andy Baldwin

"Testing is the most overlooked programming language on the books!"

Ask a great question, get a great answer. Ask a vague question, get a vague answer.
Find out how to get great answers FAQ219-2884.

 

[pronet74]

Well one of the reasons is that I got tired of my co-workers telling me Macola 'sucks'. They just laid these blanket statements over & over again and wouldn't give specifics. I was happy to let sleeping dogs lie. The president heard word about these co-workers complaining and wanted to go with a whole new system. I was against it since I had an Access database using ODBC with close 100 reports as well hooked into Macola.

Now they have alot to complain about with ES and I told them to 'Shove it up their ass'.. lol Though on a side note my company gave me a generous bonus for doing the extra work and saving them alot of money that they would've paid to Macola.

The other issue why I switched was because we are thinking of expanding down south and I wanted a back-end that I felt comfortable with that could handle a higher load. When we contacted Macola about upgrading they told me it would benefit us more to go with ES than just 7.6.300. Of course that's their marketing plan as well.

If you are thinking about going to ES, look at the PACES documents, specifically the parts about upgrading. Though there seems to be alot of paperwork that is unnecessary in there it's a good example of what steps you'll have to go through.

Since we upgraded in May the system has been stable, no crashes and no loss of productivity. However I wouldn't upgrade unless you really have a need to.

 

[kbieber]

pronet, can you expand on your flex comment above. I think we all know Flex is woefully weak in many areas. Are you also saying that additional Flex work is needed when converting from Progression to ES? Thanks.

 

[dgillz]

kbieber,

Flex in Macola ES (along with screen designer) is not available in the financial modules.

What areas is Flex weak in, in regards to your present situation? I am sure we can help you in this regard.

Software Sales, Training, Implementation and Support for Macola, eSynergy, and Crystal Reports

http://www.gainfocus.biz

"A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
" - unknown

 

[pronet74]

I had to make a customized OE to PO system, since I only wanted it to be used for *special* items. Which means items that we have to order.

In programming this I found out that I can't pass variables from one screen to another so I basically had to make a .txt file from the OE screen, then have the OE screen read the .txt file. To do it through SQL statements would be even harder.

The documentation on Flex.. well there hardly is any. I had numerous problems with flex and it got to a point with one of their flex coders that they will start charging me if I wanted any more questions answered, even though I have a maintance agreement with them. I wasn't asking them to write code but for ways around a particular issue which even had them stumped.

They wanted over $10,000 to write the OE to PO code.

It would be nice for flex to list what functions are available to us.

The code I wrote in progression had to be re-written in ES since the screens are different along with the backend tables & fields.

 

[pronet74]

* sorry, meant:

"In programming this I found out that I can't pass variables from one screen to another so I basically had to make a .txt file from the OE screen, then have the PO screen read the .txt file. To do it through SQL statements would be even harder."

 

[dgillz]

Pronet,

OE2PO works on an item by item basis. How much more special can you get than that?

Also there is a Flexibility programmer's guide that has examples of every single function. Do you have that?

A maintenance contract does not equal free help. Maintenance gives you the program enhancements, patches, etc. A support contract is what you need.

Software Sales, Training, Implementation and Support for Macola, eSynergy, and Crystal Reports

http://www.gainfocus.biz

"A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
" - unknown

 

[pronet74]

Sorry, meant that we do have a support contract. Ran us close to $12,000.

The OE to PO I had to make was only for items that Qty Shipped was less than Qty Ordered.

I also made enchancements such as when they change the ship date of one item it'll automatically change the ship dates of the rest of the items. Some of our orders are well over 100 items long.

They also wanted an enchancement so that we knew what inside sales person entered the order. They wanted it printed on the OE acknowledgement and on the OE screen when they pulled up the order.

There's other changes I made as well. If any of you want the code to this, just ask and I'll post it on here. It's all my original code so it's not copyrighted.

As far as the functions there are some functions in flex that do not work.

 

[abaldwin]

BTW you can pass values between Macola "applications" as long as both applications support flex. This can be done using global variables in the "sending" applications and references in the "receiving" application.

In other words with the OE app open and the PO app open at the same time On the PO screen you can reference global variables in the OE screen.



Andy Baldwin

"Testing is the most overlooked programming language on the books!"

Ask a great question, get a great answer. Ask a vague question, get a vague answer.
Find out how to get great answers FAQ219-2884.

 

[dgillz]

Pronet,

I think you recreated the wheel. OE2PO includes a global option of what qty to order. Backorder Qty (Qty ordered less qty to ship) is one of those options.

Will this not work for you?



Software Sales, Training, Implementation and Support for Macola, eSynergy, and Crystal Reports

http://www.gainfocus.biz

"A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
" - unknown

 

[pronet74]

But it also had to be reorder_lvl = 0. That's why I had to create my own.

As for passing variables beteween applications please give me an example. The developers at ES were not able to do this correctly when I brought it to their attention. I tried using Global variables and that did not work.