4R Systems Demand Planning and Inventory Optimization (IPMax) vs. Epicor Prophet 21

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.)

Incentivized

• As an open database, Epicor Prophet 21 not only gives you access directly to strategic information, its interface makes finding it convenient and efficient while allowing the use of industry standard reporting tools to manipulate reports and data.
• The Wireless Warehouse package has been invaluable to the efficiency of our warehouse operations. Inventory flow, picking accuracy and stocking effectiveness have all improved.
• One of the most valuable features of Epicor Prophet 21 is its support staff. They have always been responsive and knowledgeable with a focus on solving problems. They show an understanding of how important it is to correct any disruptive issues in as short a time as possible.

• 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.

Incentivized

I've used Epicor Prophet 21 for about 12 years (in various iterations). It started out as CommerceCenter by Prophet 21 then became Prophet 21 by Activant and then Prophet 21 by Epicor. So frequently, when a software company is acquired, it stops being great. That has not been the case with Epicor Prophet 21. Over the years they've been under Epicor, the product has just gotten better and better, with major extensibility enhancements and new mobile components coming online.

Incentivized

Overall, I love using Prophet 21. With a few rare exceptions, functions within the application have been streamlined so they can be used with as few clicks and key presses as possible. That's not to say they've given up any functionality. The platform is incredibly powerful; just easy to use.

Incentivized

When hosted locally, you don't have to worry about outages unless the power goes out and the battery backups fail. It can also be hosted in the cloud which is as reliable as your internet connection. There's really no concern for outages in the software by itself. Outages are controlled by external factors.

Incentivized

I do feel like there are some screens and reports that could be streamlined. Prophet 21 likes to load features all at once when going into a program but a quicker load time into order entry, for example, is worth having a little latency while a non-essential tab that doesn't get used very often is opened.

Incentivized

The support is some of the worst I've seen across all the 122 software vendors we work with. Everything is offshore and it is always vague answers, links to wiki's that don't apply, and when we pay for project support they charge $200 an hour for someone who works remote from Mexico to call you on a poor quality VoIP connection that isn't all that well trained and often doesn't have basic IT skills

Incentivized

The on-site training was great. I give it a 9 because the trainer was a chain smoker who had to excuse herself a lot to smoke. Kind of unprofessional. She was a very good trainer though.

Incentivized

I had a great time with the online training. Most of the online trainings were live which meant you had opportunity to interact with instructors. I liked trying to derail them by posting funny comments to the chat window. The only complaint I had about these is they weren't recorded for later use. Well, another complaint is that they were sometimes too short.

Incentivized

The overall implementation is smooth. Prophet 21 sends someone on-site for as many days as you need them to step through the initial implementation. Data conversion is the biggest trick. Make sure you get help with that portion of implementation. Also, be sure to offer plenty of training incentives to keep people coming back for more training. A little money spent up front will save you tons of headaches later.

Incentivized

It is very useful for a distributor that is handling inventory and customer data. Epicor Prophet 21 gives easy access to their database and it is reasonably priced.

Prophet 21 is very reliable. The database is robust and well designed. The application is also hard to break. If there's one feature I don't like, it's that they haven't accounted for the dreaded single quote. That's kind of the bane of Microsoft SQL's existence. They need to escape that character in every field that will accept it in the system. Otherwise, the system throws all kinds of errors and many times will crash.

Incentivized

• P21 has been very good with how we handle cash collections and had a positive impact for us.
• P21 user interface saves time and thus makes people more efficient by allowing customizations.
• With ordering, inventory, customer information, and CRM all in one location it makes the need for other programs like goldmine become obsolete.