Deltek Vision (legacy product) vs. M1

Deltek Vision is perfect for both small and large businesses to implement. Especially when this program can be hosted in the cloud, users then can access from anywhere across the globe via the internet to print reports & track time spent on various projects.

Incentivized

Implementation is by far the weakest link in the ECI/M1 process. Although the tool is powerful, the client is expected to drive the process of learning the tool, planning the meetings with consultants, identifying risks and making mitigation plans, etc. without any samples, guidance or assistance on the part of ECI. The tool is best suited to high volume, standard product manufacturers who build to inventory or to order without much variation. The shop floor routing and time tracking are straightforward if you can master the convoluted Unit Of Measure calculations. The tool is either hosted locally or accessed through Remote Desktop. Shop floor is web enabled but the main desktop for M1 is still a relay which makes connectivity a potential issue. Moving this platform to a truly web hosted environment would substantially improve connectivity and eliminate compatibility issues with Apple products

Incentivized

• The ability to build out your own user-defined fields, grids, and even whole Info Centers is a huge plus. We can build out what we need in-house, without needing to engage outside consultants for most needs.
• The ability to create both user-initiated and scheduled workflows allows us to add intelligence to our actions within the system. We have weekly scheduled reports going out to the various levels of our organization, as well as workflows to trigger multiple field updates, alerts, emails, etc. to keep necessary people on the path and informed.

Incentivized

• Manage inventory counts. Good precision on quantities in and out, through shipping, MI, MR, and receipts.
• Job costing shows great details on labor, operations, and materials to be used. I wished that would do better in outside operations that would return, but we still think it is great.
• Ability to track changes (changelog), showing all changes that had in a particular place. Such as where, when, and by whom a line item unit price was changed in a PO.
• Link, traceability, keeping history. If done correctly, it is amazing to keep the history of a part/lot.
• The amount of user rights/customization is unbelievable. It can be hard to set up in the beginning, but it is great that you can give some very specific access to a user, and it is not (in general) as a package.

Incentivized

• Mac users have a different view from PC users and it is not as robust as what you can do on a PC.
• You can only access the platform through Internet Explorer on a PC, which is an outdated browser not a lot of employees use for anything else.
• User interface is a bit outdated, it could use a refresh.

Incentivized

• Some of the functions are pretty detailed - and so they take a while to generate screens and pages in reports.
• We actually use it for 2 companies we own - and it would be nice if the inter company communication was a little smoother. It's hard to share some data, and not everything is possible to be shared.
• Customized reports need to backed up before any updates to M1 or they're lost. It seems M1 overwrites the report folders everytime you run an update - so you have to keep track of what you've changed in Crystal Reports and restore it.

Incentivized

Because we are looking to upgrade to the next software level of Deltek.

Incentivized

It's on the verge of being awesome. Right now it's a matter of money -- if you have the money to hire consultants round the clock, yeah this is awesome.

Incentivized

Because it would be helpful if ECI would provide better documentation, communication and workflows to understand how each field interacts within the system and how each of those touch other areas within M1. It would also be useful if ECI would provide prescheduled training for how to customize things with M1 through Design Studio

Incentivized

99% of the customer service specialists and technicians that I've encountered are quite awesome!

Incentivized

Support has been great and timely

Incentivized

I've used QuickBooks Online and other QuickBooks products but they were not for the same purposes as my experience with Deltek. I also was not part of the team that selected Deltek as that was prior to my arrival at my firm.

Incentivized

Our customization requirements were not that high and based on a price/cost benefit M1 was the winner. SAP was considered but the upfront costs and challenging learning curve together with the lack of flexibility in the SAP HANA public cloud version made the M1 choice more natural. SAP Services is usually more expensive compared to M1.

Incentivized

• Deltek Vision allows us to configure the standard info centers to capture the information we need to support our business model and decision making processes. We are able to create user-defined fields (date, numeric, currency, character, drop down list, pick lists, memo/rtf and relational database fields) on both standard tabs and user-defined tabs. This has made the product very valuable to using the system to support our business policies and help data management to support decisions easier.
• Deltek Vision's custom proposal module and government forms modules shaves hours off of proposal preparation. Because Deltek Vision is the "source of truth" for our employee history and project history we are able to easily and quickly pull information from Vision onto proposal templates in minutes. Pulling information from a centralized repository gives our users confidence in the data, employee updates/feedback are made one time (in Vision) rather than every time a new proposal document is put in front of the employee, and gives our marketing professionals the extra time needed to craft the proposal to meet the RFP and client requested information. We use Deltek Vision to support of Strategic Plan goal for our company growing and win more work!
• Deltek Vision has utilities that can be managed by designated system administrators. You don't have to have a SQL expert or DBA on staff to write basic workflows, queries and reports. If you have savvy staff on hand, that takes the time to learn the front end of the Vision product, you will be able to set up some automation and configuration that doesn't require an expert. Deltek Vision also allows you to design the layout of your screens using a easy Screen Designer tool.

• Time savings having to only enter certain information once and have it follow through the entire order process from quote to cash

Incentivized