ECI Software Solutions offers e-automate, an ERP for office technology companies to automate business workflows and increase contract profitability.
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SAP Business One
Score 6.9 out of 10
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SAP Business One is an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for small and medium-sized businesses, The product encompasses functionality around sales, customer relationships, inventory, operations, financials and human resources.
I actually liked Microsoft 365 better than e-automate. The "flaws" that I identified in e-Automate did not exist in Microsoft 365. I did not select e-Automate - the software was selected several years before I started here. E-Automate does a few things better than Microsoft …
I'm not sure I wasn't in this company with the previous software that was used. But I'm sure that the old software didn't hold up because they were shopping elsewhere, and that is why they chose e-automate. I have used other programs in the past at previous places, and this one …
We looked at other vendors before we chose to go with this E-Auto. Even though we were on an older version of an ECI product. The ease of the transition into this product will depend on your staff and the knowledge of how to complete a conversion, the ease of use compared to …
E-automate is much better at understanding the needs of the office equipment industry and provide the necessary tools. SAP Business One has limited features specific to the office equipment industry and includes things that are not useful. E-automate is also priced much better …
I have used many different ERP programs over the years. It's hard to compare e-automate to other programs because a lot is dependent on the client (size, needs, etc.). I would probably put e-automate in the lower tier when stacked up against some of the other solutions. I think …
I liked that DDMS allowed you to create anything and everything, freedom to make what you want. But e-automate saves a lot of time in comparison. And if you learn e-automate well enough i think you can also make your own things there as well, such as the rules you can make and …
D3m allows for granular detail with diagrams, pictures, plans and layouts. The template for sales quotes in D3M are very helpful to save time. D3M is easy to manage and use. Ideal for smaller organizations and teams. D3m will allow for customization with company logo, phone …
IT Glue is a good product for tracking inventory and configurations. We use it for our MSP as well as the print side of the business. It is best to use IT Glue in conjunction with e-automate since they can compliment each other. Keep all your printer configs in ITG along with …
The price of Sales Force is a lot. It does have a lot of integration, but you have to pay for all of that, and at the end of the day, it was going to be too expensive and not as streamlined specifically to our industry as e-automate.
Unfortunately, in the copy/print side of things, e-automate is the software to use, so our options were very limited when shopping around. When we decided to implement the IT side of the company, we didn't want to track the revenue, etc from the IT in a different application …
We use this in tandem with e-automate, however e-automate does tend to have more surface-level features which can be easy to use at a moment's notice, unlike GMS which often takes a lot of time and can have a more unintuitive login process while not being considerably more …
As a consultant, SAP Business One has a strong set of core features that will perform well for a multitude of businesses. It is a mature product with lots of documentation and available training online to answer questions and assist users. It also has multitudes of proven …
SAP Business One is a good fit for an organization that wants to transform its business operation with a reasonable cost for migration from the legacy system. SAP Business One can match and support the organization needs because it has most of the best business practices …
We did not use many ERP systems yet so I'm unable to go to much in detail. We tested some and the main issue was the pricing. Good alternatives would be Oracle NETSUITE, Microsoft Dynamics if your company is Microsoft based with al the other programs (great integrations). And …
SAP Business One and SAP Business Rules Management are similar, but SAP Business One better matched my organization's needs. I like how the system can be used across multiple departments at once to keep all my colleagues connected. Being able to accurately track inventory …
We ended up choosing not to discard Salesforce. Now these two systems are working together, where Salesforce will be responsible for CRM and SAP Business One for financial, tax, and logistics. This was a strategic decision by the company.
I think that NetSuite is more user-friendly. Especially on the reporting side. They have many more training offerings and seem to have greater capabilities. I know that the bolt-on products around manufacturing in NetSuite are very flawed so I am not sure that it would operate …
SAP business one provided a more complete solution since all modules are included in their package. Other ERP providers charged extra for each module that was implemented. SAP was more economical than other providers.
To date, e-automate is my favorite system. Easy to configure and date-mine. However, SAP is the closet software I have come across that matches its ability to easily interact between inventory, billing, and accounting.
I honestly preferred QuickBooks for our business needs. We went with SAP because more employees had previous experience with it and were not keen on learning something new.
Trust in size of SAP and the partner network they've built. It was ultimately Vision33 that made the difference for us. We also liked the feature fit to our manufacturing needs.
Many other ERP do not include end to end business operation module. And it's an renounced ERP due to which you get the value for money in term of support.
If you need a system to place and track sales quotes, sales orders, purchase orders, and service calls then E-Automate is perfect. However, if you want to be able to easily bulk upload customers and contracts or if you want to be able to quickly and easily track contract profitability, customer costs, etc, then you'll likely want/need a secondary or different system to do so.
SAP Business One would be more useful if it contained tools to acommodate the growing need of online sales. A more complete shipping module which handles tracking numbers with the common couriers would be great. A built in warehouse management system would be great designed to be used with barcode scanners
I like the way I can create a sales order and right click and instantly create a purchase order for that sales order, and the process continues when I clear the PO, it releases the items on the Sales order for shipment.
Customized Reports to fit the companies' special configuration and needs.
Individual interfaces for many aspects of the business; manufacturing, inventory, sales, distribution, service, etc. Each department can have its own space.
All the modules are connected and can interact with one another.
Make sales invoices not require serial numbers, or be more flexible with it.
Make contract invoices have some sort of flexibility in terms of editing. Our end users complain that QuickBooks made it very easy to edit invoices, and in e-automate, for them, it is practically impossible. (I do personally understand why it has to be as it is myself, I'm just forwarding their observation.)
Make the API actually useful. I spent days looking at the functions and the functions available are not really useful.
Following a bench mark process - this seems contradicting to flexibility however we have wished we could follow more of an industry benchmark. Our challenge as a small company has been knowing how to properly use the system. We have discovered that we have set up the system wrong based and are using it improperly which has cause a lot work to correct.
Better live reporting options - current we are on prem SQL. Yes SAP is moving to HANA however smaller companies like ourselves are not ready for that. We need to be able to maintain our existing SQL DB. We also have a demand for live BI Reporting. It has been difficult to do this with our current set up.
Error handling - have found it very difficult to troubleshoot. Errors are not always clear and answers are hard to find.
Its really the only option for the industry that does enough of what we need for it to function . I'm not sure if there were better options out there if we would have to renew our subscription. With the addition of AI, hopefully something will be able to become more useful.
I cannot run my business without SAP Business One in place. I only consult on on product and that is SAP Business One. Business volume goes to zero if I don't use SAP Business One. It is the best product on the market - head and shoulders above other ERP packages I have looked at or implemented in the past.
I rate SAP Business One's overall usability as excellent (10). The system has a user friendly interface that is easy to navigate. I enjoy how much SAP Business One helps to simplify everyday work tasks. This is a wonderful asset for any organization to use across any and all departments.
The SAP Business One software is up and running every time you need it as it was planned. In more than 6 years that we have been using the product, it has never been unavailable and if it ever was, it was because of a planned maintenance window scheduled in the company.
Reports are the struggle the most with the information being extracted in a way that you need to copy and paste it into a new document so some of the information is not covered
SAP Business One performance depends mostly on the speed of your internal servers, should you have the solution on premise as we do. Sometimes the system tends to be a little slower for some users when others are executing really big reports of performing some batch loads, but generally, the performance is acceptable to all the users.
Sometimes when you need answers quickly, a voice on the phone is far better than having to wait for email support or a callback. I have found this to have delays and feel ECI e-automate should invest more in its support infrastructure.
We had some complex questions and went in a loop with calls emails etc. They where unable to find the right person to talk with us, and when we found 1 he was unable to reach... We ended up working with a local profession for the implementation, and that went smoothly. I would suggest SAP to start with that if there are complex projects...
The training I get was a consultant level training, so it's basically a 6 weeks training covering every aspect and every module of the system. It covered most common use cases and exercise training so you can get along with the software, as well as examples so there culd be a better understanding.
Over the past two years SAP has added a great deal of new SAP Business One on-line training for version 9.0 and 9.1. Most of the training is very strong, but some is difficult to understand and follow. Additionally, SAP still has a few holes in their on-line training around Production, Bill-of-Materials, MRP and Service.
These implementations are not easy. Even a standard implementation can be difficult. With a never-been-done-before implementation, the implementation team and the user team need to be thorough with planning, make a decision on key points, and stick to them before any design happens. Our biggest challenge was not from StellarOne, rather it was from the mid-implementation decisions from our internal team. StellarOne did a great job warning us, implementing our decision, and then helping us adjust our SAP to handle the new direction we took.
I actually liked Microsoft 365 better than e-automate. The "flaws" that I identified in e-Automate did not exist in Microsoft 365. I did not select e-Automate - the software was selected several years before I started here. E-Automate does a few things better than Microsoft Dynamics - Bank Account Reconciliations and Sales Tax reporting are 2 that stand out.
SAP Business One is a good fit for an organization that wants to transform its business operation with a reasonable cost for migration from the legacy system. SAP Business One can match and support the organization needs because it has most of the best business practices deployed in its core modules so the organization can adapt to the standardized business process by choosing SAP Business One solution. Single source of data and information visibility is the huge benefit of using SAP Business One.
For most small businesses, the only way you outgrow SAP Business One is if the nature of your business changes radically. Going from 1 to 50 users is quite easy with SAP B1. Going beyond 50 may require moving to the Hana SAP B1 platform to maintain or improve performance, but the path is there. Add-ons to SAP B1 can also be added as specific needs are encountered that are not closely met by the standard product. These may be required early in the product life because of the nature of your business, or as you expand the use of SAP B1.
E-automate has allowed us to trim down our internal workforce by not re-hiring departures. Our employees are able to do more with their time.
E-automate allows us to maintain optimal inventory levels, decreasing our inventory value by 50%. This is accomplished by using the rich analytics and reporting.
E-automates contract billing has allowed us to fine tune how we bill our customers and increase the accuracy by 30%.