Epicor Eclipse vs. Unanet ERP GovCon

For medium (with growing pains!) organizations, Epicor's Eclipse software would be a great distribution and point of sale software solution and competes well with other software solutions out there. For large distributors Epicor's custom programming has the ability to tailor their software to customers exact need. I feel the cost of the system would be prohibitive to smaller distributors.

Incentivized

As I said, Unanet is great for timekeeping and expense reporting. It's very easy to navigate and intuitive for my staff to use. On the other hand, reports are a challenge. The ones that are "canned" only come out as PDFs so I find I waste a lot of paper each month. Customized reports are better and come in Excel, but setting them up is not that easy. We've been working with Unanet just over a year. We went "live" effective 1/1/2017 and we're still avoiding the reporting functions even though that was one of the main reasons we purchased Unanet in the first place

Incentivized

• Great for retail sales and it works well with ipads, scanners, credit card machines and was easy to implement.
• Initial support, setting up Eclipse and ensuring that everything works correctly was a huge benefit. We were off running from the start.
• Epicor has continuing education on its products and offers alternatives for things they cant do.

Incentivized

• Near real-time visibility into project financials. As soon as the employees save their time for the day, you can get a good measure of project financial performance. Work authorizations are embedded into Unanet so unintentional overruns are virtually eliminated.
• Nice integration with the Joint Travel Regulations. It is easy to import the latest rate tables for both CONUS and OCONUS destinations.
• Good customer support and highly responsive. Webinars on new features are free and broadcast on a regular basis. Feedback to suggestions for new features are addressed in a very timely fashion.
• It is easy to structure Unanet to support DCAA practices to be able to get approval for cost plus jobs.
• With exports to .csv files, it is easy to extract data for further analysis beyond the relatively rich built-in reporting features.

Incentivized

• Their support has gotten worse over the years. They fired a large portion of staff in favor of cheaper new hires. It is getting slowly better over time as their support people are gaining experience, but decades of institutional knowledge was lost. Response time can vary wildly depending, which is troubling when you have an immediate need. They have made a partial mea culpa, but the situation is not fully remedied.
• The user interface is clunky. The original interface, E-term, is a terminal based system (think DOS). A few years ago they rebuilt it using Java and called the new interface Solar, which is a more point and click, windows friendly version. Solar is slower, and so has been difficult for us to get the user adoption we've needed. In addition, any customization we do doesn't work in Solar. Now they have announced a new road-map to make it all web-based. Good luck to them, but it seems they spend all their time playing catch-up instead of making deep system improvements.
• There are significant gaps in what Eclipse is able to do. Sometimes there are third party products (Proof of Delivery, E-commerce, Tax, etc.), and sometimes Epicor offers in house solutions (Job Management, EDI, etc.). In either case, there are a string of products we have to integrate and maintain to make Eclipse functional. Most of them require support contracts, and have varying degrees of support.

Incentivized

• Adding hours for subcontractors must be done via import because the hours don't update on the reporting if put in via vendor invoice.
• Make posting dates less complex.
• Should be easier to figure out roles needed for managers in the organization.

Incentivized

I use it every day and can't see a reason why I would stop unless I started a new job. If I were to leave my present position, the new job would be much more attractive if they were Eclipse users.

Incentivized

This is very easy to use for someone that hasn't ever used the system before. Despite any preconceived notions about how a system should function they can learn this and become efficient with really not a lot of effort. I have used many systems and this is probably one of the easiest I have ever had to learn to navigate and use.

Incentivized

I haven't experienced any outages in the two years I have been using the system. It is always available as long as the computer is up. The only time I have seen it not be available was on occasions where we lost internet, or power and then we lost access to everything, not just Epicor Eclipse.

Incentivized

Everything in this system moves fairly quickly, that may be in part because we are a small company with only 21 users on the system at a time, or it may just be a the way the Epicor Eclipse works for any size company with any number of users. I can only speak for what I know and say that it is fast for our purposes.

Incentivized

The tier 1 support is trying, and sometimes they are successful. Sometimes they aren't. This topic isn't as black and white as the questions might suggest. Currently their Tier 1 support team is over seas, all items automatically go to Tier 1 and then when they can't help they either escalate it or tell me they need to check with someone else and they will get back to me. If they escalate me to Tier 2, then the issue comes back to the States and the support is usually at a higher knowledge/experience level and it can get resolved fairly quickly. If they don't escalate, then it might take weeks and multiple follow ups on my part before I either get a satisfactory resolution or finally get escalated.

Incentivized

Every time I have reached out to customer support, they have been very helpful and resolved my issue very quickly and efficiently

Incentivized

The training classes that I have attended have been top notch. The presenters are extremely knowledgeable on their subject matter, including real-world application of the system. They aren't just software techs training end users, they seem to be end users that have become experts in the over functionality and capabilities of the system.

Incentivized

The on-line training is very good, and it is taught by the same people that do the live in-person training sessions. The difficult part of it is, asking questions about your specific company's nuances or special circumstances. I don't remember if you can access the on-line training sessions after you have taken them for reminders purposes, but if so that is a great asset.

Incentivized

I don't really know about the implementation, it was back in 1998 and I didn't start here until 2016. By the time I started here they had been running it for a number of years and most of the people that were here when it was implemented are no longer here, and the ones that are don't really have much to say about how the implementation went either bad or good.

Incentivized

Most of my experience has been with Epicor's Prophet 21. For most distribution verticals, Prophet 21 is the only way to go. The comparison I've drawn is this: Prophet 21 is like a ferrari. Epicor Eclipse is like a reliable donkey. Both get you from point A to point B but Prophet 21 is going to get you there much quicker and with the kind of insight into your business that will help you thrive.

Incentivized

We were previously using Deltek GCS. Deltek stopped the support for this software so we were forced to change to a new product. We reviewed Costpoint, a Microsoft product and Unanet. We selected Unanet because it had all of the features we were looking for in a new software and it was very user-friendly.

Incentivized

I don't really know about the scalability. It's the same as it was when I started, I do know that you can buy more user licenses, but I think they come in packs of 5, which can be a problem if you only need 1 and will never use the other 4. But, again I'm not sure on that.

Incentivized

• Reporting features allow tracking items trending downward which can glut inventory space and dollars if not adjusted
• GMROI reports help analyze turn ratios and adjusted dollar values and margins of product lines.
• Suggested Purchase Order features allowed controlled inventory purchases which avoid lost sales while managing overall dollars invested in an acquired product with the lowest freight costs possible.

Incentivized

• Unanet has had a very significant ROI on several fronts. Our payroll department spends much less time managing and processing time in general.
• Unanet has allowed all of the project managers teams bill on a much more granular level which has saved significant time over the previous Excel based processes of gathering project level data.
• Using Unanet companywide has also saved many hours of time that were previously spent translating data from other platforms, and consolidating data via Excel for reporting purposes. Using the same tool (Unanet) with the included reports has saved significant time and hassle which has had an enormous impact on the ROI of Unanet.

Incentivized