Epicor Prophet 21 vs. JobBOSS²

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

Jobboss2 helps with creating routings, tracking hours towards those, and tracking inventory for discrete orders. It does not work well for blanket orders, consignment, or long-term agreements-type contracts with customers. Raw material tracking is completely ineffective with Jobboss2. Costing is quite ineffective with Joboss2. Production/lot planning & scheduling is ineffective and is a huge limiting factor. All of these items require manual tracking in spreadsheets. Jobboss2 has helped us get away from tracking routings with pen and paper and timesheets with pen and paper... but we're still having to use Excel to track consignment, blanket orders, job planning/when to launch new travelers, and costing/quoting. Going from pen and paper routings to digital has been a huge help overall, but the other limitations are incredibly concerning, which has led us to research & possibly switch ERP platforms.

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.

• Estimating is great once you learn how to use it, and it makes repeat estimates easier than ever.
• Time tracking is amazing for us. It has taken some time to figure out exactly how we want to use the tracking parts, but it's only because it has multiple ways to do the same thing and finding out what works best for us took some time.
• Billing and Purchasing are a breeze. The full package is worth the money to fully integrate the entire business into JobBOSS² since it can handle it all.

Incentivized

• 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

• Custom reports - support for this should be included, and not an added cost.
• Margin Summary cost data is broken, duplicating costs. Cannot be used for analysis.
• Scheduling module is difficult to use, difficult to adjust for changing team size and capacities.
• Subassembly jobs show $0 Job Value; this creates a mess when trying to gauge the $/hr profitability of individual job numbers. Because all of the profit is in the parent assembly, most of the hours are stuck with the child jobs showing $0 in sales value.
• My customer service rep cannot answer any technical questions, I'm referred to a support queue.
• Support reps are quick to call an issue DONE and close out my ticket, without verifying that my problem has been addressed.
• I cannot look at my sales backlog and show how many dollars from jobs are scheduled due for this week, next week, the week after, etc.

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

The staff enjoy the use of JobBOSS2. We don't have many complaints or issues with the software that are not solved. Support for the product has been improving and that is important for long term success. The cloud application is continually being developed and updated. New abilities are being added to assist with the customers that have strict requirements things like governance items

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

It is extremely easy to learn and use E2 Shop System. It provides everything a manufacturing company might be looking for, starting from entering a new PO to shipping parts. Routers that get created from E2 Shop System also help track parts on the shop floor and is accessible from every where. E2 Shop System also now has an app, which is great when it comes to scanning router steps directly from your phone.

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

Have had no issues with availability

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

Have only had minimal issues with slow processing

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

Ashlee Ware- Product Support Specialist. We had a wonderful experience with support from Ashlee Ware and she has since become a hero in our company. Ashlee helped us research and clear several open Purchase Orders from 2015 and beyond that were still showing on the open purchase orders report in 2023.

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

Our trainer was very knowledgeable and helpful.

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 videos and live seminars were helpful but not all were as in-depth as needed.

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

I assumed there would be more assistance from JobBoss for implementation of the software. I felt it was very independent on my part and I felt unsure a lot of the time

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.

JobBoss is much more user-friendly and cost-efficient. JobBoss also allows for greater shop visibility by enabling shop employees through mobile devices to track costing. JobBoss seems to be a better fit for us as a fabrication firm to be able to plan and track shop functions.

Incentivized

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.

• We have seen improved visibility of our jobs and on how we quote our products to our customers.
• It is nice to be able to see what is running on each station, who is running it and what part of the process the job is currently at.
• I also like the Data Collection module as I can see in real time what all the employees are currently doing.

Incentivized