Infor VISUAL vs. JobBOSS

The original version of Visual Manufacturing (Lilly Software) was intended for mechanical manufacturing. It was adapted at our facility (we were not the first) to accomodate electronic manufacturing. For electronic manufacturing process control it is not ideal when referencing in-line or custom processes used to build product. For material control it is excellent unless a modification to a standard product is required (and we did this on 60% of product going out the door). The co-product feature that removes material from an assembly requires the creator of the work order to calculate the percentage of cost the removed items are from the completed product. On the business operations side regional tax reports were difficult to extract and an external module to go into the data base and extract that had to be created. The system itself was stable for the most part. Occasional "data collisions" corrupted transactions at times. The accounting procedures in place found them by the end of the month .where they were corrected. For a small business with less formal processes Infor Visual can be used with little training for the operators. If the processes need a higher level of accountability and control the processes can be formalized with workflow scripts to ensure that higher level of control.

Incentivized

Time management and inventory control are great. Awesome investment for small business owners for everything from services like plating, or anodizing, to keeping track of our suppliers. Wish it integrated a decent label program with it also.

Incentivized

• Part/BOM libraries
• Traceability from customer order to work order
• Job status representation

Incentivized

• Timekeeping. Clocking in and out.
• Inventory control.
• Travelers or job sheets that keep track of operations.

Incentivized

• At times a "shadow part" is necessary in the manufacturing process. This shadow part does not require an inventory transaction but is made a as a separate process - sometimes out of sequence to the general process flow. Infor Visual ver 6.3.5 does not have that capability.
• When generating forms for business and manufacturing operations Infor Visual ver 6.3.5 has a limited number of options. To change or add forms requires an unsupported editor. When the stock and custom options are depleted an outside programming module is required as well as programmers to develop the forms.
• While free software upgrades to the main operations modules have been part of the maintenance agreement. One upgrade required database and hardware support not justifiable for the current business model. The system was frozen at the current version at that time.
• There is no easy way to differentiate between engineering documentation and production documentation.

Incentivized

• The reporting is through Crystal Reports which is cumbersome to work with and requires someone who knows what they are doing. If you're moving from something like Quickbooks with built in report editing, you're going to be frustrated with creating custom reports.
• If you run mutliple jobs on a single machine or use multi-pallet machines scheduling can get frustrating, and you will have to come up with your own solutions to schedule those machines. (This is not unique to JobBOSS scheduling. We tested several ERP systems in this range and most were lacking in this area).
• Even with the 12.0 update, the interface is still rather dated for the onsite version. The online version looks much better.

Incentivized

Good Technical and Customer Support during and after implementation tasks. Good Project Plan and Management support for implementation and post implementation. Financial functionality could be more comprehensive particularly with Budgeting and Cash Management. Inventory Management capability was adequate but could be more comprehensive as well. "Out of the Box" functionality was adequate but requested add-ons and enhancements seemed to be a bit pricey.

Why fix what aint broken

Incentivized

Because of use cases and easy implementation and the vertical and horizontal scaling.

Incentivized

Love the templates we were able to make and add to the program to work specifically for what we need to put on our certifications. We went from typing out each certification on a printed form to being able to work from templates and it was a serious time saver.

Incentivized

As we have seen the live environment and the use cases where we implement.

Incentivized

Could have used more hands-on approach. There are multiple webinars and information sessions but until you actually use the system, these are not very helpful.

Incentivized

We unfortunately did not evaluate any other ERP software. VISUAL was a legacy system and we determined that changing systems would be too difficult, and not cost effective. We reached out to our local VISUAL rep who knew how the software functioned, but not how to apply it more appropriately to our business model, so we continued on with what we had rather than looking elsewhere.

Incentivized

JobBOSS is the centralized solution that has helped us consolidate nearly every process within our company. It's ability to create routings and calculate material by building a job saves us hours every day compared to Quickbooks. Its inventory management is faster and tracks more information than Wasp and its ability to understand raw stock and material shapes makes life so much simpler in a manufacturing environment.

Incentivized

• Good Billing provided
• Easy to implement and use
• scales vertical and horizontal

Incentivized

• We were using several pieces or software that have all been replaced by just JobBOSS. Inventory, routings, inspections, floor tracking, accounting are now all in a single place.
• It helped us to reorganize our document server and consolidate files. Its ability to link files has created an environment where nearly every piece of information on an order can be found in a centralized single location.
• The quoting module has improved our decision making and ability to see where we were right or wrong on costing.

Incentivized