Infor VISUAL vs. Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne

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

If there are lot of complicated systems this might not be the best system. If you have only some complexity Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne is a product a technical or application person can wrap their hands around and understand the whole system.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• JD Edwards is very configurable in handling different sales order entry scenarios.
• JD Edwards can be customized to present focused information on the login screen of a user so a user can better focus on the applications or reports that are relevant to their job.
• JD Edwards is also very effective in creating relationships between various customer accounts and the relationships between them.

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 interface is aging - The application has been around quite a while. Even with the more modern UI, it still feels like a 90's application and doesn't provide the quick augmentation options like what is found in Netsuite or cloud apps.
• A premise based - It's an application that was built to run on mini/mainframe environments, which were great for its time. However, in comparison to the hand's free environments in the cloud, it requires more iron and humans to maintain the solution.
• Speed to roll out new business models - It felt like, once you deployed a business setup, it was difficult to change and add new business features, especially those that contradict previous directions.

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.

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

Incentivized

great design and continuous improvements

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

It is simple to use and implement as compared to complex softwares in the market that may take ample amount of time to implement. The budget is also slightly less to provide the same functionality that other softwares are providing. Also having Oracle database that comes with the system is much easier to handle and use and have much security.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• The EnterpriseOne toolset is flexible and easily usable. Since they continue to invest and grow the product, we do get a good ROI out of it.
• The software was already here and installed when I started at this company but the business users seemed to really like it and adapt to it well so it must feed the need to manage our inventory and financials, etc.

Incentivized