Infor VISUAL vs. SAP Business One

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

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

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• 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.

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

• 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.

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.

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.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

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...

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• SAP Business One is intentionally designed keeping flexibility in mind
• This software can be deployed on-premise or on cloud and you can change the on-premise hosting to cloud anytime in the future
• It is designed from the ground up. SAP Business One is an affordable product that is quick to install, easy to use, and simple to maintain.

Incentivized