M1 vs. Munis

Implementation is by far the weakest link in the ECI/M1 process. Although the tool is powerful, the client is expected to drive the process of learning the tool, planning the meetings with consultants, identifying risks and making mitigation plans, etc. without any samples, guidance or assistance on the part of ECI. The tool is best suited to high volume, standard product manufacturers who build to inventory or to order without much variation. The shop floor routing and time tracking are straightforward if you can master the convoluted Unit Of Measure calculations. The tool is either hosted locally or accessed through Remote Desktop. Shop floor is web enabled but the main desktop for M1 is still a relay which makes connectivity a potential issue. Moving this platform to a truly web hosted environment would substantially improve connectivity and eliminate compatibility issues with Apple products

Incentivized

Munis is great for any sort of data keeping and accounting work. There are features of Munis that I am still not familiar with even after 6 years of use. Munis would not be very good for a point of sale sort of operation like a retail store because it just simply is not set up for that sort of operation.

Incentivized

• Manage inventory counts. Good precision on quantities in and out, through shipping, MI, MR, and receipts.
• Job costing shows great details on labor, operations, and materials to be used. I wished that would do better in outside operations that would return, but we still think it is great.
• Ability to track changes (changelog), showing all changes that had in a particular place. Such as where, when, and by whom a line item unit price was changed in a PO.
• Link, traceability, keeping history. If done correctly, it is amazing to keep the history of a part/lot.
• The amount of user rights/customization is unbelievable. It can be hard to set up in the beginning, but it is great that you can give some very specific access to a user, and it is not (in general) as a package.

Incentivized

• Munis has multiple different sections that each pertain to different areas of our office. For example, there is a section in Munis that is for listing. This area supports all of the information that our county (or any other county) would need to enter to properly tax Business or Personal Property. There are similar sections for collections, vehicles, etc.
• Munis has so many features. Munis can be set up to maintain foreclosures, garnishments, attachments, and/or executions within its collections sections.
• Munis has so many features but they all work together which is great because you can see almost everything within the main bill inquiry area instead of having to flip back and forth between areas of the software.
• Munis also has a finance side which is great because we are able to submit our collections reports to our finance department and they too can use finance to handle that side of the business.
• Munis is highly customizable due to the amount of features it has.

Incentivized

• Some of the functions are pretty detailed - and so they take a while to generate screens and pages in reports.
• We actually use it for 2 companies we own - and it would be nice if the inter company communication was a little smoother. It's hard to share some data, and not everything is possible to be shared.
• Customized reports need to backed up before any updates to M1 or they're lost. It seems M1 overwrites the report folders everytime you run an update - so you have to keep track of what you've changed in Crystal Reports and restore it.

Incentivized

• Room for improvement for the Building Dept. software. Could not get it to work so we ended up getting rid of it and going back to our old system.
• The payroll side could use more fine tuning. You have to manipulate some things to get them to work properly.

Incentivized

Because it would be helpful if ECI would provide better documentation, communication and workflows to understand how each field interacts within the system and how each of those touch other areas within M1. It would also be useful if ECI would provide prescheduled training for how to customize things with M1 through Design Studio

Incentivized

Support has been great and timely

Incentivized

Our customization requirements were not that high and based on a price/cost benefit M1 was the winner. SAP was considered but the upfront costs and challenging learning curve together with the lack of flexibility in the SAP HANA public cloud version made the M1 choice more natural. SAP Services is usually more expensive compared to M1.

Incentivized

• Time savings having to only enter certain information once and have it follow through the entire order process from quote to cash

Incentivized

• Streamlines some accounting processes (e.g. purchase orders)
• Provides department heads with current up-to-date budget information
• Web-based makes it easy to access from anywhere

Incentivized