SYSPRO vs. Viewpoint Spectrum

Almost, since day one Syspro has been saving us time and making us more productive as a whole. We have been able to grow our revenue exponentially with keeping our personnel needs at nearly the same level. Syspro is a great system for an organization that has multiple needs like Distribution and Manufacturing and/or multiple locations.

Incentivized

The Installation team is amazing. They provide clear guidance at the beginning of the process regarding what is expected and what needs to be done. The implementation manager follows up monthly with you to make sure you are on track and if you need additional help. They are very helpful and responsive in resolving issues.

Incentivized

• If you are a small or medium business, SYSPRO is a great fit due to its flexible design. If you perform warehousing and inventory management Syspro performs these functions very well.
• SYSPRO has been around since 1978 and it shows in its development and support. I have been through several re-sellers for our support function, however we have now moved to SYSPRO corporate for our technical support and development/customizations. SYSPRO corporate supports their customers VERY well.
• The SYSPRO interface is highly customizable and nicely laid out. Even with the basic implementation, you can still get off the ground and run without performing too many modifications.
• SYSPRO forms and reporting templates are easy to customize/modify.

Incentivized

• Job Costing - Viewpoint Spectrum handles job costing per project, per work order, per site, and gives us an up to date analysis of the project.
• HR - helps to keep all of the training certifications and HR incidents in a consistent and manageable order for all Managers to use.

Incentivized

• We have been using 6.0 and the security is not so good.
• The program is a bit difficult to learn for rollout
• The Learning Channel could be improved - downloadable mp4's would be nice to include in the program vs moving back and forth to the learning channel. Since the program is difficult to learn, it would be nice to be able to utilize the learning channel within the program. Also, the learning channel is pretty complicated to use.

Incentivized

• Support isn't readily available. You can submit a ticket and wait days before it's picked up. Even critical issues (system outages) can wait an hour or two before someone responds.
• Large companies will feel limited. This product wasn't designed to handle large amounts of data, and performance seems to slow when there are more than 80 concurrent users.
• The new developments are limited. HR Management is less robust than a third-party product specializing in HR Management. Viewpoint Analytics is nowhere near as robust as Power BI or Tableau.

Incentivized

The product is working for us and the cost to implement a new system does not warrant the expense.

Incentivized

I've heard many reports from our users stating how difficult Syspro is to use and navigate. From an average standpoint, the Syspro Administrator has to invest a lot of time in setting up the user for success. Once the groundwork is applied, SYSPRO's overall usability becomes fair easier to the average user.

Incentivized

There's a little bit of a learning curve, but once you've been working in the system for a while, it becomes second nature. I would say that out of all of the other software that I've personally used, Spectrum has been the easiest one to pick up and learn quickly

Incentivized

I've never seen Spectrum down

For the most part the product is very reliable. Since we are hosted we sometimes have connectivity issues but I would say that is more our ISP than Spectrum.

Incentivized

The support has recently changed. Last year, you could call in and get an immediate response. Now that doesn't seem possible unless you have an urgent situation with access to the software, payroll or payables. I have found that using chat or e-mail works nicely for the most part, but sometimes I feel it would be easier if someone from support would jump on our site and take a first-hand look rather than going back and forth

Incentivized

Our trainer was excellent and navigated the time zone differences expertly. She gave us test assignments to complete and was available for questions at any time.

Incentivized

My only insight would be to take time in your implementation and training process; ours was six weeks from start to finish.

Incentivized

We evaluated 8 of the top vendors 16 years ago before we selected Syspro and frankly, none of them came close to meeting all of our needs at a reasonable price point. We still look back at that process and think it was one of the best decisions we have ever made.

Incentivized

I have previously used Sage Masterbuilder, another construction industry software. This has been a number of years ago. The company I am working for already had Spectrum and have been using it for as long as it has been around when it was known as Forefront. Based on conversations I've had with the personnel that were here at the time of purchase, Spectrum clicked off all the boxes they were looking for.

Incentivized

You can grant user specific access which is nice. Project managers do not need all the same modules as Accounting. But Accounting does need access to PM modules as well

• Significant returns regarding our ability to quickly process orders - both direct entry, EDI and web orders.
• Significant returns through giving us the ability to serve configurable products to our customers - We used the product configurator to accomplish this.
• Simplifies the shipping process and makes it easy for us to process shipments.
• Significant returns in terms of automation and cutting down on expense.

Incentivized

• [In my opinion,] it takes at LEAST twice as long to do our jobs now.
• [I feel like] we are paranoid about something not being printed correctly because of [what I believe are] buggy text fields.
• [In my experience,] we still have to refer to a physical file cabinet with paper, even though a main point of switching was to go paperless.
• [In our experience,] screens can now be "locked", so we can't see something if our coworker is also looking at it.
• [I believe that] the financial hit our company took from this switch was astronomical. [In my opinion:] Beware!