Great Inventory Management

We use Bright Pearl for both in-store and online sales. Coming from the previous program we used, Bright Pearl was a huge step up in inventory tracking. You can know where each and every item is through the whole order process - from shelf to shipment. I've also been greatly impressed with the help/support team for a couple reasons. First, the replies to your problems/queries are quick (and don't make you feel like you're talking to a robot). Second, when they tell you that they are working on a certain issue, problem, or "bug" that needs to be dealt with, they mean it. This support team actually follows through and makes changes and updates frequently, always trying to improve the software. That is something that, as a customer I really appreciate.

Pros

- great inventory management - fast and current connection to online orders, stock, and inventory - good reports system - lots of apps available to help tailor the program to your business' needs

Cons

While Bright Pearl is easy to use, sometimes the amount of manual steps you have to take with some of the processes are tedious. I would love to see more steps become automatic, and fields auto-populate. (I will say that, since we started using Bright Pearl, they've already improved somewhat in this area, though there are still many more to be done.

Manages the core of our business, finances and products.

We have been using brightpearl for several years now and the core function of the system has been to centralise around the accounts and stock management for our business. This means it's super easy to keep control of the business critical systems. The system has grown and expanded and as a small business I don't need a lot of this but it's there incase. The most important thing we have found is the super easy simple Brightpearl POS solution that is sharing the same core data for products/customers/payments as our website and accounts in real time so if the last item sells online then we don't over sell this in store at the weekend. We have two small showrooms and can have two separate pos channels that make it easy to deal with customers in store and telephone orders in the main program. Push sales from POS to backend and vice versa. It makes us more efficient and look more professional in store and on the phone. Even as a small business we have constantly changing stock and a large number of products (over 11,000) so need control of those as simply as possible. Brightpearl has done that for us along with accounts functionality. I hope as brightpearl expands it can keep true to it's roots of supporting small businesses with a system that would normally only be available to big business with big budgets. The core simple EPOS is just perfect for us with multichannel order routes to the dispatch desk.

Pros

the simple EPOS systems linked into the core of the system in real time. You have to do things by the book and can't cut corners in processes.

Cons

Sometimes you have to do things by the book and can't cut corners in processes.

All in One Ecommerce Software

All in one eCommerce solution, helped us consolidate 4 software programs into 1 integrated app. Great for small to medium size ecom companies and those wishing to grow rapidly by automating routine processes and tasks. Saves us hours each day with automation and syncing of orders and inventory to multiple channels.

Pros

Multi-Channel inventory sync, accounting is integrated with the order fulfillment, CRM, and most of the functions you need to run a growing eCommerce business. They issue updates, bug fixes, and new features every few weeks. The software has come leaps and bounds forward in the past 2 years to become more stable, less buggy, with better automation and features. Nice to have all business functions located in 1 software rather than 5 different systems that constantly need synced and updated. Cloud based so you can work anywhere.

Cons

As a US retailer there are a few UK oddities in the software but these are quickly being updated and changed to fit the US market. Customer support has also been improving since we started, but could be quicker to fix problems/ issue updates at times. They don't seem to understand at times that when something is broken, we can not run our business at all till it gets fixed. Some additional features and add-ons are not included in the base price of the software. They would be nice to have available but the price could get very expensive quickly and be out of budget for a small business. Would also like to see a quick way to back-up 'all' the data from the cloud locally in case of emergency or we needed it for another process. You can export data files and reports currently, but not the entire database at once.

Mixed Bag with Areas of Opportunity

It's nice to have all your records in one place, but being able to make meaningful use of said data is a large area of opportunity, and it can be done with some substantial elbow grease. It's good for smaller companies, but larger companies would be better with different ERP solutions.

Pros

BP has made some improvements in key areas, such as the removal of purchasing of user slots. (e.g. if you had 10 users, only 4 could sign in at any one time). But there are still areas of opportunity, in terms of better facilitation of accounting, order, and inventory control. That said, it is probably still the most economical, if you want to really put in some elbow grease vs. other ERPs.

Cons

Needs substantial improvements in reporting inventory and accurately pulling proper reports for tax accounting and other accounting, as well as aiding in projecting units to order per quarter/season. Basic functionality is fine, but could also be improved, as much of the panel is very Web 1.5. Really meant for smaller companies, and not larger complex ones.

It's good enough to run my business on

Pros

Brightpearl is both multicurrency and multi warehouse which is key to my business. It's easy to achieve this without heavy training.

Cons

I dislike 2 things. I need multicurrency journeys and they don't supply plus the report writing is complex and difficult to customise.