Phocas Software

RATING:

4.8

(116)

About Phocas Software

Phocas is a team of passionate professionals who are committed to helping people feel good about their data. Our software brings together organizations’ most useful data from an ERP and other business systems and presents it in a way that makes it easy to analyze by anyone. Building dashboards is straightforward but what sets Phocas apart is its ad-hoc analysis capabilities. Unlike other BI tools, Phocas makes it easy for the user to decide how much detail to see and in what format. From day one with Phocas, users get tracking and reporting on essential KPIs and metrics that are specific to role and industry. But users can also customize to meet the unique reporting needs of their business. Phocas lets users explore their data, following their train of thought to fin...

Awards and Recognition

FrontRunner 2024
Software Advice's FrontRunners report ranks top products based on user reviews, which helps businesses find the right software.
CEO Dashboard

Phocas Software Reviews

Overall Rating

4.8

Ratings Breakdown

Secondary Ratings

Ease-of-use

4.5

Customer Support

4.5

Value for money

4.5

Functionality

4.5

Most Helpful Reviews for Phocas Software

1 - 5 of 116 Reviews

User Profile

Gary

Verified reviewer

Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing, 51-200 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed October 2019

Best in class BI

Phocas is extremely easy to use for a non Technical users. It holds huge amounts of data and is pretty fast at being able to get the information required out of the system fast.

PROS

It is easy to use for all sales people. Lots of information at your fingertips.

CONS

Having all this data you need to understand d how to use it. This is not always easy.

Graham

Oil & Energy, 201-500 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed October 2019

Happy to Recommend Phocas!

We started with Phocas in 2009 with just the standard sales database for one region of our business but have now progressed to multiple sales databases for other business units with fully integrated rebates module as well as finance and procurement style database now, with plans to roll it out further in other parts of the business.

PROS

The ease of use of Phocas is what puts it at the top of our list for BI software. The set up of the data was quick and easy (with great support from the Phocas guys) and ability to drill down from top line data right into the detail of a transaction is what makes Phocas a great tool for us. Phocas is widely used across our business to track and analyse sales data, finance data and purchasing data with future plans to add more modules. The PUG Forum is also a good feature for me, if there is something that you don't know how to do then you'll find the info there or someone can point you in the right direction. It's also a great place to suggest the feature that you'd like to see and Phocas review and add on to their product road map, so you know they are listening to your ideas.

CONS

I'd say the visualizations and widgets on the dashboards could do with abit of updating. The charts aren't always a flexible as you'd like with axes labels and adjusting the axes to suit the chart, plus you have to be quite specific with the data in the first place to get the chart you want.

Reason for choosing Phocas Software

Since we've been using Phocas we've been assessing the use of Tableau and Microsoft Power BI however, these would replace Phocas for us, these would be secondary tools most likely used in our business for their visualization functions.

Ken

Wholesale, 201-500 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed August 2021

Good BI Tool, Not Great

Good, basic BI tool that can give sales teams good information to understand their customers and opportunities to grow sales and margins.

PROS

Easy to pull in our ERP data. Good to summarize trends and KPI metrics. Matrix feature is great to find correlated products "like" customers aren't buying. Ability to filter (called "Focus") on a dimension and all of the widgets within the dashboards will update to just show the info relative to that filter. Ability to quickly change dimensions and measures to show information in different ways. The customer service department is awesome - will help whenever and however they can.

CONS

Custom calculations are hard to use. Graphing tools are not robust (i.e. no data labels, data tables, combo charts are limited, etc.) Needs an additional user license that fits in between the Viewer and Full Licenses to give additional user features like exporting, but not the ability to design dashboards. Formatting and sorting the data is below average. The back-end Designer tool takes awhile to master. Wish there was a handbook or instructions on how to use the different features of the software.

Bill

Warehousing, 51-200 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed October 2019

Johnstone Supply - Las Vegas - Why Phocas has increased our productivity!

Overall we are very happy with this product. It has opened the door for getting information to our teams much faster and it also created a new full time position for data analysis! The flexibility of being able to create our own databases, & adding to existing databases has increased our ability to share information to our teams in a easy to view format instead of sending spreadsheets that some people did not look at.

PROS

It is very easy to use! I can show someone the basics in 5 to 10 minutes and they are off and running creating favorites and dashboards. The software is updated every month and their support and documentation is outstanding. The product gives us the information we need faster than doing it in our ERP system. With a couple of clicks you can analyze you sales data and then quickly change views to look at the data in a completely different way. It very robust in all the options you have. The company is developing based on their customer needs, you can tell that they all want to help us achieve success with this product.

CONS

This is hard to say because their are few cons. We have requested enhancements and we have some support issues that are submitted. But we have no visibility , (web portal), to review what we already submitted. It would be nice to have a support portal to check open cases and enhancements we have submitted.

Reasons for switching to Phocas Software

Phocas is a very modern looking and easy to use product, very little training for end users. Its updating and evolving with the times we live it. The employees of Phocas are passionate about their product and it shows in their support, documentation, training videos, and user conferences. We wanted a product that would take us to the next level. We did not see that in Mitts

samantha

Mining & Metals, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed February 2023

A great product with an excellent, dynamic and knowledgeable support team.

It's really quick to get the information we need. When we implemented it we presumed the sales team would spend hours on it. They don't. They get the information they need within seconds and can quickly move on to do their actual jobs. It's an extremely powerful tool.Some functions in the business don't use it very much but that's because we didn't collect data before because we couldn't analyse it. Now that we can analyse it we need to collect a bank of data so we can see what we want to do with it. Chicken and egg.

PROS

The screens are easy to navigate and there aren't lots of clicks to get the information you need.I particularly like how easy it is to create Dashboards and delve deeper into dashboard data.The supporting team are excellent too. After a bumpy handover to BAU Phocas have completely turned it around. Their team are engaging, helpful and knowledgeable. I also know that, if I can explain the data composite I'm looking for, the team will find a way of getting it.

CONS

It isn't so easy for less skilled team members to use- those who don't understand databases, don't have very good computer skills or only use it occasionally.I'd like it to be easier to import simple data such as a spreadsheet.

Reason for choosing Phocas Software

We went straight to Phocas because they had recently partnered with our ERP solution provider. It shortcut the process for us.

Vendor Response

Hi Sam, thanks for taking the time to to leave us such a thorough review! We really pride ourselves for providing real people to help you solve your problems the best way we can. It's great your wider team can quickly find the data they need too. For less frequent users, hopefully our library of easy-to-follow videos at: https://www.phocassoftware.com/academy, are proving useful. If you spot any gaps in our how-tos we're always open to suggestions: hello@phocassoftware.com Warm regards, Mike Hills Global Head of Customer

Replied June 2023