Great option for distribution

Pros

It is widely used by distributors of all kinds of industries. The independent user group is an incredible resource of users that are very helpful to everyone in the group

Cons

Costs and resources needed. This is a very robust software package and will need your time to get it setup the way you want it for your business. The good news is that it can be setup for your business.

Strong, robust and flexible

The application's flexibility allows us to tailor the application to very specific business needs and allow bringing creativity to address our needs

Pros

Deep functionalities in multiple areas Flexibility in term of technology (UDFs, business rules and screen customization capabilities)

Cons

A bit late on the market for bringing a web base version and as far as mobility is concerned

Mostly does what you need it to do

Customer service generally respond to tickets quickly, but oftentimes one representative will tell us something is impossible or not part of baseline functionality, only to have a different rep eventually tell us that it is possible and then show us how to do it. This has happened several times. When putting in a request for a custom script (as we are told to do for many requests), it takes weeks or months to get the issue resolved.

Pros

Through DynaChange, administrators have great control over which modules/screens their users can use. There are many ways to customize the various modules, either by groups of like users or user-specific. Once learned, the software contains everything needed to run the business; Accounting, Inventory Management, Order Processing, etc.

Cons

Not user-friendly. Users have complained there are many steps (more than is typical) needed to do basic tasks. This is only an 'out of the box' product for very basic use. There are many customizations needed to make the product do what the salesmen say it can do. Hosted software has several drawbacks, such as updates to forms sometimes not being pushed through properly, or having changes to forms revert because the changes did not properly propogate to all clustered servers. The same can be said about changes to printers on the network; settings will be updated and the next day they will revert to the old settings. When a data import has an error, it is not always easy to decipher what the error means.

Great Product - Great Staff

Have been a P21 "Partner" for over 22 years. I believe that it is the best software fro Distribution on the market, although not the cheapest. They work closely with Microsoft and innovative 3rd Parties as well as internally to continually provide innovation and better performance.

Pros

Information at your fingertips - inventory, orders, sales. Ease of use and scaleability. Ease of forms modification. Keeping up with modern innovations such as cloud and AI

Cons

Overall system speed. Base reporting. You can always get what you want in reporting IF you know your Crystal and/or SQL.

Prophet 21 Review

We have experienced a exceptional partnership with Epicor. There have been some bumps in the road but ultimately Epicor listens and responds. We have participated in all of the User Conferences and User Group Conferences. There is an awesome World Wide User Group (WWUG) that is very active and supportive. We have tried to take advantage and apply all of the P21 features that we can and see great return on that effort.

Pros

The application is loaded with features and benefits, particularly on the distribution side of the software. Our business consists of both Light Manufacturing (35%) and Distribution (65%) which is one of the key areas of the P21 functionality. You can search the market and find excellent distribution software and also search the market and find excellent manufacturing software, but try to find one that is excellent in both. P21 is the leader in this area and they are continuing to enhance both "sides" of the application. We also like the Windows environment which makes it very easy for new users to learn the navigation. Epicor has a lot of third party partners and providers that can bring volumes of additional resources and functionalities to the table. The SQL database is open which provides a ton of value when it comes to additional functionalities. I also love the ability to modify the baseline software appearance with Dynachange, and basic functional logic using Business Rules, and many other similar features.

Cons

P21 was built on an older database structure and has become limited in modifications such as lengthening the Item ID, or improving speed, and other core database structure. This can be limiting, however the solution most of these has been introduced with the Web enabled P21 application. Otherwise we have had a great experience.