E2 First 6 months of use Survey

Overall we enjoy the product, it has helped us reach a new company milestone and will continue to help us into the next company leaps in the future.

Pros

The Manufacturing organizational aspect of the software is great! Helps keep the manufacturing workflow running smoothly without much intervention from administrative staff. Once the software is learned, it is a pretty intuitive and easy to use product.

Cons

Ability to modify standard document layout should be included in the software and should not be an add-in. Especially working from a French/English Province we need the ability legally to have 2 languages shown on the documents but shouldn't have to pay for it. It would also be useful to have a basic functioning walkthrough tutorial for when you first start up E2.

Transitioned from QuickBooks to E2 MFG

Having no prior first-hand experience with an ERP system myself, as a company we are overall very satisfied. The reduction in phone calls between offices throughout the day to gather bits of information, the elimination of duplicating work or "copy and pasting", the decrease in errors due to not having to transcribe information any longer are all very welcome improvements. We hired an outside consultant to help with our implementation project. While this had its benefits at times, the real strides and progress came when we would occasionally bring in a ShopTech employee for the day to help with troubleshooting, brainstorming, and otherwise "head-scratchers". Once you've had a session with an on-site ShopTech consultant that you like, only schedule that consultant for every other session! That being said, all interaction we've had with ShopTech support & sales staff, prior to and post Go-Live, has been positive, but our consultant was just top-notch during every single call, email, and visit.

Pros

Improvement of inventory tracking coming from an Excel-based, manual process that'd grown to be quite cumbersome. MFG's capabilities eliminated many spreadsheets and many hours maintaining those spreadsheets. Visibility throughout the organization of order status; pieces completed, what's in-process, what's already shipped, etc. Searchable criteria in MFG is quite robust. Prior to MFG we were only able to search via customer part numbers, this left a lot to be desired. Now we can search based on many, many more variables.

Cons

The biggest hurdle/challenge in learning and implementing MFG was understanding a whole new terminology; allocations, transfers, material/job requirements, processing, etc. and how those functioned in MFG specifically. As well sometimes, certain terms are used interchangeably in certain places and this can lead to temporary confusion. There are many ways to accomplish a single task. This flexibility is nice once you're used to the system but can be overwhelming in the beginning.

Over thought and over engineered nightmare

Pros

Customer support is good. You can always get someone on the phone. They do work with you to try and get things figured out. Although you may be on the phone a long time, so plan accordingly.

Cons

Everything pretty much. It's the least user friendly software we've encountered. It's not a visible system, everything is buried deep within. It takes many different clicks and screens to see what is needed to see. Doing any retail type business with different price levels is very troublesome. Information that should be simple to look up in near impossible. This system also puts your parts from a PO in the order they want to, not how you entered them. you can't customize any reports without paying or going through a bunch of trouble. We have stumped our techs several times with simple issues that can't seem to be resolved. You can't just hit print on any screen, you have to "generate a report" Creating parts in the system is cumbersome as well. You have to close one window to open another when creating the part, you can't check from one part to another to compare. There's several errors that pop up. The cost of this software was far too high for how much time it added to our work day and work load. We also had to upgrade our main server and some computers to accommodate this software. All in all, this system is not a simple system.

Shoptech is a full-featured ERP application that covers all of the bases

Still in the setup phases

Pros

The integration is well done, there are many facets to the software setup that enhance the integration.

Cons

I wish the training video's were more up-to-date on some of the advanced features like scheduling and the web interfaces.

Excellent customer service and value - MFG user

Pros

Excellent customer service with support on software and hardware questions. I have had consistently outstanding support from the customer service group supporting the E2 MFG system. Good value for the product provided. Accounting module works well for us and allows us to use one system for our manufacturing processes and our accounting functions.

Cons

Some of the changes made through upgrades have been pretty frustrating and seem to be focused on a select few customers and don't make sense for the rest. (most recent example: Purchasing Module - addition of required Location entry for Receivers as a default instead of a choice to be made within the company preferences.)