M1 ERP

M1 Manufacturing Software Review

Kommentare: It's been pretty good. It was a huge step forward from our previous software for a fraction of the price.

Vorteile:

I like the customization available since it's built on SQL Server and uses Microsoft forms. It's easy to get at the data and add custom features. The fact that is uses Crystal Reports as the reporting engine is nice - so there's not a big learning curve there.

Nachteile:

I think it could respond a little quicker to inquiries (the screens sometimes feel slow) and the errors are sometimes cryptic - unless you are familiar with the database tables and their layout.

Metalfab Manufacturing, Inc. Review

Kommentare: Overall its been really good, it takes a lot of figuring out, but it really does put all our information together and keep things organized in a way to produce usable data and reports.

Vorteile:

The ability to bring everything together in one place, where all management and supervisors can access it has been great. I like to ability to use shop floor terminals for data entry and the ability to generate reports from that data.

Nachteile:

A regular challenge I face is trying to figure out the right location or combination of steps it takes to change certain items within the system. There are not explanations of pathways. For example, the other day I wanted to pick specific lots of material for a job we were running. I thought I would be given the option right at job material processing. Nope. I can see the different lots, but the numbers are locked, I couldn't change them. After many failed attempts. I finally called support. Long story short. I have to process, go into details, unprocess the line, go into the sub-details and type in the amount for each lot. That's an example of a common frustration I find in the system. There are lots of locked numbers. I understand some are necessary, but others just don't seem to make sense. The process to then alter them does not always follow a discernible pattern. You can often find the same information in multiple spots, but finding the place it drives from is a shot in the dark.

Do not buy this software in Australia - Dishonest business practices and terrible support

Kommentare: They installed the core system for one company to test, then couldn't get their optional modules to work, but still performed the agreed work to customize our installation (and charged us)... then finally gave up trying to get THEIR optional module to work in version 8, and told us that we had to upgrade to version 9 to get those modules to work. Then after we upgraded to version 9, they said that version 9 now no longer supported that optional module, or the custom work they had already been paid for. We have been promised repeatedly by their support team and management that they would fix the issues and get this up and working as soon as possible. Please don't fall for these lies like we did. Instead of trying to fix anything, their support department literally just 'solved' all of the 30+ support tickets in their system on with the same day with the message 'SOLVED: This function or a component that it relies on is no longer supported' with no option for further discussion... no refund for the optional modules or custom work we had done... and then they have the hide to say that they need to get us to sign off and accept the fact that they can't make that company work before they even install the core systems for any of the 6 other companies.

Vorteile:

Their sales team made a really good pitch, then went radio silent the moment we signed up, and quit 6 weeks later. Based on their pitch, we engaged them to provide version 8 of the core system seven companies, and a couple of optional modules for a couple of those companies, and a few custom modifications, we were assured this would be straight forward and ready to use in 8-12 weeks. It has been over 2 years and they been unable to even get one of those companies up and running as per the our agreement with them.

Nachteile:

The worst part about this experience? Everything that happened after they had our money... In all of my professional life I have never before experienced such intentionally dishonest behavior in a professional setting. Deciding to use ECi M1 has been the worst business decision that we have ever made. If you are in Australia, or if you intend to rely on the Australian support team, I cannot urge you strongly enough to stay away from ECi M1. They have repeatedly proved themselves incompetent and dishonest.

Pretty good software. Lots of little things that are good, and some are not so good.

Vorteile:

The drill-down from reports feature is great. The where used is extremely helpful to find specific info. The software is customizable (though not easily) and fully searchable. Being able to email customers their Invoices and Vendors their POs via email is a plus.

Nachteile:

Too many things to know how one transaction affects another. Many reports are not set up the way we would like them. We were told when we bought the software that you did not need to know coding to be able to customize parts of the software or reports. Customizing is difficult to the average user, and for anything to be customized by M1, it always costs extra. Security settings are trial and error/very gray. Not black and white. For our business to utilize other aspects of the software we purchased, we would need to hire people just to run the software.

M1 - A very visual ERP

Vorteile:

M1 is incredibly visual; whether you prefer traditional forms or spreadsheet views, you can customize the navigation and data forms with ease. Search features are robust in the spreadsheet style views. M1 is also fairly flexible for customization regardless of programming skills. We can easily add fields to any module and forms can be manipulated to match our information flow. In our business every order is a custom order yet the straight forward manufacturing module makes planning and scheduling simple. Dashboards on the start screen are great to monitor daily activities. While most ERP implementations require significant work, the visual nature of M1 really helped us keep the project on track. The M1 implementation specialist spent time to learn our business and specific information needs. 9 months running and we are very happy. We have added several additional modules since the implementation and have linked M1 to our sales tax service provider. The suite of included reports are handy, though they need some customization when you start up. Export to Excel is very easy. We added Spreadsheet Server option to really increase the capability to share data with Excel. Security controls are very robust.

Nachteile:

At times customer service response is a bit longer than we would like though once they are working on an issue, they are great at resolving. Some of the included reports are fairly complex yet require customization in Crystal Reports. Best to have some working knowledge of Crystal reports. Some modules in M1 are not consistent with others - probably different programmers or different schedules for upgrading - however that slows the process just bit when you move module to module.

Zermatt Tool, Inc M1 ERP Review

Kommentare: It has worked as we need it to do full manufacturing management.

Vorteile:

It Will do virtually anything that we need it to do.

Nachteile:

Not very good support for the product, ie having to call or e-mail someone to call back, maybe within a couple of days. Manuals are very generic. Online info is very limited too.

Excellent software for small manufacturing businesses

Kommentare: I know it's difficult to launch a software and continually upgrade it to meet the customers needs. Not only from a development standpoint, but from a tech support standpoint. The team at Shoptech has always been friendly and very willing to help. The tech support team has some strong players on it, both in software and hardware, and that is making a huge difference in the customer experience.

Vorteile:

Overall, the product is very easy to use. The modules "talk" to one another and the data flows with ease. Our A/R and A/P departments use the software in conjunction with purchasing and sales and their experience has been positive. The data collection system is very user friendly for the employees on the floor and provides great feedback and reporting for the management team. The quick analysis reports, or dashboard reports, provide a snapshot of what's going on in your business at a quick glance.

Nachteile:

There are nuances to the software that only a "seasoned user" would know exist. If the user is unaware of the nuances, the data could be skewed, or the user could be stopped in their tracks, or worse yet, the action of the subsequent user could be negatively impacted. To that point, the overarching concern I have is that we have a lot of tribal knowledge when it comes to E2 MFG and if an employee chooses to leave our company, the next hire will "learn" the software, but they won't really "know" the software for quite some time.

Review of M1

Kommentare: Overall a decent program. I think it would definitely work better for a larger company with multiple divisions.

Vorteile:

Very detailed when planning jobs. Trackability of inventory is great.

Nachteile:

I am not a fan of how once something has been linked it is not able to be deleted.

Terrible company to do business with and terrible product.

Kommentare: The key benefit is having to start over and implement something else after less than 5 years on the product.

Vorteile:

It's easy to customize, which is good because - you are going to be doing a lot of customizing. Grids - basically an onscreen report are easy to create - also good because this subs in for the lack of workflow.

Nachteile:

If you want an accounting system that routinely can't do basic math you'll love M1 (simplified example - $100 payment to $100 invoice resulted in a -$200 balance - and M1 doesn't even allow negative invoices). Screens are overloaded with fields you will never, ever, ever use. There's no workflow for any process - making it easy to "lose" a sales order or a work order or skip a step (complete a work order without issuing the raw materials - sure why not - and no warning). No built in alerts (that's an extra module - but you have to create the alerts yourself). The canned reports are nearly useless. The support team is terrible. The company itself outside of support is also awful to do business with and won't refund us for our unused implementation hours, or an extra module we purchased that we immediately decided wouldn't work for us (didn't even install it).

ECI Support does not understand this product and will not stand behind it.

Vorteile:

If you are able to deploy, implement and customize M1 for your company without any support from ECI this is a good option.

Nachteile:

Support is terrible - ECi was unwilling to respond to any of my questions on the software's functionality. I have paid for maintenance and support on 9 licenses for over 15 years and they will not even respond to my online request. When I finally called in and waited for a live person they insisted that I needed to pay for training in order to get answers to general use questions about how to setup and use different functions in the software. After 2 hours of paid training I had very few answers to my questions and my trainer "[SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN]" had a list of questions he was going to "get back to me on". It has been several weeks and once again I have no answers and "[SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN]" is ignoring my emails.

Lifesaver

Kommentare: For us it was really the staff that made us feel at ease with out decision, from the salesperson to our implementer to the folks in support. They have really come through for us over the time we have used M1.

Vorteile:

M1 has helped us track serial and lot numbers effectively and allowed us to streamline many processes across the company. Have used it for five years now, we rely on the data it generates to run our business in the most efficient and cost effective way possible. Our implementer took the time to learn our business and made suggestions on how the software could assist us in areas we had not even considered. We definitely choose the right software!

E2 - Powerful and well worth the investment

Kommentare: E2 has helped us be able to reign in hundreds of variables and see an organized shop floor and schedule. It takes dedication to learn and upkeep, but well worth the time and cost.

Vorteile:

It is very intuitive and extremely detailed. Nothing is missed.

Nachteile:

Hard to learn at first, but customer support more than makes up for it. Very helpful and professional.

E2 Manufacturing has helped us plan schedule of manufacturing.

Kommentare: We are only using a small subset of the capabilities at first, but we have solved our manufacturing scheduling issues by tracking machine and personnel usage time.

Vorteile:

Easy to use. Broken into modules so everything is grouped together. You can have multiple tabs open and traverse in-between them. Being able to access SQL backend is beneficial for writing customized reports.

Nachteile:

Would like to see what users are logged from login screen as sometimes concurrent licenses are orphaned.

Great ERP software

Kommentare: I recommend this ERP software on a regular basis, it is a great value added to our company

Vorteile:

We have been using this software for over 13 years and the fact that it is an open system allows us to implement special features that is only relevant to our business and it is very easy

Nachteile:

The quality management in regards to the inventory was lacking when we implemented the software and I don't know if it was improved since then

Frustrating to Deal with!! Poor Customer Service!! Implementation process is terrible!!

Kommentare: We purchased this program more that 3 years ago, the implementation process was horrible! and they have done very little to help us get this program up and running as a result we are using about 10% of the program that we have paid for. we purchase a copy of Sage every year to handle our accounting, because we have not been shown how to use the accounting side of the program( I have never even looked at it to see what it looks like). We have tried to use the payroll side of the program and it was not accurate so we stopped using it.

Nachteile:

Terrible customer support right from the initial implementation, we have had issues with this program from the very start and get 0.00 help...there is some hype that they will get our issues solved with no, or very little follow through, we just get sent from one person to the next and start from square one each time.

M1 ERP Review

Vorteile:

The training and implementation was fantastic. The product is well suited for our needs and the cost tracking functionality is great. The greatest strengths of the software are inventory control, cost/labor tracking, and reporting.

Nachteile:

The accounting functionality and process can be burdensome. While it does get the job done, incorporating a FIFO system with real time cost of goods sold entry would be much more advantageous. Currently M1 only offers average, standard, or last cost of goods sold, which can really make things difficult if inventory costs change. Additionally, not having "real-time" financials is frustrating. You don't get the "actual cost of goods sold" until an accounting entry is made, so you cannot track financials daily or weekly unless your accounting department has time to make this entry and reconcile it on that same interval. Granted, moving to the COGS program could fix this issue, but the additional work and potential for mistakes makes it easier to wait for financials.

Try M1 First!

Vorteile:

We replaced Global Shop with M1. We like M1 because is quick and efficient. We are working on more customized reporting and moving to the newest version - very exciting for our company!!

Nachteile:

Getting new downloads up and running is a little difficult. Hard to coordinate M1 Support with our outside IT Consultant

Effective Eci M1

Vorteile:

I like this software because it is very effective and efficient to my team. This is a software with complete package. The functions and features are very nice.

Nachteile:

When I'm starting to use this software I can't experienced any negative. Very recommended to all type of organization.

Smooth transition from previous MRP system. Logical transactions and easy to retrieve data when needed.

Kommentare: Overall very satisfied with the functionality of the product.

Vorteile:

Systematic logical sequence of steps from the time an order is placed to final shipment of the products.

Nachteile:

Forecasting needs to be improved. The way sub-assemblies are scheduled could be improved although very flexible.

E2 MFG Implemented 3/4/2019

Kommentare: As Production manager, I have so much more data available through E2 than I had access to prior to implementation. I have been able to customize some of the standard reports using Crystal Reports and find it very easy to export CSV files for analysis in Excel. Overall the synchronization between QuickBooks and E2 MFG has been smooth.

Vorteile:

There are multiple ways to perform functions within the software. The access to data through QuickView and report hyperlinks makes finding the information very easy.

Nachteile:

Once a job is "In Process" making changes becomes very difficult. The lack of being able to use UPS ground freight pricing has added extra work onto our Shipping department. Hopefully, the interface will be completed soon.

M1 = good production foundation to build from

Vorteile:

Overall architecture is well thought out from a flexibility, customization and IT standpoint. It uses standard database (MS SQL), reporting (Crystal reports) and customization (VB) languages. You can use their resources or find your own to dive as deep as you need to but you also can do quite a bit without being an IT professional.

Nachteile:

Support experience ranges widely from good to very slow to respond. They have made efforts to improve and you see benefits slowly but it still isn't a good consistent support experience.

M1 has been great The design was with end users in mind

Vorteile:

The low cost of overhead to run M1 is its best feature. It is very robust, and runs day after day with minimal support required. M1 is very user friendly and intuitive. Also, the use of Crystal Reports on an SQL database allows for easy modification and development of reports that then are easily run from inside M1 giving users a seamless feel. We have had excellent support during implementation and post implementation.

Nachteile:

I am anxious for continued development of the manufacturing floor scheduling.

ECi M1

Vorteile:

User friendly dashboard. Advance options for all the modules. one stop solution for all the resources planning.

Nachteile:

Not enough features for multiple platform usage. Little Slower. No report modification format for user

My experience with this product is positive

Vorteile:

All the functionality of a larger program without the big program cost and the flexibility to do minor customization.

Nachteile:

Slow performance. Some reports of tools are at times very slow. Our Job Analysis report runs very slow at times. Usually when the quantity is more than 1 and the material quantity is more than 100.

Flexible, customizable, & user friendly

Vorteile:

The vendor is wonderful to work with. From the sales thru the president, their open door policy is forward thinking and provides customers with a sense of being taken care when they need it. The product M1 has proven to be the most customizable and flexible system I've dealt with in 36 years however I'm still learning more of what all it can do.

Nachteile:

The least liked, even though it this is by no means a dislike on my part, for the product would be the way item master must be for the local bin and not being able to have multiple bins per one location for one item. The vendor side would be the fresh talent they are with vs. Those with 20 plus yrs.