M1 ERP

Pros

The ability to drill down between modules is wonderful. I've never used a software that allowed this so seamlessly.

Cons

The lack of online inquiries through the internet from fellow users that might have experienced something that isn't typical to help others figure it out. This can be technical or a way to resolve a process issue.

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.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing M1 ERP

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to M1 ERP

Pros

User friendly and suites our manufacturing process

Cons

The customer service and the fact that we can not have an end-to-end solution discussion with anyone at ECI

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to M1 ERP

Pros

Helps immensely with organization and the customization options are excellent.

Cons

It does not allow for a user to have more than one order open at a time, which makes it difficult for multitasking or referencing a previous order. This is one feature that we greatly miss from Job Boss. Also, the training provided could have been better, there was a lot of situations that the training did not cover and we had to learn on our own.

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.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing M1 ERP

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to M1 ERP

Pros

This software is very detailed and makes it easy to make changes that keep production going. There are a lot of different steps to assist with making sure changes are correct, which helps with accuracy and decreases human error.

Cons

I wish there was a grid in the Order Entry tab to search for the Part Number. When I need to see what orders are open on which parts, I have to use the binoculars to search and there is no part number available until I go into edit those orders.

Pros

We really enjoy the way that we can customize the system to our exact needs. Also, it is very user friendly and easy to learn. We use it for multiple departments and love that it is integrated for inventory, production, purchasing, etc.

Cons

The sales and engineering departments have difficulty with quoting - it's a bit complex. Also, the inventory for issuing materials can be manual and complex.

Pros

The most helpful feature is that M1 is all connected and integrated. Everything is in one place and is easy to do everything we need. Next, while we do not do our accounting in the system, it is very helpful in generating the reports we need for our accountants.

Cons

In the inputs for materials in the quoting feature, it sometimes is difficult to change the inputs to exactly what I want. For example, I want to talk in terms of price per pound per material, where the system wants to talk in a different metric other than pounds.

Pros

What I like most about the software is how easy it is to stay on top of the General Ledger on a daily basis. If something goes wrong, I don't have to wait until closing to find the problem. M1 makes it possible to make corrections immediately.

Cons

1. We were told the job costing module would apply labor & burden properly. It doesn't.
2. We were told the BOM would upload to the job. It doesn't. That was an expensive lie for us.
3. When the guys make mistakes, it can be difficult and tedious to find and correct mistakes.
4. We made it clear from the start that one customization would be needed and would be VERY important. Numerous attempts have not gotten a result.

Pros

All the data you could ever need about your business can be housed in M1, between the data and the custom reports that can be made, it is a valuable tool to have.

Cons

Its clunky to use, most things take too many clicks to find and it feels like you have to go out of your way to find what you are looking for. It takes some work to make it user friendly in the least bit

Pros

This is the most customizable ERP I have ever dealt with or implemented. Love, Love this as it easily can modify to serve the challenges of about any size company, growth rate, and experience levels. This is the best feature of this software.

Cons

The main con from my exoperiences has been the support personnel and the lack of knowledge of the product and the response. With that said, let me say that it is not complelely fair as the compaqny has experienced a rapid growth and with that comes new personnel and the years of experiences are just not there.

Pros

Visibility is key for us, and with this software you can follow an opportunity through from initial stages of quoting through final stages of billing and everything in between. And Customer Service is Top Notch!

Cons

It can be difficult to make changes to orders once in process, but hopefully that is something their team recognizes and will help to rectify in the future.

Pros

The most we like about E2 is the following,

1 user friendly , specially the help line
2: database module an bill bill of married module and part search engine
3: project setup and process routing
4: real time cost capture
4: we envoy the accounting module

Cons

The most we like least about E2 are,

1: Converting proposal to order
2: Lack of creating report to show the Balkance of non invoiced for any particular order

Pros

Ease of use, functionality, reporting, scheduling.

Cons

Nothing yet. We've been using V7 and are getting ready to switch to V9, looking forward to the upgrade.

Pros

After months of appraisal we chose M1 because of its ability to to be configured exactly to our requirements, as opposed to the one size fits all approach of so many other ERP packages.
M1 straight out of the box was immediately able to satisfy most of our needs, however, with its ability to be easily customized to suit our various processes, the system is intuitive to use from shop floor requirements through to full financial reporting and control.

Cons

Same as any other system out there, rubbish in, rubbish out. Once we had that sorted out though by ensuring that all users had an understanding of how their inter-reaction with the system was a benefit to all, themselves included, we gained a complete buy in from all staff along with the required real time and accurate data input on which the system depends.

Pros

No ad-dons, no cost for view users, i.e. unlimited clock card entry PC's.

Cons

Absolutely poor support if any. Referred to external consultants as ECi M1 could not supply technical support.

Pros

Good Sales Team :) Might be good for very small company but wouldn't recommend to any company. After trying other ERPs have almost no Pros except how they did Part Revision.

Cons

Software failed when was put to load. Worked fine in pilot but when needed to manage 1.4k POs on daily basis it couldn't do math. At one point had daily meetings with development team from Australia on issues but still couldn't resolve all issues. About twice a week were getting orphan records in DB, development team were no help on this.
ECi started promising us new version but promise was sliding.
After 8 month of deployment time and about 6 month after go live hard decision was made, search for new ERP. When ECi was asked to give us partial refund because their product didn't perform as advertised they revealed themselves as very bad partner.
M1 also has major security issue.

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.

Pros

The software makes it easy to find a lot of data that can be exported and used as necessary

Cons

It is more difficult to set up reports and customize fields for users that do not want to see all fo the background data and only want specifics

Pros

Vendor has awesome support. We love how it brings all of our activities together in one program. We also like how we can customize the program to fit our needs since we are a very unique manufacturer that does many products under one roof. It has many 'cross checks' so we are making sure each department is doing exactly what they are supposed to which leads to accurate financials and job costing.

Cons

I feel like some of the modules we purchased were not fully explained enough or applicable to our usage. Fortunately, they recognized this and helped us to direct our purchases in a more advantageous direction for our business. There are also adjustments in the financials that everyone could benefit from and should not be made to customize it.

Pros

Ease of use. Navigation of windows. Ability to run many custom reports in Hotspots.

Cons

Cost of additional users can be expensive.

Pros

Excellent promises by the sales people - they never eventuate though!

Cons

Support - they are the worst

Pros

I like the speed and the accuracy of this software. Its easy to navigate through and get the job done a lot quicker than other software(s) I've worked with in the past.

Cons

Sometimes can be not so user-friendly, I often get confused when orders don't want to "Process".

Pros

Work stations and scanning job orders was good

Cons

Reporting and finance
Reporting difficult and Ul was not good

Pros

This ERP software is very intuitive and very flexible relative to the previous software from Made2Manage that my organization ran for the past 24 years. The input of transactions is straightforward with minimal training, and searching for almost any data is substantially easier.

Cons

The only issue we've had any challenge with so far is with the conversion of our old Made2Manage data, which was an old FoxPro version into a pure SQL format. Some data came across easily, and some data didn't come across at all. We could have come up to speed running the new software much faster if we'd have been able to convert our M2M data in a more timely fashion.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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).

Pros

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

Cons

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.

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.

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.)

Pros

This software is highly customizable and provides freedom for the many integrations that we implement regularly.

Cons

This software is not the most user friendly for a sizable chunk of our end users. Customers with limited computer experience find the interface difficult to use outside of tasks they perfomr regularly. This issues are largely easily solved by regular attention from the software administrators or super users.

Pros

Once you understand the features and how to navigate, it is a fairly easy software to use. Information is easy to find. It is also easy to query for information.

Cons

There are not any modules available that we know of that can assist in training to understand the features that M1 has to offer. There are several features that we don't use. Features that we wish we knew more about are scheduling and the possibility of integrating a bar code scanning system. Our IT admin has been working on this with M1.

Pros

E2 is a huge step forward from where we were as an organization. The powerful features and endless options make the possibilities for this software seem endless. If you want to perform a particular function odds are E2 has a way to do it.

Cons

E2 was such a drastic shift from where we came from that eployees took a long time to adjust, Those that are willing to experiment with the software and its capabilities have had a much easier transition than those who are not.

Pros

We love the order, purchasing, inventory and accounting modules. We just started exploring the quality module.
Also the support is top notch. They always take time to review the question or issue with you can provide the best possible solution.

Cons

We struggle with the MFG Shop and Scheduling as its not easy to manage and requires a full time person to manage. Also the shop users found it slowed down their efficiency as they scan, job, employee, pieces accepted, etc.

Pros

Although not intuitive at all, once you get used to the system it does work and prior to this year, it has been infallible.

Cons

Customer service is fair to poor as we did not receive any contact from this company regarding upgrades, etc. Carefully read the maintenance agreement as it apparently does not cover repairs and upgrades - which begs the question, what is that payment for exactly??

Pros

This software is very versatile and covers everything from quoting through shipping. The accounting module keeps everything in one interface so there aren't any integration issues.

Cons

The quoting module uses estimate codes that you can not see all at the same time. Reconciliation of accounts only works on a calendar month basis. Credit cards require jumping through some hoops!

Pros

From the initial RFQ to Final Shipping, E2 MFG is there every step of the way. This is turnkey platform for Aerospace/ISO registered companies.

Cons

Hoping to add a 1st level viewer of PDFs or solid model plug in. one click printing of print, job label and traveler.

Pros

This software has a nice interface with easy to follow tabs.

Cons

Very limiting software. Certain processes are too rigid and do not follow company system. Constant need to call customer support due to glitches or other defects in code.

Pros

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!

Pros

Technically it works and some of the functions are understandable. But the setup, service and basic norms affiliated with software are missing

Cons

Terrible service and backup. Only 1 technician that knows what he is doing and he is across NZ and AU and he is not allowed to give out his direct contact details. Recently logged a ticket on the 3rd of May and got first response on the 4th June! If you want to know your GP and other profitable forecasts or set up a half decent quote and reporting be prepared to have to spend a whole lot more.

Pros

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

Cons

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

Pros

Abilty to customize per user and not effect others.

Cons

Clear upgrade evaluation from V 8 to V 9.2

Pros

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.

Cons

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