JobBOSS²

We are a small manufacturing facility - but small does not mean we don't need the same data as the "bigs". E2 in it's old form was terrific - however the cloud based version is superior! Functionality - ease of reports, working with other platforms....we can't say enough!
We are now working on customizing some reports and I can't wait til they are part of our daily work!
Great software, great people, great value!

IF we can't figure out a custom report and need some form changes...it has taken longer than we like - however....that is the only downside thus far!

The ease of quoting parts for customers was decreased substantially.
Real time reporting of the work flow in production.
The ability to connect with the system offsite to give customers answers about their orders while meeting with them.

There was a lot of data entry that had to be done to get the system working correctly for our company.

The designers clearly have knowledge of a shop environment and are pretty comprehensive in touching all the aspects of a job shop. The sales team is very accessible. The product is very easy to get up and operational with which may be attractive to shops starting out or implementing this type of system for the first time. The software does have controls over what users can do what which is useful for keeping employees in check. The reports that it generates are concise and professional looking out of the box.

The interface is woefully outdated and lacks cohesiveness throughout, data entry practices in one area do not apply to others and certainly do not conform to defacto software standards. Its a bit embarrassing having state of the art CAD/CAM systems with wonderful imagery next to something that looks straight out of 1996. Looks are one thing but we have had a lot of time lost due to slow workflow and data entry errors. It will open many windows and dialog boxes which demand screen focus. Not only is it cumbersome to work in other windows applications with E2 running, you can not even run more than one task at a time inside of it. The software does not scale well to high resolutions or multiple screens. The software rarely fails gracefully, you'll get cryptic error messages in never ending loops.

The software relies on a number of 3rd party frameworks including outdated Java runtimes (insecure) All of your data is stored MSJet databases, for those not tech savvy, its late 1980's technology that is isn't supported by Microsoft any more and was never really designed to be scaled to the point you can potentially reach. They do offer an upgrade to MS SQL which comes at a significant cost (which doesn't include SQL server itself or migration services) and it has the added bonus of breaking any custom reports (which are also expensive commissioned work). Although some user controls are present, there isn't granular control over everything in the system. Its very possible users without clearance to certain information can gain access to things they shouldn't. (ie: ITAR)

Nearly every other vendor is offering some type of cloud integration, and although E2 does offer a component called webview (no surprise, its an additional fee), its really a customer portal and doesn't offer much in terms of what a company employee would need. The software will not play nicely across multiple networks, we had several locations connected via VPN which Shoptech does not support. Their solution was to use MS terminal services which is cumbersome and requires additional licensing. In today's global economy, accessibility should be paramount, not a vendor locked afterthought.

The software does have provisions for shop floor data collection and although it does work, its cumbersome and our busy and non-technical shop floor staff abhor it and we eventually abandoned it.

Support was initially good but as our business grew and our implementation of the software became more complex support has been slow to respond (if at all) and many of the ongoing problems we are facing haven't been satisfactorily resolved.

The software can handle all the process in your facilities from sales to delivery to the customer.
form SO to the customer, pass throug jobs (WO) and invoices to delivery product. it handle fine partial delivery so it can be accurate all invoices.

once you have all modules set up. it can work. but you need to get assistance from an partner to get all the information and help to set up all the process. it can't be set by yourself.