M1 ERP

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.