Small business computing solutions

[mutahman]

We are a 2 year old company who designs, produces and distributes consumer goods products (cases and bags for CD storage, laptop, iPod, etc) and have 2 locations. We sell both online and to retailers in the USA and importers around the world. Over the past 6 months we have been looking to move from a manual based office to a system, shifting our Accounting, inventory, sales, crm and e-commerce to one supplier. From what we have found, there is so little to choose from out there, unless you want to (a) spend US $50,000 or more or (b) use multiple softwares that integrate together to get to an end solution. We have looked into AccPac, netsuite, iCode, Quickbooks, Simply Accounting, Mocrosoft and Sage. It's incredible how overlooked this segment is by the vendors (at least in my opinion).

Is there any other solution that we may have missed that could adequately handle our end to end operations?

Any thoughts would be helpful

Thanks

[mutahman]

Here is an update on where we are (I figured it may help someone who may be looking for similar information in the future).

We are still looking for something that takes care of our back end (accounting, reporting and inventory) and our front end (e-marketing, sales automation, e-commerce and CRM). We were leaning towards Netsuite and in the end decided not to go with them for a few reasons

(a) the Sales Manager I dealt with assured me that they could meet our price requirements, and in the end came back to us with a 3 year license for $20K. Price wise this was about 50% higher then where we wanted to be (we're in the $12-15K range) and if we really loved the solution we could have done this, but as I chewed on their offer I started to use some common sense (vs. impulse buying). I was in the enterprise software business for 8 years and know that license pricing is (for lack of a better description right now) a scam. It is very common to find small, medium and large software companies regularly give 70-100% off the license costs of a new purchase. It takes a relatively small number of sold licenses to make up the development costs, and everything on top of break even is gravy (even when factoring SG & A costs. They make up what they "lose" in license revenue on the implementation, consulting and training fees. Typically as a trade off of license fees the company asks for a reference they could use in a press release, as well as being referenceable in a white paper, as a direct reference to use with future prospects and to spearhead user groups in new territories. Lastly, they know that if they lock the customer in as a user they are likely to be able to make money on additional licenses down the road, upgrade licenses and continual maintenance fees. So in short I was surprised that Netsuite was not more aggressive in trying to get us locked in as a customer.

(b) Netsuite is an ASP model, and while it's attractive in the sense that they host the software which means we do not have hardware or internal IT costs, after the 3 years of running our business on their systems they know it'll be a nightmare for us to remove all of our information from their systems to migrate to another system. If after 3 years we move from them to another system, being that ALL of our company information and records is one their servers, they can charge whatever they want to "help" us get all our information off their servers without incident. OR if we decide to stay with them, who knows what the monthly licensing costs will be 3 years from now. Afterall, we do know they are working towards going public, and their current fees are already quite high now....what will happen when they have the quarterly/yearly pressure to increase and meet revenue and profit figures.

All in all, it's an attractive model in the short term, but it's too uncertain for me to buy into.

We are now looking at Quickbooks for the backend (the enterprise edition) and other software that integrates (without having to synch) to give us the e-commerce, CRM and sales automation we need

If anyone has experience with quickbooks any feedback would be very helpful

Thanks

[SmallBizCRM]

Hi Mutahman,

Did you manage to find a solution to your CRM/accounting needs yet?

If not, there are a few solutions I can suggest for you..

Perry
www.SmallBizCRM.com

[InfoSourcing]

Hi,

Looking at your post I do feel that you have gone through the same excercise of every small business owner goes through ...

If your interested with iCode solution Everest, let me know I can help with "Training, Implementation, Support, backend office, customization etc ..." you just have to buy licenses from them that way your cost would reduce by 30-40%...

I have 10yrs of experience dealing with Small and medium business and hand holding them during this process.

But Yes Netsuite is a good product compared to Quickbooks and MS Great plains others are too costly and doesnt have rich features or all-in-one functionality...

We are a 2 year old company who designs, produces and distributes consumer goods products (cases and bags for CD storage, laptop, iPod, etc) and have 2 locations. We sell both online and to retailers in the USA and importers around the world. Over the past 6 months we have been looking to move from a manual based office to a system, shifting our Accounting, inventory, sales, crm and e-commerce to one supplier. From what we have found, there is so little to choose from out there, unless you want to (a) spend US $50,000 or more or (b) use multiple softwares that integrate together to get to an end solution. We have looked into AccPac, netsuite, iCode, Quickbooks, Simply Accounting, Mocrosoft and Sage. It's incredible how overlooked this segment is by the vendors (at least in my opinion).

Is there any other solution that we may have missed that could adequately handle our end to end operations?

Any thoughts would be helpful

Thanks

[Jeff ransom]

Let me know if you are still considering the Everest Product. We are an Everest certified reseller and can provide the installation training and support you require at a reasonable cost.

www.ibsnw.com

[lvsales]

Be careful before you consider Everest. We have experienced VERY costly Accware (iCodes previous solution) and Everest project disasters. From their fine print travel costs from Virginia, to their hardly understandable overseas tech support to their cost gouging and horrific software failures, at least for us in wholesale distribution. We spent well beyond the $20,000 originally quoted, perhaps 10 fold when considering VARs who don't know what they're doing (not that there aren't some out there that do!) who have to call tech support on our YSM dime just to try to figure out a solution which we were told must be customized each update (more exhorbitant costs). After a few years of promises that iCode is changing their ways and going in a new direction, we finally realized it is time to dump them entirely, take our losses and move on to something new.

We have gotten great personal in house attention BEFORE SIGNING from a company called Prophet 21, who cater solely to distributors. It is an SQL based package, so it is fairly flexible. We must admit, the quote, including implementation, still hovers around the $60k mark, but they are up front in the beginning about the costs. This price is including an 8 user Commerce Center license as well as the eCommerce B2B Advanced package and implementation in house from a fairly local team, and CBTs & WBTs for us to play with in house on our own time. Granted we have only begun this new venture, however looking at the functionality compared to Everest Advanced, P21 seems to exceed in their out of the box functionality, at least for us in distribution. Just a couple major factors included 3+ decimal pricing for items, able to be pulled forward to the web site, Unit of Measure (UM) breaks and UPC per UM within one item # in P21 and more. Also no hidden travel fees that they wouldn't sign to up front (iCode sticks fine print of $75/hr door to door until the reach your office then it's their $195/hr or whatever it was while on site + hotels etc.). We just couldn't commit to someone who wouldn't commit to us a total in writing. P21 also seems to be open to negotiation should you have other quotes to match. Granted their windows set up looks a little basic compared to iCodes Everest, however the functionality and ability to connect us with very knowledgeable technicians BEFORE buying has put a personal touch on P21 that iCode NEVER had in the 5+ years we have experienced iCode. If anyone has Prophet 21 experience out there, do share.

Just my opinion, but if you've seen the forum posts, you'll be able to judge for yourself.

Ernie
lvsales.com

[Prometheus]

Have you signed yet???

[Gromit]

You might want to search in the forums about iCode. There's very lengthy thread with some deeply unhappy people who tried iCode and are not at all pleased with the outcome. I wouldn't make a decision until I'd read that thread...serious food for thought.

[BNapier]

Our company has been using Prophet21 products for almost as long as the have been in business. We are currently using there Acclaim product and are considering moving to the CommerceCenter product in the near future.

This is a very professional company with a focus on distribution. Be assured when software or hardware errors or flaws are discovered, and as with any software, they will be, the act promplty to repair or patch as needed.

Though their products are initially expensive, the completeness of the product offering may actually make the overall cost of ownership very reasonable.

[mydaro]

Have you considered open source applications? The one which come to mind is Compiere (http://www.compiere.org/) This is a full ERP/CRM package and it is free.

[bschoenbaechler]

I have been in your situtation and I ended up buying a product from a local vendor who wrote the code himself. My business has out grown our system so I have been shopping for a product with requirements similar to yours. I would highly recommend you do some research on Compiere. Compiere is an open source product which has several vendors who provide consulting service to assist you in setting it up. I am currently in the process of implementing Compiere in my business.

check out www.compiere.org.

[mutahman]

We started using Netsuite about a year ago (June '05) and here are some findings;

1) the system is ok for supporting e-commerce but not great:
Key shortfalls:
--limited number of ways to set up sales promotions (IE cannot do tiered sales)
--administration panel locks up in customer records with Firefox
--PayPal intergration issue since their V. 11
--check out pages are not streamlined, 20+% of customers complain about it
--we've been trying for a year to implement Crystal reports and cannot get it operating correctly and they want $2000 to come over and do it for us. one of the things I truly despise about software companies.

2) their pricing is getting too expensive. $400 per seat per month is insane no matter how you slice it

3) there are too many areas where the built-in customer support has no information

The Good
a) the dashboards
b) one interface makes it easy for your employees
c) the accounting capabilities are adequate
d) security and uptime

All in all it's a solid solution but for a company who is truly small (under $5mil) I believe you could achieve the same results at half the cost. This is an expensive long term software platform. We're now looking for another solution to migrate to when our second year is up (June '07)

Hope this helps