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Thread: iCode Everest or Netsuite? - Looking for an "all-in-one" small business solution

  1. #76
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
    Posts
    2,087
    Randy, amateur psychology has no place on the forum. Thank you.

  2. #77
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Posts
    1
    What’s great is how Randy literally SPAMMED the board trying to derail any of the criticism that Icode has been under. I am glad you have been in business for 52 years, but some of us want to be retired long before we hit your age. We aren’t looking for products that are “ok” “satisfactory”. We want products that amaze us and not only meet our requirements but far exceed them with tools and features we never even though of.

    The thing I want to point out is that products like Netsuite, even though it is a yearly fee, are allowing customers to make 10x 100x 1000x that amount of money.

    How valuable is your business to you? Is spending $10,000 a year worth the 10 million a year you gross in sales? What about the things that have no monetary value? Your employees come into work, answer the phone, and in general deal with customers that have no idea about your products, how frustrating do you think that is? Do you want them to deal with the added frustration from horribly implemented solutions, or would you rather them zoom along with the tools they need and make an extra $50,000 in sales that day?

    Its all about how efficient you can relay your information inside your company, and then use that information to give your customers the best possible service that you can. Keeping your customers in the loop and coming back year after year is a sign of success. Software like Netsuite allows a company to maintain and expand their operation to multiple locations, multiple states, and even multiple countries.

    Most people here seem to be small business, and that’s cool. Some of the people reading this thread have to decide on a solution that meets the needs of today as well as tomorrow. The company I work for is a distributor and a manufacturer of industrial products. Our sales are in the millions each year, and that’s not including anything from the website. So at the start of this thread, it was about what is the best solution for me, but now its turned into a flame war between employees of these products and customers.

    Let’s try to stay somewhat on topic =)

  3. #78
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Posts
    1
    You know, iCode is a mamber of the DC area BBB (www.dc.bbb.oeg) I just filed a complaint against them over their policy of not refunding the incident fee when the issue is a bug.

    It is unconscionable (and I suspect illegal) that iCode breaks their own product and then charges every customer that calls in for a solution to a bug a non-refundable $195 fee to address it. At the best that leads to a dis-incentive to produce a bug-free product. iCode actually makes less money when it produces a bug-free product. Rush a release to market and make more on the support. At the worst it leads to purposeful bugs with the intent to make more money on the support.

    As for legal options, I don't think that the district attorney is the right forum. I think that this is more a job for the state Attorney's General. If anyone else thinks that the 'pay for bugs' policy is illegal (fraud I am thinking) I would encourage you to send an email AND a fax or letter to your state's AG.

    Dave

  4. #79
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Posts
    8
    Hi There,
    I just came across the website and read Netsuite.
    We are a company in South Africa and have been
    fighting to find an all in one solution. After contacting 10
    different companys such as Vcommerce and others
    we opted for Netsuite, and are currently implementing it.

    Why? Because they actually returned emails, took their time
    and were willing to consider a South African company and a "small"
    business and had a partner here.

    Bryan, we are in the same business I'd love to have a chat with you.
    www.speedworkz.co.za (old website)

  5. #80
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Posts
    174
    I'm not a big fan of character assassination, fact-based or otherwise. Clearly there are a lot of people here who are less than thrilled with iCode and who have tried, with varying degrees of success, to resolve them with the company.

    If you are indeed an iCode employee, I would think you'd alert your management to this forum -- they should know about the complaints and take steps to correct what could be a huge PR problem for the company.

  6. #81
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Posts
    3

    So I think I am going to go with NetSuite

    I've spent the past few weeks looking into this and I think I'm coming to the conclusion that NetSuite is the way to go. The reasons are:
    1. Fully hosted solution - we are a small company and I would rather not hire infrastructure people at this point. Sure I could buy SW and then find a place to have it hosted, but NetSuite provides it all for a reasonable price.
    2. Comprehensive functionality - It seems that they have pretty much everything I need and I can customize if required at a later point.
    3. Large Revenue/Customer base - They are in the 100s of millions in revenue with 1000s of customers.
    4. Backed by Larry Ellison - large revenue/customer base combined with Larry Ellison indicates they will be around for a little while at least!
    5. so maybe in the long run I pay a bit more, this will probably save me a bit more in the short term which is more important to me. I would rather pay less now and have a robust solution running quickly at a lower cost. This will allow my business to grow quickly and buy the time the costs end up catching up with me (4 -5 years down the road), I hopefully over the hump and have grown the company significantly and it becomes less of an issue.

    Any thoughts on my reasoning???

  7. #82
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Posts
    44
    I hear great things about Interprise Suite
    E-commerce and Content Management made Affordable and Easy:
    http://www.coremanagementsolutions.com

  8. #83
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Posts
    9
    For what it's worth, I'm a journalist who has talked with a lot of e-commerce owners about software platforms, and I'm impressed with the positive buzz about NetSuite. It seems like a company that offers a reasonably priced product that's well-respected in the industry, and the company is on its way up.

  9. #84
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Posts
    5

    I recommend a maintenance plan

    Davecove

    You can't really believe that iCode deliberately creates bugs in the code to create a revenue opportunity. Do you really believe the company is less profitable if it creates a bug free product?

    Application software unfortunately has bugs from time to time. iCode offers it's customers the opportunity to purchase an annual maintenance plan whereby customers may call customer support for assistance (an unlimited number of times) on a variety of subjects including "how to" questions so the customer can better utilize the application. Customers on the annual maintenance program also receive all the upgrades and enhancements to the product free. (Incidentally, this annual maintenance fee is lower than all of our major competitors.)

    I realize you don't like being charged for assistance but try to understand that there is a cost involved with customer support and iCode does not, under any circumstance, try to create issues in the software so we can charge for the issue to be resolved.

  10. #85
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Posts
    44
    Our corporation handles it:
    Software bug reports or help: Always Free
    How to questions: Chargeable $7 per call billable in 10 min increments.

    Yes every application will have bugs. It is hard to write a 100000 page word document without one spelling mistake and having every chapter back link to multiple chapters in a flawless manner. In large applications like ours and the one we are debating recursiveness is always a pain. The intent though is of course to never have bugs.

    We have worked tirelessly over the last 7 years to ensure our software is relatively bug free however the statement still remains true: Where man meets computer, there will always be a bug
    E-commerce and Content Management made Affordable and Easy:
    http://www.coremanagementsolutions.com

  11. #86
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    Ashburn
    Posts
    248

    Thumbs up My 2 cents here

    Hi,

    My 2 cents here, few extended thoughts on “your reasoning”.

    Quote Originally Posted by danw
    I've spent the past few weeks looking into this and I think I'm coming to the conclusion that NetSuite is the way to go. The reasons are:
    1. Fully hosted solution - we are a small company and I would rather not hire infrastructure people at this point. Sure I could buy SW and then find a place to have it hosted, but NetSuite provides it all for a reasonable price.
    2. Comprehensive functionality - It seems that they have pretty much everything I need and I can customize if required at a later point.
    3. Large Revenue/Customer base - They are in the 100s of millions in revenue with 1000s of customers.
    4. Backed by Larry Ellison - large revenue/customer base combined with Larry Ellison indicates they will be around for a little while at least!
    5. so maybe in the long run I pay a bit more, this will probably save me a bit more in the short term which is more important to me. I would rather pay less now and have a robust solution running quickly at a lower cost. This will allow my business to grow quickly and buy the time the costs end up catching up with me (4 -5 years down the road), I hopefully over the hump and have grown the company significantly and it becomes less of an issue.

    Any thoughts on my reasoning???

    1. Fully hosted solution - Yes, fully hosted solution would be the next wave in software. Keeping up with technology and passing on the benefits to consumers is very important. NetSuite does that very well, for their hosted solution they have given a rich user interface with help of AJAX technology/tool, making the applications equally good to desktop/thick client usability.

    2. Comprehensive functionality - "One size doesn't fit all..." being a hosted solution you lose certain functionality such as POS, which is sole functionality requirements for retail industry.
    Being hosted solution helps start-up companies to have web presence at easy, but gets painful to grow in terms of capitalizing on new marketing trends such as SEO and SEM, which is a must in today's world and don’t want to be dependant with vendor.

    3. Large Revenue/Customer base - Hmm this is good point, but again as we have seen when companies grow big you either hit the ceiling or you grow fat for your legs and you may crash like QuickBooks with millions of users who can't grow beyond 5/10/15 users (with enterprise maxing out at 15 users)

    4. Backed by Larry Ellison - True good in a way, but history of Larry shows he can do what he wants to do, who knows if he takes all of us for a boat ride in his yatch - Rising Sun

    5. Long run - Calculating the ROI is tough, let's say if you are selling some fast moving products and would like to cash out then I would suggest a powerful ecommerce with good backend office mgmt tool, would increase your online sales and you see a greater healthier ROI.

    a) For now NetSuite is commanding in the mini-ERP space, however there are new-comers joining the race, look out for Interprise and Evolution, they have right technology for serving SMB and their cost is much better than NetSuite, only drawback is they yet to gain credibility.

    b) Everest is not a bad software, reading the comments on this forum tells the tale of the management resulting in such an outcry, but it has a good integrated solution though, better than obsolete solutions like Accpac, Great plains, Peachtree and QB where the applications are not integrated and are based on old technology.

    It would be interesting to see Microsoft’s new Project Green application supposed to be released in 2007 integrated with MS office.

    Ideally the Future of ERP is based on "Software As A Service (SAAS)" where you rent/lease the service for conducting your e-business at easy. I would give 5 star ratings for NetSuite and re-visit in 6 months time frame and check if it still holds good.

  12. #87
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Posts
    44
    1. Fully hosted solution - Not to disagree but I will disagree. I believe a blended solution will be the wave of the future. Fully hosted solutions will always have the limitations of needing a hosted connection. When you can work online and offline in a seamless manner a new type of experience can be found. There is only one business application that I know of that does this flawlessly. I know others have tried and failed or are trying in some way but still have a long way to go.

    2. Comprehensive functionality – Once again here is where a blended solution does the best of all worlds. With a semi-disconnected application you can benefit for local POS and other application data while instantly sharing that data around the world. That is again why I believe a blended solution will dominate the marketplace in the months and years to come.
    “Being hosted solution helps start-up companies to have web presence at easy, but gets painful to grow in terms of capitalizing on new marketing trends such as SEO and SEM, which is a must in today's world and don’t want to be dependant with vendor.”
    I completely agree with you and that is why again in my opinion a blended solution is the best way to go. You still maintain control while realizing full versatility.

    As for the other thoughts: Great points info-sourcing and great point of view. You rock as always!

    I think this is the best link any modern business should read:
    http://darwinproductions.net/Present...eEvolution.xml
    If not for a company to purchase the solution but to simply understand what can be achieved with a semi-disconnected reality as this is what new technology is bringing to the table. Soon the old limitations of the past will become exactly that: A thing of the past.
    E-commerce and Content Management made Affordable and Easy:
    http://www.coremanagementsolutions.com

  13. #88
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    NYC
    Posts
    4
    If you are truly looking at a small ecommerce site, I believe a hosted solution would suffice for day to day business needs. Now... if you're looking at things that require real time automation, for example, please consider that a hosted solution is limited to your connection speed and as such might be an additional bottleneck in your business flow. Consider that you are shipping packages from your a warehouse, your flow might look like this: your shipper will need to pick the products (are you considering barcoded products with serialized inventory?). Scan the invoice, Scan the items (are you able to connect a bar code reader to the platform you're choosing?), seal the box, print the label and go to the next invoice. In general, this might take up to 20 seconds. If you're using a hosted solution, the data transfer over the web might take 20 seconds in itself, not withstanding the physical labor desribed above. Also consider automation, a HUGE request from our clients. Does a hosted solution offer Business Process Management (BPM) or Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)? Consider that in today's market, business is most always time of the essense. Does your system automatically react to situations? Can you build intelligent automation in a hosted solution? Consider a real world scenario... We have a client with a 5 man crew that ships over 1000 packages a day. I cannot imagine how to accomplish this without automating a multitude of processes. Mind you that this company started 3 years ago with only a husband and wife team. Take care of your bottlenecks by automating your processes. Not only will this increase your capacity but will lower your costs and most likely increase your customer satisfaction! A hosted solution is a bottleneck in itself.

    I hope this help,
    Gil
    Devix Group LLC
    http://www.devix.com

  14. #89
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Posts
    44
    Right on Gil.
    E-commerce and Content Management made Affordable and Easy:
    http://www.coremanagementsolutions.com

  15. #90
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    Washington State
    Posts
    49
    You should put money into a business like that, and don't go the cheap route cause you are going to own it for life (hopefully.)
    natureday.com
    Reallythin.com

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