JDE Enterprise One - how good is it really?

nuffznuff

Member
My employer is a small-ish company of 200 employees and based in outskirts of London (UK). It offers health care advice (NHS111) and provides out-of-hours urgent health treatment for when the surgeries are closed.

It presently uses MS InfoPath to raise and track purchase orders, but Microsoft has discontinued this product and it will not be compatible with MS Office365, which is being implemented across the estate imminently.

Therefore a meeting was called with Finance department to gather requirements and consider options for a solution, and I have been tasked with investigating E1.

My background is JDE World support and development, so of course E1 was the first thing I consisered. B-)

What I'm looking for is impartial information on Enterprise One, but I accept that I'm probably asking a partial audience.

REQUIREMENTS
+ Finance department open to replacing current system (Sage 200).

+ New product must be easy to use, to configure, to maintain
Reviews I've read on this subject are mixed. Some say it is, some say not.

Our IT department consists of one IT manager, two desktop support techs (of which I am one), and two more desktop support techs working in remote sites. We can't afford the drain on resources supporting any new product, with users constantly running in to our office whining 'how do I do such and such?', not to mention the ubiquitous 'it's not working'. It really has to be 'plug it in and go'.


+ Will not need an item master - must be able to perform non-stock purchases
My experience tells me that this should be possible. We won't be selling products froma a warehouse, so an item master is not reqiured. Finance mgr recalled a previous experience with SAP where her department had to have an item master entry for every purchase, whether stock or not.

+ Do not want to have to install product on each computer that will use it – therefore must be cetrally hosted or cloud based
I've already found out that E1 is now cloud based, which ticks that box. But can it be hosted on a central server locally? (Given our resources, I don't really think we want to go there.) But the illustrations I've seen all use IE - is that mandatory, or will Chrome be acceptable?

+ Due to email storage limitations, documents must not be attached to emails – URL links or shortcuts better
This is a sore point to us - our email server ran out of disk space and we were down for two days! I'm sure you know that email attachments take up a lot of storage, and we don't want to be generating a PO out to PDF and then send it for approval to the CFO. I recall JDE doesn't do that, but how does it notify the approver that a PO is awaiting approval, and how does it send POs to external suppliers?

+ Financial analysis/reporting important – export facility to Excel
My research ticks this box, too. I understand that FASTR isn't (or wasn't previously) available on E1, but can users generate their own reports, say, using WorldWriter? Or is that a World-only thing, too? (Pardon my ignorance.)

+ Up to 40 users will be using this product.

+ Licence fee must include upgrades and support
Can someone quote me some figures for 40 users? Preferably in GB£, but US$ will give us an idea.

Thank you for your patience in reading this to the end, and I look forward to reading some constructive feedback.

Kind regards
 
Yes, it can be hosted on a central server locally.
Yes, Chrome will be acceptable.
Yes, WorldWriter is a World-only thing. E1 users can generate their own reports with One View Reporting.
 
Looks like you're trying to crack a rather small nut with a rather large hammer. Your requirements seem to fit more along the lines of a cloud financials product like Xero rather than a full blown ERP.
 
I would suggest if available in the UK, JDE Cloud. You can license the modules you need, simple management, potentially faster implementation.
 
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