Inform ERP

Solid ERP

Aspetti positivi:

My favorite thing about this program is that you can pretty much get from any part of the program. From the sales order entry screen to the linked purchase order or to the product details or the customer master file. Sometimes this creates too many options when training new employees, so best to have a good plan for that otherwise new people might get confused.

Aspetti negativi:

It always feels like the developer is adding new features, which is great, but since they charge so much for maintenance you would think these features would be integrated as part of the program, but instead they are offered in a sort of add-on structure, which can be frustrating.

Twi-Laq Industries, Inc.

Commenti: The support staff has been wonderful helping us get the most out of our software. Managing customers from both a sales and accounting standpoint is easy and intuitive and has helped us grow our business significantly.

Aspetti positivi:

Sales/Order Entry - Every bit of information needed when entering an order is always at your fingertips, the system is intuitive and allows our admin staff to best support our sales force in the field.

Aspetti negativi:

The lack of mobile/remote access has been a challenge. Loggin in through a 3rd party software is an extra step that has created challenges for our sales staff that prefer to enter orders themselves after hours. I was very happy to learn that Inform Mobile is coming!

Enterprise ERP that lacks basic ERP functionalities

Commenti: DDI has been running our business for over 3 years. Warehouse and inventory control systems are decent, accounting meets our basic needs. The biggest issue w DDI is they are a closed source software. Integrating with other strike mission software is virtually impossible. For example, you are bound by DDI into using Authorize.net for payment processing. For a wholesaler, Authorize.net is the least favorable payment processor b/c it cannot pass level 3 data, required for best rates on corporate charge cards. Being bound to Authorize.net costs our business year just in higher CC rates. Another example would be interfacing w 3rd party e-commerce platforms, which is very difficult and expensive to achieve with DDI closed source code. The built-in e-commerce platform is pathetic. It's 1990's web technology not mobile optimized, zero customization for the structure and layout, custom rules and customer-specific catalog pricing for a true B2B experience is not available. the list goes on and on. Your business processes must conform to DDI's framework, when it should be the other way around. There are MANY other ERP solutions that can do what DDI does for a fraction of the price. They keep promising updates to meet these glaring issues, but they never materialize. We'll be making a move in the next 24 months.

Aspetti positivi:

DDI team was readily available during installation and training Detailed financial and sales performance reporting Little downtime.

Aspetti negativi:

Closed-source code eliminates any integration w 3rd party software Baked-in e-commerce platform is woefully outdated DDI is always promising to rollout new features that rarely come to fruition

Doubled the size and revenue of my business

Commenti: The people who work at DDI are absolute masters at what they do. They understand distribution and software. Frankly, they have been more like consultants to my business than just come software relationship. I knew on day 1 when was I was sitting down with the founder and CEO of this company that it would be the sort of relationship I was looking for. I have not been disappointed since.

Aspetti positivi:

I have been using Inform for just over one year. Within that time I have doubled the size and revenue of my business, the purchase of this software has been instrumental in achieving that. The reduction of time spent executing every day procedures cannot be understated. This system streamlines operations to such a degree that attention can be refocused elsewhere, like selling. The selling aspect of this system is second to none. Customer management is so well intertwined within the system. In a moment you can search a contact, know a few things about them, know what they have stopped buying from you, and translate your talent as a sales rep directly into a finished order. Everything you quote, sell, invoice, purchase and commit is represented and fully tracked in a completely live system. This is crucial to my reporting, which is also a very easy to use part of the system. The forecasting capability within the purchasing part of the software runs circles around systems that are easily quadruple the price of this system.

Aspetti negativi:

The old ecommerce package was not mobile responsive. Since the release of their new ecommerce, I have purchased it. It does wonders for my business, as it is completely integrated within the software. People can order their specific products from me on their phones and in seconds I have the order being picked and staged.

DDI-Inform. Value and support today. With a clear path to needs of the future.

Commenti: We switched to DDI a couple of years ago. As a HVAC-R distributor with four branches and growing sales, we needed a powerful ERP system that provided flexibility, stability, responsive support and a strong plan for the development of future features. DDI-Inform provides all that. Inform is adaptable to the way that you do business with an extensive list of features and options that can be turned on or off to fit your needs. It also provides a granular permissions model that allow business owners to determine who can do what in the system. We choose run Inform on our premises, but it can be hosted on Rackspace. Inform is very stable. But modern ERP's are complicated and you will always run into edge cases. When we have needed support, the support provided by DDI is responsive and timely. They have a web support portal that works quite well, but you can also call them if needed. The support team is large enough that you are never left without support, small enough that they remember who you are. One of the things that is important to us is an ERP that has plans to grow with emerging technology's while still being stable and usable in the near term. DDI has slowly but surely been updating Inform to the new Inform 2 interface. During this transition they have taken their time to make sure that we don't loose any functionality while consistently providing improvements in design and features. I'm excited for the future of this product. And the advantages that it will bring to our business.

Aspetti positivi:

Stable and flexible. Excellent Support and responsiveness from their team.

Aspetti negativi:

There are, of course, little minor issues. But nothing that has made us regret our decision.

Comprehensive System but Room for Improvement

Commenti: The DDI system is a comprehensive system that manages sales/warehouse needs very well, but everything else is sub-par to competition. Being a comprehensive system has it's perks; it means you can use DDI for almost all parts of your company; sales, warehouse management, analytics, and even online sales are incorporated. The strong suit of the DDI Inform ERP system at managing warehouse/ sales and analytics. He warehouse management system works very well to account for inventory, and the analytics part will tell you when certain inventory items are low and allows you to send out P/O to vendors right from the system.

The sales side of the system is also great, it’s very easy to use to type in Sales Orders and adjust pricing, etc. Compared to other sales systems we used, this is definitely one of the most comprehensive.

That being said, being a comprehensive system also has some drawbacks, and DDI as a system has room for future improvement. Luckily they do update their software with upgrades/updates throughout the year. The online sales portion of DDI could use work. As of right now, their online mobile ordering page isn't mobile-optimized, and compared to other applications designed for online sales/ mobile order taking, DDI's Mobi-Order performance is sub-par. However, I did hear from DDI that they are working on this portion to improve it, so hopefully with the updates will make the Mobi-Order more intuitive.

Another problem we’ve encountered there is little room for customization within the DDI system itself: layouts and formats of invoices, sales orders, etc are all pre-set and not easily changed. If you really wanted to change anything, DDI will bill you for special customization, which can be costly. To summarize, there is no denying the DDI system is great for warehouse/sales management, but aspects of the online/mobile department can definitely use some improvements, as this is the future of sales. Overall, a very comprehensive system that I would recommend for the wholesale & distribution business.

Aspetti positivi:

- Great at warehouse management - Great for sales team management, helps track salesperson - Good for accounting - Analytics for sales team / product team - Constant Updates

Aspetti negativi:

- Lack of customization options - Lackluster features on it's mobile site / ordering app

Solid ERP System

Aspetti positivi:

We've been on this system for almost 8 years now, and it's been great to see it evolve over time. The developers are constantly looking for ways to make the user experience more efficient and giving us more ways to use the system. Personally I find the Advanced Report Writer function to be the most useful as I can provide automated reports to various departments daily, weekly, or monthly.

Aspetti negativi:

There are sometimes issues known to the developers that don't get communicated to the users. I had a conversation with their support staff last week where I mentioned an issue we've been seeing for a number of months and he said it was a known issue but nobody had bothered to communicate it. Seems like they also charge a lot of money for maintenance, then try to charge more for features when they are added as well.

User Friendly Software to manage your business

Commenti: How to forecast sales and better inventory management

Aspetti positivi:

Software is very easy to learn and use. CRM in software helps ours sales team without have to purchase additional software.

Aspetti negativi:

Mobile IPAD ordering, sometime a challenge uploading to our website

We are a distributor and this system is perfect for our industry

Aspetti positivi:

The system provides a smooth process, compared to our old system we couldn't keep track of old/new costs or receipts. I train everybody at our company and DDI is very easy to write a process and train right away. To be honest I am very happy we made the change to DDI, it's perfect for what we need to do everyday to service our customers. I also think we don't know everything this system could provide but we are in the works of finding out.

Aspetti negativi:

I wish there was an easier way to identify sales orders from machine part orders. If a customer calls in and says "I need a part for my machine" but if it's a customer who places a lot of orders with us the sales history screen doesn't load because it's a lot of information. If we had an option to select the sales rep name in the sales history screen it would only pull up the orders that my machine tech sold not every order. This would make serving our customer on the machine side easier and more efficient. One more thing, customer service uses the customer order pad when entering orders but when they hit save the items appear on the sales order in alphabetically order. This is an issue because we have customers who could place up to 10-20 items per order and if they used the pad it makes it very difficult to check the sales order before saving it, if they have a big order they manual enter the codes on the sales order.

Easy to use with great customer support

Aspetti positivi:

Easy to use, nice interface. Recent updates have made it easy to switch from one screen to another when you need to, but what's even better is that you can hover over certain fields for more information without even having to open a separate window.

Aspetti negativi:

It sounds ridiculous, but their customer service is almost too responsive. When I send an email with a question, they always follow up with a phone call, and while that may sometimes be necessary, it's annoying when it's not, especially when we are having a busy day and would rather keep the phones open for customers. We are a small company.

Always costing more!

Aspetti positivi:

Once you learn DDI, it can make placing orders easier with creating specific reports nice.

Aspetti negativi:

It does not intergrade with 3rd party software well and anything you need to customize for your business costs a ton extra. Just to import "Ordered By" from our website into DDI's field was going to cost $1000.00 To create a different size label for the "Print Product Labels" was $300.00 It is overpriced for the help you receive and the training on the software was miniscule at best.

Inform for Small Business

Commenti: Over-all this software does a great job of meeting the needs of our company, we need to learn to use forums for additional training on occasion and also do our upgrades more often. This requires an outside IT person to help so it doesn't happen as quickly as it should.

Aspetti positivi:

Software is very user-friendly, Unlimited reporting possibilities, frequent upgrades, "help" blog for additional training

Aspetti negativi:

Some features in AR/AP are lacking, not "Windows" based so setting up remote users is costly for a small business

Excellent ERP that facilitates data driven decision making. Client for ten years and the software has continued to evolve.

Aspetti positivi:

The constant evolution of the interface and functionality. The Dashboard feature allows users to access enterprise wide cross functional data in real time, which in turn allows for an immediate drill down to root cause. This has proven very helpful in improving our training efficiencies.

Aspetti negativi:

We have always desired the ability for purchase orders to be set as recurring and spawned from a template. This functionality exists on the Sales Order side, and for an master distributor, who often orders in comparable lots at essentially set intervals, there would be an increase in efficiency by eliminating the need to continually created similar POs.

version 18 is great

Aspetti positivi:

Version 18 is a huge improvement over previous versions , the ability to see snap shots of products while adding an order is wonderful . Also being able to see stock levels of products at all location while adding to an order is a very helpful tool .

Aspetti negativi:

While a little hard to learn from the start once you get use to it works smoothly . I for one would like a reference guide for ARW (advanced report writer ) , this would make writing reports much easier . or maybe a Wizard that walks you thru making reports .

Inform

Commenti: Great system and people to work with.

Aspetti positivi:

Best decision our company ever made was to upgrade our system to Inform. More control over inventory and accounting than what we had before. Customer support is always ready to help.

Aspetti negativi:

Can be a little overwhelming at first but well worth the time and investment.

Satisfied customer for 6 years

Commenti: Always adding new features and helping me run my business better.

Aspetti positivi:

Very easy to use and powerful. New employees are able to learn 80% of what they need to learn to do on the software in half a day. We can report on anything we want and write custome reports easily. Best customer service I have had and much better than every other software other business people tell me about.

Aspetti negativi:

It's not free, but you do get what you pay for. With Inform you get very good value. Each module is sold separately.

DDI Inform is very intuitive and the customer service is outstanding

Aspetti positivi:

Customer support is always at your finger tips and the agents are experts. It's an easy system to navigate. As an analyst I find the system easy to use to get the data I need in a timely manner. If the system is lacking they do try to add the upgrades to future releases.

Aspetti negativi:

DDI Inform is constantly releasing upgrades to stay competitive and to fulfill the voice of the customer and this is good and bad: The Lot control functionality needs improvement. I feel that DDI should spend a little more time testing and validating the software upgrades before releasing them in order to avoid bugs and customer discomfort.

Carpentry Supply Shop

Aspetti positivi:

Easy to use, powerful record keeping and accounting. All your customer data and order history is saved and available at your fingertips to help you provide a high level of customer service.

Aspetti negativi:

I would like to have all edit-able fields in the order entry and accounting screens connected so they can be tabbed through. There's a time savings there vs. having to mouse click on each field and then enter values.

DDI experience has been great!

Aspetti positivi:

I have used several ERP software programs for the distribution industry. DDI by far is the most robust, simple and easy to use so far. The CRM package specifically is my favorite. It has allowed me to better serve my customers with hundreds of reporting features at my fingertips. In the past with other ERP programs it is very difficult to gather numbers and really know your numbers. The pivot tables for sales analysis by customer, part number or whatever info I need can be accessed on the software.

Aspetti negativi:

My least favorite part about the product is searching for products among thousands in our product catalog. I wish you could see the price for each product on the menu instead of choosing each product to see pricing. In distribution the product master, or what we can sell is obviously the most important. It is sometimes hard to choose the right product unless you know what is the cheapest or best option while searching.

Does more than we can use

Commenti: Users who have been on other distribution software absolutely rave about the ease and information available in DDi Inform.

Aspetti positivi:

Easy to learn basics with built in help and video tutorials. Intuitive processes and drill down ability Outstanding support

Aspetti negativi:

Creating reports can be difficult. Cannot make global changes in some fields where it would be extremely useful to do so.

The more I use the system, the more I like it.

Aspetti positivi:

The Pricing Menu - the Price Matrices, the Price Rollup Schedule, and the Product Import - when all used in conjunction with one another, they make for a very functional and user-friendly system. Plus, the reporting on them is very easy to work with and understand.

Aspetti negativi:

I have found some unnecessary steps in some of the more basic functions. It tends to make some easy tasks a bit daunting.

My company has used DDI System since 2005. System and DDI staff both are great to work with.

Commenti: DDI staff makes it even better.

Aspetti positivi:

Has everything needed to keep precise records of customers, inventory & company finances. Easy to use.

Aspetti negativi:

I really do not have anything that I do not like about DDI System. If I had to choose, it would be that there is not a payroll option.

DDI changed my work habits!

Aspetti positivi:

The reporting that Inform provides is unlike any other we could find. We made the switch from an old DOS based program, and the ease of being able to click through things without having to stop, use the bracket key or cntrl ** has made life easier. The projected purchase orders & critical inventory reports can be ran every night and ready for our purchasing staff every morning so we don't have to sift through the prior day's transactions to see what we need to reorder.

Aspetti negativi:

This one isn't really a big deal, but we do run across the transaction that, although the account isn't set up as tax exempt, the project/sales order will be. Instead of being able to click 1 button to make the sales order tax exempt, you have to click several spots on every line item. Just a bit tedious in my opinion.

A pleasure to use

Aspetti positivi:

Ease of use, streamlining processes that make the day go by easier. Allows us to take care of our customers quickly and accurately.

Aspetti negativi:

No major issues. DDI has been implemented successfully in our organization and we appreciate the support we receive.

Distributors Deserve DDI

Aspetti positivi:

DDI is forever changing with the times. The mobile revolution and ease of access are upon us, and DDI is following suit with their CRM features and mobile capabilities. Recently we were able to get rid of our other CRM and downsize into one software. This made it extremely easy to have our inside and outside staff communicate better.

Aspetti negativi:

I wish that DDI had a customer import feature like it's product import feature. This would make importing leads and customer information easier. But, I know that DDI listens to its users and is constantly making changes to better fit their customers. I may see this feature in future upgrades.