An ERP software designed by Epicor Software for distribution and wholesale trade companies.

Product Overview

Epicor Prophet 21 Cloud is an ERP software for wholesale trade and distribution companies. It’s powered by Microsoft Azure, offering a device-independent system that enhances mobility and usability. The software’s core features include BI tools, accounting, CRM, supply chain management, and more. It combines distribution expertise with a modern technology stack, providing flexibility and extensive customization options.

Pros

  • Cloud-based ERP solution
  • Low total cost of ownership
  • Powered by Microsoft Azure

Cons

  • On-premise deployment has extra support costs
  • May require extensive customization and technical support

Target Market

Mid-sized to large distributors in various industries, such as fasteners, fluid power, HVAC, industrial/safety, medical supplies, and welding.

About Epicor Prophet 21

Epicor Prophet 21 is an ERP software developed to manage intricate supply chain and distribution processes. It includes a variety of features such as Epicor Commerce, business intelligence tools, financial management, and CRM. Prophet 21 also supports sales, supply chain, service, and maintenance management.

The integration of technologies like HTML5, Angular JS, .NET, and SQL Server enhances its flexibility, scalability, and extensibility to meet evolving demands as distribution companies grow. Hosted on Microsoft Azure, Prophet 21 offers reduced total ownership costs and a platform equipped to adapt to current and future business requirements.

  • Enhances operational efficiency and manage inventory costs effectively
  • Provide comprehensive visibility into the supply chain with actionable data insights
  • Concentrate on customer experiences to strengthen trust and loyalty
  • Adapt operational processes to attract and retain talent
  • Scale resources in the cloud to align with business needs

The system is tailored to streamline distribution processes in a dynamic supply chain, catering to distributors of various sizes. It supports industries like industrial/safety, HVAC, medical supplies, and more. With the flexibility of cloud and on-premises deployment options, it can adapt to changing business needs.

Epicor Prophet 21 Key Features

  • API for seamless integration with external applications
  • CRM tools for efficient information access and improved customer service
  • Order management capabilities for quick order processing
  • Cloud-based eCommerce solutions to expand sales and customer reach
  • Dynamic stock management methods for optimized inventory control
  • Centralized purchasing process for enhanced buying power
  • Wireless warehouse management system for accurate operations
  • Real-time financial insights for proactive accounting
  • Manufacturing tracking from start to finish
  • Integrated service and maintenance management
  • Business intelligence tools and Epicor Data Analytics for data-driven decision-making
  • Epicor Virtual Agent (EVA) for remote interaction with Prophet 21

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Product Overview

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User Reviews of Epicor Prophet 21

★★★★★
★★★★★
Submitted on June 16th, 2023 by FEDUP

accounts receivable its horrible

The Good…

Nothing

The Bad…

If your company is considering this RUN

★★★★★
★★★★★
Submitted on March 27th, 2023 by Anonymous

Epicor is designed for the small to moderate size company that is growing out of Quickbooks or even Excel style solutions and blends them together to create a basic and fundamental ERP. It is a powerful tool in comparison, where it blends back-end and retail processing into one program. As a business expands and starts to work more directly with other larger businesses and their associated ERP’s, it starts to fall short. One of the major shortcomings is no streamlined way to do one task, rather multiple ways which then gets confusing as different users use different processes to achieve the same goal. Using external tools (ie. Card processing equipment, barcode scanners, Telxon handhelds, etc) is a major task and doesn’t fluidly adapt, making use of the system as operations expand challenging. It is in no way comparable to SAP or Oracle, however can be a powerful tool for companies looking to grow their business with a smaller ERP.

★★★★★
★★★★★
Submitted on October 29th, 2019 by Colleen

I am trying to implement the cloud version of P21

The Good…

Our employees have used P21 in the past (desktop version) and loved it. IF we can get through the setup then it might be good. But i have my doubts!

The Bad…

It has been a nightmare trying to get set up. I get error message EVERY DAY just trying to get things worked out. I create a case, get an email with a documents attached that doesn’t help, on and on and on, etc. It took me 3 weeks to finally get a crystal check form i could modify. I probably took a week before a tech emailed that i had to have crystal reports loaded on my computer. Why couldn’t I have been told that up front. I don’t have time for all the negative things I think about this program. I have worked with software over 30 years, even worked for a software company for 12 years, doing support, training, design programs, and QC and i have never had this much trouble. God help the people that dont’ have any experience. Do NOT buy cloud version - too many bugs.

★★★★★
★★★★★
Submitted on May 20th, 2019 by Anonymous

ERP system that attempts to handle most functions within your distribution business

The Good…

The audit trail functionality allows users to see updates made over time to help track where an issue occurred (However, some seemingly important fields do not get tracked in the audit trail like carrier changes within an order) .

The Bad…

Slowness and Bugs. The product is built on powerbuilder which is single-threaded and modern processors with high core counts will not help if the individual core speed is not extremely high.
Every time they release a new version, we find multiple bugs which can take months for them to fix. We wonder if they actually test the software before releasing the latest version.

★★★★★
★★★★★
Submitted on May 9th, 2019 by Anonymous

We Implemented this software back in December of 2018. Since then it has been a complete nightmare. Every technical issue you have needs to be submitted through a ticket system. While the responses are decent, the solutions involves a link to an article. Sometimes it’s a solution, but often it isn’t. So time consuming and not very helpful. Worse is their customer service. Purchased the P21 Mobile app and it doesn’t even show Service Orders! Of course, you can’t get any recourse. Their policy, “We don’t refund purchased modules”! What about servicing your customers?! Unless you have someone technical on staff, avoid this software at all costs.

The Good…

Hard to determine at this stage.

The Bad…

Mostly everything.

★★★★★
★★★★★
Submitted on October 22nd, 2018 by Anonymous

Overall, I’m happy with system, but it has limited reporting for kitting and assemblies. We continue to pay them for service and updates that we don’t use. I do like that we can enter our orders and it can help us purchase it well.

★★★★★
★★★★★
Submitted on July 28th, 2018 by Anonymous

Rich distribution functionality; latest technology

The Good…

The focus on technology improvement; rich distribution knowledge - they know how to talk distribution.

The Bad…

Some support has been sent offshore. These employees are new and still learning.

★★★★★
★★★★★
Submitted on July 18th, 2018 by Anonymous

It definitely has some pro’s with being able to track inventory and orders. But if I had to do it over again, I would NEVER go with this company. They are absolutely disgusting in getting every penny they can get! We have for the past 5 years with this system spent at the MINIMUM of $40,000 for ESSENTIAL ITEMS! They are such an awful company!

The Good…

I appreciate their support staff that quickly respond to questions I have regarding the complex system. (Remember though… you are paying at the minimum of $829.04 per user to use this and if they can’t fix it then you pay someone $175 per hour to walk you through the fix)

The Bad…

SO expensive. It would be one thing if I just paid a one time fee for an incredible system that I can rely on but paying over $40k per year is unbelievable. The system is so complex that you have to have support from Epicor to be able to walk you through day-to-day situations that arise. If you make a mistake in the system, expect yourself to have to work on that mistake for 30 minutes because of all of the steps that you have to go through.

★★★★★
★★★★★
Submitted on February 19th, 2018 by Anonymous

P21 allows you to invest in software that is ever changing and growing to meet the needs of their customers, they are continually learning and getting feedback from their customers on how to make the software more user friendly for people in all businesses which i think is great

The Good…

I am very happy with some newly integrated tools within the Production order control portal i think it adds a lot of functionality that is beneficial to the user

The Bad…

The ability to hide deleted items in Assembly Maintenance would be great because if you have a lot of changes you want to know about the changes but you don’t want to see all the parts that are deleted when looking at the assembly

★★★★★
★★★★★
Submitted on October 2nd, 2017 by Aaron

Prophet 21 is a fully-functional ERP that covers all aspects of my business. For distributors, there isn’t a better choice. Prophet 21 offers an entire suite of accounts payable, accounts receivable, inventory management, and transaction management programs. It is easy to implement and easy to use.

The Good…

It’s hard to narrow down to just one thing. I really like the interface. It’s crisp and laid out for people who actually use the software. Additionally, most screens can be customized (including adding required fields) to fit the workflow of many businesses. The available programs within the application are comprehensive in scope, and there’s a great search feature that makes programs easy to find.

The Bad…

Implementation can be expensive. It’s powerful software, but sometimes I wish it were less costly.

★★★★★
★★★★★
Submitted on September 29th, 2017 by Charles

Prophet 21 is a full-featured, fully scaleable ERP system for medium to large business. Or for smaller enterprises on a growth track. It can handle any or all of accounting, purchasing, inventory management, assembly, routing, price/cost management, etc.

The Good…

Prophet 21 is an open Microsoft SQL database that runs on pretty much any Windows network. It’s easy to access and maintain with standard applications and tools without too much additional training. Because it follows many common Windows paradigms, users can find their way around and will be productive in a shorter amount of time. Prophet 21 is highly adaptable to many types of distribution businesses and brings many features to all aspects of vertical markets that are helpful but not necessarily standard.

The Bad…

It can be complex and a little convoluted in structure to accommodate so many options. Specific solutions are sometimes difficult to implement if not part of the package. As for the elephant in the room, it is rather pricey and licensing isn’t clear on what is included and what is extra.

★★★★★
★★★★★
Submitted on September 28th, 2017 by Anonymous

Prophet 21 helps us to provide better customer service with real-time and accurate information. It also helps our users to easily find the answers with a few simple clicks instead of weeding through paperwork like we did previously.

The Good…

Prophet21 is a distributor centric software that allows us to serve our customers and keep up with changing technology. It is user friendly and allows for easy interface modifications as needed. It also has some nice out-of-the-box features that help us automate our business without having major system modifications.

The Bad…

Prophet21 can be very rigid and unforgiving when little mistakes are made. A wrong click can cause a headache. Still does not outweigh the good.

★★★★★
★★★★★
Submitted on December 2nd, 2016 by August

We are a leader in the Fluid Power Industry in which we design, sell and Service equipment and parts along with manufacture custom hydraulic systems through distribution. We have 2 companies across 9 locations with 3 manufacturing divisions. Each location has a showroom for Front Counter Sales (Point of Sale) and a Service Department with a stocking warehouse. We perform central based purchasing and forecasting mainly with some location based purchasing where needed. We use Prophet 21 software in every aspect of our company across all locations, short of payroll and internal purchasing of our business consumables in a mostly dominant thin client environment. Prophet 21 has a vast amount of features that allows it to be compatible with many different business models throughout several industries which can make it a little over complicated on what to do via data-entry as your company doesn’t use every single piece of functionality and you have to fill in the appropriate area for what your company is using as there are allot of fields and tabs that you could have to update. So it can produce very detailed information if allot of the fields are utilized. Speed is a huge concern with this software as it has multiple layers of programming on top of an outdated platform that makes the data entry workable but painfully slow once you get used to running the software.

The Good…

Scale-ability and the capability to mold to a lot of different companies business models. The Purchasing/Forecasting functionality is top notch and very mold-able to any purchasing model ranging from central purchasing down to individualized seasonal items. Once set up it will let you get away with a smaller procurement department as the system will tell you what you need to order. The vendor is good about fixing issues quickly but sometimes difficult to distinguish between an actual error and a company specific business process. There are a ton of purchasable add-on’s from the Vendor them-self along with even more third party add-on’s that makes this a wonderful software if you have the money and skilled personnel to support it.Recommendations are in order of robustness in each area of business. Purchasing - Very Strong Distribution - Very Strong Sales - Strong (Does not currently have a “true” Point of Sale Module / No security for sales pricing over-rides) Pricing Sales/Purchasing Structures - Strong (Does not show % discount for orders / Rebates are cumbersome) Service & Maintenance - Strong to Medium: Needs a lot of work for differences in business models for Service. Scheduling a service is a challenge. Manufacturing - Light: When they mean light manufacturing they mean it. Not a CNC type manufacturing add-on. They are currently working on a scheduling functionality that will help a ton but would still be a lot of work to run a large caliber manufacturing facility using this add-on. Some things are nice and some other are horridly missing. There is better software that handles manufacturing easier. CRM - Thumbs is half down: Can get away with the baseline functionality and better with some customization but a purchasable integrated add-on’s make’s a world of difference! Reporting - Baseline: Thumbs Down - Need to purchase add-on if you want any business oversight and strong reports. Someone with Highly developed SQL and or C Skills recommended. Crystal skills is a bonus. Can get away with middle of the road knowledge in those areas but the highly developed skills make a world of difference in molding your business processes.

The Bad…

Scale-ability and the capability to mold to a lot of different companies business models. Since this software can mold to a large variety of business models it can make training difficult and long due to the complexities of the software’s advanced features. This also makes data entry combersome as you have to know what fields to enter depending on what functionality you are using. Slow to implement vendor driven Idea’s Network from user ideas. The product feels extremely slow once you get used to running the system and is glitchy because of the method chosen to release updates and advancements. Developers run a continuous improvement program with multiple releases a year so as they are designing new features at the same time they are cleaning errors and glitches rather than waiting a long time for advancements and a rock solid release. This could also be considered good and bad if you need an advancement, you don’t have to wait! The companies move to have the first level of support go to India can lead to frustrations because of the communication blearier along with the new support teams are not yet very knowledgeable with the software and the level of experiences with the software is still being developed

★★★★★
★★★★★
Submitted on November 30th, 2016 by Erik

Epicor Eclipse is easy to use and easy to learn. I have only been with this company for about 8 months and had never heard of Epicor or Eclipse and I am getting around pretty good already. Actually I have been for a couple of months now. One thing I like is that there is a whole community of users that share their tips and tricks for using the system which helped. The representatives with the company (that I have spoken with) are patient. I do agree that the support fees are way to high, but, on the other hand, in my opinion they do a lot of behind the scenes work. We are using an older version and I am excited about the chance to move up to a newer, more aesthetically pleasing version in the near future. Epicor offers training after the installation (for a charge per person) in the form of classes held regularly, which is better than I can say from my previous experience with SAP. I can’t really say if I would choose this product again, because we are on an older version, which I don’t like. It looks too much like I am using a mainframe.

The Good…

One thing I like is that there is a whole community of users that share their tips and tricks for using the system which helped. The representatives with the company (that I have spoken with) are patient.

The Bad…

I do agree that the support fees are way to high, but, on the other hand, in my opinion they do a lot of behind the scenes work.

★★★★★
★★★★★
Submitted on November 17th, 2016 by August

We are a leader in the Fluid Power Industry in which we design, sell and Service equipment and parts along with manufacture custom hydraulic systems through distribution. We have 2 companies across 9 locations with 3 manufacturing divisions. Each location has a showroom for Front Counter Sales (Point of Sale) and a Service Department with a stocking warehouse. We perform central based purchasing and forecasting mainly with some location based purchasing where needed. We use Prophet 21 software in every aspect of our company across all locations, short of payroll and internal purchasing of our business consumables in a mostly dominant thin client environment.

The vast amount of features allows it to be compatible with many different business models throughout several industries which can make it a little over complicated on what to do via data-entry as your company doesn’t use every single piece of functionality and you have to fill in the appropriate area for what your company is using as there are allot of fields and tabs that you could have to update. So it can produce very detailed information if allot of the fields are utilized. Speed is a huge concern with this software as it has multiple layers of programming on top of an outdated platform that makes the data entry workable but painfully slow once you get used to running the software.

Recommendations are in order of robustness in each area of business. Purchasing - Very Strong Distribution - Very Strong Sales - Strong (Does not currently have a “true” Point of Sale Module / No security for sales pricing over-rides) Pricing Sales/Purchasing Structures - Strong (Does not show % discount for orders / Rebates are cumbersome) Service & Maintenance - Strong to Medium: Needs a lot of work for differences in business models for Service. Scheduling a service is a challenge. Manufacturing - Light: When they mean light manufacturing they mean it. Not a CNC type manufacturing add-on. They are currently working on a scheduling functionality that will help a ton but would still be a lot of work to run a large caliber manufacturing facility using this add-on. Some things are nice and some other are horridly missing. There is better software that handles manufacturing easier. CRM - Thumbs is half down: Can get away with the baseline functionality and better with some customization but a purchasable integrated add-on’s make’s a world of difference! Reporting - Baseline: Thumbs Down - Need to purchase add-on if you want any business oversight and strong reports. Someone with Highly developed SQL and or C++ Skills recommended. Crystal skills is a bonus. Can get away with middle of the road knowledge in those areas but the highly developed skills make a world of difference in molding your business processes.

The Good…

Scale-ability and the capability to mold to a lot of different companies business models. The Purchasing/Forecasting functionality is top notch and very mold-able to any purchasing model ranging from central purchasing down to individualized seasonal items. Once set up it will let you get away with a smaller procurement department as the system will tell you what you need to order. The vendor is good about fixing issues quickly but sometimes difficult to distinguish between an actual error and a company specific business process. There are a ton of purchasable add-on’s from the Vendor them-self along with even more third party add-on’s that makes this a wonderful software if you have the money and skilled personnel to support it.

The Bad…

Scale-ability and the capability to mold to a lot of different companies business models. Since this software can mold to a large variety of business models it can make training difficult and long due to the complexities of the software’s advanced features. This also makes data entry combersome as you have to know what fields to enter depending on what functionality you are using. Slow to implement vendor driven Idea’s Network from user ideas. The product feels extremely slow once you get used to running the system and is glitchy because of the method chosen to release updates and advancements. Developers run a continuous improvement program with multiple releases a year so as they are designing new features at the same time they are cleaning errors and glitches rather than waiting a long time for advancements and a rock solid release. This could also be considered good and bad if you need an advancement, you don’t have to wait! The companies move to have the first level of support go to India can lead to frustrations because of the communication blearier along with the new support teams are not yet very knowledgeable with the software and the level of experiences with the software is still being developed