Comtech's Visioncore

[bluecherry]

Has anyone used Comtech's Visioncore to manage Ablecommerce? Any cons? Anything I should be aware of?

[jmestep]

You need to make sure it works with Able 7, if that is why you are asking. The screenshots of Able that show on Comtech's site are Able 5.5

[WylieE]

The AbleCommerce / VisionCore integration utility is still in beta right now. It is more of a synchronization utility than a seamless integration of the two. One of the important details is to know which way the data is flowing.

Our new website/back end ERP will be based on the Able/Vision combination. We've only been in development for about a month, but it is looking very promising so far.

[chad08]

Make sure you test it and understand how it works. The synchronization is very tight between the two systems which means almost everything must be the same in each system (categories, shipping codes, etc.)

It uses triggers to update data between the two databases. That's fine if you are hosting both the DBs but if your Visioncore DB is back at the office and your Able cart is at a hosting company, it's hard to encrypt the SQL traffic. It also adds another point of failure. For example, if the Able DB can't reach VisionCore while the user is adding their address at checkout the order will fail.

One big concern for me was that it does not handle items with options. And yes, it's in beta but does work with version 7.

[calvis]

One big concern for me was that it does not handle items with options. And yes, it's in beta but does work with version 7.

I would have the same concern for the handling of kits as well. Any word on if it will handle kits? The Visioncore product does sound very promising, but I think it would hard to ween people off from Quick books to using their accounting setup. Does their accounting setup have any functionality for assemblies or BOM?

[chad08]

You can create kits in VisionCore, but I'm not sure if they work with the integration to AbleCommerce. You can download a demo copy of VisionCore from their site to see how it compares to Quickbooks.

[bluecherry]

I too have concerns about kits. They have a free single user unlimited use download to play around with. However I'm unsure if they have a Ablecommerce online demo that you can connect to to verify intergration.

On the Visioncore side I wasn't able to get kits working the way I wanted. When I setup an assembly item and added it into a quote or order it threw all the assembly items into the order. When I tried a kit it didn't work like I expected (I expected a box saying hey, which kit items do you want added).

As far as moving from Quickbooks...I have no problem with that. It's a constant headache trying to keep quotes together along with keeping inventory correct, and forget about any CRM functions.

We currently use Volusion and 3dcart for our two sites. If visioncore supported two sites with shared inventory and supported kits I'd jump today. I have two emails I'm waiting on that I sent them to address some of my questions.

We were looking at Interprise Suite and using ASPDNSF. However I've heard _horror_ stories of sites going down for days and no real fixes to their 500+ bugs reports.

Interprise Suite and Visioncore look to be about the same, so close at first I thought I was looking at a rebranded version. However alot of the "what the hell?" stupid things I saw in Interprise Suite are not in Visioncore and alot of the "that would be cool.." are in Visioncore. I'm not 100% thrilled that you have to have Shiprush installed to do online quotes for shipping (Interprise you just put in your UPS API username and password and it was done). But, after using Shiprush for 2 years it's nice and works well.

I'm very much interested in Visioncore and hope that someone will get back to me soon on my questions. I really believe having a decent ERP / CRM solution for Ablecommerce would be awesome for Ablecommerce.

As far as running the databases as mentioned in the previous post...we would install Visioncore's databases on the same server as Ablecommerce.

Thanks

One big concern for me was that it does not handle items with options. And yes, it's in beta but does work with version 7.

I would have the same concern for the handling of kits as well. Any word on if it will handle kits? The Visioncore product does sound very promising, but I think it would hard to ween people off from Quick books to using their accounting setup. Does their accounting setup have any functionality for assemblies or BOM?

[WylieE]

Make sure you test it and understand how it works. The synchronization is very tight between the two systems which means almost everything must be the same in each system (categories, shipping codes, etc.)

It uses triggers to update data between the two databases. That's fine if you are hosting both the DBs but if your Visioncore DB is back at the office and your Able cart is at a hosting company, it's hard to encrypt the SQL traffic. It also adds another point of failure. For example, if the Able DB can't reach VisionCore while the user is adding their address at checkout the order will fail.

One big concern for me was that it does not handle items with options. And yes, it's in beta but does work with version 7.

Chad, are you currently testing the two or are you in development?

As a note, I've found the support team at Comtech Solutions to be responsive to our concerns and bugs we've found in the integration tool. (Replication concerns, mostly.)

According to the integration documentation, kits are supported between the two applications. We have not tested this yet. Our products are highly custom and are subject to complex rules. As a result, we're building our own product wizard outside of both AbleCommerce and VisionCore and will be connecting it to both applications.

While VisionCore is marketed as an ERP system, I would not consider it a powerhouse manufacturing system. They are adding a new production module, inclusive of ABOM, that looks promising.

[chad08]

Chad, are you currently testing the two or are you in development?

I was in development last month but had to go live without the integration. I needed to offer options on our products which it does not handle. My site only has 37 products but a couple hundred sku's when you add the variants. I can understand how hard it would be to tie into the option/variant items because of the way AbleCommerce stores them in the database.

I actually bought Able and VisionCore at the same time hoping the integration would work well and because we were shopping for an accounting system and a cart for a new company. I wish they would have better documentation on the "bridge" and describe exactly what it can and cannot do.

I agree that their support has been very responsive and helpful. And if you have a programmer in house, it looks like VC can be customized pretty well.

[WylieE]

I agree that their support has been very responsive and helpful. And if you have a programmer in house, it looks like VC can be customized pretty well.

We recently added an in-house graphics/web designer and a programmer to our development team. So far, we've been very impressed with the level of documentation with VC. It looks to have quite a bit of potential as a back office system with AbleCommerce.

I'll be sure to keep the AbleCommerce forum update on any significant progress we make.

[bluecherry]

if their friendly sales team is anything like the support team then I expect great things from Visioncore. It does seem like they are still working on their product but so far it seems like a good program.

Still a couple features that I'd like to see integrated...orders that are placed in Visioncore should be able to be seen from Ablecommerce client login along with quotes.

I agree that their support has been very responsive and helpful. And if you have a programmer in house, it looks like VC can be customized pretty well.

We recently added an in-house graphics/web designer and a programmer to our development team. So far, we've been very impressed with the level of documentation with VC. It looks to have quite a bit of potential as a back office system with AbleCommerce.

I'll be sure to keep the AbleCommerce forum update on any significant progress we make.

[elzar]

Has anyone used Comtech's Visioncore to manage Ablecommerce? Any cons? Anything I should be aware of?

yes i used Comtech's VisionCore, and AC7 and very familiar with those 2, i cant see any cons, it should work great, both program has a good DB design it should work great!