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Summary
Acom’s EzConnect software promises to make EDI integration easy and seamless for any sized organization. It does so by relying on a back-end infrastructure hosted by Acom that acts as the gateway to popular retail organizations with which you may be exchanging EDI. This concept is not novel or unique to Acom and like other organizations with similar models there are advantages and disadvantages to this type of solution. The biggest disadvantages have to deal with the lack of independence you will suffer from having to use Acom’s services as a result of the set of for the company’s products. While initially this is a viable and easy starting point, most organizations will quickly wish they had more independence.
Strengths
The biggest strengths of the Acom approach is its ease of setup and configuration. Getting operational with an Acom solution can in fact be very easy. Their products provide a fairly broad amount of support - both in terms of trading partners supported as well as the number of accounting packages and ERP systems that can be used. The product itself is fairly mature and is on par with most EDI products as far as ease of use and ease of deployment. The biggest challenge with Acom, however, comes with two aspects of their solution that could be very limiting for even mildly growing businesses.
Limitations
Two aspects of the way Acom does business will make you pause. First is the fact that Acom is at its very heart a VAN. They may not say it that way but essentially that’s what they do. Their system relies on sending their data through their “pipes” and in turn limits your ability tow work independently with other providers or directly with retailers when you want to. The second major omission of the solution is the reliance you will inherently acquire on Acom for even the smallest of changes to your integration maps. That’s because at its very heart the Acome solution is a closed system requiring the company itself to help you make the necessary changes to make the product work for you.
Wish List
Our biggest wish list would be to give users the ability to create their own EDI Integration maps and the ability to create a full automated process without human intervention - this is after all what competing vendors like EMANIO are already offering.
Product Ratings
The product ratings below reflect our evaluation of Acom with a rating score that ranges from 1 to 5, with 1 equaling “fail” and 5 being an “Excellent”. Our overall score for Acom is of 2.5 out of a total possible of 5.
| Product Area |
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| Setup & Installation |
Setting up and installing the product is relatively easy and fast since most of the integration work has already been done ahead of time. |
4 |
| Interface |
While the interface is easy to use, the lack of advanced features, advanced mapping capabilities and its reliance on human interaction forces us to lower the score. |
3 |
| Features |
While rich in features, Acom lacks in major areas - including advanced self mapping capabilities as well as the lack of full automation. Having to rely on the vendor for all your EDI work is simply not viable. |
1 |
| Ease of use |
Although the web based product is fairly easy to use, the integration component is overly cumbersome and requires too much oversight on the part of the user. |
3 |
| Automation Capabilities |
Extreme limitations in capabilities and “hands off” operation force yet again a low score for the product; Acom is trying to force users hands by controlling how they work with EDI which is simply not viable for most companies. |
3 |
| Integration capabilities |
Integration capabilities are good, but ultimately fail to impress due to the lack of advanced mapping capabilities as well as the lack of automation that ultimately forces users to manually manage their system. |
2 |
| Performance |
Although the system performs reasonably well the forced interaction with users to complete the integration aspect forces limitations on how much data can be sent to the ERP system at any given time. |
3 |
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Overall Score |
2.5 |
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Our Team
About Team 
The strength of EDI Software Review is the individuals that make up the team. In fact, we believe that our team consists of a group of uniquely talented individuals. Each of the team members is an experienced consultant that is operationally savvy, demonstrating a deep levelof experience. Each member of the team has an intense commitment to board service and to working closely with the management teams of software companies to provide an unbias independant review. |
