Vista

We love the change that we made to VISTA. It has allowed our company to streamline, and operate with same personnel - with growing at the same time.

Pros

We were a Maxwell Streetsmarts users for over 10 years, when Viewpoint purchased Maxwell. At that point we began to shop "other" vendors for the best comprehensive solution for our Heavy Excavation company. As it turned out Viewpoint Vista Softwarewon! We preplanned for nearly 15 months before making the transition. We opted to make the transition at the slowest time of year for "our" company. With our initial planning we were able to schedule training that worked in our company's timeframe, we were assigned a Project Manager who kept us on track. Our go live date was Feb 2016 - of which meant - we went live; hiccups and all! To the credit of Viewpoints Vista team the transition was seamless. We had the correct training from the start, correct leadership within our company, and a VISTA TEAM that moved us forward.
We started out with the essentials, and have since added a few more modules, document imaging, and Mobile Field Manager.
It has taken us awhile to adjust to the reports vrs what we were use to, but have found we can "adjust" reports via the Crystal Report writer ourselves.
As software updates are released, they are easily installable from the end users aspect.
I highly recommend the software as a whole - many ways to get information out!

Cons

Cons are not negative to us - just ways to improve! After using the software for awhile and you call into support, and you know more than the support person.

I think a great deal of the Cons could be eliminated if the training was better, but the way I understand the roll out training was so expensive and fast that it wasn't that helpful. Plus it happened on the onset before they had any experience with the software. There are video trainings that are good, but some are outdated.

Pros

After you learn the nuances of the software its a good product. It tracks compliance well, subcontract and change order entry is easy. Good reports to obtain information.

Cons

Due to inadequate initial training the previous AP lady thought she could bill an amount on items that were designated as EA (having unit cost and Unit Quantity. As a result, we have had major issues. The support staff said if Viewpoint would fix that issue their support cases would drop exponentially. If they cannot fix it, at least they should not allow the user to be able to perform the function. Although good data on the reports, some are clumsy. At times it is difficult to find exactly what you want to display on a report. Support is great, but when the problem overlaps from one category to another, you can get faulty information. For example...if you have an AP problem, it could be causing a problem in SL but the AP support team won't know to tell you that. We had a major issue that was created as a result of this because it crossed years.