Phocas Software

4.8 (117)
Feel good about using data.

Overall rating

4.8 /5
(117)
Value for Money
4.6/5
Features
4.6/5
Ease of Use
4.5/5
Customer Support Software
4.6/5

99%
recommended this app
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117 Reviews

Bill
Overall rating
  • Industry: Warehousing
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Johnstone Supply - Las Vegas - Why Phocas has increased our productivity!

Reviewed on 10/10/2019

Overall we are very happy with this product. It has opened the door for getting information to our...

Overall we are very happy with this product. It has opened the door for getting information to our teams much faster and it also created a new full time position for data analysis! The flexibility of being able to create our own databases, & adding to existing databases has increased our ability to share information to our teams in a easy to view format instead of sending spreadsheets that some people did not look at.

Pros

It is very easy to use! I can show someone the basics in 5 to 10 minutes and they are off and running creating favorites and dashboards. The software is updated every month and their support and documentation is outstanding.
The product gives us the information we need faster than doing it in our ERP system. With a couple of clicks you can analyze you sales data and then quickly change views to look at the data in a completely different way. It very robust in all the options you have.
The company is developing based on their customer needs, you can tell that they all want to help us achieve success with this product.

Cons

This is hard to say because their are few cons. We have requested enhancements and we have some support issues that are submitted. But we have no visibility , (web portal), to review what we already submitted. It would be nice to have a support portal to check open cases and enhancements we have submitted.

Graham
Overall rating
  • Industry: Oil & Energy
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Happy to Recommend Phocas!

Reviewed on 17/10/2019

We started with Phocas in 2009 with just the standard sales database for one region of our business...

We started with Phocas in 2009 with just the standard sales database for one region of our business but have now progressed to multiple sales databases for other business units with fully integrated rebates module as well as finance and procurement style database now, with plans to roll it out further in other parts of the business.

Pros

The ease of use of Phocas is what puts it at the top of our list for BI software. The set up of the data was quick and easy (with great support from the Phocas guys) and ability to drill down from top line data right into the detail of a transaction is what makes Phocas a great tool for us. Phocas is widely used across our business to track and analyse sales data, finance data and purchasing data with future plans to add more modules. The PUG Forum is also a good feature for me, if there is something that you don't know how to do then you'll find the info there or someone can point you in the right direction. It's also a great place to suggest the feature that you'd like to see and Phocas review and add on to their product road map, so you know they are listening to your ideas.

Cons

I'd say the visualizations and widgets on the dashboards could do with abit of updating. The charts aren't always a flexible as you'd like with axes labels and adjusting the axes to suit the chart, plus you have to be quite specific with the data in the first place to get the chart you want.

Ken
Overall rating
  • Industry: Wholesale
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 6.0 /10

Good BI Tool, Not Great

Reviewed on 17/08/2021

Good, basic BI tool that can give sales teams good information to understand their customers and...

Good, basic BI tool that can give sales teams good information to understand their customers and opportunities to grow sales and margins.

Pros

Easy to pull in our ERP data.
Good to summarize trends and KPI metrics.
Matrix feature is great to find correlated products "like" customers aren't buying.
Ability to filter (called "Focus") on a dimension and all of the widgets within the dashboards will update to just show the info relative to that filter.
Ability to quickly change dimensions and measures to show information in different ways.
The customer service department is awesome - will help whenever and however they can.

Cons

Custom calculations are hard to use.
Graphing tools are not robust (i.e. no data labels, data tables, combo charts are limited, etc.)
Needs an additional user license that fits in between the Viewer and Full Licenses to give additional user features like exporting, but not the ability to design dashboards.
Formatting and sorting the data is below average.
The back-end Designer tool takes awhile to master.
Wish there was a handbook or instructions on how to use the different features of the software.

NIcholas
Overall rating
  • Industry: Wholesale
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Phocas is Amazing!

Reviewed on 08/10/2019

The biggest benefit is not having our sales reps rely on our IT department to create a report from...

The biggest benefit is not having our sales reps rely on our IT department to create a report from an old legacy system. They also don't have to rely on standard out of the box reports that can be limited in scope. Phocas allows them to instantly dive into their sales data and find anything they need--from summary numbers to very specific sales data. In fact, this applies across all departments including management. The ease and flexibility of finding information is incredible.

Pros

Ease of use. Within seconds I can find the exact data I am looking for. It requires very little technical knowledge, however, I have set up many advanced sales--and even financial--reports using Custom Mode. The software loads quickly, and I have rarely encountered a bug. On the few occasions where I have emailed the support desk they ALWAYS respond quickly and have a solution implemented right away. This is definitely not the case with many other software companies that I deal with. I love Phocas.

Cons

This is very minor, but exporting reports could use some touch ups. Exporting to Excel comes with conditional formatting. Some users may like it, however I almost always remove the conditional formats because it dramatically slows down other functions I may perform with the data in Excel. Again, this is very minor as I understand the usefulness to some users of having the conditional formats already set up. I also occasionally print a report that displays in a weird format with regards to column headings and column widths.

Thomas
Overall rating
  • Industry: Wholesale
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Why I recommend Phocas to all of my peers in this industry.

Reviewed on 17/08/2021

There isn't enough space to go through the numerous benefits I have gained since purchasing this...

There isn't enough space to go through the numerous benefits I have gained since purchasing this software. I have reorganized sales territories based on overly concentrated vertical sales. Our team now has a place to review and track sales vs goals daily. I have a consolidated and by location view of my clients in an easy to find manner along with a customer stratification system to help manage margins, AR terms compliance, etc to educate the sales team on what we need to be doing differently with said accounts (spend more time, spend less, cross sell specific items....) . Like I say, I could spend all day on the benefits.

Pros

I have been exposed to 10 or more different operating systems over the course of my 26 year business career. NONE of them have provided adequate business intelligence tools. Phocas is highly intuitive and thorough which saves me hours per week of spreadsheet work. I cannot offer a better compliment than it being an amazing time management tool.

Cons

There are a few issues I have with loading budgets and working through Administrative User rights but that is an infrequent issue. I would like to have a few additional graphical options for data visualization but it works just fine as it is. What I like the absolute least is that we didn't add additional modules...accounting, pricing tools... and have no plans to do so in the near future due to budgetary contraints.

Josh
Overall rating
  • Industry: Wholesale
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10

Phocas is a necessity!

Reviewed on 05/08/2021

Fantastic. [SENSITIVE CONTENT], our Customer Success Consultant is amazing. She's readily available...

Fantastic. [SENSITIVE CONTENT], our Customer Success Consultant is amazing. She's readily available and knows exactly what she is doing. Their support staff is also very accommodating and knowledgeable. We've dealt with other software companies and they take their time and treat you like they don't need your business and
over charge for routine services. Phocas is a true partner. A couple projects that were able to be successful with the use of Phocas is: Customer Stratification, Gap Analysis, Daily Inventory Analysis (Which was huge for this last year) and our Dead Stock process.

Pros

The ease of use. As an admin of Phocas, it was very easy to get our staff onboarded and very comfortable with day to day usage. If the staff isn't going to use the tool, then it's worthless no matter how great the data is.

Cons

Phocas is great at listening to our issues and roll out timely updates to add new features or fix issues.

Bobby
Overall rating
  • Industry: Wholesale
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Getting the most out of data 'NOW' !!

Reviewed on 11/08/2021

Our number one benefit was saving time and delivering information to our Salesforce. Prior to...

Our number one benefit was saving time and delivering information to our Salesforce. Prior to PHOCAS every need for information came as a request to our I.T. department. With a limited staff keeping our systems updated and available was a major time consumer ... leaving very little time to develop the report or query request that constantly came into the department. After Implementing PHOCAS the number of request went down mon th by month as the Salesforce started using PHOCAs and getting their information without having to wait on the I.T. staff to produce it.

Pros

Deliver what was promised. Ease of implementation, Ease of training, Ease of Customer service.
Price point sealed the deal.

Cons

As we looked at several products we found that most of them had the same look and feel. Most wanted a high front end implementation cost along with a 2 year commitment. Phocas was willing to do a 'Install, try and buy' approach.... nothing to lose but some system admin time working with Phocas to setup the environment to prove it worked. So with that said ... our only 'con' comment is ... we wish we had implemented sooner.

Lisa
Overall rating
  • Industry: Wholesale
  • Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Phocas is a fantastic tool!

Reviewed on 10/08/2021

I do a lot of reporting in my role with the company, not only internal but external to our vendors...

I do a lot of reporting in my role with the company, not only internal but external to our vendors and also customers.

I am able to provide real time reports via Phocas. This has been where I most have appreciated the software. I used to have to email all my reports which would take countless hours week after week. WIth Phocas, setting up a link takes a few minutes on the front end but then it's done and you can easily share with many.

I have been able to dig into our data and provide analysis that I would have not been able to do otherwise.

Pros

I love the flexibility within Phocas and the ease with which you can customize reporting to fit so many different areas of business. I especially am thankful for the links that you can provide to non-users to share reporting outside of your company. Phocas makes my job so much easier and gives me the power to provide quick and useful reports.

Cons

Until I discovered the online videos and trainings, I was not able to use the software to the fullest! I highly recommend when the software is introduced to a new user, that they watch some of the 101 level trainings to learn all that can be done.

Jason
Overall rating
  • Industry: Automotive
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Comprehensive Reporting & Business Building Tool

Reviewed on 10/10/2019

My overall experience with Phocas has been excellent, we use the system to monitor growing and...

My overall experience with Phocas has been excellent, we use the system to monitor growing and declining sales to protect out business and easily identify buying gaps to help increase sales.

Pros

Ease of use, speed of reporting and level of detail available that can be accessed. Automated reporting saves a lot of time. Support from the account managers when required is excellent.

Cons

Sometimes some of the functionality could be improved further to allow more flexibility. An example here would be multiple options for subscriptions i.e. a weekly report that you could also set to receive at monthend without the need to create a new favourite. Nest function is a fantastic addition to the functionality but due to the way Phocas works you have to start at the bottom layer of data then build layers above.

peter
Overall rating
  • Industry: Automotive
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Quick data analysis that creates easy talking points and business opportunities

Reviewed on 09/02/2023

My experience is that the software is a major tool in my working day that allows me to tackle many...

My experience is that the software is a major tool in my working day that allows me to tackle many business questions and come up with a solution or talking point via the data.

Pros

The Product is easy to use, clear and concise with a good simple view of the data.

Cons

Maybe some more different style's of graphs would be good.

Response from Phocas Software

Hi Peter,
thanks for taking the time to leave us a review, we love that you're able to quickly get to actionable data with Phocas.

If you have any graphs or gauges that you are really missing from your dashboards we would like to know more - you can always email us at [email protected]

Warm regards,
Mike Hills
Global Head of Customer

Chris
Overall rating
  • Industry: Wholesale
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Great Product with First Class Support

Reviewed on 05/08/2021

Phocas has easily been one of our most successful implementations. Users love it.

Phocas has easily been one of our most successful implementations. Users love it.

Pros

Offers easy deployment and maintenance. Database builds are a snap while offering dynamic reporting, dashboards and alerts.

Cons

More access to backend functionality would be helpful.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Power BI

Reasons for Choosing Phocas Software

Cost, functionality and maintenance
Stephanie
Overall rating
  • Industry: Logistics & Supply Chain
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

I've worked with Phocas for just a year, and absolutely LOVE it.

Reviewed on 09/05/2017

Pros

The ease of use is great, and has brought so much benefit to our company. We are able to customize reports and dashboards to our needs as a company, which is a huge deal. Getting reports out to our field is easy and painless. We use subscriptions constantly, and that has made many employee's lives easier.

Cons

I wish, still there was more ability to customize the report layouts. There are a lot of times when I have to create the report in Phocas, export it, and then do additional formatting in Excel. Also, the ability to download an entire dashboard would be amazing! It would make it so much easier than exporting each part individually.

Dean
Overall rating
  • Industry: Wholesale
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Happy PHOCAS User

Reviewed on 10/08/2021

I speak for all at 3E when I say this product is used daily and relied upon to be the source of...

I speak for all at 3E when I say this product is used daily and relied upon to be the source of good data for analytics from our ERP System.

Pros

Ease of use.
Depth of its capabilities.
Intuitive - Minimal Training needed for general user.

Cons

I wish I had more time to learn the product backend features.

DArren
Overall rating
  • Industry: Wholesale
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Excellent Business Intelligence

Reviewed on 08/10/2019

Managing a sales force performance is key and the data provided by Phocas allows quick and easy...

Managing a sales force performance is key and the data provided by Phocas allows quick and easy benchmarking. There is also a superb level of output for the sales force to use to be better account managers and category champions.

Pros

The ability to dive into category data, and split by customers, customers groups, date ranges, sales rep, is excellent.
Also the ability to present customers purchasing data to them via matrix reports and charts is very impressive.

Cons

Writing custom reports is a great feature but can be tricky if you don’t do it very often.

Grahame
Overall rating
  • Industry: Warehousing
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Our experience over 16 years of Phocas usage

Reviewed on 08/10/2019

Pros

We have been a user of Phocas since 2003 and it has proved to be the single most useful piece of software we have ever used. We have our staff, customers and suppliers accessing the system, it is that good. Our suppliers prefer to use Phocas to their own in house systems and our customers say they have never seen anything as good. Without Phocas we would seriously struggle to know what is going on in our business.

Cons

There is nothing we don't really like...

Donna
Overall rating
  • Industry: Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Powerful tool for all level of users!! Simple, Intuitive, and Flexible!

Reviewed on 29/07/2021

Very user friendly, lots of learning opportunities, great customer support, very intuitive.

Very user friendly, lots of learning opportunities, great customer support, very intuitive.

Pros

I love the ability to customize your data. I can run a high level report to summarize data another employee may need and with a few clicks can drill down to the details needed to create a more in-depth analysis of the data. I also love the flexibility of changing views, measures, dates, etc. with ease without starting from scratch.

Cons

I honestly can't think of anything I don't like. Customer Service in very customer-centric and work to use feedback to always make improvements.

CHRISTOPHER
Overall rating
  • Industry: Wholesale
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Phocas Software review

Reviewed on 08/10/2019

Sales and profit information by customer and product line is instantaneously available. I do not...

Sales and profit information by customer and product line is instantaneously available. I do not know how we functioned without it. Grat tool to analyze sales and profitability

Pros

Information Availability and speed of access to queries

Cons

We cannot link our customer price matrix database to our sales information

Linda
Overall rating
  • Industry: Wholesale
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Very happy with Phocas

Reviewed on 18/08/2021

Overall we are very happy with our product.

Overall we are very happy with our product.

Pros

This product is easy to use and we create reports quickly.

Cons

We wanted to add some features into our existing databases but couldn't do it on our own. We just had training and now we learned how to do that.

John
Overall rating
  • Industry: Automotive
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Phocas Software review

Reviewed on 29/10/2019

Good, I can see what everyone is buying, how I’m targeting specific products we manufacture. Follow...

Good, I can see what everyone is buying, how I’m targeting specific products we manufacture. Follow up leads. Easily compare turnovers. See who has stopped buying a particular part no, and see who is buying something new.

Pros

All information I need for sales, prospects easily available.
Updates every day

Cons

Nothing really. All works pretty easily for the info I need

Dianne
Overall rating
  • Industry: Building Materials
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10

Love Phocas!

Reviewed on 09/05/2017

Pros

I have been a Phocas user for a couple of years. Being a SHIMS user, we are always looking for software to enhance it and make the end users lives easier. Phocas has been a great fit for us.

Cons

We started using the CRM database about 6 months ago. After a somewhat rocky start, the salesforce is finally embracing the technology.

David
Overall rating
  • Industry: Building Materials
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Phocas review

Reviewed on 08/10/2019

We have improved margin, customer retention, staff output and much more.

We have improved margin, customer retention, staff output and much more.

Pros

Data is very powerful when used properly.
Easy to use once leaned and it's extremely quick to extract important data.

Cons

Some bugs still sit in the software. Not a lot but they are annoying when they do pop up.

Dawn
Overall rating
  • Industry: Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing
  • Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Fast USer Adoption

Reviewed on 08/08/2021

Pros

The software is easy to use and implement. User adoption was very fast. I like that you can quickly and easily build your own database in Designer without an IT resource.

Cons

If the data could be real time instead of on sync

OLIVIA
Overall rating
  • Industry: Wholesale
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10

Simplified Tool for business data

Reviewed on 17/04/2019

Pros

I'm able to see various snapshots of all the data that drives my business decisions in one place - and even better - I am able to slice and dice the data in different ways so as to get in depth analysis when needed

Cons

Not in real time (at least for my organization) - the data downloads every night so we have to wait until next day to see numbers up until the previous day

Vince
Overall rating
  • Industry: Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Unlocking the power of phocas

Reviewed on 17/08/2021

Overall experience has been positive. Great service/support

Overall experience has been positive. Great service/support

Pros

Fairly easy to use with data highly configurable

Cons

Lack of out of box setup. Lack of point and click to drill into Data.

Gar
Overall rating
  • Industry: Paper & Forest Products
  • Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10

Phocas Software review

Reviewed on 29/10/2019

Helps me stay up to date with what happened and anticipate coming trends

Helps me stay up to date with what happened and anticipate coming trends

Pros

Easy to use, quick access, daily reporting

Cons

Can’t streamline some of the reporting not a timely report process