GEP SMART vs Oracle E-Business Suite iProcurement comparison

"The basics of what we use it for and what the product offers work really well for us in terms of contract creation, from beginning to end."

"I love it because everything is done within the contract module. The previous tool that we had really acted more as a repository, whereas this is the lifecycle. Once a business owner gets to the point where they want to enter into a contractual relationship with a party, from that point, including the drafting of it through to the signature on it, it covers the lifecycle. It's from the beginning to the end to even the archiving. It's all done within the tool, including e-signature."

"It's a huge efficiency tool and it has really accelerated our ability to drive the procurement business case in terms of cost savings."

"From a contract perspective, in my opinion, SMART has improved things a hundred-fold."

"The digital transformation and people being able to search and the reduction in redundancy are all part of the efficiency and process improvement, from our perspective, and there's a huge benefit to it."

"There are additional time savings in managing communications. If you have an open RFP and there are questions, you can manage all of the questions and answers in the thread inside that RFP. All the suppliers will get any notifications that you want them to get, and everything is within the body of the RFP so you don't have to worry about things in email, outside of the system."

"The one we use the most is the sourcing module... It's really easy to use. You don't have to train vendors. You can add a new vendor at any time, and that vendor will get an email saying, "You've been selected to participate in our RFP, and you do X to get your ID set up." That works really well."

"We operate with three different systems that input data. The fact that GEP consolidates all that information into one place is a big deal for us. It streamlines that data for us."

"The features and capabilities of Oracle E-Business Suite iProcurement that I have found most valuable include its market reputation, its ability to automate all processes such as creating requisitions and receiving items, and its e-commerce interface that allows vendors and suppliers to browse and automate tasks."

"It is a scalable product."

"It is a scalable solution."

"Tech support could use a little bit more work."

"Very recently, they implemented a customer success team to manage our expectations and communicate them to their technical team. That function is relatively new and some work needs to be done to build that connection so that it's a little more seamless."

"We definitely have some asks for enhancements. One of the big ones we'd like to see is what we call "drag-and-drop." If I have an email that I want to maintain in the SMART record for whatever reason — for example, it has supporting information in it — I would love to be able to just drop that into the notes and attachments section without having to save it as a PDF and then upload it."

"The loading of the contracts could be a little bit easier."

"While it captures all the fields and requirements, when any supplier updates or new supplier registration happens, then the supplier needs to update their bank details. Our IT team has made it so every half an hour the GEP SMART system will push the supplier to the Oracle Database. So, we have faced some problems, like bank details, etc. We addressed this issue with GEP. They are working on it to make bank details a mandatory field for any supplier and match our requirements. Their engineering team has taken up creating a customized process for us."

"The manuals, especially the ones for the suppliers, are currently available only in English. If these can also be translated into different languages, that would be excellent."

"We didn't like their dashboard initially, but they responded to that very well. They've given us some customizable dashboards and have also made it so that the dashboards can be exported into PDF and other formats, so that we can share them with the rest of the company... That was a weakness at the beginning, but one that they have responded to adequately and we're really pleased with the result."

"We didn't like their dashboard initially, but they responded to that very well."

"The interface lags a bit since it is a heavy application."

"There could be a mobile application for the product."

"If our organization could use it as a full-fledged solution, then it would be valuable and give a return on investment. However, since we are not currently using it as a full-fledged solution, even facing some bugs and problems with the synchronization with some of the internal software, we are not able to use it in a full-fledged manner."

"My advice is to think wisely when it comes to estimating the number of licenses that you will require. If you settle on a number too early and you need additional ones, then the extra licenses might be quite expensive."

"The product is more expensive than one of its competitors."

"The product is somewhat expensive. Only large organizations can handle such an application."