Jitterbit Vinyl Reviews

We are using it for headcount, some dashboarding, and centralized reporting for various departments.

In one group, we created an application which helps provide insight into profitability per salesperson. For each of their orders/customers, where is the best profitability? Where are the low margins? This has been transformative.

It is flexible and versatile. You can connect to multiple data sources or databases concurrently, which is very useful. You don't have to extract and load or build a data warehouse, if you don't want to. You can attach to databases live and pull data live wherever it is. It can be in the cloud, on-premise, or on a subsidiary's premise. You can get at them all. You're not just stuck with doing redundant copies of data.

We find it is easy to learn and use, and the user interface is easy to pick up. We have trained some of our own people to be able to do apps with VINYL. Therefore, we can turn things around quickly.

Once or twice, when a new version of VINYL comes out, it has had a negative impact on a feature. However, we do everything in a test environment. Unless we miss something in test, we don't go live with it if it isn't perfect. Zudy hasn't had too many stumbles along the way, but there have been a couple times, and it's been minor.

I haven't seen any limitations to the scalability, and we have demanded a lot.

Everyone at my current location has access to the product via the Intranet, about a few hundred people.

We find the team members who work with us from Zudy catch on to business issues and processes quickly. They make good suggestions and are excellent listeners, which distinguishes them from more than 90 percent of the rest of the consultants and service providers out there. These people listen and do what you ask them to do. It's truly a distinguishing characteristic.

I was looking for a tool with which I could easy build dashboards from multiple sources which didn't necessarily go together. It didn't make sense to build a single data warehouse out of information which was quite disparate. So, I found a viable solution in VINYL.

The initial setup was straightforward.

The implementation team was a combination of Zudy's and our technical teams.

I have two Zudy staff full-time onsite for deployment and maintenance, plus my own team.

Pricing and licensing are expensive.

I did evaluate other competitors.

Consider Zudy, at least when you are getting started, because their people listen and deliver what you ask them to do.

We love the tool. I like it enough to introduce it to another division of the company. 

They have added some security features at our specific request. We are told that other customers are very receptive to those security features.

We have had minimal problems with the product and a high degree of success with their consultants, service providers, and technical support people. In addition, the success that we have experienced with recommendations that we've suggested to improve the product. They are easy and fantastic to do business with. They don't have to be micromanaged.

We use it for different applications. We're doing some dashboarding, some demo tracking, some commission. So far, those are the three applications that have been working for us, or are in the works.

It gives us an accurate idea of where we stand as a business, on many different levels. It also gives our sales department more of an idea of how they are doing for the month, every month. And it gives us more capabilities within our systems to pull information out. It's just a better, more accurate, and faster system.

This is like having an application within your business and it's a totally different premise, rather than having to go in and have all this coding done, which just takes so long. And everything else is done by spreadsheets. You don't want to stare at a spreadsheet all day long, because there are a million of them and there could be errors. The idea of there being errors is less likely than it used to be.

• Ease of use
• Easily accessible

We've been on a hold with one of the products that we started with, which was one of our processes. It just wasn't capable of doing it. It could extract it but it couldn't get the information back in internally, correctly. And that's just because our system is old.

No issues with stability. It is very much a stable product.

The first project we gave them, our biggest, was the problem. It wasn't able to do it but, as I said, the system we were using was too old, and they're too advanced.

We have a guy that comes to our office every Wednesday and he's easily accessible at any hour, any day of the week. If there is a tech problem, he deals with our IT department directly. Honestly, everything is quick. I think because of the way our world is nowadays, where everything is so easily accessible, and being accessible even on a weekend makes it that much better.

We were using a manual system that we created ourselves, and that's why we switched.

The initial setup was straightforward, not complex at all. We're not delving into the learning of how to use it yet. We have somebody in-house who is trying to learn it, but we have other projects going on, so it's taken a back-burner. But, as I said, its accessibility is very easy.

You always look for the underlying cost, there's always underlying costs but the value is fine. I don't think it should cost any more. You pay for the software but you're also paying for their employees, when they work onsite for you.

Licensing is fine. We have to finalize the agreement once a year and that's pretty much it. Otherwise, it's ours and we can do whatever we want with it.

We did look at other options but they don't have the flexibility that this does. This has a lot of flexibility.

They give you a free trial of what it can do. Go in with something that's easier, not harder, because that is going to give you an idea of what it can do, and you can basically work from that point on.

I rate it an eight out of 10. There is always room for improvement. If they could just make it a little bit easier for the customer to learn how to use it themselves, that would make it better.

The greatest benefit that this product has had for Cal-Maine has been to empower our developers to very quickly be able to produce applications. This is very important in today's time frame.

The product has reduced the time that it takes us to produce apps.

Being an agriculture company, we are pretty mean and lean when it comes to spend. It really helps to produce applications in a faster period of time.

One of the cool things about Vinyl is they are constantly improving it. They have a new version that they are showing, which we have not seen yet, at the meeting that I am attending. 

They are constantly adding new features. That is really important. We suggest things sometimes, then all of the sudden, they miraculously appear.

We have never really had any downtime with Vinyl at all. We actually host this in our own environment as opposed to a cloud environment, which is their typical model. We have been very pleased with the stability of the product.

This is an extremely scalable solution because it enables us to interface with all types of disparate information. So, the larger we grow, the more we can use a product like Vinyl.

We are located in Mississippi. There is not a lot of technology available in Mississippi when it comes to solutions like this. One of the things that we value about Vinyl is they have a tremendous support team.

We deployed Vinyl about nine months ago. Previously, we were using a small application that wrote code for our personnel in a manner very unlike the way that Vinyl does. It was something that we worked with because it was all we could find, but as soon as we found Vinyl, we put it into play.

To deploy Vinyl in our environment, we engaged the Zudy engineers to help us. This is not a product where someone could just get the code, install it, and do it themselves. A very important part of a business relationship with a software company is application support. This all worked together for our installation to go well.

Some people are really reluctant to rate anything a 10 out of 10. However, when you have a good product which does a good job, and it is affordable, why not give it a 10?

We're a tour company and we have a schedule of several hundred tour managers who are managing all the tours that we operate. All of their schedules for the year are put in here. We also manage all of their quality surveys. We ask for quality surveys and we get those back. They're not stored here, but they're reported out here. We also manage any guest comments in here. And the big one is reconciling all the tour funds. That's not active yet, but it's being tested right now, and that will go active and live in November. So, there's a lot that's happening with this.

To me, the most important piece is going to be the funding, the reconciliation, because right now it's a very manual process, and this will automate it. It's going to make it a lot more streamlined. It's going to be a lot quicker for people to process it and, therefore, get money back. It's efficient and I like that. They'll be able to just take a snapshot of the receipt and upload it into the system, and then it just all gets submitted. It's cleaner and it will be a lot smoother process.

Zudy has created a platform that will make us much more efficient, with everything in one place. It's a much better way of reporting out. It leaves less room for any human error. I think it will be great. The piece that I'm talking about, specifically, is the funding reconciliation, but in general, all of the other things that they've done so far have been super helpful.

The way that they've done some of the reports, they've created really great data dumps. If I want to see a snapshot of something for a given timeframe, I can download it. From that download, I can create further analysis or do my own thing with it, which is really helpful. I'm even able to go back several years and get data. So when I'm doing a comparison of year over year, I am able to do it just from what they have done, what they have created for us.

In terms of it being easy to learn, it's logical so it makes sense of things. The steps are pretty logical and the display is very user-friendly. A "pencil" means "write," i.e. that you are able to write. So it's clear. It's not ambiguous, what you can and what you can't do on it. 

In the beginning, we were working with it while it was still being tweaked. So sometimes things weren't working 100 percent, or they were working but, because they were being tested behind the scenes, some things were kind of funky. But, just a quick email to them saying, "Is this correct?" would usually have a really logical answer, and then it would be fixed.

It's pretty much a stable product. I haven't seen many issues with it. I do know that there have been some smaller issues with some new people that are also starting to work on it, and their name being in the system, but I haven't been involved in that part of it.

So far, so good. I haven't seen anything that it hasn't been able to handle, but the real test will happen in November when we have several hundred people on it, adding their funds and trying to process or submit their funds.

I can tell you that I really appreciate Martin and Grant, the two guys who have been helping us in developing this. They have been really outstanding. You ask for something, you ask for a specific design, that you want to see something, and they get it. They just give you what you need. It's been really great. It's been a great pleasure working with them.

Whenever I have a request such as, "It would be great to have this," I've been able to send an email to Martin. He has come back and said, "Yeah, we could do that." And, he just does it. There's really not much room for improvement for me, because I feel that is great: To be able to ask for something, and then he immediately just gets it to us. That's been quite helpful.

Their overall support is a ten out of ten. They have been very supportive. If you ask them for something, and they're able to deliver, they do. And if they can't deliver, they just are straightforward and tell you that they can't do that.

I came into the project after it had already started, so I only got, if not end result, the "first draft." It was pretty clear. There were some things that we suggested be changed and they were super helpful about that.

Have meetings with the developers, and make sure that you're clear on exactly what you need before you start to have them develop it. Be really clear.

I would give VINYL an eight out of ten, and I would say that it's great. The eight is because it's pretty user-friendly, it's clean, and it's reliable. I don't know if there are other things out there that are better than this, but for what we have needed so far, based on what I've seen so far, this is pretty helpful.

We use it mainly for financial reporting. It helps us see our net margins in detail, net margin by customer, by category. It allows us to see our sales in more detail, and same-day versus a couple weeks after month-end closes, for example. But we mainly use it for financial purposes.

It has been very beneficial. We have quite a few people using it who would always rely on the finance team to merge Excel spreadsheets, merge data from multiple sources, and then provide a final report to them for whatever turnaround period was required. But now they're able to just go to the website and see what they need right away. If it's data they want to download instead of just seeing it in a final report, they can do that.

Overall, "numbers on demand" has been a really big change for us. VINYL has been able to pull information from a couple of sources, and stuff that would end up just being in giant Excel spreadsheets otherwise, we're able to have it available immediately.

It's also helped the accounting department, specifically, for our month-ends. We still have to validate all our numbers manually, but we compare our numbers now to VINYL and make sure all our manual calculations are in line with VINYL. It's helped with a lot of troubleshooting.

It has made us clean up our data too, to make sure VINYL can read it. We have to make sure we're consistent with how we input our data and categorize everything. We've been able to really expand our reporting and see net margins in so many more ways than we were able to before.

In addition, we've been using a distributor that will send us just giant spreadsheets weekly, of all the data, of all the sales, item by item. The biggest value for us has been the ability for VINYL to do massive revenue recognition for us, every day. That's been the biggest advantage for us, being able to pull this data in every day. Previously, this was something we were only doing at the end of every month.

It's customizable to whatever you might use it for, so I don't know about specific features. It's specific to our needs. But I've gone in and I've learned it myself a little bit, with their help. I've gone to some of the Zudy training for VINYL.

As far as features go, it's the ability for me to go in and see what's going on when I need to. And to be able to start to do some back-end programming of it myself. That's been nice too.

It's very user-friendly, and the front-end is exactly what we need to see, very simple. It can get more complicated too, if those are the needs.

I would love to have the home screen a little more customizable because, as we're building more and more reports, it would be nice to have more options in how they're organized on the screen.

I'm not sure if this is something they could do, but if we had it more customizable for different departments - if sales saw it one way, whereas finance had something different than sales - that would be helpful. We also have a few companies within Elite Group that are using it so more customization could be nice.

It's never been down. The only time we've had issues is if we change something, and then it messes something up in the back-end. But that's always been our fault. Generally, VINYL has really helped us to find our own user errors. We've found more of our own problems than we've ever found with VINYL.

We have three years of data in there. It has handled it well. All our limitations, as far as data is concerned, have been related to the file size. We export things from VINYL into Excel and Excel has a maximum. We can't go over 500,000 lines. I don't think any of our scalability issues have stemmed from VINYL itself.

We keep adding companies to it, and that's been no problem but we're not a huge company. We haven't had any problems with scalability. It's not a problem to add users. It's really quick. That's never caused a problem.

I deal with a lot of people at VINYL. We have our consultants, a couple guys at VINYL, and we talk once a week. If there are any issues I go directly to them. There's also a trainer I've been in contact with when it was less specific to our use of VINYL and just a general VINYL question. 

Everyone has been extremely helpful and friendly. We've never had a problem with them fixing what needs to be fixed. They know what's priority. They know our Friday management report is the most important thing for us and, whatever we do - any changes we make to VINYL - we have to make sure the Friday management report goes out smoothly and as expected.

Before VINYL, it was very manual for us. Zudy is the first tool where we really tried to bring together these two data sources. We went to Zudy VINYL to merge Accpac and our distributor data. It was the first tool we really found. We needed something that could be extremely customizable.

I was involved in getting it to go live. We had a lot of logic to build into it, and that's when I was brought on, to find ways to work with them, to figure out how to go from what's in our system to what the actual correct numbers should be.

It was easy to learn to use. What they present is final. You don't have that many ways to use it. It's not like a major ERP system where you have all these options, all these different menus that you can go through. What's presented on the screen is a report. For me, it's pretty intuitive if I want to change the date range, if I want to change what customer I'm looking at. I don't think anyone else has mentioned to me not finding it intuitive or finding issues with the navigation. It's a pretty straightforward tool, so I find it quite easy to work with.

It's valuable for all of us, in terms of our time. It has saved us time.

Discuss your needs with them, make sure they understand the end goal. Then they can customize it to your needs. With us, we kept changing what we wanted, how to use it, so we had to keep going back to the drawing board. But they're extremely willing to find a way to make what you want, as long as they know what you want.

There is some patience required in getting it set up because it's different for everyone. Everyone uses it differently, so you do have to be patient with the initial setup process. When I was brought on it was because we had to find a way to go from our system, take our numbers, and figure out what it was we wanted to see on the screen, and how we could get them from our system into VINYL. We don't really do inventory the normal way with our company, so we had to find a way to get inventory displayed through VINYL.

Be patient and communicate, explain what your needs are, and figure out where the data come from in your system to be able to project it into VINYL. The way we use it is so heavy on finance. We need our numbers to be precise. Everything comes down to precision and numbers for us. We're able to get that and it's helped us for sure.

I really like VINYL. I would rate it a nine out of ten. I see the advantage of it and I also see so many ways we could use it more here. I want to keep pushing for us to use it in more ways because I can see how it can be so beneficial if we start pulling in other systems.

The fun part is, the messier it feels for us, the more excited they sound at wanting to solve the problem.

Often times, the expression "spreadsheet hell" is thrown around our walls, and people get too entrenched in sharing, emailing, creating, and saving spreadsheets just to share information. The Zudy product, Vinyl, has really allowed us to get out of spreadsheets and start to build dashboards for information which needs to be shared. In that sense, we have grown as a business in directions which are scalable for us in the future. 

• You do not need to be a programmer to use it or build something in it. This is pretty important in our business.
• You can unite data which lives in different sources without moving that data. This have been a real game changer for us.
• Our partnership with Zudy has really worked out for us.

The most meaningful improvement might be done in some of the aesthetics of the reporting and dashboarding. We unify and unite data in ways which are flexible and usable, but do not always have the aesthetics of some of the other reporting platforms out there. If it could be prettier, it might be a bit more attractive on the business side.

For us, it is very stable. We can host it internally and in the cloud. It is secure and accessible. We have been using this product for about a year and a half, and we have only seen improved sustained stability and usable.

The product's evolution to this point has proven that it is becoming more scalable.

We are still a small enough business that it meets our needs today, but the improvements that I have seen in Vinyl mean that we will be using this product for years.

The support from Zudy has been tremendous. The people that we have worked with (not just Tommy, Trish, and Charles), but the people in our business probably think Martin works for our company. It would not surprise me based on the number of times that we see him walking the halls and solving problems for people with this platform. Whenever we reach out, we receive someone who is friendly and competent. 

I was very new in my role at Collette when I started talking with Zudy. What I walked into was the scenario where there were a lot of people depending on spreadsheets, a nightmare of version control and sharing of data, and I was looking to solve beyond what we had internally. Therefore, about a year and a half ago, we engaged with Zudy and it was the solution for us.

It is a platform which can grow with us and get us out of spreadsheets.

I was not involved in the day-to-day of the initial setup, therefore it is hard for me to comment. However, I know that we were successful with it. Probably any limitations that we had at setup were due to some of the friction that we have internally in our network.

I would rate the product a nine out of 10, because I always leave room for improvement. I do not have any gripes. When you discuss the triumvirate of people, process, and technology, it has worked out for us in those regards. I have optimism for the future, but I am excited for what they will improve.

Our primary use case is scheduling. We do a lot of scheduling and collecting of survey data.

The tour managers are able to view their results - versus having to wait two times a year to get their results - they can review them in real time. They're also able to instantly receive their schedules versus having to manually send them via an Excel grid. It's also able to distinguish what type of guide we are using.

The fact it connects to all of our systems outside of Zudy. It connects with our internal systems and it makes things more productive and not manual.

The calendar has room for improvement, but that's what they're going to be working on next: making a Gantt chart.

It is a stable product for the most part, but if there are any issues their developers are instantly available to address them.

There have been no scalability issues. It handles a lot of stuff. It replaced two of our programs.

Their technical support is awesome. I work exclusively with their technical department and they're able to turn things around super quick and make changes and adjustments. Nothing takes very long, usually, and they're always available.

We used Microsoft Project and Microsoft Access, but the system just kept on crashing and it wasn't sustained by our IT department, so it was a lot of having to do it ourselves. It was manual and there was a lot of room for error. We moved to Zudy because it was a system everybody could understand and it wasn't outdated.

The setup was a little complex, but not that bad. I had Zudy specifically here. I was working with two of the developers and they were with me every step of the way.

The sky is the limit. It is able to pretty much do anything and everything that you thought a computer couldn't do. You should just really embrace it. It took me a while to embrace it but they're a really great company to work with.

I would rate it at eight out of 10. I think a Gantt chart would probably put it to a nine. I don't think anything's ever perfect. I'm feeling concerned about when we end our relationship directly with Zudy and just work with our own IT department, how quick the changes will be. 

Overall, it's a really great product. It's able to tie into different departments. From my understanding, it's what they were intending for this. We're able to use it across the board, all the departments.