Fulcrum Pro
4 Reviews 5/5 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★An ERP software for small to mid-sized manufacturers and job shops with modules for quoting, job scheduling, production tracking, and more.
Product Overview
Fulcrum Pro is an ERP software for small to mid-sized manufacturers and job shops. It’s also designed for OEMs and made-to-order environments. This cloud-based platform includes over 100 integrations with platforms like Shopify, Shipstation, and QuickBooks Online. Core modules cover processes like quoting, job scheduling and tracking, quality control, and more. The system supports unlimited users with varying permission levels.Pros
- Supports unlimited users with varying permission levels
- Integrates with QuickBooks Online, Shipstation, etc.
- Direct phone help and support from project managers and developers
Cons
- Some lag between data entry and its appearance in the system
- Occasional slow load times
Target Market
Small to mid-sized manufacturers and job shops. Designed for OEMs and made-to-order manufacturers in ever-changing, dynamic environments.About Fulcrum Pro
Fulcrum, a cloud-based software with ERP, MRP, and MES functionalities, is tailored by Atlas Solutions for small to mid-sized manufacturers. The platform molds itself to fit unique process requirements, eliminating the need for manual data entry in spreadsheets.
Key features include over 100 integrations, with help in automating data transfer across systems. Fulcrum covers everything from quote to cash and can deploy in modular components or as a complete platform.
Fulcrum Pro Key Features
Fulcrum Pro’s feature set includes:
- Provides unlimited user access with customizable permission levels.
- Features scheduling and estimating modules tailored to specific business needs.
- Boasts modern, user-friendly interfaces, a stark contrast to outdated systems.
- Integrates seamlessly with other systems to prevent duplicate data entry.
- Promotes a digital, paperless workflow using tablets and scanners.
- Offers direct support from project managers and developers, bypassing traditional ticket-based help systems.
Modules
Fulcrum Pro includes a range of modules, such as:
- Quoting
- Job Scheduling
- Job Tracking
- Production Tracking
- Quality Control/Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Inventory Management
- Job Costing
User Base
Fulcrum Pro caters to job shops, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and made-to-order manufacturers who operate in fast-paced, constantly evolving settings. It’s ideal for businesses seeking growth but facing labor market constraints.
Pricing Model
Fulcrum’s pricing involves an initial investment starting at $20,000 for configuration and implementation. This is followed by recurring monthly fees that cover cloud hosting, updates, and support. The platform supports an unlimited number of users, ensuring scalability for growing businesses.
Product Overview
User Reviews of Fulcrum Pro
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Our end goal for implementing Fulcrum at our company is to help enable rapid, scalable growth. More product out the door, faster and easier than before. We expect we will see that in the future, but because we’re only a few months into what we believe will be a multi-year journey, we’re not yet able to conclude whether this was made possible with Fulcrum.
In the meantime, the process of preparing our data for entry into Fulcrum immediately gave us better quality BOMs. The flow-on effects from that mean better purchasing and inventory management. We also have greater visibility around what the team are completing each day and the real cost of manufacture.
However, the key thing we’re still waiting to see the results from is the Scheduler. Once our production team members start to trust the Scheduler and work on what it asks them to work on, we believe that is when we will start to see efficiencies previously not imagined possible.
I’ll update this review in 6 months with further details around the benefits we are seeing at that point in time. Keep an eye out for it sometime in mid-2022.
We have been implementing and using Fulcrum at our manufacturing firm in New Zealand since December 2020. Our company has a headcount of 25, half spread across sales, marketing, engineering and admin, and the remainder as production team members working on the shop floor. We’ve doubled our headcount in the last 12 months, and are looking for tools to help us scale more rapidly. We believe that looking back in 5 years from now, Fulcrum may well be the tool that had the biggest effect on our growth.
The launch team that we were paired with from day one of our implementation were instrumental in our successful launch. We had weekly video calls with them to help us understand the basics, they answered our myriad of questions and they helped us with preparing the data we needed to get Fulcrum live, but it’s also fair to say the implementation did take us a lot longer than first anticipated. A lot of these delays came down to the data set that we had. Our BOM’s were lacking clarity, and the process of getting the data into Fulcrum was not very streamlined. More details about this are in the section below.
We rolled out a staged launch of Fulcrum in our business, with key components being switched over from the outgoing systems over the course of around 6 months. First Inventory management, then Jobs, and then lastly the Job Tracking component that is utilised on the shop floor by our production team members. We also had to complete a full stocktake on the day Job Tracking went live, to ensure the system had all the right information for scheduling.
We are still getting our team completely up and running on Fulcrum’s automated schedule, but once we do, we believe that the superhuman knowledge of the Scheduler understanding every product, sub-component, machine, operation, staff member, inventory level, lead time and many more data points will allow us to scale our manufacturing at a rate not possible via anything else we’ve seen in the market.
We have a good relationship with the key staff at Fulcrum. From their implementation team, right through to their CEO. This is because their company is young, the product is still maturing, and they are experiencing the same growing pains that we are - and so with that, we have a lot of communication with them regarding the product, and the resolution of the problems or questions that we raise.
We believe the core of the product is sound. The Scheduler is the magic sauce, and it works. But the user experience within the product from onboarding right through to day-to-day usage of the system by our team has room for improvement. It is also accurate to say that they are improving it. The product has been refined incrementally over the 10 months we have been using it and we hear that the pace of improvement will only increase into the future as they scale up their engineering team.
Regarding the setup process. We have less than 2000 unique item numbers in our company, spread across 10 or so core products. Unfortunately, our previous inventory system kept these as flat BOM’s, so adding the data to tree those products for Fulcrum to understand took us a lot of time. Being based in New Zealand also didn’t help, as we needed a US-based Fulcrum team member to upload our data set each time we had another version to test. Due to the timezone differences, this was usually just a once per day operation whereas if the upload was possible via a user-facing page, we believe we could have been testing uploads multiple times per day. I wouldn’t be surprised if Fulcrum launch their own upload tool in the future just to take that load off their launch teams.
There are a lot of other unique “Fulcrum characteristics” in the platform, that we’re not used to experiencing in other more mature SAAS platforms, but thankfully these are decreasing weekly, and we look forward to the system eventually being simple, clear and robust enough for all our staff to understand and use without too much oversight.
Finally, the lack of quality user documentation due to the rapidly evolving platform also hindered our onboarding timeline as most information was learnt during our weekly meeting. While the meetings were good and I understand the reason behind the lack of docs so far, I was pleased to recently hear that user documentation is high on their priority list.
I thought we were going to be too custom and complex to fit Fulcrum, but I was blown away with what their team was able to do.
Fulcrum took our scheduling process that used to take our team three hours a day, and now only takes one person 20-30 minutes.
My husband and I were each working 60 hours a week, and didn’t have the time we wanted to spend with our kids. Now, we’re only working 30 hours and our revenue continues to increase. I didn’t think it was possible!
