Global Shop Solutions

We’ve been using this program for about 13 months now and I struggle to find anything to say that is positive. In summary, if anyone is considering using this program to make their work simpler, they’ll be very disappointed. Below are some notes.

Note; I have paragraphs and paragraphs of how bad this program is but I'll try to be brief.

The user interface is, without question, the worst I’ve ever encountered in almost 30 years of working with computers. Text interface is awful. Sometimes when you first click a field, any input will then erase and replace what’s in there. Other times when you first click a field, any input will append what is already in there. Sometimes you have to hit “enter” to get your edit accepted, other times you have to “tab” to have it accepted.

Sometimes it will let you input lower-case, sometimes it won’t. Also, sometimes the field is case-dependent, but most times it is not.

Text: cursor placement. Sometimes mouse-clicking in the field places your cursor at the home position. Sometimes it places it at the end of the text. Sometimes it actually is highlighting ALL of the field. You don’t know what it’s going to do because it does it differently depending on the window you’re working in.

Concerning text, you have to press the “insert” key to keep from overwriting text when editing a field. Overwriting is GSS’s default action and there is no control-z function to correct any mistake, should you happen to overwrite what was in the field. Many of the GSS windows don’t have a “minimize” button; only an “X”.

I don’t like that GSS’s windows take precedence over all of the other windows on my machine. Even though I’ve selected (let’s say) Outlook to view right now, GSS’s inventory browser always stays in front of it. I can still click around and work in the Outlook window but the GSS inventory window is displayed in front of it. The only way to get it out of the way is to CLOSE it. There’s no minimize button.

Doing an order or a quote makes you open a new window for your lines. However, the old window (header) stays open and blocks what’s behind it. You can’t move it, either because it’s not the active window.

The cut/paste form fill interface is very difficult to decipher and almost impossible to use if you don't have an insert button. Can’t control-Z. If you get GS’s text interface (above) wrong, you can’t control-z to undo. Again… Windows 95 had this action. This can’t be said often enough. You can’t control-Z. There is no “undo” functionality. You can’t even close/abort an order w/o saving it. Copy and paste, even insert, are a mystery. It always behaves differently depending on the specific window that’s open.

In closing, I would recommend that you run -with all your might- away from this sophomoric attempt at a user interface.

GSS has been a good fit for us by providing a fully developed, all-in-one business resource, from a software provider that acts more as a partner than a vendor.

We went live in Global Shop on 04-01-15 and in virtually all areas of our company, it's simplified how we operate. Is there a learning curve? Yes, but we went into the transition expecting a learning curve! It was new, complex software that took the place of multiple homegrown systems. It took 4 months from when we started till we went "live", which for us exceeded our expectations.