Can anyone on here give us some insight to this software platform? We are currently looking into this software for our business and would like to hear from some of the professionals out there currently using it. Good and bad, do not hold back..

Thanks , Bill
MTS

do a search there are lots of posts on this. And don't as Q.Q.Q if its better than D-tools!

Funny! Actually, I would never try to talk anyone out of Horizon. I think it might well be the better choice for some companies*. Just not for me :-).

*Companies that gross about 10K a year. JUST KIDDING!

Been their done that, just pony up for D-Tools, you will be glad you did. Just opt to keep getting the D-Tools updates, it is more $$ but worth it. The only pain in the ass is setting up D-Tools, it takes FOREVER, that is if you have a broad product and service line.

I could not give the Horizon software a bigger recommendation. Great presentation, very easy to use and excellent support. Do you have any specific questions?

As a project manager for one of Horizon Software's "Smart Partners", which are businesses that signed on early in the development process, I used this program daily. Acutally, to be more accurate, the program used me daily. If you have a very optimistic mind, a belief that someday everything will randomly work itself out, then maybe Horizon is for you. Its goal is fantastic, it is designed to integrate almost every aspect of your business into one streamlined interface...problem is that if you truely try to utilize all of its features...it doesn't work. There are so many little variables that even after being set up corectly, they automatically affect every other part of the program and this leads to some truely crazy crap...A lot of my time with the software was spent hunting for the reason why 20,000 feet of speaker wire was automatically being calculated for a 2000sq ft. home with 3 pairs of speakers. It gets updated every tuesday, and every new update fixes old problems and creates new ones. The program in its current configuration is buggy at best. I could of hand written every proposal I have ever done, 6 times, and still saved more time than I did with Horizon. The other problem is that Horizon's development team consists of about three people. If they get sick, get tired or go bankrupt, forget using your software ever again. It auto expires every few months, unless you type in a current subscription code. I no longer work for the company that was smart partnered with Horizon, and in the 5 months that I've been gone, (Started my own business)miracles may have happened and Jim, Horizons principal developer, may have his program operating as he has always intended. As for me, I waiting to check out D-tools at Cedia this year, I want to find a program that save me time, not gives me an education in FilemakerPro troubleshooting.

I am still using an older version of Horizon software, so I haven't dealt with any subscription issues. However, I cannot explain how much time this program saves us. The initial loading of all of your product info and text is very labor intensive, and you will continue to tweak things. But after that, every time you add a new product line or service, just keep make sure to load it all in right away. You only have to do it once. It is also very easy to duplicate a product and just change a few specs. This makes adding new product or similar product very quick.

We do not use some of the automatic calculation features. I don't feel this really saves that much time anyway. There are way to many variables from job to job to let a program make your decisions. If you cannot estimate in your head the amount of wire that 3 pairs of speakers in a 2000 sq ft house will take then you probably should not be writing proposals.

The support from Jim and the others has always been first rate for us. Questions are answered almost immediatly and problems always taken care of.

The example of the 2000sq. ft house was simply for effect. The particular instance I'm referring to, not that it matters, involved a 100K Lutron Homeworks system for a 6,000 sq ft. house. The home also had an additional 150K in Audio, HT, intercom & Structured wiring systems. With a project of that size, quoting installation costs, building lists of materials & generating accurate labor times is a bit more involved, not to mention critical, than wiring 3 pairs of speakers. It is for these types of projects (or larger) that people buy programs like Horizon.

If you select a product that says it will simplify these types of tasks, spend a large sum of money upfront and also pay a subscription fee, then it should do everything it says it does without having to email the developer daily. Jim had flown out personally to set the system up so implying that our company’s methodology was possibly to blame is incorrect. We learned from Jim.

Two things you mentioned don't really help people looking for advice on this product. First you stated you do not have a current subscription, and are using an older version of the program. How this helps someone looking at the existing, CURRENT system I have no idea.

Secondly, you also mentioned that you don't use many of the auto calculation features. At its core, Horizon & D-tools for that matter are designed primarily for this purpose; to eliminate the need to manually calculate everything for each new project. If all you are using Horizon for is to manage your inventory, there are plenty of cheaper, less involved programs to do that. Owners looking at these products want something that works reliably and as advertised.

At last years CEDIA, only a handful of Smart Partners were happy with the products performance. NONE even suggested that it was easy to use. All in attendance at Jim's meeting had question after question regarding stability, usability & additions of promised but currently non-functioning components. For example the contact manager & accounting modules.

In conclusion, telling someone that your outdated, under-utilized version of an application "works like a charm" is not helpful. Insulting other posters for their solicited criticism of a product is also not helpful.

Bill asked for ANY insight and that is what I gave. MY opinion about MY experience and the support from Horizon. The fact that Horizon can give 1st rate customer service should be useful info for Bill.

You yourself say that you gave a bad example. That was the ONLY way I made reference to you. I am glad you don't need a costly program to design a simple system. For your customers sake.

My feeling is that using a program to speed things up is great but the program cannot take the place of an experienced person in designing and specing a system. We use Horizon to generate very profesional looking, thorough proposals for jobs up to the $100K range. We use it for all invoicing, product info and spec sheets for the other trades.

Is it for every company or type of system design? Of coarse not. It does work exceptionally well for many.

Bill,

Horizon Software has two versions of software. CPS (Custom Proposal Software) and SCPS (Smart-Partner Custom Proposal Software).

It sounds like you were asking about the original CPS software which costs about $1,200.00. This is the software that DDeca spoke highly of. SCPS is a subscription software that costs $200.00 a month plus a buy-in (to catch up with those who’ve paid $200/month since its inception).

Firstly, I can’t speak highly enough of Jim Engandela, the Principle of Horizon. Not only is he a talented software developer, but he was the successful owner of a chain of high-end A/V stores (which provided custom installation), that he sold so that he could focus his energy on Horizon. He knows this business and its challenges.

If you want to get started with a proven software package that really works, then you can’t go wrong with CPS. Once you take the time to set it up correctly, you can create templates that will allow you to duplicate and modify complex proposals within minutes.

SCPS is a much more comprehensive software package. It will cost you a chunk of change to buy-in, if it’s still open in your area. I feel that even though there are hiccups sometimes, it is still the best available. We’ve used it for almost two years with excellent results (after having been long-time CPS users and short-time D-Tools users in-between).

Before switching over to SCPS we spent somewhere between $12-to-$16K on D-Tools, and although I didn’t use it directly; my General Manager just couldn’t get it to work efficiently after several months of battling. He has an above average IQ and I allowed him to spend all of his time on the software (8hrs. a day). Every problem we had could only be solved by spending several more thousand dollars, and even then, things were frustrating at best. If we wanted to modify or customize something we had the choice of either buying more software applications such as Crystal Reports or hiring D-Tools at a huge expense to make what seemed like simple cosmetic changes. Every software module also came at a cost – per every seat – and every upgrade also cost heavily – per every seat! It is really a drawing program that creates proposals, which we found makes it clumsy to use. After we realized that we had signed on as prisoners of a “one-armed-bandit-money-sucking-machine” (and other manufacturers such as Lutron felt the same way), we decided to cut our losses and stop using the software. We tried to get our money back but finally decided to give up. This is only our experience; although I know that there are many out there who have had better luck.

In conclusion, back to the question of this thread, with twenty-years in this industry behind me and after using proposal software ranging from Excel/Word cut-and-paste to PageMaker one-offs to CPS to Guru to D-Tools; I highly recommend Horizon Software. No matter what you do, however, this type of software take a significant investment of time to set up correctly and maintain. None of this software is 110% perfect, at least in my opinion. So get ready to assign somebody to this task or spend several weeks on this project yourself. Otherwise just stick with Word and Excel if you already have a reasonable system working now. Just like everything in life, nothing is easy. Good luck.

Steve

The bottom line is that one software product might be excellent for one company and horrible for another and it might have NOTHING to do with the product itself [or then again it might :-)]. I have heard horror stories AND raves about Horizon and D-Tools. I think in some instances it's because the people that did the researching and purchasing did their job poorly and had no idea what they were getting into. I remember one guy here that complained that he had been ripped off because he bought D-Tools and didn't find out until afterwards that they would need a large scale printer/plotter to take full advantage of the program. I mean come on! If you're buying a CAD program that's like complaining that you bought a car and didn't know you'd need gas.

Regarding Horizon and the “smart partners” package I’ve heard people make the exact same comments as Blueprint. Everyone running the smart partners package seems to acknowledge it has some “bugs”. Others have been satisfied. Both could be right.

Personally, I would never even consider buying a software product that guarantees me a “protected area” where they won’t sell the product to other dealers. I find the concept so laughable from a business point of view that it makes me wonder who I’m dealing with. I called AutoCad and told them I’d only use their product if they wouldn’t sell it to anyone else in my area. The guy was still laughing uncontrollably when I hung up ;-).

Bill,

do you have specific questions?

Thanks for the input, I have been doing alot of research on the software available to our industry. And yes I was looking at the CPS system , not SCPS. It seems to have what we need. D-tools looks very good also, but very intense to setup and keep up to date. But , every software has a learning curve, some harder than others. No one software will make everyone happy. Simply Reliable looks interesting also, but they seem to be priced in the D-tools range. We are looking for software to assist our people, not replace them.
I was just looking for some input from people that have been using this software , good or bad. And I thank all that responded. Your input was greatly appreciated and helpful.