Connected Enterprise - An Epicor Blog

Insights 2012 Round-up

Epicor hosted its’ largest customer conference yet, Insights 2012 in Vegas. The May conference featured leaders and innovators from the distribution, manufacturing, retail and services industries. Here are the show highlights: 

• 2,900+ Customers
• 400+  Partners
• 450+ Employees
• 700+ Sessions
• 220+ Hands-On Labs
• 100+ Exhibitors in Solutions Pavilion
• Award-winning Keynote Speakers - Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation and Geoff Colvin, senior editor-at-large, FORTUNE Magazine and author, Talent is Overrated
• 1 Emmy® award-winning Entertainer, Dana Carvey, known as a regular on Saturday Night Live for his uncanny comedic impersonations

Product News Highlights

• New Version of Epicor Next-Generation ERP

Available today, the next-generation of the Epicor enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution contains more than 300 new features and enhancements designed to further improve reliability, performance and ease of use. Now in more than 60 countries, this version delivers functional improvements and enhancements across every suite within the solution, including the Epicor ICE Business Architecture. As a result of these enhancements, transaction speed has been improved in some cases by an order of magnitude of 7.5x.

•  Epicor to Bring On-Demand ERP to the Windows Azure

Epicor announced a strategic alliance with Microsoft Corp. whereby the company will use Windows Azure to expand on-demand delivery of its next-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite worldwide. The Epicor ICE Business Architecture will also benefit from Windows Azure and SQL Azure.  Epicor ICE will provide platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offerings using Windows Azure.

The flexible service-oriented architecture (SOA) of Epicor ICE provides connectivity across a wide range of Epicor business software solutions for the manufacturing, distribution, and services industries, enabling more customers to leverage Epicor Extend solutions delivered via the cloud.

• Epicor Introduces Customer Profit Analyzer Application

Epicor presents the Epicor Customer Profit Analyzer, a business intelligence solution that reveals a distributor’s most profitable (and least profitable) customers and provides the data to make better informed business decisions. Based on an equation that considers a combination of factors, Epicor Customer Profit Analyzer allows a distributor to easily understand the gap between customers' transactional “gross margin” and the company's net profit.

Posted by the Epicor Social Media Team

Is it Possible to Implement an ERP System in Just 3 Weeks?

Implementing a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) product can be a costly and time consuming exercise. Having worked for two different companies as an internal ERP solution manager tasked with implementing and then maintaining an ERP in a number of different companies, geographies and business units, I have first-hand experience with the associated challenges. I was very proud to see a news release we published about how an Epicor customer managed to implement a fully functional version of Epicor iScala within 3 weeks. How is this possible you ask? What tools exist within Epicor iScala to support fast implementations and ensure that change control is maintained even when the implementation project is complete?

Epicor has developed a number of tools to help speed up the implementation process and ensure consistency within the project and maintain the integrity of the solution going forward.

The Epicor Signature Methodology of implementation goes a long way to guaranteeing the success of the project by ensuring buy-in and approval during all phases of the project by all the members of the project team. This combined with tools like XSOL InOrder to document Epicor Best Practices allows Epicor to support the implementation process from start to finish. Other tools like Epicor Knowledge Mentor (EKM) allow for the creation of reusable documentation and training material to support on-boarding of existing or new employees with measurable results.

With the implementation process and documentation secured, how do we handle best practices and templated implementations? Having come from a consulting background I realized that we needed to introduce something into iScala to allow us to support templated implementations. One of the first things we added to the development plans for iScala was the iScala Template Tool. This tool provides Epicor, our consulting partners and even our customers with the ability to define, maintain, distribute and control different iScala configuration templates.

The Template Tool is easy to use. Templates can be created for specific organizations, regions, industries or even business processes using a collection of preconfigured system parameters, code files and even master data.

So how does it work? Administrators can select an existing iScala implementation, take a snap-shot of this importing any master data (customers, suppliers, stock items), code files and parameters into a new template. The template can be adjusted adding in customer parameters to further control what is included in the scope of the template.

Once the template is created this can be used to either validate compliance with a predefined (one or more templates) configuration using the compare mode or to ensure compliance with a predefined configuration using the enforce mode. The Compare mode allows system administrators/owners to monitor the system configuration ensuring change management is maintained even once the implementation project is finished.

The enforce modes is a great way to implement the application quickly by using one or more templates to prepopulate the iScala application with all the correct system values for the organization, region, etc.

The combination of the compare and enforce modes is a great way to ensure change control. Any unauthorized/undocumented changes to the system configuration are detected using the compare mode and then incorrect values/settings can be reset to comply with the template. All of this can be from a central location meaning that if you have several iScala companies there is less administration involved.

As a former consultant this is really exciting. Likewise, as a former system administrator the iScala Template Tool offers a number of benefits: change control and compliance management; easier support and troubleshooting; and, quick starts for new sites or organizations.

So you see, a successful ERP implementation really could be just 3 weeks away.

View the announcement of Albatros Aluminium Implements Epicor in Less Than Three Weeks.

Posted by the Epicor Social Media Team

Have We Reached the Tipping Point in SaaS ERP?

In Malcolm Gladwell’s seminal book The Tipping Point, he defines a tipping point as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.” For Software as a Service (SaaS), the traditional barrier to attaining the momentum implied by the tipping point has been ERP. Companies have been amenable to having applications that surround or extend ERP reside in a SaaS environment, but they have been less likely to place their most critical enterprise records in an environment they did not directly own or control. This is changing.

According to a recent study by Mint Jutras, an independent research-based consulting firm that specializes in analyzing the business impact of enterprise applications, “Today…as many weigh the pros and cons of SaaS ERP, the advantages appear to be winning.”

Why? Why now?

In Q3 2011, Mint Jutras surveyed over 1,000 individuals knowledgeable of and involved in ERP implementations, in companies ranging from small (<$25M annual revenue) and lower midsize ($25M – $250M annual revenue) to upper midsize ($250M – $1B annual revenue) and large (>$1B annual revenue). The survey’s responses give a strong indication of why we may have reached the tipping point. Here are a few of the principal ones:

• Acceptance as a deployment option
  SaaS deployment is now more likely to be considered than traditional hosting options. Even more stunning is the decline in the willingness to consider traditional on-premise deployments. This has fallen on the order of 40 percent in just a few years.
• Acceptance at all enterprises
  SaaS ERP is not just a “small-company” option. In fact, the willingness to consider SaaS ERP increases as companies grow, with the highest level of interest from large enterprises. Further, those companies with the most successful ERP implementations are most likely to consider SaaS deployments.
• Powerful cost considerations
  When survey respondents were asked about what they found appealing about SaaS ERP, cost factors rose to the top of the list. More than half cited lower total cost of ownership (TCO), while nearly half also noted lower startup costs. In a global economy where capital concerns have been rising, these are powerful drivers.
• Accounting advantages
  With on-premise solutions, the default accounting is to treat the ERP implementation as a capital expense (Capex); but because SaaS solutions are generally paid for through subscription, they provide the alternative of being categorized as an operating expense (Opex). This ability is often associated with lower risk, and in any case the flexibility is generally perceived as an advantage.
• Distributed environment growth
  Operating across a distributed environment has become a way of life for a large percentage of businesses, even smaller ones; this may be providing an additional incentive to consider SaaS ERP. The level of distributed environment helps explain at least in part why large enterprises are so willing to consider SaaS ERP, because of the control of standardization of solutions and processes through SaaS deployment.

For a more detailed look at the momentum being gained by SaaS ERP, download the full report from Mint Jutras, made available at no cost by Epicor. Do you think the tipping point has been reached? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by the Epicor Social Media Team