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All Licensed Up with No Place to Code – Making the Most of your Service Connect Investment

During the rush to select, acquire, and implement an ERP application, companies often license modules that they do not end up utilizing by the time cutover rolls around. Once the booming, buzzing confusion of going live has diminished, companies frequently review their suite of modules to determine whether some second phase enhancements can be implemented, both to benefit their organizations and to make use of the money spent on licensure. Epicor’s Service Connect application often falls into this second-phase category. It is not uncommon for Epicor customers, fresh off an implementation, to come to us and ask, “So we own Service Connect—now what is it good for?”

Service Connect is a multi-purpose tool in which a user can automate business processes and create application integrations to aid a business in its day-to-day processing. By using documents as its primary interface, Service Connect can convert data from one application into a form another application (or internal process) can understand. It uses industry-wide technologies to exchange information between applications or business processes based on data mappings and data manipulation.

A business may benefit from the use of Service Connect for many reasons. Some reasons include:

  • To automate an internal process by removing the human interaction from a process. For example, a company might use Service Connect to automate the entry of a Sales Order, based on an external trigger, or have the lines of a Sales Order automatically ship when the Sales Order has been closed.
  • To have one application pass information to another application, in order for the second application to process the data. An example of this would be billing information from a project tracking application to an accounting application. This would allow Accounting to bill for services rendered on the project.
  • To respond back to an application with updated data after a business process has been completed. This would keep two unrelated applications in sync. For example, if an item were to be requested to be shipped in an inventory application, the data would be passed to a shipping application to be shipped, then once shipped the tracking number would be returned to the inventory application.
  • To send emails requesting tasks be executed before another step of a business process can be completed. An example of this would be sending an email to a Purchase Order manager to approve a Purchase Order over a specific amount.
  • To assign tasks to be completed to users, to help manage the flow of a business process. By using Service Connect Task Monitor, instead of emails, a task can be assigned to a specific user and the business process halted until the user completes the task. This could be used for setting up project service billings approvals or Personal Time Off requests.

The automation and orchestration capabilities of Service Connect improve processes within the Epicor application and improve interactions between the Epicor application and other applications.  Customers in need of such capabilities find that by dusting off their Service Connect license and connecting with some skilled partners, they can extend the scope of their enterprise application and yield tangible business benefits in so doing.  The Estes Group has a wide breadth and depth of experience in Service Connect, and has been helping customers to get the most out of their investment.  Looking to take your enterprise application to the next level?  Come check us out—we’d love to talk with you and see what’s possible.