Epicor ERPs are designed to provide companies of all scales and in every sector with feature-rich, customizable ERP solutions that can either be based in the cloud or deployed on-premises. The inherent flexibility of the system’s design, combined with the adaptability offered by choice of deployment model, make Epicor an especially power enterprise tool, and the kind that readily adapts should your business or technology change.
There are many reasons for this, but they all point to one key factor: success.
At this point, thousands of companies worldwide have rebuilt their workflows to leverage the cloud revolution. In doing so, they reimagined their enterprises as a series of processes that can be accessed in real time from anywhere in the world and from any device.
This, in sum, is the value offered by cloud-based ERP solutions: they obviate the need to maintain a wide basket of separate, “one off” applications that (hopefully) merge with the central processes of your business.
Put differently, the proper ERP solution should become your business process. And who better to design it than Epicor, a company that has spent 25 years leading its field.
Epicor’s products are built on decades’ worth of research and development coupled with deep industry experience and thousands of successful implementations. Businesses around the globe use Epicor to great effect. For these reasons and many more, we at Estes Group always consider Epicor products when consulting with you on the ERP solution that perfectly fits your business.
Our analysts at Estes Group have reviewed the latest Epicor release. Epicor 10.1 enjoyed a substantive, months-long testing cycle with select beta customers. While long beta cycles often indicate problems with a software release, we happily note this wasn’t the case. In fact, by our estimations, Epicor 10.1 offers vast and substantial improvements over its predecessor version, Epicor 10.
After this introduction to Epicor ERP 10.1, the following series of blog articles will drill into some of the new, key features Epicor 10.1 offers. Where applicable, we will compare new functionalities to those in Epicor 10.
And, as always, should you have any questions, please feel free to contact an Estes Group consultant. We are always happy to discuss these features at length, as well as to provide insight into how Epicor 10.1 may suit the needs of your current Business Process Reengineering.
Read more about this ERP system in our informative blogs on the NEW features and upgrades in Epicor 10.1
Customizations – If your organization has a multitude of customizations, integrations or modifications in place then you need to get organized around all of these with a plan that allows the time to implement them into the new environment. The magnitude of complexity goes up with each version of Epicor that you are leaping over to get to 10.1. So if you’re on Epicor 9.04, it’s not as bad as if you’re still on Vantage 8.03 and not as bad yet again as if you’re on Vantage 6.1.Catalogue your customizations in a spreadsheet. Make the business team force rank them as level 1,2 or 3. Level 1 – Business Critical Level 2 – Could work without for a period of time Level 3 – Functionality no longer needed or has been replaced with Out of the Box with 10.1
Once you have everything catalogued it’s easier to build a plan of action around them. Which ones will need hands on work to function in Epicor ERP 10.1? Which ones are critical to be included in the regression test plans.
Processes aren’t documented – If you don’t have your critical processed documented in your ERP then how are you going to systematically test them before you launch a new version of your ERP? In addition, moving to Epicor 10.1 should have other forecasted advantages for your business. What are those new processes and how will they impact the workflow for your organization?
Business Team Readiness – Just like in your original implementation the upgrade isn’t handled by just one individual. Besides, would you want to be the one guy with the weight of the business’ ERP on your shoulders if that upgrade doesn’t work out? You need your core team of business representation to establish the plan, set and perform the regression tests and ensure that they are ready for the new version. Multiple eyes on your project are always better than a single point of failure. On top of your core team making sure that you have the same level of involvement from the executive team is a must. Everyone needs to be on board with an upgrade.Granted, if you’re making a “dot” upgrade from Epicor 10 to 10.1 it should be much less invasive, there should be a lot fewer surprises and it should run smoother but this is no excuse for bypassing the fundamentals of project success.
If you take the time to organize your upgrade to Epicor ERP 10.1, you’ll be increasing your chances of success exponentially. Yes, it’s a little more ground work on the front end, but doing this work up front is a fraction of the time it will take if you skip it and get a surprise later on. I would love to continue our conversation and welcome you to…
Learn From Our Experts: Access Our Epicor 10 Out Of The Box Tools Video Series.
Epicor ERP 10.1 is due out right around the corner in September according to the rumor mill.
What does this ERP upgrade mean for you and your company? Well for starters this is the release that has been put through the quality control wringer. Epicor has taken a step back and even put a new team all the way to the executive levels around this product to break the trends of quality issues around this release. The product has always been praised for the innovations to ERP and is known to be first to market with a lot of new features but it’s always been noted that this has come at a cost to quality and stability with the software. At Insights (The Epicor Users Conference) in the spring of 2015 10.1 was heavily featured and several sessions focused on the above and how they were going about fixing these issues. So many of you also heard this message and have been holding off waiting for the promise land.
Besides stability, what are the key Epicor 10.1 features that make it worth the wait? Again these are all speculation as we haven’t received the final 10.1 features list but these are all some things that we saw a bit of or were shown at insights and are hearing that they are planned to be in this Epicor upgrade:
Planning Contracts – Finally the ability to plan for long lead time items without having to release a job or create a sales order release. The idea here is that you can create a planning contract and tie it out to a project and create individual purchasing demand against that contract and receive it in a bin that has been set aside for this contract.
MRP by Part – Oh man has this one ever been a long time coming. If you’re a facility that launches all of your production or at least the vast majority by MRP and you get a hot item come in it was always a pain launching a full MRP just for that one part. Not anymore folks! You’ll be able to filter to a single part number and run MRP against just that part. Not bad for testing either.
Zero Quantity BOMs – This one will be a nice addition and came from an EUG request (Yes the EUG does have development influence and here’s proof of that) that will allow for you to add zero quantity items to the BOM. So if you need items listed but don’t want them placing demand on inventory or purchasing here’s a great method for this.
There are many other Epicor 10.1 features that are planned but these seem to be the top three that get asked about in conversations. But keep an eye out for Multi-Job Scheduling and Packaging Control as well.
What are your reasons for wanting to jump on the 10.1 bandwagon? I would love to hear from you on your business needs and how you see 10.1 fulfilling them.
I invite you to…
Access Our Epicor 10 Out Of The Box Tools Video Series.
Epicor’s Company structure comprises the fundamental data elements, which underlie a customer’s configuration of Epicor’s ERP application. Epicor’s Company structure allows customers to configure their ERP system in a manner that mirrors their business structure and strategy. Moreover, proper Company setup ensures that the Epicor application will function as intended, allowing Epicor’s rich layers of functionality to be effectively utilized by an implementing customer.
The importance of Epicor’s Company structure cannot be understated—the setup at the company level affects every module, influencing or altering its behavior or functionality. Thus, an implementing customer must give strong consideration to its Company setup, as to maximize its ERP investment and avoid sub-optimizing its use of the application.
To get access to Version 10 Epicor features, the setup of Companies in an Epicor database involves three phases:
Companies are created through the Epicor Administration Console.
The base information for a Company is defined through the Company Maintenance form.
The detailed module-specific defaults for a Company are defined through the Company Configuration form.
As part of the installation process, or shortly thereafter, Companies are created through the Epicor Admin Console. Companies are database entities that are created through the Application Server nodes of the Admin Console. A right click on a given application instance allows a system administrator to add a Company:
When adding a Company, the Admin Console raises a configuration window, which allows the system administrator to define the basic Company elements:
The elements that can be defined at this time include the following:
The Company ID: This ID is a key field and cannot be changed once it is defined.
The Company Name: This represents the name of the company, as it will be viewed on forms and reports. This value can be later changed through the Company Maintenance form.
The Company Installation: This is the specific license file which will be used for this Company. This is a required field, and the value assigned is normally the same license file that was previously imported into the Admin Console at the time of installation.
Country Code: If the customer is using company-specific functionality, then the Country Code can be defined.
Base Currency Code: Most often, this is defined as US Dollars or “USD” for Companies whose work occurs primarily in the United States.
Number of Decimals: These can be defined according to the decimal required to support cost-related, price-related and general functionality. Quite often the defaults of 5-5-2 are sufficient for many businesses.
The above steps entail the mere beginnings of a Company configuration, but as a Company setup progresses, implementing customers work to become in good company with other successful Epicor 10 implementations.
Simplify Technology, Improve Operations, and Gain Efficiencies…
Hey, folks. It’s Matt Thompson here with a real quick video for you all. I’m just going to show you some tips and tricks in Epicor 10—how to get around. There are a couple key features here that a lot of folks don’t know about. I just want to be able to make sure everybody kind of has an idea.
I’ve pulled open a real quick dashboard tracker here that’s showing our year-to-date sales. It’s got some nice buckets. It goes all the way across the screen here with a lot of information. So, I want to show you some things.
A lot of folks want to be able to take this out to Microsoft Excel and be able to massage that. Well, anywhere you see this grid view it’s no problem. You can right-click, copy to Excel. Then it’s going to open up Excel and dump everything in there for you and you can be on your way.
A lot of folks want to be able to see and massage the data a little bit. They can still do that. So I can right-click and say show group by. Now I can bring my cust. ID up here. I’m showing where I’ve got my customers grouped into these nice neat buckets. I’ve got that information now dissected so I can look at things a little bit more clearly. In addition I can right-click here and say show me my filters. I’m going to filter this down to only show and say Boeing. Now I’ve got only the Boeing Company’s information that’s actually here in front of me.
That’s all fine and dandy. Those things are great for filtration and everything. Now let’s say I still want to massage it in Excel. If I right-click copy to Excel, it’s actually going to fire this thing up. I can see that it brings it over, and it still has my group-bys automatically brought over into Excel. Then I can expand and see my data column sets. That’s really cool and a really neat function here with Epicor 10.
In addition to this, I got a lot of information rolling out to the right. Maybe I want to be able to lock my screen or freeze panes. This is a little hidden gem that a lot of folks don’t know about. Anytime I see this scroll window in a grid view whether it’s horizontal or vertical, on the capstone here, I see this little rectangle. When I roll my mouse over it, my cursor changes. I can click and drag that guy right over to where I want that to freeze. It essentially just made a mere copy on both sides of the same dashboard data.
Now as I scroll, I have the effect of freeze panes right here in my window. I can actually scroll across, see my year-to-date totals while still keeping my name in check here without having to change and manipulate where I’m dragging and dropping different columns. It’s a really nice feature there to be able to see very quickly how your data looks, feels, forms and everything else.
Then in addition, the one last one here, you can show summaries. That will give you the ability to do summarized totals here within the different column sets. You can actually see some aggregate sums out there as well. I hope this is definitely helpful for you. There are some tips and tricks that a lot of folks just don’t know about. Make sure to start a conversation with us—estesgrp.com/ask-an-expert.
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Hey, gang. Welcome to Project Roles and Responsibilities, the Cliff Notes Version. We’re going to get started here and just kind of run you guys through hopefully in three minutes or less some of the key roles and responsibilities you need on your ERP successful project.
Number one, you need an executive from the client side to be able to understand your business goals and be able to support and establish whatever that project, plan, scope and any resources that need to happen on that side to ensure that you have that good success.
Your client side project manager as well needs to be able to understand the methodology, your goals and objectives that you need, who are the key people on your project team and being able to help motivate and help move things along so that that project thing gets executed and you stay on time, on task and on budget.
Your Estes Group consulting team, they need to be able to follow what that scope is that you have, be able to execute to those assigned tasks, but most of all, they’re there to teach you the software. They’re there to be able to figure out your business problems and be able to solve those problems with ERP solutions in the form of end user procedures at the end of the day.
That way you can map over all of those new processes into your new software package as cleanly and successfully as possible with the understanding that your team of consultants is going to provide you with the best possible solution with the least amount of inefficiencies as possible at this point in time.
So your customer side, what is all about you guys here and what should be expected of you, right? So customer executive sponsor, person needs to be well informed. They need to be the one that’s setting the ultimate goals and objectives. Odds are they’re the ones that are pulling the trigger at the end of the day saying here’s the reasons why we’re going to a new ERP software or we’re upgrading our ERP software.
Yes, it’s going to be painful. We understand that, but here are the reasons why. Here’s the scope in which we need to do that. Okay, team, you’ve got the ball. Go and run with it. Let me know what you need. I’m here to make it happen, and they’re there to celebrate when you do make it happen.
Your steering committee, made up of all the business leaders that are most likely responsible fiscally for each of the different functional areas of your business. That may be by product line. That may be by functional area. There’s several different dividing lines that we’ve seen businesses divide those up by, but the key there is, is your steering committee is going to make sure that any conflict or any different decisions that need to happen come up to them, they’re able to help resolve those issues, whether it be resources, whether it be scope, whether it be just process decision, and be able to help things move along their way.
Your customer project manager, this person is there to basically be a task master. They’re going to be tied to the estes group PM. They’re going to be following that methodology and they’re making sure that everybody does their homework, it’s on task and it’s with the right amount of time that needs to be dedicated to it to ensure that we’ve got quality and success that’s going to come out of that. They’re also there to be able to report up to the steering committee anything that needs to happen and go from there.
Now the majority of the folks are right here in the customer core team. So that core team is made up of your unit managers that have to build and decide on all those processes that need to be mapped in. They’re working directly with the consultants, with the problems, with the puzzles, helping resolve those, document it, and ultimately train the end users at the end of the day.
So, folks, I know that was the Cliff Notes version, very quick. There’s a longer video out there that goes into a lot more explanation. Feel free to take a look at it. This one was just designed to be a real quick teaser to give you a guys an understanding of what kind of roles and responsibilities we see and how we see that they’re important.
So feel free. Start a conversation with us, estesgroup.com/askanexpert, [email protected] via email, Facebook and Twitter, Linked In, all the social media, make sure you get in touch with us out there. You’ll see any of the new stuff that’s coming up. Facebook.com/estesgroup is where our page is at. Hit us up at estesgroup on Twitter, amd LinkedIn.com/company/estestgroup and you’ll find our business page out there on LinkedIn.
Thanks, guys, very much for your time. Looking forward to hearing from you in that conversation.
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