Epicor claims high ground in making technology work harder for businesses

Those are the statistics averaged over seven years for software, services and maintenance – and, unsurprisingly, Epicor is making hay with them, suggesting that users and competitors ain't seen nothing yet. At a conference staged by Epicor at Microsoft's UK HQ in Reading, Roy Shooter, vp of sales for EMEA, claimed that success is due to its stance on protecting users, extending their systems' functionality through components, but now also providing an ultra user friendly convergence path in Epicor 9 – which existing users on maintenance can get FOC. Entitled 'Making Technology Work Harder for You', the conference leaned heavily on the example of Epicor 9, launched late last year, as the key to knocking down barriers to agile business – with real examples to get beyond the rhetoric. For James Norwood, Epicor vp product marketing, it's about a whole new generation of business applications that "redefine how systems are both built and used". Norwood made the point that, while Epicor 9 based on "the best of everything we've done in the last 25 years," the new architecture moves business management and insight into the 'virtualised, always on, run anywhere' world. "First, we've created a system with end-to-end capabilities and one view of the truth – so encompassing APS, MES [manufacturing execution system], CRM, MDM [master data management] etc as standard – not as bolt-ons with their own databases, middleware or interfaces," he said. But that's just the start: from then on, it's the sheer adaptability of the underlying system architecture and Epicor's new business process modelling tools, which "enable users to change and support their businesses without programming". How? Because all of that is abstracted through an Outlook-like rules engine – hence the user friendliness. And much the same applies to the user interface – which can now be anything from a windows PC, to web browser or mobile device, harnessing what's called the Epicor Everywhere framework, which essentially saves common process information as metadata. "That's part of our SOA and Web 2.0 development," explained Norwood, warming to a consistent theme that also took in real-time business intelligence, again aimed at real users, and enterprise search – in this case, using cloud computing and Microosft's Azur. For doubters, it's worth noting that Epicor 9 is already available for 28 countries and in 16 languages, and that Norwood says those figures will rise to 40 countries and 23 languages by end of this year. That scale of adaptability is being achieved by eating its own dog food – the combination of components, abstraction, Web 2.0 and SOA. And there's one more point. Paul Farrell, Epicor vp of worldwide R&D, suggested that next generation ERP systems have to be part of pulling down the barriers that still exist within most manufacturing business when it comes to Web 2.0. "Everyone uses Facebook and Twitter. It's no longer just a younger generation thing, because so many people of every age have found it useful and easy to use." For him SOA and Web 2.0 have to be key building blocks that enable adaptability and collaboration among real people in real businesses – and that has to be reflected in a sea change in ERP systems. "It's about embracing the Internet, rather than fighting it: traditional ERP was the antithesis of this. It's also about bringing business information and insights to real people, not just the IT team – which we've made easy through our BPM tools." And it's about describing business processes such that the system does whatever is required on whatever user interface. "With Epicor Everywhere, you can use Word, SharePoint, mashups, Excel, Outlook, store front applications. The point is you can bring ERP data to whatever roles you need in whatever format you want."