As a global leader, Epicor software has helped thousands of Manufacturing companies throughout North America and globally. Their clients range from smaller, privately held manufactures, to multi-national publicly traded organizations.
Why do we like Epicor for manufacturing?
We think Epicor provides the best overall solution for mid size manufacturers. When we say this, we look at the total package – the features, the technology “stack”, the publishers track record, the education, support and consulting availability, and the total cost of ownership. There are a lot of packages to choose from so we understand it can be difficult to sort out. Some products have been around a while. Companies like Syspro, Dynamics X3, Infor Visual, Infor SytLine, QAD, Global Shop, Exact, Oracle, SAP and literally another hundred like them. While these products are all feature rich most of them are based on older technology stacks and have not been rebuilt completely to leverage todays technology. Then there are the new players like NetSuite, Sage X3, Plex, Accumatica, and again, a long list of firms, with new ones popping up every day. Since these are new, they don’t have the baggage of building on layers of old technology. They can generally be more nimble and truly adaptive to leverage simplified integration to things like CRM applications, email, web based specialty apps for tax reporting, forecasting, and product life cycle management (PLM).
How do you decide?
If your thinking of making a change, first understand why. It’s only going to come down to one or more of these four reasons:
- Your company has change size or focus and what you have doesn’t work any more.
- Your current software is old and no longer supported
- Your current software is still supported, but you are so far behind on releases that the cost of upgrading has you thinking there might be something better.
- Your company has changed leadership or ownership.
Understand the reason – then identify your true business requirements. In reality, there is only going to be a few major areas and any product that is supposedly built for manufacturing is going to have some baked in idea of how a manufacturing company should operate. Your unique requirements are going to be in the following areas:
- organizational structure and reporting requirements like multi company, multi location, multi currency
- products that you build and how you build them. Are you make to stock, make to order or a mix. Do you build sub-assemblies to stock and then assemble, are you process or discrete.
- how do you price your product and quote your product.
Once you identify what is truly critical, then make sure you understand how the publisher is going to support that requirement.
Understand your size. Everyone on the planet knows Oracle and SAP and Microsoft. That doesn’t mean they are the right product for you. The size of your firm is based on employees and transactions – not revenue. Remember, revenue is determined by how much you charge for your product and how many units sold. Transactions are what give you grief – they cause questions – and what ever software you invest in, should help answer those questions so you can focus on what makes you money.
Our track record
We have been working in the “business automation” world since 1986 and with Epicor clients since 2002. Our clients run Vista, Vantage, Epicor 9, and Epicor 10 and they benefit from our years of experience in manufacturing, supply chain management, and finance.
If any of this sounds interesting – call us at 530-823-2829