“Epicor iScala has always been one of the top ERP systems of choice for global companies because it helps them keep costs low while enabling them to comply with local regulations wherever they are located,” said Matt Muldoon, vice president, product marketing for Epicor. “Through new features such as grid-based sales order entry, integration to Epicor Mobile Field Service, box handling and packaging, and event-based invoicing in Contract Management, this powerful new release helps businesses become more efficient. This results in their being able to streamline their processes and fulfill growing demand as the economy recovers.”

Global market leader WD-40 has been using Epicor iScala since 1999 and the company is planning to upgrade to the latest version within the next couple of months. “We have already evaluated iScala 2.3 SR3 and we are looking forward to the performance improvements, the new functionality, and support for the latest version of Microsoft SQL,” said Jonathan McCoy, IT manager for WD-40. “Our sales team is particularly excited about the new grid-based order entry screens because they will make it easier and faster for them to enter orders – helping us increase efficiencies throughout the company. Other features that we will benefit from straight away are the improvements in the credit check processes, and the settlement discount localization for Spain.”

Swedish-based HMS Networks is a world leading supplier of communication technology for automation equipment. The company has been using Epicor iScala solutions since the late 1990s and it has performed an evaluation of iScala 2.3 SR3. “We are delighted to see that a number of features from our wish-list have been incorporated in this release,” said Anders Törhagen, IT manager for HMS. “We are particularly interested in the improvements in serial number handling, the way we can enhance emails that are sent directly to customers, and the extended possibilities with user definable fields that will allow us to add more information such as delivery or batch details, onto documents in line with our business processes. Additionally, the improved functionality in Service Connect will make it easier for us to split orders, something that is quite challenging at the moment.”

“We have been testing the latest release of Epicor iScala and have found it to contain value-added functionality for nearly every user in every industry,” said Daina Ziraka, managing director for viaPro, an Epicor partner in Latvia. “The two main challenges our customers face today is the need for improved efficiencies and being able to use technology as an innovation driver. With the latest release, Epicor iScala delivers on both aspects. The integration with Epicor Mobile Field Service gives customers extended mobility functionality as a standard option, benefitting companies today who use mobile technology as a driver for improved customer service. The decision support enhancements and the continual support for ever-changing local regulations will help businesses not only keep up with changing legislation, but also give them tools to control operations and create further efficiencies throughout their business cycles.”

Ziraka continued, “Additionally, a special bonus for manufacturing companies is that they will receive immediate value from the disassembly and repair processes, allowing unified processes across production units and eliminating the complexity of handling production functions across multiple iScala instances.”

Brand New Functionality

The Revenue Recognition module is specifically built for customers that use Contract and Project Management modules, and it is designed to determine the conditions under which revenues and expenses are recognized. Advanced Credit Control introduces several enhancements to the iScala credit control capabilities. It supports the introduction of a new set of features that allows organizations to define a credit authorization/approval matrix consisting of up to 10 user-defined credit limit overrides. Each credit limit override is matched to a specific user permission. The credit overrides allow authorized users to release credit-stopped order lines for delivery.

The Business Transaction Control Engine (BTCE) sees the introduction of a new feature set that allows customers to control specific business transactions or business events for the sales, purchase and service management processes. For example, extended support for advanced License Control (LC) will allow companies to control what, when, why, how much, from/to whom specific products or raw materials can or cannot be purchased or sold.

Muldoon concluded, “The latest Epicor iScala release continues to give global businesses powerful support in areas such as disassembly and repair manufacturing processes, as well as extensive country specific functionality. The latest release also offers expanded transaction capacity for higher volumes, printing from snap search, and pre-packaged content for Epicor enterprise performance management (EPM) to help our customers run leading edge businesses.”

Through a unique multi-channel transaction adapter, Enterprise Store Central simplifies retailers’ daunting task of enabling the full spectrum of POS and enterprise sales functions across stores and channels, so retailers can more effectively manage transactions and customer engagement. Serving as a single integration point for transaction “basket” logic, the adapter integrates data from all channels — blending the e-commerce and brick-and-mortar experience like never before for simplified shopping and streamlined information management.

This approach solves a common issue. Until now, retailers doing business in store and online had to choose — a POS system that’s strong in retail transactions, or one that was well equipped to handle Web transactions and all that entails, such as the sending notifications to online shoppers when a product is shipped and/or calculate shipping charges. Many retailers soon found the only answer was to deploy separate POS platforms — one for in-store and another for Web/online, doubling the management overhead and preventing retailers from providing a unified customer experience.

“Point of Sale systems should be an enabler to today’s multi-channel retail enterprise, not hinder their progress,” said Randy Tofteland, executive vice president, retail software for Epicor. “When a consumer wants to return an item in store that they originally purchased online, they don’t care that the transaction engines behind those two channels are different — each with limitations. They want a seamless shopping experience across that brand. Epicor Retail Enterprise Store Central and the powerful Epicor Retail Store 6.3 Point of Sale solution enable streamlined POS transactions across all channels — eliminating headaches for both retailers and consumers.”

Enterprise Store Central relies on powerful Microsoft technology components to provide the requisite transaction scalability, and support data reporting and analysis. The latter enables retailers to transmit data in real time to ensure accurate inventory information and pricing information across all channels. Addressing the need for up-to-the-minute sales transaction data, a transaction “trickle” feature provides real-time feeds to sales audit programs, central feeds to Epicor Retail Enterprise Selling and central, real-time electronic journals. An enterprise-level SQL Server Analysis Services-based tool provides pre-audited data for near real-time reporting and the ability to dynamically analyze data and export into Microsoft Excel, so retailers can track transaction trends to guide decision making.

Enterprise Store Central also simplifies configuration, administration, and monitoring of POS devices. A store administration interface supports centralized configuration management and provides visibility into “who” needs “what” configured. Central monitoring functionality helps retailers ensure the health of their POS hardware, via alert and log enhancements and integration to IBM’s RMA/Director monitoring solution.

Enterprise Store Central also provides the engine for digital receipts. Retail associates can now be prompted to offer customers traditional paper receipts, digital receipts, or both. Providing convenience for both the retailer and shopper, digital receipts can be easily tracked, stored and provide cost savings by reducing the reliance on expensive consumables such as ink and receipt paper. Returns are simplified as the electronic transaction can be stored, searched for and easily retrieved — either from the register or via the customer’s email files.

The MQ for ERP for Product-Centric Midmarket Companies evaluates products that have a global presence and are specifically tailored for product-centric midmarket companies with roughly $50 million to $1 billion in revenue.

Innovative Approach to Midmarket ERP

“Epicor’s focus to bring unique value to our customers is what drives us to continually deliver technology innovations and services that offer unprecedented choice and flexibility,” said George Klaus, chairman, president, and CEO of Epicor. “We believe our positioning as a visionary vendor in this report supports our long-standing commitment to providing our customers with flexible, scalable and cost-effective solutions that keep pace with the latest technologies and industry best practices; the successful execution of a multi-product consolidation strategy with Epicor 9—something no other vendor has achieved—is testament to our commitment to helping our customers increase efficiency and productivity, and ultimately achieve their business objectives.”

The award-winning Epicor 9 offering was released in December 2008, representing the convergence of Epicor’s 25 years of experience delivering enterprise-wide solutions into a single next-generation global ERP solution. Today, over 300 customers worldwide are live on Epicor 9, and the solution has been shipped to over 2,000 sites in 56 countries, including shipments to over 800 new customers.

Report available at:

http://www.epicor.com/Company/Pages/ERPMagicQuadrant.aspx.

Epicor has  announced a new enhanced Enterprise 2.0 strategy, designed to provide customers with practical and manageable benefits from social technologies within enterprise applications. Epicor will help businesses increasingly focused on effective organization-wide execution to drive growth through innovation with the combination of Epicor 9 next-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications and Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

Integrating social networking features into business applications is an increasingly vital strategy for improving organizational efficiency and productivity, as well as harnessing knowledge through collaboration. However, the potential for data deluge for organizations that venture into the world of Enterprise 2.0 without clearly defined business policies and processes threatens to work against worker effectiveness and business productivity.

Epicor’s strategy is focused on two key aspects: First, it enables businesses to the power of collaborative participation via social networking tools to make applications easier and more engaging, ultimately empowering knowledge workers improving overall business agility and responsiveness. And, of equal importance, it businesses and users to control and manage the flow of information they receive, for improved relevancy without information overload.

Epicor was among the first to realize and deliver upon the potential of merging modern service-oriented architecture (SOA) with collaborative Web 2.0 concepts for greater Epicor Unveils New Enterprise 2.0 Strategy organizational performance, and now will utilize the latest in Microsoft technologies to further empower users of Epicor ERP solutions. By delivering a platform for greater collaboration and productivity that combines enterprise data in context with social networking channels in a controlled manner, Epicor expects to help businesses more effectively engage information workers within the business, between businesses and their broader supply-chain of customers and suppliers.

“Epicor is now building ERP solutions that incorporate social concepts applied to the enterprise at every level,” said James Norwood, senior vice president, worldwide product marketing for Epicor. “Epicor ICE business architecture was one of the first to blend the social and technical aspects of Web 2.0 concepts with SOA and this new extended strategy is designed to help businesses get the maximum benefit from Enterprise 2.0 without the associated deluge of data.”

Epicor has announced its Smarter Business Intelligence (BI) initiative that builds on the real-time, embedded and pre-packaged analytics delivered with the Epicor 9 next-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. The new initiative is designed to leverage the model driven service-oriented architecture (SOA) of Epicor ERP, as well as advanced analytic and cloud computing technologies offered by Microsoft to bring more valuable insights, predictability and performance guidance to businesses who are increasingly focused on effective organization wide execution and growth through innovation.

“Epicor continues to be a leading strategic Microsoft partner, delivering innovative business applications leveraging Microsoft technologies and platforms,” said Bob Maher, Sr. Director at Microsoft Corp. “The development Epicor is doing around advanced, predictive analytics that will utilize SQL Server PowerPivot and the Windows Azure platform will help transform the way business users utilize the abundance of data inside their ERP systems, with the ability to model and analyze information rapidly for greater business insight.”

“Epicor continues to turn the traditional concept of business intelligence on its head, by taking it out of the hands of a limited number of analysts and technicians and letting all end users easily define, access and act on the information they need, wherever and whenever they need it,” said James Norwood, senior vice president, worldwide product marketing for Epicor.

“Our smarter BI initiative is about delivering the right information to the right users at the right time based on their business role and their company’s business performance goals. It’s a unique new approach to comprehensive business insight.”

Epicor expects its new smarter BI initiative to help businesses establish a culture of high performance where all stakeholders are aware of what’s important to the company, how the company is tracking, and where their work fits in to the big picture. It’s all about aligning devices, tools and the most efficient processes to end users, and each of the currently available or planned Epicor applications and tools within the initiative are designed to do just that – align business processes with business performance goals for maximum business benefit.

Photo (L-R): Basil Daniells, Sr. Director for Epicor in the Middle East, Africa, Turkey and India; Dan Wibberley, Lamprell Group Commercial Manager, Roy Shooter, Epicor Sr. Vice President for Sales.

Lamprell, a leading oil and gas contractor in the Arabian Gulf is implementing Epicor 9 next-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution across its entire organization. Epicor will replace a number of bespoke and off-the-shelf applications that Lamprell currently use for its procurement, warehousing, manufacturing and financial operations.

Lamprell is planning to implement Epicor across its entire organization, which comprises several companies and facilities in the United Arab Emirates and a facility in Thailand. To start with, the system will have just over 150 concurrent users, building up to more than 300.

“Because we use a mixture of applications it’s currently difficult and time consuming to prepare accurate business reports, with data often being out-of-date by the time the report is finished,” said Dan Wibberley, group commercial manager for Lamprell. “We need access to live and up-to-date business data from across the entire operations in order to make effective management decisions. Running a mixture of products doesn’t support a growing international business and we knew we needed an ERP solution to improve data visibility and control.”

Lamprell turned to an independent vendor evaluation firm to help them put together a detailed request for information document, and subsequently demonstration scripts, as a help for evaluating various solutions. “This meant that we had vendors demonstrating the exact same functionality so that we could compare like for like,” said Wibberley. “After reviewing several solutions, including those from leading tier one vendors, we selected Epicor because it was clearly the best fit for our environment and our methods of operation.”

Wibberley explained, “We found the Epicor team knowledgeable and professional throughout the entire evaluation process; they answered all our questions with ease. When they demonstrated how to operate the system it looked easy, as opposed to some of the other systems we saw that looked difficult to operate. As we don’t have any previous experience with ERP, this was very important to us. Epicor contains all of our industry requirements plus a selection of ‘nice to have’ features, all within the same package.”

By implementing Epicor Lamprell expects to achieve better visibility across the entire organization. “We already run an effective business but we feel that now is the time to fine tune operations and with Epicor’s help we will be able to find all those smaller areas where we can improve efficiency to help create a truly streamlined organization,” concluded Wibberley.

“Lamprell joins a group of leading energy businesses that use Epicor to successfully manage their operations worldwide,” said Basil Daniells, Sr. Director, MEA, Turkey and India for Epicor. “These businesses need to be agile to enable them to quickly adapt to changes, control processes, and reduce costs, in order to meet demanding market challenges. With its powerful reporting and dashboard capabilities, integrated end-to-end functionality, and modern look and feel, Epicor should be on every energy company’s short list.”

Unveiled earlier this year, the Intermec PartnerNet Program is designed to recognize highly-valued partners and empower them to quickly and effectively capitalize on new business opportunities. By leveraging Intermec’s deep industry knowledge, sales and marketing resources, and innovative program features, PartnerNet Members can achieve greater results.

“Epicor is an important partner that consistently demonstrates commitment to Intermec and our mobile computing solutions,” said Scott Anderson, vice president of Global Channels for Intermec. “With our expanded alliance, Epicor and Intermec will focus on extending the global market for our joint offerings to targeted industries—manufacturing, distribution, transportation and logistics, and healthcare.”

“With Epicor Mobile solutions, enterprises can support more customers, transactions, and products, and maintain a wider range of business partner relationships,” said Basil Daniells, Regional Director for Epicor in the Middle East, Africa, Turkey and India. “Our mobile solutions securely and cost-effectively distribute and automate subsets of existing enterprise business systems outside of the company network—whether connected or remote—with hundreds of Epicor customers worldwide, leveraging Intermec mobile devices today.”

“We were running separate systems for accounting and manufacturing, doing most of the reporting on Excel spreadsheets,” explains Muazam Chaudhry, group financial controller & project manager for the Epicor implementation across the group companies of Knightsbridge Chemicals. “With a growing business and more complex manufacturing processes we needed a system that could centralize data, improve our reporting and help us make better informed business decisions.”

The key criteria that Knightsbridge were looking for included local availability in the Middle East, a flexible system on a modern platform, easy to implement and affordable. Epicor includes full manufacturing capabilities and provide Knightsbridge with the single integrated system they required.

“We operate in a very competitive market and in order to gain more market share we knew that we had to streamline production and reduce costs to improve the margin but without losing out on customer service. Epicor will help us do just that,” said Chaudhry. “It will give us access to historical data from customers, suppliers and from the manufacturing side of our business so that we can easily see trends and react faster to predict demand and supply.”

Reporting will also prove a major benefit for Knightsbridge who will no longer need to manipulate data in spreadsheets, spending time and resources on manually producing reports that were not wholly accurate, nor included historic data. “Once implemented in all Group companies, Epicor will help us to readily access data from across the various functions within the Group, and reports can be easily customizable,” said Chaudhry. “We also know that the reports will be accurate due to the various control points that we have set up. And because they will be available online, it will be easy for managers around the business to access the necessary reports they need. Epicor gives us visibility of our operations on a management level so that we can make better informed business decisions faster.”

“Designed with modern users in mind, equipped with full ERP functionality, and with strong manufacturing experience Epicor should be on every Middle East company’s evaluation list when they look for a solution to support their growth across the region,” said Basil Daniells, senior director for Epicor Software. “We are delighted to see Knightsbridge going live with Epicor on four of their plants and we’re confident that they will continue to realize further benefits as the system become more embedded into their business.”

Working cooperatively with Kodak, and building on its own proven success delivering industry-specific ERP solutions to retail, manufacturing, distribution, hospitality, and services organizations, Epicor is further expanding focus on the print, publishing and packaging industry. The alignment with Kodak creates an opportunity to deliver an integrated print production, digital workflow, and business information solution that can leverage printing industry best practices from design and creation to print and delivery.

Under the agreement, Epicor will deliver Kodak’s sophisticated workflow capabilities and print-focused KODAK EMS Business Software suite embedded with its Epicor 9 next-generation ERP solution, to be branded Epicor for Printing and Packaging. Together, these software solutions form a complete business workflow solution that can help manage all aspects of printing, publishing, media and graphic communications businesses. As part of the agreement, Kodak has ported its sophisticated print-focused EMS software for printers to the Epicor 9 platform. Epicor and Kodak have a number of joint customers in the printing industry today; Kodak will continue to market and sell the solution jointly with Epicor.