Epicor ERP

Vantagens

Epicor ERP is an all-in-one solution for medium-sized manufacturers. It covers everything needed and has lots of optional modules.

We use it for:
Quoting
Orders
Jobs/BOMs
Product Configurator
Dashboards
Reports
Purchasing
Inventory
Production
AP & AR invoicing

The Epicor team has worked hard to improve the software over the years, and it is now 100% Microsoft Stack. The SQL database can be queried from within the software using reports and dashboards, or externally using Business Intelligence software such as Power BI or Tableau.

The price point is better compared to some of its larger competitors in the ERP space. If you have less than 200 users, Epicor will be a much more cost-effective ERP than the ERP leaders.

The opportunities for customisation and personalisation are very high.

Desvantagens

Earlier versions of Epicor ERP were slow and clunky, but the new version is really fast. Also, you need experts to help you implement the software, and a dedicated team to maintain it.

This is not an "out of the box" solution. It requires you to map your business processes and then implement the software carefully to suit the way your business works. You can customise almost anything you want in the system, but greater customisation brings with it added complexity and possible issues when upgrading point releases and versions.

Vantagens

Epicor ERP is an exceptional software product for manufacturing environments! It's strongest points are Inventory Control (Including perpetual inventory tracking and extensive Bill of Materials functionality), Manufacturing Routing and Scheduling, and Job Costing. It also does a good job at Quote and Order Management, and standard accounting (AR, AP, GL's etc).

The UI itself, while very expansive, is easy to navigate and laid out very logically. The MES (shop floor) module is also fairly straight-forward to use for the production employees.

The software offers some great tools like their BAQ feature (Business Activity Queries), which allows extensive SQL Queries to be designed and used within the UI without having to have SQL scripting / programming knowledge. The entire UI also has a "field help" feature, which allows you to access table names, field names, and field function info right from within any screen in the UI! For people with SQL and UI knowledge, Epicor ERP offers some really good customization features as well!

If Inventory, Scheduling, Job Costing and Quote/Order Management are your biggest priorities, I'm of the opinion that Epicor ERP is the BEST choice out there!

Desvantagens

There are a LOT of options throughout the system, including areas like scheduling and costing. These settings and options can be overwhelming for sure, so it's critical to have a solid team of power users who have a good understanding of options and how things work!

I would like to see Epicor ERP have a few more integration features, such as email and calendar integrations.

Vantagens

I mostly like the ease of use of this software. Data entry and Data queries are easy to do with the many screens provided in this software. One thing to mention is the powerful search function to find different screens, displays their path within this software so that is also a big plus. Another positive is the overall navigation of this software with the different modules feels natural because of the 'tree view' option for the menu items. The different maintenance screens are set up pretty nicely and can be customized depending on what type of SaaS option you have so that is great as well. I also really like the security settings I can adjust to prevent users from accessing certain screens or hiding certain fields from them. One final mention for this section would have to be the SSRS integration. I design lots of reports and it is extremely easy to pull data into an SSRS report and present them how I want it.

Desvantagens

Of all the pros that I have listed in the previous section, there are some cons to mention as well. One mention that I like least about this software is the optimization of this software. Many screens take at least 2 minute to open and that is with the recommended hardware specs provided. Another mention is that the PDF reports take at least 2 minute or more to view. I know that the reports are server side and I don't know the process flow of it but it would be nice to click the print preview button and 3 seconds later, have the report show.

Vantagens

This software allows a quoter to include every facet of a project before it gets a customer PO. From that quote, every detail is able to be brought through to the order, the job, the packing slip, and the final invoice. There are so many different ways to track various phases of the project as it moves through. Every detail can be recorded if every employee is disciplined enough to make the input. Then, 10 years from now, when the machine finally has a hiccup, (and assuming everyone entered all the details) you know every purchased part and have a link to every drawing used in manufacturing. Your customer will be amazed when you can recite those part numbers and pull prints within minutes 10 years later with absolute accuracy. You will eliminate QuickBooks, sales force or any other CRM, MS Project, and a host of programs that are not integrated and require multiple entries once you are fully functional. This software will transform your company, and you will become more profitable than you were before. Your work week will never be under 50 hours again, and you will either learn very facet of the software of spend well over 100k every year to keep it running, but if you stay on every employee all the time to do their best and do YOUR best, you will realize some incredible benefits. Our company does more with 20 people than many companies do with 50, and we manufacture parts and machinery. We can credit a lot of that success to the Epicor ERP system.

Desvantagens

There are a few Caveats. There is no way you can employ a single person who is not college educated. Without math skills, great writing and data entry skills, and an exceptional amount of discipline, you will not get the quality inputs, and the software will not be able to give quality outputs. Slowly, over a period of about 3-5 years, you will come to the realization that people just cant come up to the level of inputting the information correctly, and you will have to decide if you want this software to work and be useful of if you want to eliminate these people. There is no other way, it simply cant work. Garbage in - Garbage out.
The complexity of the entire computer industry has taken the decision that they are going to complicate every facet that they can to require you to hire consultants to do what for 20 years you could easily do yourself. Continual updates, incredibly complicated reporting that an average person used to be able to do, and a constant push to the cloud really get in the way of helping your customers at every turn. It is almost as if, as a machine shop in our case, your mission is to configure software all day and never deliver a single project.
The pros outweigh the cons, but the cost of ownership and value of the effort put into keeping the software functional was less than 10% in 1996-2010 than it is today. If our company was looking at this software today, I really don't know if it would be possible to justify it.

Vantagens

This software has a ton of features. From Quote to Invoicing and every piece of the production pipeline in between.

Desvantagens

It's not super intuitive and requires a bit of a learning curve to get it going in the right direction.