I spent 7yrs in Automotive using Epicor… they barely have any real modules for Automotive, im not even sure they know Automotive. Need a Vehicle Title, MSO Report, Intermediate Title, Tire Tag, VIN Validation, OEM/Program Management, SOP for Automotive TIERs, AIAG Guidelines? Wont find it in their ERP 
#WordsOfWisdom
But sometimes Marketing is all that matters, perception is key.
We’ll never know the full story behind this one, however worth being aware that this is Red Bull’s secondary / junior team.
The Red Bull F1 team have used Epicor for many years: on every trip to the UK the fresh-in-the-door CxOs talk up the visit they had to Red Bull the previous day. I’ve lost count of the number of events the same discussions have taken place at!
Could be as little as trading a little sponsorship space on the car for a reduced support payment 
As a F1 fan who purchased some additional licences days before this was announced I kinda feel responsible for this one …
It’s the Rise of Hyper-Inflation as a result of the artificially created economic crises created by CON-19.
Epicor on premise maintenance is pretty cheap. It would have been even cheaper if we had properly vetted the modules and also understood how the licensing works (an open screen on someone’s desk doesn’t necessarily consume a license)
We only do 2-4 tickets a year but I’ve found the biggest value has been the upgrades. Lots of bugs have been stamped out and they’ve added a lot to the software and improved DMT since we signed up in Jan 2016. E10 was built out of E9 support payments. Epicor is a progressive software that seems to be evolving faster than the competition. I’m going to assume a lot of companies are hurting and dropped Epicor support so they’re raising support prices. I would like to have all epicor companies contributing to progress.
Mark, it’s not cheap for everyone. We’re talking exotic car territory…
Not “exotic” but for our yearly one could a BMW 3 series.
I wouldn’t call our on premise maintenance pretty cheap.
When we went through our ERP selection I noted that both Infor and Dynamics AX had far higher annual maintenance costs (like 1.6x) and both are far more expensive to customize. Think about it. By virtue of the fact this board even exists, the system is highly open and customizable. It’s nuts.
I also see a value in not needing support calls vs. having to manage tons of support calls. It’s a sign of quality.
If your maintenance is 50-100k choose your measuring stick of choice. Is the software worth a person? If you have 20 people probably not. If your company is 100+ then it probably is. Percentage of revenue? For us the on premise Epicor annually costs .1% of revenue. The software choice you make should be right-sized for your business.
Now we know how 1 of Epicor’s Customers is paying for the 5% increase.
That’s cool that you and your company are able to say that the maintenance contract you pay for is of value to you.
I don’t know if most people use it like you do so I understand both sides of it.
You know, when our maintenance comes up for renewal I’ll use your argument as it’s quite valid. Epicor gives us tons of value by efficiencies that’d either require a more expensive ERP or many more employees (which aren’t cheap either).
That or a complete lack of confidence in support. Some people see the value in Epicor support/maint and their advancements others don’t. Regardless of price if a customer is not seeing value in the support contract Epicor should still be addressing that.
From my own personal standpoint, I’m not happy seeing support dollars spent on half baked shiny objects (EVA, Collaborate, EMWW or whatever it’s called this week) while real features that let us get business done lag (MRP, Subledger Reporting, WIP implementation, PCID implementation). That is where I get frustrated. It sends a real grasping at straws to be hip and with the times vs meticulous go forward planning vibe.
I concurr with Johua here, In our case we haven’t used any of the new functionalities, and the ones that seem intersting imply a new purchase. If we could see at least better performance in the screens or processes that would be a better way to sell the maintenance fee to the upper management, but sadly it is not the case.
Worst of all we are required tu update constantly because of CSF Mexico, that is pretty much my only card to talk CFO and CEO about paying this. Regulation changes about every two years, so we get to change to newer versions to get the CSF Update accordingly. Also, this updates are bare minumum and sometimes get really late so lots of stress there. We had to pay CSG for a customization(because the way Epicor decide to tackle the issue is not viable to us), so another maintenance fee is there. Getting ready to pay the next flesh pound.
Support lacks customer value for real bugs, because it is a hard as customer to get rejections because we can’t duplicate the error. I would get that in errors that happen while entering data, but there are other processes which are a completely black box and the customer can hardly find out what is triggering an MRP malfunction for example.
As others have mentioned, the value is in upgrades. Other than that any bugs even if duplicated get a standard response “ It has been fixed in a future release” even if that release is not yet available.
Recently we upgraded to 2021.1.11 (latest version available on that date) about a month ago and have users use the kinetic screens. We tested all the critical features and converted customizations to Kinetic screens.
Three months into using we realise on Order Entry “ Build order from history” is not working. It works in the classic screens.
We lodged a ticket and the error was duplicated in their database. After a webex session and assurance to get it fixed, we got the answer, that it has been fixed in 2021.2.3 (a version that is not even available yet for on prem).
Now, how does this help me. I cannot upgrade just after a month of going through it. If we tell the user to go back to classic screen, they lose confidence in the system and changing back and forth is not feasible after all the customisations done in Kinetic.
I think there should be a policy of fixing bugs in any current supported version. It should not be that difficult if it is fixed in a later release.
Vinay Kamboj
I am predicting a negative sentiment analysis result on this thread should it continue.
I honestly didn’t expect this many responses, but I guess it’s a hot button issue. Not even sure who to mark as a “solution”. I very much agree with @Vinaykamboj when talking about the “it will be fixed in the next release” nonsense. Management cannot stand when I tell them this. Upgrading is not a quick and easy move for all users. We only really keep the maintenance for the upgrades but in my opinion the costs have run too far and the constant increases every year are too much. No reward for being a loyal customer for years? I guess we will just have to go through and evaluate what modules we use and what we don’t to see if we can drop support for those.
Do you have to “mark as solution” or do you just close the thread or just let it run? I haven’t posted that many discussion posts on here.
I think admin can lock it.
Yeah, I think this thread has run it’s course. Nothing really new is being discussed, these are all the same complaints everyone has voiced for years. Locking the thread.