First off, as a non-partner, I don’t represent Epicor.
While independent consultants shouldn’t be at odds with Epicor, their client is paying them for work that is in the clients best interest. I’m not saying that non-partner consultants should ignore Epicor’s guidance. But the clients interest should come first. Obviously, this is most often achieved by working together with Epicor and and the client.
It’s a disservice to the client for the consultant to do something that goes against Epicor’s best practices, or future roadmaps. But there will be times when a clients business model (or budget) simply require a workaround. And I’m not talking about technical issues, but rather business (i.e. sales revenue for Epicor) issues. There’s always some optional functionality that a client could use (like configurator, Advanced Printing, etc…) , but might not have the budget or justification for the expense of it.
And isn’t one of Epicor’s business practices that it imposes on its partners that they meet sales requirements of Epicor products - i.e. getting their clients to buy more seats, modules, training, etc… So Epicor partners should be advising clients to purchase more from Epicor. Whether the client needs it or not.
And for the record, I’m not a traditional consultant. I’m only a consultant in the fact that the company I provide my Epicor services for, employs me as a consultant, and not a direct employee. I don’t offer my services to any other company.
We aren’t saying you need to sell anything the intent was simply that “CONSULTANTS” should refrain from giving advice that would hurt the customer/community member (for example suggesting you go edit something in SQL)
This is against the Epicor Support rules and against the limitations imposed on partners, yet we’ve had several consultants lately come in here and say stuff like just delete it from PartTran which is a TERRIBLE idea
So we are just asking that if you are a consultant you behave in way that won’t harm anyone’s relationship with Epicor or Support by giving the incorrect advice.
Also as a former partner, I can say that although Epicor does have “goals” and “targets” for their re-sale partners that doesn’t really have anything to do with the consulting side of the house (or at least it shouldn’t)
I (and most consultants I worked with) always give the best advice we could that would benefit the customer regardless of weather it would benefit us (or Epicor)
Many times I straight up refused to do a specific customization when I knew that it was not in the best interest of the customer or that the functionality they were looking for was already available in vanilla Epicor. I made sure to guide them down the correct path even if it meant that I didn’t get that consulting time or those development hours.
The guideline wasn’t meant to discourage anyone from participating all we are asking is that people consider the consequences of their advice before they post. If that advice falls in a category that may jeopardize the relationship between a user/community member and Epicor / Support then we ask that advice not be issued.
The “CONSULTANT” title carries weight it implies knowledge beyond average and so if a consultant advices that you delete records from PartTran using SQL someone who doesn’t know better may assume that is the correct thing to do and lead that community member into a world of hurt.
Yeah I might have jumped the gun on my first reading of the guidelines. I took “… in alignment with Epicor Business practices …” a little to literally. And put too much emphasis on “business practices”, as meaning the business aspects (i.e. revenue), over the the technical aspects.
But for the record, I’ve had Epicor support tell me to modify a DB table in SSMS. I balked about doing that, hoping for a datafix. But they determined their suggestion for me to edit the table, was the solution and would close the ticket.
Sure and if they ask you to do it and document it then that’s on them.
But if you do it because a “CONSULTANT” told me… that’s where fecal matter hits the wind generating oscillating rotary tool
Recently I have mentioned about standard Purge option available to delete PartTran and other transaction table which many may not aware in Epicor. This is common feature available in many Erp products.
