In my past experience I’ve worked with a company where we had 2 Generalists and they were Masters of none.
In another experience we had 5+ Specialists each one responsible for a Module (Sales, Supply Chain, Engineering, Mfg, Finance) and the Implementations were well executed.
Do you prefer a mix of 2 Generalists + Specialists or mainly Specialists?
What have you seen work and be successful?
What type of Epicor Team do you think makes Epicor successful?
Define “successful”? In my experience, successful companies were successful in the face of Epicor trying very hard to make them not succeed. I have never seen an ERP turn a poorly managed company around but have seen even very well managed companies have ERP failures
Great question… but the answer is too often “it depends”. Sort of like asking if you need IT specialists or generalists… it mostly depends on the size of your organization and what you want those folks to do.
Kinetic is mostly a mid-market product, and at MOST of the companies I work with, the in-house Epicor staff headcount ranges between 0 and 1. Frequently the go-to person for ERP expertise has a day job as an engineer, IT person, controller, or whoever else got “volunteered” during the original implementation. On the other hand, I’ve been to a few places where there was a DBA, a programmer, and one or more “application specialists”.
I think the available resources (i.e. number asses you can put in chairs) will play a huge part. If you can only afford 2 people, they’d better be generalists.
Having always worked in small companies and having to wear many hats - talking inter-departmental functions(engineering, R&D, IT, service, sales support, etc…), not just various aspects within a department (Network management, vs Desktop Support, vs AD, …) - I’ve found that one very versatile person can usually do a “good enough” job to keep the ship sailing. It might not be the “best” solution, but it works.
Where as specialists that know little to nothing about aspects outside their specialty, cannot do a “good enough” job to keep thing moving.
I think you need at least one generalist person in IT who understands the business needs with the ability to manage a project. This person should be able to understand the problem, suggest solutions and at the end validate the developed enhancement. You need at least one of these because there are policies which bridge all departments such as part creation rules, costing and inventory. The generalist should be able to hammer out a BAQ or BPM and do simple screen customizations.
The only ‘module experts’ should be the SME users embedded in the various departments. Users should channel all problems through the help system followed by their SME, then to IT. Amazing how much more the SME learns that way. Enhancement requests should always come from their supervisors unless it’s a bug.
Additional IT resources for development become just a matter of bandwidth and can then come from anywhere. Consultants, in-house, CSG, wherever.
The first Epicor implementation for our company was feeling pretty rough, we felt the first consultant wasn’t a great fit so we had him replaced. The second consultant was very knowledgeable and did a great job. As time went on we thought it was taking too long and almost took on the implementation ourselves. Ultimately we decided not to fight the method and just follow it. Turned out to be a successful implementation and it improved our company immeasurably.
Bottom line, if there is a lack of management commitment and the users aren’t putting in the work, it may seem like Epicor’s fault. But it’s a complex project. Epicor is a white board and takes a LOT of work to make useable. And this baseline enhancement development is a killer. Bringing on subsequent companies / sites is child’s play.
I couldn’t agree more! Every day I hear “Epicor doesn’t” or “I can’t blah blah in Epicor” …well yes Mr. User who was on the implementation team - you COULD do those things if you had been paying attention and doing the work during implementation!
