I could not manage this system for our whole company by myself without this forum, that’s for sure.
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I don’t get paid enough to deal with Epicor, but on the bright side, there is usually a solution to most out of the box issues or missing functionality. It’s a full time job to be able to create and maintain customizations, on top of learning everyones job function so you can fix their issues. The system is meant for robots to use, customization is for all the additional special circumstances.
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The information worker seems it could be useful. I had our integrator quote it for me.
I am going to do some more research on it. Thanks for posting that.
You are correct in saying we just need help understanding what we have in front of us. It’s quite confusing and our integrator isn’t really “training” us per se - I do need to spend the time in the education portal.
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That is sort of our issue - we’re small (13) and don’t have a dedicated team to deal with a system like this, so I am hoping I can figure out how to get some basic functionality and maintain my sanity at the same time lol. Netsuite is a complex machine as well, but it functions nicely out of the box. Granted it lacks in areas too, but the basics are there. The basic functions in Epicor seem to be from 1996.
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I’ve used netsuite, (very shortly mind you), but from what I could gather, they spent time and energy getting the basic bits set up pretty well, and not on being able to make customizations. Other than some layout arrangements, any other customization seems pretty hard to get anything done. Epicor on the other hand, has a pretty mature set up customization tools, but they spent time and energy on those, sacrificing some of the out of the box functionality that you would find in other products.
It’s kind of like the difference between IOS and Android. IOS is pretty stable, works pretty well on it’s own, but there are a lot of bumpers that mean you don’t have a lot of control. Android on the other hand says you can have all the control that you want, but be ok with hanging yourself if you do something wrong.
Personally, I like being able to bend the system to my will, so I like Epicor. But I could understand a company that’s less tech savy and doesn’t want to support a big IT initiative want something like Netsuite.
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I truly think if Epicor put a real effort into their CRM to make it match even basic ones like Acumatica, they would be a far more attractive company for most if not all customers. Granted CRM isn’t the backbone of manufacturing, but it’s almost expected these days to be in good shape. Tools and technology for the end users/in-house dev resources is excellent and does require a bit of knowledge. But customers will be so much more willing to invest if Epicor would polish up the “expected” stuff like CRM. My 2 cents at least.
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13 employees? Oh my.
I don’t think you can cover all the department responsibilities of epicor with that many people. I have no idea what you do though.
I would hire a full-time consultant for 6 months to a year if you’re struggling and do not want it to be your primary job.
Build a decent integration with a partner doing well in the CRM space- while it might be better for their bottom line to develop and sell their own CRM, I am hoping they keep going the route they are going with BI (not the switching partners thing), where they partner with someone who’s product is better than anything they could produce internally and build out an integration.
Examples:
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Quick Ship - integrates with UPS and Fedex.
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FreightQuote - Rate shopping for LTL
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EDA - Using phocus and now grow (maybe) to do the visualization piece.
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Robotic automation. Lots of custom systems with lots of parts/pieces that are custom built (machined, fabricated, etc). Also have a standard product line, spare parts, etc.
We were told by our integration sales team that Epicor was a perfect fit for this. We were shown some canned project/job demos, some of the accounting functionality, typical sales presentation.
We stressed that we’re a small company and don’t have an IT team to put onto this system, it’ll be 3 or 4 of us using it.
I hope we aren’t sunk because of this decision.
Are you 365 users?
Information Worker is built on the older plug-in model. So you won’t be able to use it outside of the Outlook client (web or mobile). Just an FYI.
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Ha. Yea 365 user… so it’s not going to work.
Thanks for that info!
AFAIK, the Connect CX solution also works with only the Outlook desktop client.
Tried working with the system today for some practice. Did a quote of some manufactured items - however I don’t have a BOM/MOM built for the item itself, I really want to do that in the quote process since I am using the same custom component parts in multiple systems, none are the same… so I made a generic part called “Base Frame”… that base frame can be used in an infinite number of systems we build, each time the BOM and MOM will be different… So I did an Engineering Worksheet in the quote. The main item I am selling is called “MWINTSYS” which is a kit. That kit again will be quoted and built as custom systems.
So I added the “Base Frame” in the Engineering worksheet, added manufacturing steps, added material.
I then created an order from the quote, but no matter what I do I cannot create jobs - I tried the create job wizard, nothing shows up. I tried clicking “create job” from inside the sales order, again nothing happens.
If my main items is a kit, do I need to put the “base frame” in it as a line item within the quote, or will the engineering worksheet take care of that since it’s called out in there along with the manufacturing process and raw material?
During these few hours, Kinetic froze and needed re-started at least 5 times.
So frustrating. Not sure what I am doing wrong.
From the embedded help - part type - sales kit
- Note: You will be prevented from creating a job for a Sales Kit part if the part is parent (assembly part) and a configured item. If you attempt to create a job, the Job creation for a Configured Sales Kit
I ran into so many bugs and needs to restart Kinetic while trying to make a quote… screens scramble, operations disappear (but Kinetic thinks they’re still there) - I am at the end of my rope honestly.
There’s no way I can feel confident to dump Netsuite and move to this product. I am scrapping it, and having my legal council sort the contract issue. Epicor sold me a broken product. That’s a breach of contract.
I don’t have the time to beat my head against the wall trying to learn something that’s broken to start with.
Stunning.
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Are you using the web version?
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The app
Just tried it in the web version - same problem.
This software is JUNK!!! How do you people use this stuff lol???
The classic version works fine I think you are using the new web interface that is still under development