With respect to this complaint specifically, did you check out Epicor’s Extended Solutions that I suggested in your previous topic (Logging email communications)?
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With respect to Mike’s suggestion regarding APR, please consider voting for Kinetic Idea #363, Modernize Report Data Definitions to include contact email addresses for all externally distributed forms.
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This is the basis of most of the pain that all ERP users feel regardless of the product. My wife often says,
An expectation is an unborn resentment.
When we expect the new system to act like like old ERP system, the manual system, a system we have in our head, then we’re just setting ourselves up for disappointment.
For me, it’s like learning a language (spoken or computer, doesn’t matter). Just forget the language you know and accept the way the new language does it. In that way, one discovers the (different) beauties the other language has to express ideas.
And as a bonus, I find the idea works with people too! 
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I like this
Hopefully things will smooth out for you.
But (I think) you are not alone, most end users love to hate their ERP software.
While I like the concept of Kinetic, it’s still relatively new. So… I plan on using the classic interface for at least another year or two.
Switching brands almost always involves pain and disappointment. This is why I tend to stick with the “devil I know”.
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I have been consulting on Epicor software for 14 years now starting out with Vantage 8.03.
A common thread that I have seen when users have been frustrated with the ERP system is not setting up the system correctly and following the “flow” of the design of the system.
There have been several times when I came into a customer that was frustrated, and after checking a few boxes or adding some parameters, the system began to do what they needed.
Other times, added customizations or workarounds sometimes cost you more than following the standard flow.
Project is a complex beast and working through some of the summarization tables can help you understand how the build analysis can work for you to calculate your gross margins, etc.
This forum is here to help you as shown by the response to your frustration.
@anon99908839 Welcome to the club!
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I’m not sure which “this” you are referring to, but yes the courses are from the Epicor Education Portal, the Info Worker walk through is from…some presentation Epicor gave at one point not sure where.
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Epicor is useless if not dangerous without customizations.
We had to constantly implement new BPM’s to create warning messages that I think should have been standard out of the box. And we are still doing so 2 years later.
We made tons of BAQ’s and Dashboards to get at the data we wanted in a timely and human readable way.
That being said, it would be even worse if we couldn’t customize it.
The Epicor installation consultants should carry a USB stick full of common BPMs and common Dashboards to get new customers up and running.
I know every business is different. I get it. But come on.
I really have no idea if other ERP’s are better. I’m sure they all have their pros and cons. I can’t imagine going through the pain of switching again.
If I could do it all over again, we should have sent some key team members to VISIT a few different other Epicor customers. It would have been good to get the real user experience, not just the dog and pony show from the Sales Team.
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That’s what I am saying Chris, I think all of us have learned our lesson about expectations and wish we would have done some more up front exploration/demoing.
I must say though, Epicor warts and all has helped us in the very way being discussed here. Bear with me.
It’s admittedly a mess, missing functionality you’d think is bone-basic.
However, what I think is missing is likely different from what you think.
And that’s The Thing.
Epicor gave us a baseline, so we could say what our PROCESSES were missing, in a common language as a delta from out-of-the-box Epicor.
Before, we had 20 different people with 20 different ways of describing process problems and 20 different ways of keeping records and implementing changes. We went quickbooks to Infor Syteline to Epicor and in my opinion Epicor - warts and all - is the best balance so far between flexibility and a basic structure.
We now have 20 managers using the same process language and gradually learning about the same 40-50 available building blocks to improve the business as it grows.
Of course, @KevinK is right, the whole industry is a mess and of course, Epicor’s service level does not attain to their price point; but it doesn’t really matter because there’s also no support hotline for “times have changed and my business is failing”. Adopting the necessary mindset to make an ERP work will give the team the same taking-responsibility mindset needed to keep the business going, a common language, and even a common enemy to boot.
FWIW we’re about 150 employees, 50 named users, 3 factories, mix of MTO, MTS, ETO and we gave up on CRM.
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Let’s go Steve, nice post.
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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