When I started my position in the summer of '04 my first task was to
bring our 21 user 6 DC license facility to 6.0. My boss was told, by
Epicor, that we would be 6.0 for a short time, now was the time to do
since the conversion would be done for free and 8.0 would be out in
about a month. I got the 1st pass data, trained myself on the
functionality of 6.0 and away we went. Went to Perspectives in 04 and
converted live to 6.0 in December thinking 8.0 was just around the
corner....and a few months passed. Once we realized the inevitable we
started picked up projects along the way. We made a huge push on data
collection, which was never used. Made push on getting thing tracked
the right way. Finally we got the disks, bought a new server, did test
conversions on our own, tested, tested and tested, customized a bit and
in Dec of 05 v8 we went live.
When on 6 I did very little to it support wise, I spent most of my time
on projects getting Vista to where it needed to be, getting the
"information system" in some order, and doing some Crystal report
writing. Along the way I've picked up things about progress, databases,
crystal, etc.
Once we first flipped to 8.0, training was needed and fires, as far as
searching and basic training were needed, and the learning curve were
tough. Initially it will be a full time job, but shortly thereafter it
shouldn't be all that bad. Report writing and dashboard creation will
be a big part as well as preparation when schema changes come into play,
8.00-8.03, for example. One things that slows down how fast you can put
fires out is the speed of development. If you find bugs you can never
really be sure how long they will be out there before they are fixed. I
spend half my time working on project to improve the traceability in
vista. Mainly Job Costing perfection is our goal. Tracking/inventory
of raw material, tracking the cost of tooling in jobs, keeping up with
data collection, getting bar coding off the ground, getting the QA mod
implemented. There always seems like something more can be done to get
actual costs to the job and off the burden rate. The other half is
spent on a 25% each mix of issue resolution (keeping up with open call
with vista), dashboards/reports, IT/Systems management, and learning
more about emerging technologies/preparing for the next patch and
training.
Paul
From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Todd Caughey
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 1:36 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [Vantage] poll: how many people does it take to support
Epicor 8?
Roger,
I will take a stab at this because it is "near and dear" to me and my
situation. We are still on 6.1 and eventually anticipating migrating to
8+. I am in a support quandry as things are now and wondering if 8.0+
intrinsically has some added support burden (beyond startup impacts
anyway). Such as 8 is 25% more time consuming to support. The only way
to really get a handle on this is from migration sites -- so far I have
run in to very few, and those have tended to be larger sites with more
resources than a one-man IT shop like us.
Part of the impact though of 8+, I would assume, is that the added
functionality must come at a price, support wise. It's a TANSTAAFL
situation. Selling management on all the cool new capabilities has to
come with a realistic price tag. There really is no free lunch. And if
you go cheap and cut corners on the design and build you end up paying
dearly later in usage and inability to "fix" poor decisions you are now
locked into....only adding to support overhead.
Currently, for me, supporting daily operation of Vantage 6.1 for 33/full
& 10/DC users is NOT a full time job...even with supporting the
underlaying hardware they are using. I still have time to manage the
rest of the technology (physical security, web sites, marketing
brochures, A/V products, etc...) as well as try to keep up on new stuff.
On the other hand impact from 8+ would certainly mean either off-loading
these to someone else or adding a support position. Even now priority
juggling and concession making are the norm...forcing management to
fight over my time. Again, no free lunch.
In a straight up 8.0/8.03 post-implementation for 15 users I suspect the
level of added support will boil down to a cost benefit analysis of the
new customization projects you could get done sooner and the benefits
that will flow sooner if someone else was supporting users and fighting
fires...while also doing customization in between fires. Leaving you to
concentrate of getting things right rather than "fast & distracted".
Bottom line here is the style of your management and how realistic they
are about how much and how fast they want things done. Then again if
they plan on never improving system usage after implementing, that is to
do no new customization, then an added support person should not be
necessary. Also, what if you grow to 100 or 400 users? That will sure
impact support without changing anything else!
Another thought...who manages the support person. You? If so expect that
this too will be a drain on you so there is a cost there as well. You
won't get a 100% return.
Anyway...just my 2 cents. I would love to here from smaller migration
sites about that support ratio from 6.1 to 8+ and what they have seen.
-Todd C.
-----Original Message-----
From: vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com>
[mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com> ]On
Behalf Of Roger@office
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 11:20 AM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [Vantage] poll: how many people does it take to support Epicor
8?
My boss asked me if supporting epicor was going to be a full time job?
we are very slowly trying to implement epicor and he is wondering were
he needs to budget for a support position once Epicor is not longer
dead(meaning Live). We will have 15 licensces and this is going to be
very customized enviroment.
roger Rabus
Starrco
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
bring our 21 user 6 DC license facility to 6.0. My boss was told, by
Epicor, that we would be 6.0 for a short time, now was the time to do
since the conversion would be done for free and 8.0 would be out in
about a month. I got the 1st pass data, trained myself on the
functionality of 6.0 and away we went. Went to Perspectives in 04 and
converted live to 6.0 in December thinking 8.0 was just around the
corner....and a few months passed. Once we realized the inevitable we
started picked up projects along the way. We made a huge push on data
collection, which was never used. Made push on getting thing tracked
the right way. Finally we got the disks, bought a new server, did test
conversions on our own, tested, tested and tested, customized a bit and
in Dec of 05 v8 we went live.
When on 6 I did very little to it support wise, I spent most of my time
on projects getting Vista to where it needed to be, getting the
"information system" in some order, and doing some Crystal report
writing. Along the way I've picked up things about progress, databases,
crystal, etc.
Once we first flipped to 8.0, training was needed and fires, as far as
searching and basic training were needed, and the learning curve were
tough. Initially it will be a full time job, but shortly thereafter it
shouldn't be all that bad. Report writing and dashboard creation will
be a big part as well as preparation when schema changes come into play,
8.00-8.03, for example. One things that slows down how fast you can put
fires out is the speed of development. If you find bugs you can never
really be sure how long they will be out there before they are fixed. I
spend half my time working on project to improve the traceability in
vista. Mainly Job Costing perfection is our goal. Tracking/inventory
of raw material, tracking the cost of tooling in jobs, keeping up with
data collection, getting bar coding off the ground, getting the QA mod
implemented. There always seems like something more can be done to get
actual costs to the job and off the burden rate. The other half is
spent on a 25% each mix of issue resolution (keeping up with open call
with vista), dashboards/reports, IT/Systems management, and learning
more about emerging technologies/preparing for the next patch and
training.
Paul
From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Todd Caughey
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 1:36 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [Vantage] poll: how many people does it take to support
Epicor 8?
Roger,
I will take a stab at this because it is "near and dear" to me and my
situation. We are still on 6.1 and eventually anticipating migrating to
8+. I am in a support quandry as things are now and wondering if 8.0+
intrinsically has some added support burden (beyond startup impacts
anyway). Such as 8 is 25% more time consuming to support. The only way
to really get a handle on this is from migration sites -- so far I have
run in to very few, and those have tended to be larger sites with more
resources than a one-man IT shop like us.
Part of the impact though of 8+, I would assume, is that the added
functionality must come at a price, support wise. It's a TANSTAAFL
situation. Selling management on all the cool new capabilities has to
come with a realistic price tag. There really is no free lunch. And if
you go cheap and cut corners on the design and build you end up paying
dearly later in usage and inability to "fix" poor decisions you are now
locked into....only adding to support overhead.
Currently, for me, supporting daily operation of Vantage 6.1 for 33/full
& 10/DC users is NOT a full time job...even with supporting the
underlaying hardware they are using. I still have time to manage the
rest of the technology (physical security, web sites, marketing
brochures, A/V products, etc...) as well as try to keep up on new stuff.
On the other hand impact from 8+ would certainly mean either off-loading
these to someone else or adding a support position. Even now priority
juggling and concession making are the norm...forcing management to
fight over my time. Again, no free lunch.
In a straight up 8.0/8.03 post-implementation for 15 users I suspect the
level of added support will boil down to a cost benefit analysis of the
new customization projects you could get done sooner and the benefits
that will flow sooner if someone else was supporting users and fighting
fires...while also doing customization in between fires. Leaving you to
concentrate of getting things right rather than "fast & distracted".
Bottom line here is the style of your management and how realistic they
are about how much and how fast they want things done. Then again if
they plan on never improving system usage after implementing, that is to
do no new customization, then an added support person should not be
necessary. Also, what if you grow to 100 or 400 users? That will sure
impact support without changing anything else!
Another thought...who manages the support person. You? If so expect that
this too will be a drain on you so there is a cost there as well. You
won't get a 100% return.
Anyway...just my 2 cents. I would love to here from smaller migration
sites about that support ratio from 6.1 to 8+ and what they have seen.
-Todd C.
-----Original Message-----
From: vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com>
[mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com> ]On
Behalf Of Roger@office
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 11:20 AM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [Vantage] poll: how many people does it take to support Epicor
8?
My boss asked me if supporting epicor was going to be a full time job?
we are very slowly trying to implement epicor and he is wondering were
he needs to budget for a support position once Epicor is not longer
dead(meaning Live). We will have 15 licensces and this is going to be
very customized enviroment.
roger Rabus
Starrco
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]