System Review

Yahoo Archive
1
We wanted a specific review of Vantage Scheduling so we contacted
Vantage and arranged to have one of their top instructors, Steve
Wieland, give us an in house course not only in Scheduling, but other
areas we had questions about. In addition he gave us an overview of
what was in 4.0, 5.0 and beyond. Epicor knows these people need to get
out with customers instead of just teach courses in house. We found him
very knowledgeable and forthright in his answers.

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: H. Dale Puls [SMTP:DPuls@...]
Sent: Monday, November 06, 2000 5:57 PM
To: vantage@egroups.com
Subject: RE: [Vantage] System Review

I'm curious on how to determine IF the Epicor consultant is
worth the cost
for a post-implementation review. We've been live for 11 months
now and
would, very likely, receive great benefit from a review. Our
Epicor
consultant, on the other hand, was very unprepared to help us in
our initial
installation and constantly pointed us to "read the help"
screens at every
question we asked. (The help, of course, did NOT address the
questions we
were asking) As a result, we stopped using the Epicor consultant
and have
relied on calls to Tech Support as our only means of support. I
know this
falls far short of having a consultant on-site to evaluate the
processes,
but WHO.

H. Dale Puls
Pacesetter Electronics

Has anyone ever hired an Epicor consultant to do a
post-implementation
system review? I am considering doing this but I am very
interested in
feedback, positive or negative, about the process and your
perception of its
value for your company.
Thanks.
================
Steve Sanders
Delta Centrifugal Corp.

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2
Has anyone ever hired an Epicor consultant to do a post-implementation
system review? I am considering doing this but I am very interested in
feedback, positive or negative, about the process and your perception of its
value for your company.
Thanks.
================
Steve Sanders
Delta Centrifugal Corp.
3
We are considering doing exactly what you are pondering. We have allocated
the last couple days worth of our pre-paid service credits for having our IC
come back and "grade" us on what we are doing. We went live in September
and next week start labor clocking on the shop floor so we will have most of
the processes implemented. Before we go too long building bad habits I want
a review of what we are doing and recommendations as to what we can be doing
better. There is now enough info in the system to benefit from tips on
digging it out. Positive changes we can make NOW will have the maximum time
to pay back. I am shooting for mid-Dec as sort of a 90-day review. This
will also coincide with the last of the jobs running out of Classic (old
system) which will be turned off at year-end (or after auditors are done
with any data still in there).

As you can tell I think there is a lot of value in having a knowledgeable
outside person review the situation.

-Todd Caughey
Harvey Vogel Mfg. Co.

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Sanders [mailto:ssanders@...]
Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2000 4:21 PM
To: vantage@egroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] System Review


Has anyone ever hired an Epicor consultant to do a post-implementation
system review? I am considering doing this but I am very interested in
feedback, positive or negative, about the process and your perception of its
value for your company.
Thanks.
================
Steve Sanders
Delta Centrifugal Corp.



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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
4
I was in charge of my former employer's, a custom machinery builder, Vantage
implementation. We went live three months after purchase, and things were
going pretty smoothly three months after that. But our delivery time of 26
weeks, job budget versus actual of +/- 25% and our net 15% loss were the
same as before we implemented. Six months later, we went through a review
and re-implementation: delivery down to 20 weeks, job budget versus actual
to +/- 15%, profitability breakeven. A year later we did it again: delivery
down to 16 weeks, budget vs. actual to +/- 5%, and profitability up to 8%
net.

I may be considered biased now, but these type of reviews are actually the
difference between whether your ERP (whatever system is used) implementation
actually gets a ROI or not. You can get real technical about the studies
showing the effort curves, etc. involved in ERP system implementations, but
it can basically be boiled down to simple human nature. Everyone in the
company is required to put forth a lot of additional effort JUST to get an
ERP system up and running. Once that is done, everyone goes "phew, glad
that's over." That is where most companies stop, thus the statistic from
APIC showing 80% of ERP implementations fail. The definition of failure, by
the way, is that the company makes less money after implementation than
before.

Anyway, in order to get the ROI, companies MUST embark on the "second" phase
(or even better continually go through this phase) that you are talking
about. However, be warned that just getting it started by having someone
(inside or outside) do a review doesn't mean anything unless you have
someone in the organization that can generate the same enthusiasm and energy
that was required for the original implementation. You may think this
sounds extreme, but I have seen many companies do exactly what you are
contemplating. Some failed, some succeeded immensely, but the
differentiating factor always seemed to be the ability to gain buy-in and
extra effort from employees as had to be done with the original
implementation.

If you would like to discuss this further, please feel free to contact me
offline.

Rick Lane
Intelligent Systems Integration, Inc.
661B Weber Drive
Wadsworth, OH 44281
330-335-5291
Fax: 330-335-7275

"Helping business make intelligent use of technology"


Has anyone ever hired an Epicor consultant to do a post-implementation
system review? I am considering doing this but I am very interested in
feedback, positive or negative, about the process and your perception of its
value for your company.
Thanks.
================
Steve Sanders
Delta Centrifugal Corp.
5
I'm curious on how to determine IF the Epicor consultant is worth the cost
for a post-implementation review. We've been live for 11 months now and
would, very likely, receive great benefit from a review. Our Epicor
consultant, on the other hand, was very unprepared to help us in our initial
installation and constantly pointed us to "read the help" screens at every
question we asked. (The help, of course, did NOT address the questions we
were asking) As a result, we stopped using the Epicor consultant and have
relied on calls to Tech Support as our only means of support. I know this
falls far short of having a consultant on-site to evaluate the processes,
but WHO.

H. Dale Puls
Pacesetter Electronics

Has anyone ever hired an Epicor consultant to do a post-implementation
system review? I am considering doing this but I am very interested in
feedback, positive or negative, about the process and your perception of its
value for your company.
Thanks.
================
Steve Sanders
Delta Centrifugal Corp.
6
Good point!
We were very lucky to have two outstanding consultants during our
implementation:
Mary Riffle who is no longer with Epicor and Burdell Fossum who is now
working in a different department. Both of these women had an excellent
understanding of the system as well as good accounting practices.
I'd really appreciate some feedback from others about who the good
consultants are and who to avoid - and why.
================
Steve Sanders
Delta Centrifugal Corp.


-----Original Message-----
From: H. Dale Puls [mailto:DPuls@...]
Sent: Monday, November 06, 2000 4:57 PM
To: vantage@egroups.com
Subject: RE: [Vantage] System Review


I'm curious on how to determine IF the Epicor consultant is worth the cost
for a post-implementation review. We've been live for 11 months now and
would, very likely, receive great benefit from a review. Our Epicor
consultant, on the other hand, was very unprepared to help us in our initial
installation and constantly pointed us to "read the help" screens at every
question we asked. (The help, of course, did NOT address the questions we
were asking) As a result, we stopped using the Epicor consultant and have
relied on calls to Tech Support as our only means of support. I know this
falls far short of having a consultant on-site to evaluate the processes,
but WHO.

H. Dale Puls
Pacesetter Electronics

Has anyone ever hired an Epicor consultant to do a post-implementation
system review? I am considering doing this but I am very interested in
feedback, positive or negative, about the process and your perception of its
value for your company.
Thanks.
================
Steve Sanders
Delta Centrifugal Corp.


We no longer allow attachments to files. To access/share Report Files,
please go to the following link: http://www.egroups.com/files/vantage/
(Note: If this link does not work for you the first time you try it, go to
www.egroups.com, login and be sure to save your password, choose My Groups,
choose Vantage, then choose Files. If you save the password, the link above
will work the next time you try it.)
7
Dale,

Why not call EPICOR and ask them for a list of people who are available,
along with their credentials ?

It's always been standard practice in the large shops that I've worked in
for the customer to interview / review the prospective consultants that a
company is proposing to send to you.

You could also do a phone interview to see how in tune they are with your
type of operation. You're right, for the cost, these people should almost
walk on water.

Treat them like any other employee you are thinking of hiring. "Are they
qualified?" should be you're first question.

Once you have some names that you think might work for you why not ask
EPICOR for a list of other customer's that have hired those specific people
recently for system reviews. Do reference checks.

I've seen many postings over the years from people who say that EPICOR
consultants were very good or just "ok". I would think that there is a
difference between the best and the worst that EPICOR has to offer. It's
just human nature.

Good Luck ...

Todd Anderson

-----Original Message-----
From: H. Dale Puls [mailto:DPuls@...]
Sent: Monday, November 06, 2000 4:57 PM
To: vantage@egroups.com
Subject: RE: [Vantage] System Review


I'm curious on how to determine IF the Epicor consultant is worth the cost
for a post-implementation review. We've been live for 11 months now and
would, very likely, receive great benefit from a review. Our Epicor
consultant, on the other hand, was very unprepared to help us in our initial
installation and constantly pointed us to "read the help" screens at every
question we asked. (The help, of course, did NOT address the questions we
were asking) As a result, we stopped using the Epicor consultant and have
relied on calls to Tech Support as our only means of support. I know this
falls far short of having a consultant on-site to evaluate the processes,
but WHO.

H. Dale Puls
Pacesetter Electronics

Has anyone ever hired an Epicor consultant to do a post-implementation
system review? I am considering doing this but I am very interested in
feedback, positive or negative, about the process and your perception of its
value for your company.
Thanks.
================
Steve Sanders
Delta Centrifugal Corp.


We no longer allow attachments to files. To access/share Report Files,
please go to the following link: http://www.egroups.com/files/vantage/
(Note: If this link does not work for you the first time you try it, go to
www.egroups.com, login and be sure to save your password, choose My Groups,
choose Vantage, then choose Files. If you save the password, the link above
will work the next time you try it.)