Epicor ERP has been the subject of the most rigorous quality assurance and controlled release program in the history of Epicor. The internal system testing and controlled release for the current version ran for more than 10 months and involved collaborating with Epicor customers around the world. During the course of the development of this release, our focus was on ensuring the highest quality and performance. As a result our system change request (SCR) backlog is at its lowest level in many years and we are committed to keeping it at, or lower than these levels going forward.

Along with performance, another big focus of this release was functional enhancement to customers, particularly in the areas of financials and doing business internationally. Bank statement processing, deferred accruals, asset revaluations, global chart of accounts, statistical data, multiple budgets, AR reconciliation, plus many more on the manufacturing side such as planning contracts and multi job scheduling all mark a significant step forward in the capabilities of the system to support Epicor customers and their users today and as they grow in the future.

Existing customers will notice a significant reduction in the “number of moving parts” and all customers should appreciate the ease-of-use of an array of tools and solutions that underline the streamlining of the new Epicor platform. Most noticeably, Epicor ERP features the option of a vibrant new home page using “live tiles”, in addition to the current “classic” menu. The Epicor ERP home page can easily be configured by each user to contain content such as regularly used forms, links to other applications, reports and active dashboards alongside a live stream from Epicor Social Enterprise. These homepages can also be saved and shared for delivering role based homepages to the users. Throughout the application users will find new features such as configurable predictive search, and menu search. Existing features have been simplified and the elimination of the need for replication vastly simplifies the deployment and configuration of many aspects of reporting. IT administrators are now supported by streamlined tools to manage deployment and upgrades making it considerably easier to stay up-to-date.

Increased expectations of mobility have resulted in pressure to support multiple devices throughout the organization. This brings pressure on IT infrastructure and security policies. Epicor ERP is designed to streamline the process to support “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) from the core ERP framework. The latest release delivers a brand new mobile framework which will change the way you access and view the system. Epicor web access has also been re-architected yielding a substantial improvement in performance. We have also expanded the range of solutions designed for mobile access such as time and expense management, field service, Epicor social and mobile eCommerce.

The explosion in new solutions focused around social collaboration particularly in the consumer environment has led to raised expectations within the business environment. Point solutions are available, but at Epicor we believe the true potential of improved collaboration can only be realized by a more intimate approach.

Our solution is to embed Epicor Social Enterprise (ESE) into the core of Epicor ERP. ESE is a powerful social collaboration environment that keeps your Epicor ERP at the heart of your business conversations. Available in a browser or from within Epicor ERP, ESE is available to every employee allowing non-ERP office users to become directly involved in collaborating around business conversations. Depending on circumstances, examples might include collaborating around a project, a customer incident, a quality issue, a procurement challenge, or a planning event. ESE changes your relationship with ERP, enabling everyone to securely engage within your businesses and leverage ERP to make more informed decisions. Online social engagement reduces the frequency of meetings and improves the speed of decision making, delivering a new level of business efficiency. Activity streams are used to monitor changes, conversations, and discussion topics and can be accessed in a browser or in context of the relevant ERP form. Epicor Enterprise Search delivers the ability to mine the knowledge retained across all Epicor ERP, including ESE activity streams.

We understand the disruption (and opportunity) upgrading can have within a business and have worked to streamline the process as much as possible. We want every Epicor customer to be able to move as easily as possible to this latest release to enjoy the multitude of benefits from improved quality and performance, new capabilities and enhanced solutions. We have built Epicor ERP for change and have enhanced tools such as Solution Workbench to enable you to package all your form customizations, menu options, BAQs and dashboard definitions. In addition, Epicor ERP has an embedded solution tracker for further organization and documentation. Once you move to Epicor ERP you will find the tools you need to help you stay on the latest release.

ERP systems were previously deployed almost exclusively in local data centers. Today, there are all kinds of ERP deployment strategies—single-system ERP, cloud-based ERP, operational ERP, Peer ERP and multi-level ERP. Epicor ERP is built on Microsoft .NET®, the Windows Communications Foundation and Microsoft ServiceBus—all of which work together to make sure ERP instances can reliably communicate with each other and client applications in local or widely distributed deployments. Epicor ERP is also certified to run in virtualized environments using Microsoft Hyper-V® or VMWare®, which is one reason it is easily deployed to public clouds resources. You can host the solution for yourself on public cloud resources or using on premise infrastructure. Even if ERP itself is deployed on premise, cloud resources can be useful for managing database backups, hosting companion systems like Epicor Commerce Connect, or even for disaster recovery.

Many industries are moving towards a more direct relationship with their end-customers, and many trading partners demand a more direct, intimate relationship. Traditional portals and eCommerce solutions have been a part of the Epicor portfolio for some time, but Epicor ERP takes these to the new heights required by business today. Epicor ERP introduced Epicor Commerce Connect (ECC) a powerful yet easily configured collaboration environment for consumers, customers and suppliers. Designed to connect into the popular Magento® ecosystem, ECC provides a rich, secure environment for building closer relationships with customers and suppliers including the ability to expose the powerful Epicor ERP configurator directly to consumers and customers.

Epicor ERP is built on the latest version of our innovative business architecture, Epicor ICE. Highlights of the enhanced capabilities in the embedded tools include a new graphical front-end for the popular BPM workflow tool, significant new abilities in BAQ’s, including the capacity to work with external data sources, and new features to simplify the process of creating complex queries such as recursive functions. Furthermore, Epicor ERP operates on a pure Microsoft® stack which opens up the world of inhouse development using readily available and widely adopted technical skills.