Almost three years after its last ownership changes, Epicor is firing on all cylinders to drive its ERP offerings into key verticals, capitalize on the synergy from its acquired assets, and perhaps finally put into motion a circular system that speeds up the decision-making process for those that make, move, and sell essentials that the world depends on.
At its recent customer events in the United States and the United Kingdom, Epicor outlined these major themes:
- Sustaining growth with its foundational products and Cloud upgrades
- Capturing synergy with new BI, AI, and other innovations
- Expanding ecosystem with industry templates, automation studio, and channel support
Having built its ERP successes for decades by selling into manufacturing, distribution, and other verticals, Epicor is steering 90% of its installed base to the Cloud. Recognizing this shift in customer behavior, Epicor strategically decided to evolve its offerings to cater to these preferences.
In Las Vegas, CEO Steve Murphy said the vendor has taken a customer-centric approach by transforming its existing Eclipse software to function seamlessly in the cloud environment. It also vows to support those that may still run its systems either on-premise or hybrid through hosting.
At its recent event in London, the vendor also noted that it achieved more than 80% growth in customer cloud adoption with new implementations over the past year.
That is consistent with research highlights from our Buyer Insight Technographics Database, which shows the majority of Epicor’s installed base is still running on products that they purchased decades earlier and the tide has just begun to turn in recent years when many of these customers realized the importance of keeping up with the latest technology enhancements as they started upgrading and migrating to the latest releases from Epicor.
Our database shows 79% of software purchases of Epicor products happened during 2000 and 2017 across 850 organizations worldwide, leaving only 21% of these purchases and implementations being done since 2018. Over 60% of these 850 organizations are in manufacturing, distribution, and asset-intensive industries, underscoring the industry-specific solutions from Epicor continue to resonate with new and existing customers.
Indeed, Epicor has witnessed significant cloud adoption in the UK and Ireland, where companies are migrating to or choosing Epicor cloud solutions like Epicor Kinetic.
Designed as a purpose-built, flexible, and scalable platform, Epicor Kinetic empowers 1,400 manufacturers to compete and grow their businesses more effectively. This momentum in international growth is further highlighted by Epicor’s new data centers in India and the Middle East, as well as the increasing cloud adoption across Asia, including the introduction of Epicor Managed Hosting Services for Kinetic in China.
What makes growth more compelling than ever is that Epicor has been forging a path of combining proven solutions in ERP with opportunistic assets that it has picked up to round out its product and service portfolio since August 2020 when it was last sold to PE firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice by KKR for $4.7 billion.
Last year, Epicor acquired Grow, a low-code, full-stack business intelligence (BI) platform enabling the creation of Epicor Data Platform, a comprehensive solution for data integration, warehousing, and visualization. With over 150 pre-built data connectors, organizations can easily connect and explore their data from various platforms, databases, and CRMs. The platform ensures data accuracy and timeliness through APIs that continually update and refresh data, empowering users to make critical business decisions based on current and reliable metrics emphasizing the critical role of data-driven insights and decisions.
Moreover, Epicor’s system generates automated supplier performance scores, facilitating the selection of suitable vendors based on factors such as quality, delivery, and timing requirements. This capability, coupled with Epicor Prophet 21, enables organizations to optimize their supply chain management through comprehensive data analytics and intelligent vendor selection processes.
Additionally, Epicor also acquired DSPanel, a cloud-based Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) solutions provider and an existing Epicor ISV partner. These moves expand Epicor’s range of financial management offerings, enabling manufacturers, and distributors worldwide to streamline budgeting, planning, forecasting, scenario modeling, and financial reporting through Epicor Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A). The integration of Grow’s innovative no-code technology further enhances Epicor Financial Planning and Analysis, providing users with an advanced and user-friendly platform that enables real time data visibilityfor financial and operational planning and analysis.
At the Las Vegas event, Epicor announced it is working with Open AI to incorporate ChatGPT into its industry expertise and deliver predictive analytics and contextual recommendations via the intuitive Epicor Virtual Agent (EVA). With the help of Generative AI, Epicor users can save time analyzing information across both internal and external data sources by simply querying EVA to quickly uncover the answers they need to make informed decisions making EVA a powerful tool for predictive analytics, enabling customers to make data-driven decisions and improve operational efficiency through user-friendly dashboards and interactive visualizations.
The AI drive will add momentum of Grow and the Epicor Automation Studio, which help transform and accelerate end-to-end enterprise workflows with insights and team collaboration. That is done in conjunction with Epicor’s industry templates designed to automate and simplify the increasingly complex activities from manufacturing execution to supply chain processes that support organizations that make, move, and sell essentials without which the world can no longer function.
While this circular system is far from perfection, Epicor Insights 2023 demonstrated the vendor’s dedication to providing its customers with innovative solutions that leverage advanced technologies and industry expertise. By embracing the cloud, integrating AI capabilities, and expanding its product offerings, Epicor is well-positioned to address the evolving needs of the market and drive different digital transformation initiatives under way among many of its manufacturing and distribution customers.
Some of the latest Epicor customer wins, extracted from ARTW Buyer Insight Technographics Database, are listed below:
