Epicor - is this the ERP system we want?
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I'm in the process of finding a suitable ERP system for our company - apparel, 100 employees, from manufacturing + import all the way through retail + ecommerce / 10M sales/yr. Since we're doing everything ourselves except for some of the production, we need basically everything that any ERP system can offer us, and hence, we can't get stuck with the wrong one or we're screwed.
Epicor gave us a demo, and as demos go when done well, they can be pretty impressive. The system seemed very competent, well designed and support a very good workflow. But is what we saw real? Or is it all lies (which I doubt)?
Now I don't know if any of you guys have experience with ERP systems, but if you do: please respond. We're looking at a 100-200k expense here and I'd like to know about oddball systems, rollout experiences, Epicor-related experiences and SAP horror stories.
Since ERP systems are not the main theme here on The Daily WTF, I feel that they are under-exposed. Why that is, I don't know since almost every 5+-employee business should have at least a small ERP system and I would expect more WTF stories from that corner of the business software world (other than Oracle stuff)...
What we liked about Epicor was the way parts and inventory were handled and tracked, the warehousing, project and purchasing planning, accounting, the knowledge base/issue tracking, and the search feature. Oh and the web interface.
We don't like the price tag.Anyway: if you have anything that could potentially be interesting to hear about, say it here.
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I have never seen an SAP implementation done well. I don't know if that's SAP's fault, or the implementer's fault. From all the bitching I've heard from my college buddies who were exposed to SAP (I avoided those classes HEAVILY), it's SAP's fault.
Never heard of Epicor.
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Epicor is big, but Sage is bigger (I think). They tailor to different sized businesses, and SAP is marketed towards the largest businesses out there. I know it's all Oracle based, and the implementation takes years.
I was told we are a $10M business with $100M problems, so (and I know from experience) a $5-25M business solution won't cut it. We currently have a system that doesn't support half of what we do. Major growing pains!
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I'm not all that knowlegeable about it, but I've heard good things about MAPICS, which is now apparently Infor ERP.
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Also, I found Gartner's Magic Quadrant report for "ERP for Product-Centric Midmarket Companies" of 2010. Looks like I have some more reading to do.
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We used Epicor for our GL where I used to work. I came in +5 yrs after they implemented its use.Suffice to say I absolutely hate it however as you mentioned it is for manufacturing and my former employers' business is in property managment . Support was ok not the greatest but certainly not the worst. Their latest version offered a web interface but we were running behind in versions so I can't speak to that option but the interface is terrible, hard to navigate and is full of gotchas. Not only was it not the correct software for our enterprise but the original team to install it (including a hired Epicor consultant) installed it incorrectly so maybe my experience is entirely jaded with it but I will stick with my gut instinct to tell you to run far far away from that product.
