Epicor
Latest Release Includes Significant Global Enhancements, New Service Contract Management and Advanced Manufacturing Capabilities, and Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 Integration for Project Management
IRVINE, Calif. (April 22, 2008) – Epicor Software Corporation (NASDAQ: EPIC), a
leading provider of enterprise business software solutions for the midmarket and divisions of
Global 1000 companies, today unveiled Epicor iScala 2.3 SR1, the latest release of its
integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and
supply chain management (SCM) solution designed to support organizations with global, multicompany
or multi-site business models.
The latest version offers users a feature-rich service release providing increased ease of
use and extended global reach with expanded localizations and capabilities for Spain, Italy,
Latin America, Sweden and Denmark. The enhanced offering is ideal for global businesses that
need to collaborate at once with customers, suppliers, sister organizations or other partners to
achieve optimal operational and business execution and efficiencies.
“With our latest release, Epicor continues its focus on addressing the specific needs of
our worldwide customers, offering enhancements to three key customer requirements:
expanded global reach, improved operational efficiencies and even better ease of use,” said
Adam Prince, senior director of product marketing for Epicor. “With additional localizations that
specifically drive lean initiatives for high-use processes, the new version builds on Epicor’s
ability to truly meet the needs of businesses as they expand across the globe.”
Advanced Manufacturing Module Enhances Productivity
Supporting lean techniques, the Advanced Manufacturing module provides additional
functionality for multiple processes within the production environment, including support for
managing production across multiple plants.
Advanced Manufacturing also adds support for faster, nearly real-time MRP through the
combination of Net Change support and moving MRP calculation to one or more dedicated
servers. Each of these enhancements significantly reduce the time required to run MRP
calculations and help reduce the performance impact on other enterprise activities, resulting in
exponentially improved performance.
Lease and Rental Support Now Available
The new Lease Contract Management module supports both operating and finance
lease contracts, and is fully integrated with Asset Management, Preventative Maintenance and
other critical capabilities. Support of operating lease contracts is ideal for companies that rent
out items for relatively short periods of time over and over to multiple parties. The new Lease
Contract Management module will also assist companies, whose lease contracts are generally
longer term, typically lasting the operating life of the product.
Both lease contract management options support traditional simple order lines, as well
as execution orders, to manage more complex activities that require a combination of parts,
labor and accessories, such as assembly, disassembly or other engineering activities performed
on site as part of the delivery, repair or return process.
New Integration Boosts Project Management Efficiency
The addition of Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 Integration to Epicor Project
Management provides task scheduling, resource management, tracking and reporting and team
collaboration. Users will now combine the ease of use and power of Microsoft Office Project
Server 2007 for graphical planning and scheduling, with the proven financial project planning
power of the Epicor ERP solution.
“Epicor is an excellent example of a partner that continues to leverage the benefits of
combining rich ERP capabilities with proven and familiar Microsoft applications,” said Seth
Patton, Director of Project at Microsoft Corp. “Epicor customers will benefit from the natural
extension of Office Project Server 2007 Integration to Epicor Project Management, as their
experience will be enhanced and simplified as they interact with a familiar graphical interface
with proven usability, further empowering productivity and efficiency for information workers.”
Compensation Controls Extended with Commission Management
Another highlight of the new release is Commission Management, which allows
employees or agents involved in the sales process to be compensated whether they sell using a
traditional sales order, service activity using Service Management or via any of the Epicor
Contract modules. Varying compensation levels are easily managed and adjusted, and Morecompensation
calculation can be linked to invoiced value or funds actually received, or can
even reduce to reflect discounts granted so that the sales staff are incentivized to maximize
revenue and not chase artificial targets.
Customers Champion New Enhancements
“We will be able to further streamline our manufacturing processes across operations,
and with expanded localization support we will standardize our business processes in Italy as
well,” said Jürgen Kaesberg, CIO for HEIDENHAIN. “Additionally, iScala’s advanced
manufacturing capabilities have enabled us to deploy into much larger facilities.”
“The goal of MRP is to match available resources to demand, and identify gaps quickly,”
said Paul Kramer, Informatics Manager at Spuhl AG. “In our first look at the new release, we’ve
seen the benefits of increased performance and usability the Advanced Manufacturing
enhancements offer, and we look forward to delving further into other MRP benefits we can
realize across our global organization.”
“The merged Italian and Spanish capabilities available with this new release have
enabled us to move to a single installation for these locations,” said Magnus Enocson, business
application manager for Schoeller Arca Systems. “We are just finishing our internal system
testing, and anticipate going live end of May with a single worldwide implementation.”
Source: Epicor