Perspectives 2009 highlights continued market, corporate, and product transformation

(Photos by R Wang & Insider Associates, LLC.   Copyright © 2009 All rights reserved.)

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, Epicor hosted over 1500 partner, customer, and employee attendees at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, NV.  Conference highlights include:

• Update on Epicor 9 adoption. Epicor has (deployed 11/19/2009 ) shipped 30,000 seats to 60 customers since GA in December 2008.  More than 890 customers have purchased the product with 590 implementations in progress.   The company hopes to be in 50 countries and 30 languages by end of year.
  POV: With over 22,000 customers worldwide, product adoption may at first appear below average.  But given the recessionary factors, Epicor has done well in taking its time to ramp up and build customer references for this next generation app.  Epicor's success will require a future specialization into verticals and indirect partner channels.
• Shared benefits program. Epicor launched a new program to improve implementation outcomes with shared risks and benefits.  Vendor and customers will own project scope definition and agree on outcomes and ROI.  If the project is under budget, Epicor shares the savings with the customer.  If the project runs over budget, the customer pays for half the contracted professional services hourly rates.
  POV: Epicor builds on its previous program where it targeted a 1:1 license to implementation ratio.  While there may be open issues about unintended consequences (i.e. as raised by fellow Enterprise Advocate Frank Scavo), Epicor's intent to change the relationship is a great step towards improving outcomes for clients in the enterprise software world.

• New eCommerce solution. Epicor launched an all-in-one eCommerce solution that covers design to delivery.  Users of Epicor Commerce can synchronize master data elements such as products, pricing, customers, and inventory levels while managing website content and delivery.  Other features include support for payment options, merchant account/gateway integration, and tax calculations via Avalara.
  POV: Commerce customers at Perspectives were expressing interest in the new SaaS-ready options as well as hosted options.  Prospects should take a close look at the Order Hub integration from retail activities to the back end ERP systems as this will prove the greatest integration value.

Feedback from 37 customers remain mostly positive
Conversations with 17 Vantage, 12 Enterprise, 5 Avante, and 3 Vista customers showed quite positive customer sentiment.  Most (15/17) Vantage customers expected to move to Epicor 9 in 2010.  Key drivers:

• Key functionality addressed in newer release
• Better usability
• Newer technology
• Greater ROI

However, only 3 Enterprise customers, 2 Avante, and 1 Vista customers expected to make the move in the next 12 months.  Key drivers for not making the upgrade include

• Economic recession
• Waiting for functional parity
• Over customization of existing product

Your POV.
If you get a chance, let us know:

• Which Epicor products do you use?
• When will you migrate?
• What do you think about the shared benefits program?
• Will you look more closely at Epicor as an alternative to SAP and Oracle?

Feel free to post your comments here or send me an email at rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwareinsider dot org.