The fourth annual Epicor Global Growth Index looks at the constantly changing state of growth in the manufacturing, distribution, and retail industries along with what trends impact the bottom line. We asked more than 2,000 businesses about key strategies, growth initiatives, and how they define success. Overall, findings suggest that enterprises are embracing better technology to offset the effects of Covid-19, supply chain disruptions, and global competitors.

 

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, or renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.


The confluence of an improved market outlook, the shift to the cloud, the pressure of digital transformation, and replacement cycle dynamics have created one of the biggest growth opportunities for enterprise resource planning (ERP) refreshes. New cloud deployments provide a catalyst for improving and automating back-office processes like never before.

This Market Overview examines the wide range of cloud ERP solutions based on product- versus services-centric offerings and unregulated versus regulated solutions. While the number of vendors in the market has diminished due to mergers and acquisitions, the consolidation has led to concentrated platform investments in the cloud and exponential technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, augmented reality, the Internet of Things, 5G, and blockchain.

Successful deployments will achieve the elusive goal of improving efficiencies and preparing for exponential growth. The use of AI in the back office will power the next wave of post-digital ERP advancements.

 

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, or renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.


So, you just purchased a shiny new ERP, and are looking to roll out EDI. You want to get started right away on your EDI project, right? We should be able to set up data and test all transactions out of the box, right? WRONG!

EDI Project Best Practices

EDI is a customized, systemic process, that much like your data, rolls through the quote to cash cycle in a coordinated sequence. Each EDI document requires data from an upstream process, and you must always complete, and validate, the upstream processes first.  A common mistake we see on many EDI projects is an expectation that EDI is plug and play, and that we can implement all documents simultaneously.  EDI is not plugged and play, for the same reason that ERP implementations are not plugged and play.

EDI trading partners are notorious for sending through erroneous or uniquely specific data. Our customers all have different shipping and packaging scenarios. Many customers have different expectations on how EDI data is to be handled. The answer to a successful EDI implementation is to work on each document until it is correct, until moving to the next one, and ensure that the ERP system has been configured and validated for packaging and shipping processes before starting to work on outbound transactions. EDI implementations always lag the ERP implementation by some weeks, and always last the duration of the design and validation stage of the implementation project.

Below are some typical EDI transactions, that must be managed, and processed sequentially.

Inbound Purchase Orders (850i), Demand Forecasts (830i), etc.

Many times, Trading Partners will send data that does not have a native home in ERP. Our EDI team must carefully inspect all the inbound PO documents from all your trading partners, and understand each file, which will be unique, whether there is a native home in Epicor, and if not, we create one for it and make it visible in the ERP through customization. This can take time, and for some trading partners, extensive customer part cross references must be built, so that Epicor ERP can understand what it is in fact that this customer is ordering.

Outbound Sales Acknowledgement (855o)

It is common to need to include custom trading partner data in an 855 outbound. Until all of the inbound maps have been translated, and the data housed in Epicor, we can not start testing 855o.   This is normally not a difficult transaction, but until we have every inbound document defined and a custom schema in place to accommodate your trading partners, we can not design the outbound format for this document for testing.

Outbound Packing Slip (856o)

Most customers expect us to be able to start this right away. Some customers have even demanded that we start this right away. The trouble is that everyone ships differently, and some people have multiple levels of packaging, at various points in their production process, which change how we build the dataset for the 850o. Another common mistake our customers make is asking for the packing labels before the ASN is designed.

The shipping and packaging process must ALWAYS be designed first, and approved, before we start building 856o data and labels. Typically the label would be the last thing we build, as we process through all the 850i for all trading partners, demonstrate all packaging scenarios for each, and then finally, armed with model data, we can construct the outbound ASN dataset and labels. This is especially important when you have multiple versions of labels for different trading partners, or if you have Master Pallets, Mixed Pallets, etc. All EDI projects I have seen go over budget, or that have been frustrated, have been those where the company insists on having working outbound ASNs before the shipping process is validated.

Outbound Invoices (810)

Typically the easiest of all, but these can not be started until a validated ASN document has been produced. As such, we save these until the end of the project, to ensure all the data necessary on the invoice, whether from custom inbound data from the 850o, or custom packaging data from the 856o, are available. Shipments in the system are required to invoice, so there needs to be a solid, unchanging process to generate multiple shipments for the inbound orders, such that they can be invoiced.  This data is typically not available until the last quarter of the implementation.

Listening to your expert EDI implementation consultant, and understanding that EDI will slightly lag the work being done in ERP and that the work will stretch the duration of the project, are key to a successful EDI implementation. Following our process and methodology and will minimize frustrations if expectations were that EDI would be ready on day one, and reduce or eliminate rework for any EDI transactions forced through before the system is validated.

If you are having a difficult implementation and would like to talk to Encompass about how to put things back on track, we would be happy to conduct a mid-ERP implementation review. If you are about to start an EDI implementation, understanding the above before starting, and ensuring that the project manager and steering committee understand the timeline, will be critical to meeting expectations, and ultimately having a successful, error-free cutover.

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, or renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.


Key themes woven into our worldwide manufacturing top 10 predictions for 2021 include the focus on the ecosystems, supply chain management, product and service innovation, quality, technology consolidation, and AI. These predictions span the manufacturing value chain, as DX continues to be embraced by all parts of the business. This IDC study provides manufacturers with the top 10 predictions and underlying drivers that we expect to impact manufacturers’ IT investments in 2021 and beyond. Technology leaders and their counterparts in the line-of-business (LOB) operations can use this document to guide their IT strategic planning efforts.

IDC provides its top 10 predictions for the manufacturing industry with an analysis that covers five years. The predictions are designed to provide organizational decision makers with a call-to-action investment plan concerning these technologies

 

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, or renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.


Epicor QMS the most powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use QMS solution available on the market. For customers in industries such as heavy industrials, fabricated metals, food and beverage, electronics, medical devices, life sciences, chemicals, aerospace and defense, automotive, and consumer products, Epicor QMS enables customers to optimize the critical quality processes that drive product and service excellence and deliver clear business advantages for their organization.

 

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, or renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.


As regulatory and compliance standards grow more stringent, supply chains lengthen and become more complex, data is distributed in silos across an enterprise, and decision-making becomes ad hoc and reactionary. Consequently, quality and the people responsible for ensuring it are under more pressure today than ever before.

Rock-solid product quality is the backbone of brand reputation and brings a premium to quality-centric organizations. Quality products and services establish and reinforce lifelong loyalty, market dominance, and profitable businesses. Epicor QMS helps market leaders design, deliver and optimize comprehensive quality management systems (QMS) and environmental, health, and safety (EHS) management programs for multinational organizations as well as mid-sized businesses. Epicor serves the strongest companies in the world and our software helps them stay that way.

 

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, or renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.


Inventory Cost Reduction in the New Now – Dimensional Inventories to the Rescue. Learn about new technology to simplify your inventory problems.

 

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, or renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.


Overview demonstration of Epicor Quality Management System (QMS), powered by ETQ Reliance. Epicor QMS is helping manufacturers deliver first-in-class delivery with quality from start to finish. Enable your customers to eliminate manual quality processes and reduce product defects and rework, increasing traceability and auditability

 

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, or renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.


Centralized collaboration technology in cloud ERP solutions can help you manage operations more efficiently. It brings employees together from locations around the world by hosting data and information that serves as a single source of truth. Your organization can share information that offers these surprising benefits along the entire supply chain.

 

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, or renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.


Centralized collaboration technology in cloud ERP solutions can help you manage operations more efficiently. It brings employees together from locations around the world by hosting data and information that serves as a single source of truth. Your organization can share information that offers these surprising benefits along the entire supply chain.

 

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, or renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.

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