Now that she’s been with the company for the better part of a year, we asked Vee for her thoughts on her experience at Encompass. Here’s what she had to say.

First Impressions

From the moment I stepped into Encompass to interview for the Documentation Specialist position on January 28, 2020, until now, I’ve been exceptionally pleased.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I walked in, especially since I was about to be interviewed by a Managing Partner. I knew that I had to shake off my nerves and be the only person I knew how to be… me.

Upon arrival, I initially spoke with a lady who ended up sitting with me on the couch to chat. She learned a little more about me and not only what I can do for the company.

Many questions can be answered simply by engaging and not going straight for the jugular. Being grilled with those cookie-cutter questions in the past made me wonder if I was a Miss America contestant or a key suspect in a criminal case who was subpoenaed for court. After getting acquainted for a bit, it was time for my interview.

Another engaging conversation… I was still a little nervous, but at ease. It was finally refreshing to have dialogue that showcased my personality and talents to determine if both were suitable within the Encompass environment. I was introduced to my future co-workers. First impression? Friendly and genuine.

The managing partners have an open-door policy. Doesn’t that sound familiar? The difference here is that you’ve heard. They listen to understand before responding, instead of listening solely to respond. If there are any concerns, work-related or personal, they’re addressed and not left floating in limbo.

Part of the Team

Regardless of our specialties, we work as a team. We’re there if our clients are in a pinch, needing immediate assistance on projects that require ‘all hands on deck. Prepare a quick training to get us up to speed to comprehend your needs and we’ll keep the ball rolling until it’s time for it to stop.

This is the truest definition of a team that I’ve ever been a part of in my corporate career of 22 years. Solid foundations are built upon communication and trust, which leads to long-lasting relationships.

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, and 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.


Today marks a special occasion. Today, Encompass Solutions, Inc. celebrates its 20th anniversary delivering an array of services to small and medium-sized businesses in manufacturing industries. While it may not be sensible for us to come together and celebrate at this time, we feel it’s important to mark the occasion and thank our staff, partners, and customers for their contribution to making this day possible. In the meantime, we’ll settle for a slightly self-serving new logo:

An image of the Encompass Solutions 20th anniversary logo

The consulting life is unique in that it demands many of us spend time away from our families for extended periods or work long hours to ensure projects are completed on time and within specifications. It’s not easy, but the rewards are great when seeing the efforts result in success for clients and growth for our team members.

Encompass Solutions opened its doors in 2001, driven by a handful of veteran consultants. Since then, we have grown to include more than 25 full-time employees and dozens more specialist contractors skilled in business management, process improvement, ERP software, EDI, and managed services. To date, we have helped transform more than 750 small and medium-sized businesses. We look forward to serving the needs of many more over the next 20 years.

A Few Words From Our Leadership

The time has flown by. I had no idea when we started Encompass that we would still be here 20 years later, nor would I be able to envision how much we have developed. 

I must acknowledge that we wouldn’t be where we are without the many wonderful employees we’ve had over the years (those that are still with us and those that were here for a season) and the loyalty of our customers. 

It is inspiring to see all the ways so many of our customers touch our communities.  It is also amazing to watch our team evolve over the years –even with the changes, they have supported each other to build enduring relationships and friendships. 

  • Sonia Haslam, Managing Partner

As someone who deals more with behind-the-scenes operations, I want to commend our staff and customers for helping to build Encompass into the company that it is today.

Every day, I see the projects and relationships we share progress and deliver the results we expect. Our reputation among vendors, peers, and partners remains in high regard because of their direct contributions to our mission. Thank you to everyone who has built this company into the shining example we continually strive for it to be.

  • Jim Baggerly, Managing Partner

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, and 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.


Encompass Solutions delivers an array of useful services to support your business beyond ERP implementation. Whether you need IT support for your on-prem or cloud-deployed ERP system, EDI management, or system patch management services, we are fully equipped to deliver on your needs. Make use of these managed services promotions to ensure your business has the support necessary to enjoy continued success.

Keep in mind, These offers apply to any of the Managed Services coverage levels outlined HERE.

Managed Services Promotions

Whether assisting with infrastructure support, reporting customization, Epicor patch management, or EDI-managed services, we are proud to add value to our customers.

New Managed Services customers committing contracts can take advantage of considerable savings on waived fees and free services.

6-Month Commitment: onboarding fee waived (up to a $2,000 value)

12-Month Commitment: onboarding fee waived and an additional 1-month service included (up to a $4000 value)

Offer Terms and Conditions

  • To remain eligible for discounts, commitments must be signed by October 30th, 2020
  • Terms are based on your organization’s Managed Services Proposal
  • If a 12-month agreement is broken, the user owes the remainder of the contract and waived onboarding fee
  • If a 6-month agreement is broken, the user owes the remainder of the contract and waived onboarding fee
  • Contract termination based on service subject to review and approval
  • As an introductory offer, contract promotions are available to new Managed Services customers only.

For any questions or to request customer referrals on our Managed Services offerings, please contact us to set up a meeting.

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, and 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.


To address the increasing call for our services and the remote requirements businesses currently need to adopt, we’ve expanded our emphasis on remote consulting and implementation services. This slower time could be an opportunity, while people have the bandwidth, to prepare to scale up for future growth.

You can tailor these combined training seminars and implementation services to topics specific to projects currently underway or planned in your organization. The benefit of combining these two services remotely results in better use of your time and money.

We are also discounting consulting blocks to make these services more easily available to businesses.

ESI Discounted Consulting Blocks

Adapting to constrained means of producing and delivering your products and services doesn’t have to impact business continuity. To ensure your organization suffers minimal disruption of day-to-day operations, we want you to be able to take advantage of our experience at a much lower cost to your business.

There are a few scenarios where only one or two hours of consulting work may be needed in training or implementing new systems and components. That said, Encompass Solutions will discount consulting hours by a significant amount.

You can choose to make these seminars group sessions, where the audience sits in on actual project work being done in real-time. Alternatively, you may opt for these sessions to be 1-on-1 consulting engagements or as purely discounted work based on your project specifications. Remain operational and profitable, while your staff can participate in on-the-job training as the work is being completed by our implementation specialists and consultants.

Sample Workshops And Initiatives

We’ve listed several of our more popular projects to give an idea of how these discounted consulting hours can be used to benefit your business. Packages to guide you through value-added tasks while operations are slow or idled include:

Physical Inventory and Cycle Counting

If a factory is idle, this is a great time to perform a full physical while inventory is not moving.  With accurate inventory, once business picks up, you can be sure you can effectively use MRP and purchase suggestions with trusted output, and make better inventory decisions.

Once you have your inventory trued up, cycle counts, when used properly, will let you keep your inventory accuracy high and remove the need for a year-end full physical inventory.

Typically we can remotely assist a client that has no prior knowledge of performing a Physical Inventory with a couple of hours of training, a hands-on workshop, and some remote support during the physical inventory itself.

Discounted Cost: $1,200 – includes seminar, training, set-up, and follow-up questions

Preventative Maintenance

Epicor sells the Maintenance Management module to manage the maintenance department and its requests. The module also provides the framework for setting up preventative maintenance schedules, as well as planning and creating maintenance jobs.

With a factory idled, it’s a great time to schedule maintenance and set up this module for maintaining machinery, define maintenance plans by machine so that after a certain number of hours it can be flagged for maintenance, and be able to design and test so that when the plant is at full operational capacity, maintenance runs itself.

Discounted Cost: $600 – includes seminar, training, set-up, and follow-up questions

Fixed Assets

Many companies own this module, but its typically brought online after an initial implementation project as a Phase 2 component.  The Fixed Assets module lets you track your fixed assets and set deprecation schedules, that integrate automatically to the general ledger, reducing the need for manual depreciation calculations at the end of your financial year.  It’s also integrated with the Maintenance Management module to align with the same equipment – setting up for one module will ease the implementation of the other.

Using downtime to set up and automate the handling of depreciation now, will mean one less task to be performed at the end of every financial year.

Discounted Cost: $300 – includes seminar, training, set-up, and follow-up questions

Costing

Many of our customers have questions about how Epicor handles job costing. This can be a complex area. Every company will have a costing model that works best for them – standard costing, average costing, FIFO, and Last Cost are all different costing methods supported by Epicor ERP, and choosing the correct costing model has big implications for how costing is reported to the general ledger.

Having accurate costing will also highlight red-flag materials (both raw materials and finished goods) that need to be focused on to improve and maintain profitability. This targeted consulting event would be specific to your organization and would be comprised of a training component, recommendations from us based on conversations with your business, and support in setting this up in your environment.

Discounted Cost: $2,400 – includes T account explanation and costing model comparison, discovery and design, system configuration, testing, and rollout.

Project Management Module

The Project Management module lets you tie all the activities for a project, and get an overview of all the costs involved.   This is especially good for long-term projects, allowing you to track sales expenses, orders, engineering design time, purchasing and manufacturing costs, and provide a full overview of the entire project from beginning to end.   Being able to tie all this information together automatically is a huge timesaver, you no longer have to write custom reports, or manually pull information together.  For many customers, especially those selling to government agencies, for example, being able to set milestone billing,  or providing a percentage of completion billing that would other be a very manual and cumbersome process.   Epicor’s Project Management module also provides for revenue recognition, both at the phase, and project level.  It also fully integrates with the general ledger within Epicor ERP.

Discounted Cost: $3,600 to $4,800 (depending on requirements) – includes T account explanation and costing model comparison, discovery and design, system configuration, testing, and rollout. Note: Typical consulting time around a Project Management engagement takes 2-3 days, depending on the customer requirements

Case Management

This is a Customer support tool, that many people have licensed, and are not leveraging.  Case Management allows an organization to use a case as a ‘binder’ to track customer issues, and tie together the relevant quotes,  sales orders, jobs, materials, RMA processing, and solutions together for a holistic view of the customer’s resolution – it’s particularly useful in the quality area.  The use of Case Management allows your organization to build up a knowledge base, to be referred to should another customer have a similar issue in the future.  With this module, you can track KPIs, like time to resolution, and SLA commitments.    Epicor’s Task Management system can also be leveraged here.

Discounted Cost: $300 – includes training and follow-up questions

Task Management 

Many people have access to Epicor’s Task Management system.  Task Sets are embedded into Epicors Quotation, Engineering, and Case Management modules. Having a structured set of tasks within a case, quote, or engineering workflow, aids in ensuring that your team adheres to your company’s best-practice standard procedures, and ensures compliance.

Discounted Cost: $300 – includes training and follow-up questions

Enhanced Quality Module

Epicor’s Enhanced Quality module builds on the foundations of the standard quality module, allowing you to design and configure inspection plans that tie to your organization’s quality needs using out-of-the-box software.    This is often used to ensure correct equipment calibration, in conjunction with the Maintenance module.

Discounted Cost: $1,200 – includes training and workshop to design a simple ‘first quality configurator’. Note: Typical consulting time around an advanced quality engagement could be several days depending on the complexity of the configurations and different product lines involved.

Discounted Consulting Terms and Conditions

We don’t want to introduce a menagerie of needless rules regarding these discounts, but we also need to be respectful of our consultants’ livelihood and schedule. To be eligible for discounted consulting hours, one must:

  1. Make your purchase of consulting hours by the end of April 2020.
  2. Bulk packages must be paid for upfront.
  3. Hours must be used by the end of 2020.
  4. Prices are based on estimates. This may increase or decrease based on the customer’s unique business processes and requirements.
  5. Services discounts only apply to new services deals.
  6. Discounted consulting engagements will require a deposit.
  7. Discounts are off the list price, not a currently negotiated rate.
  8. Discounts are capped at rates depending on the type of work and volume. 

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 has helped modernize operations and automate processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and 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.


What’s your hull?

What’s your hull?  When was the last time you dry-docked your business?  How can you leverage COVID-19 shutdowns and downturns to revitalize your core business systems to emerge stronger, faster, and leaner after the pandemic storms have passed?

If you’re like us, you’ve spent a lot of time asking critical questions about how COVID-19 will affect you, your employees, and the future of your business.   At Encompass, we’ve been talking a lot about the dry dock.  When a ship needs critical work on its hull, it is pulled out of the water into a ‘dry dock’ for inspection and repairs.

This is hugely expensive.  It’s hugely inconvenient, too.  Taking a ship out of water is the equivalent of locking the doors of your business.  We all do that for holidays (fun and predictable), year-end inventories (predictable but never fun), and occasionally because life is unpredictable and sends us surprises like snowstorms and power outages.  But most of us have never shut down our businesses for an extended period of weeks or months the way a ship is taken out of the water for months in dry dock.

COVID-19 changes that.  Some of you sent staff home and locked the gates.  Some of you feel like the gates are locked anyway because your customers are sheltering in place at home.  Some of you saw your entire supply chain shut down and fall apart.  In some way or another, most of us are in dry dock right now.  It’s expensive, outside our control, and hugely inconvenient.

If we’re all dry-docked anyway, how can we take advantage of a complete system shutdown and upgrade our business ships?

When was the last time you dry-docked your business?

If your business is a ship in a dry dock, the hull represents your critical systems.  Do you have areas of your business that desperately need overhauling, but they are too integrated into your daily routine to ever take them offline?  This could be:

  • Network and server setup that impacts the security of your systems.
  • ERP modules you paid for but never implemented.
  • Part BOMs have been inaccurate for years.
  • Financial, engineering, and manufacturing configurations that drive you and your staff crazy.
  • Cleaning up old, bad MRP data so your ERP can run MRP, scheduling, and purchasing accurately.

Encompass is using our own dry-dock time to upgrade and improve the systems that run our business.  We’re keeping staff engaged on continuous improvement projects we never have time to work on when we’re running at full capacity.  And since we are working on systems, this can all be done remotely.

What can you do to improve your systems?  Right now, your best staff members are probably sitting idle.  They’re afraid of COVID-19.  They’re afraid of losing their jobs.  And they’ve been frustrated for years because they know how to improve your systems but never have time to work on them.

How can you leverage the recent shutdowns and downturns?  Can you use idle time to revitalize your core systems?  What will make you stronger, faster, and leaner once this storm blows past?

Do you need our help?

If you’re reading this, know that Encompass chooses who we partner with.  We pick and choose customers, and we’re with you today because we fundamentally believe in your business.  We want you to survive and thrive.

If you do need help, we started preparing ‘dry dock support’ packages for our customers in late January, and we’re geared up to offer support with:

  • Remote workshops on all core Epicor modules to help your team identify best practices, plan, prep, implement, and process improvements across the system.
  • Rapid implementation of new modules. Right now is the easiest time you’ll ever have implementing scheduling, quality assurance, landed cost, and other new functionality.
  • Report development and customer and supplier communications right out of Epicor.
  • Coaching on how to optimize projects when your team is working from home.

Let us know what you need.  Or just touch base and let us know you, your team, and your families are OK.  We like you as people, and we like being in business with you.  We’re all in this together.

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 has helped modernize operations and automate processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and 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.


Encompass Solutions March 2020 News And Updates

With Winter wrapping up and Spring on the horizon, there are some budding developments in the world of manufacturing, Epicor, and Encompass. Here are a few updates, events, and resources to consider this March.

Epicor Insights 2020

Insights 2020 is Epicor Software Corporation’s annual user conference. This event is looked forward to every year by employees, partners, and customers from around the world. If you want to have a look at the current Insights 2020 agenda, you can review all the details, here.

Don’t forget, that we’ll be holding our own annual customer appreciation event at Insights with drinks and food for all our partners and colleagues in attendance.

an image of the Epicor Insights Executive view exhibit floor

New Kinetic Experiences Available for Epicor ERP Cloud Customers

As we continue making progress through the Epicor Kinetic journey, more Kinetic reports and processes are now available to our Cloud ERP customers to test and provide important feedback that will help to shape Kinetic innovations.

an iamge of the epicor erp kinetic design framework as revealed during epicor ignite 2020

Epicor Patch Management Service

Encompass Managed Services enable businesses to supplement their internal functional resources with Encompass experts. Our new patch management service extends your Epicor system functionality with an iterative process. We ensure your system is always up to date and functioning at peak performance with the Encompass Patch Management Service.

epicor patch management services

What You Need To Know About Cloud Computing

From storage to software, if you’re getting/using it over the Internet, it’s cloud computing. “Cloud” is the delivery of on-demand computing resources over the Internet. You can leverage the cloud in many ways, including the deployment of your Epicor ERP system. Learn more about the benefits and challenges associated with Cloud computing.

an image of a server room used by epicor prophet 21 cloud erp for distributors on microsoft azure

Product Knowledge At The Core Of Your Company Culture

To demonstrate that you can solve a customer’s pain points, you must know technology solutions at a detailed level—you need deep product knowledge. You must also understand the specific needs of your customers so you can communicate which solutions and capabilities are most relevant to them. When you have more comprehensive knowledge on both fronts, you can communicate how your solution is differentiated, relevant, and superior on a functional level.

Epicor production management as part of the complete epicor erp overview

Encompass Solutions & SPCA Of The Triad Donation Drive

As part of our quarterly community service initiative for Q1 2020, Encompass Solutions will be working with SPCA of the Triad to conduct a donation drive. We are gathering and requesting Food, Materials, and monetary donations to assist our local SPCA. While all of our employees are encouraged to participate, we extend our invitation to participate beyond the walls of our offices. If you’d like to help improve the lives of shelter animals and their caregivers, please join us in donating.

ENCOMPASS Q1 FOOD DRIVE SPCA FLYER

Cycle Counts That Count Workshops

Cycle Counts That Count will help you implement better cycle counting on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis starting in April and let you potentially conduct your last ever year-end full physical inventory that same year. The final full physical will validate your efforts at daily counting and provide management with the data they need to determine when to switch to a cycle-only inventory process.

cycle counts the full physical inventory continual process improvement workshop

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, and 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.


If you’re like many manufacturers in the US and around the world, COVID-19 has disrupted your supply chain significantly. Many of our partners have spent the recent weeks evaluating which of their Suppliers in China and other parts of Asia have stopped shipments. Evaluating how this will affect your manufacturing operations in the US and other facilities around the world can be a cumbersome task. The impact on the delivery of products that this global pandemic has produced cannot be understated. By proactively leveraging these COVID-19 resources, your business can be better prepared than businesses reacting to the latest industry disruption.

Discounted Consulting

In an effort to address the increasing call for our services and the remote requirements businesses currently need to adopt, we’ve expanded our emphasis on remote consulting and implementation services. This slower time could be an opportunity, while people have the bandwidth, to prepare to scale up for future growth.

You can tailor these combined training seminars and implementation services to topics specific to projects currently underway or planned in your organization. The benefit of combining these two services remotely results in better use of your time and money.

We are also offering discounted consulting blocks to make these services more easily available to businesses.

Cycle Count Workshops

Streamlining inventory management through effective cycle counting can do away with show-stopping inventory activities at the end of the year when flu-season and holiday social gatherings are in full effect.

Work smarter, not harder, and instate a policy that ensures your organization is prepared throughout the year with accurate and effective inventory management.

Production And Delivery Analysis

Our consultants increasingly hear from the board room regarding how outside vendors, salespeople on the road, and visiting customers could potentially bring nasty bugs into their facilities. It’s a legitimate concern and carrying out predictive analytics is an undertaking where Encompass Solutions is happy to lend a hand. Together, we can sit down and take the time to figure out how you can stay in business during an uncertain time, remain profitable, and protect your staff.

Want help creating your own alternate production and sales plan for the next 90 to 180 days? You’ve likely got many questions revolving around how operations and production will change moving forward. We can help you answer and develop plans in regard to the following questions:

  • What products were imported in the last 90 or 180 days?
  • How will limited supplies impact their production?
  • How will this impact open sales orders and forecasted sales?
  • Which customer accounts will be hit the hardest?
  • How will this affect revenue?

Leveraging Remote Meetings

For many, remote work is a concept that difficult to manage within the current structure of their organization. We’ve mastered the art of remote work with our partners and can help your organization get a handle on the most efficient ways to leverage remote resources and staff.

Encompass offers remote support via Zoom on a daily basis to organizations across the globe. Let us lend a hand in helping you set up and manage your workforce remotely when needed. We’ll assist you to manage your data in such a way that facilitates lag-free, streaming audio and video sharing, suggest the best situations when staff should stay at their desks vs a group in the conference room, how to manage audio if there are multiple users on laptops in the same room, downloading recorded Zoom sessions, and more.

Ultimately, in a worst-case scenario, you may decide that your teams should work remotely for a period of time. We’ll help you develop and implement the Zoom and Webex best practices that fit your organization’s structure. You can maintain that framework and adjust it as time goes on.

Alternate Plans For Production And Sales

Ensure your production floor and sales activities remain in operation, regardless of the current climate, through the development of alternatives based on projected 90-day and 180-day forecasts.

  • How will limited supplies impact their production?
  • How will this impact open sales orders and forecasted sales?
  • Which customer accounts will be hit the hardest?
  • How will this affect revenue?

If you have asked yourself any of the following questions over the last few weeks, it may be worthwhile to formulate alternatives in the event your trading partners cannot fulfill their obligations for one reason or another. Reach out to Encompass today and we’ll work with you to ensure you have an effective plan in place prior to the next big disruption.

Encompass Small Business COVID-19 Resources

Encompass Small Business COVID-19 Resources can assist in completing projects, evaluating and renovating new or existing systems, as well as providing managed services to supplement limited workforce scenarios.

US Small Business Administration Guidance & Loan Information

Emergency Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) Program

Small businesses and private nonprofits are now eligible to apply for the SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. The working capital loans of up to $2 million can provide vital economic support to small businesses and nonprofits to help overcome the temporary loss of revenue they are experiencing.

CARES Act

Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act

Payroll Protection Program (PPP) Loans

Payroll Protection Program Loans were put into effect April 3, 2020, to provide small businesses with loan funds to maintain their workforce and keep their employees paid. You can read more about the program Here.

Employment Law Changes

Effective April 2, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act mandates paid sick leave, paid family and medical leave and enhanced unemployment compensation benefits.

Click Here for downloadable workplace posters from the U.S. Department of Labor.

Council of Development Finance Agencies Weekly Briefing

Fridays, at 1 p.m. — These one-hour phone calls will feature legislative updates, news from our members, state and local financing strategies, and lessons learned from previous development finance responses to disasters.

Click Here for more information.

Taxes

Federal: The IRS has automatically extended payment deadlines until July 15, 2020, with some exceptions. The filing deadline is still April 15.

US Chamber of Commerce Coronavirus Response Toolkit

Click Here to access guides for employment law changes, workplace safety information and other resources.

US Chamber Coronavirus Emergency Loans Small Business Guide and Checklist

Ready.Gov Disaster and Emergency Resources Businesses

Click Here for disaster planning for businesses.

COVID-19 Resources For Control And Prevention

It should be noted that first and foremost, you and your staff should be taking all available precautions to minimize the spread of infectious disease in and out of the workplace. While we are adopting our own standards for the health and safety of our staff at Encompass, we don’t feel it is prudent to make suggestions to our partners and other businesses. Join us in following the suggestions of the professionals and research the best practices.

United States Department Of Labor – Occupational Health And Safety Administration

Centers For Disease Control And Prevention

The United States Food and Drug Administration

World Health Organization

We hope you will continue to remain safe and take the necessary precautions to ensure the safety of your families, friends, colleagues, and communities.

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, and 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 Industry.


As part of our quarterly community service initiative for Q1 2020, Encompass Solutions will be working with SPCA of the Triad to conduct a donation drive. We are gathering and requesting Food, Materials, and monetary donations to assist our local SPCA. While all of our employees are encouraged to participate, we extend our invitation to participate beyond the walls of our offices. If you’d like to help improve the lives of shelter animals and their caregivers, please join us in making a donation.

We are holding a food drive for the SPCA of the Triad from March 1 – April 14, 2020 (extended from the original March 31 close). Ideally, we want to funnel all goods to our Greensboro office and monetary donations through our local SPCA. However, if you’d like to support your local chapter, that’s just as admirable.

We don’t want this effort to be limited to ESI employees. So, please invite your friends, family, and colleagues to participate. Please see our donation drive flyer below for more details on how you can participate and what items are needed most. To make a donation directly to the SPCA, you can do so here:

ENCOMPASS Q1 FOOD DRIVE SPCA FLYER

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 has helped modernize operations and automate processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and 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 Industry.


Every year, millions of workers brave the cold to perform year-end full physical inventories in the final weeks of the fiscal year – with mixed results. While this annual ritual is in many cases the only way to reconcile inventory variances incurred throughout the year, it doesn’t need to be. Enter the cycle count.

Cycle Counts That Count will help you implement better cycle counting on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis starting in April and let you potentially conduct your last ever year-end full physical inventory that same year. The final full physical will validate your efforts at daily counting and provide management with the data they need to determine when to switch to a cycle only inventory process.

Cycle Counts That Count Or…How I Learned To Stop Worrying About The Year-End Full Physical Inventory And Love The Cycle Count

An effectively implemented cycle count program can, within 9 months, effectively do away with conducting a full physical inventory. That’s right. You can free your organization from the dreaded yearly shutdown that pulls staff away from their families during the holiday season and closes your shipping doors for a week.

Now, what if we told you that our workshop would ensure you’d never have to perform another year-end full physical inventory, ever?

Contact Us today to set up your workshop and we can help you perform Cycle Counts that Count!

We can work with you to level work out over sessions that coincide with your low periods.

Cycle Count Project Management

Partner with your Encompass team to lay out a simple project for implementing daily or weekly cycle counting for your organization. The audience should include senior management, such as plant managers, the controller, or the executive team, as well as staff responsible for inventory control.

Our first workshop will review how a typical daily cycle counting program looks, how much time will be required to conduct daily counts, as well as case studies in efficiency gained by accurate inventory adjusted on a quicker basis. A series of planning documents will be provided and reviewed during this session which will create a custom-tailored implementation plan for your organization.

Our second workshop will include the same audience. The consultant will review your implementation plan with you and then provide training on setup, configuration, and daily processing of counts in Epicor. The goal of the session is to provide you with a simple roadmap you can follow to get the program up and running immediately for a small subset of product while you complete the implementation plan and ramp-up to include all products over the following 45 days. The session will be recorded to be used by staff for reference in the future.

Your First Count Workshop

We will schedule a follow-up session with our consultant and your finance and warehouse teams to work with you on setting up and processing your first cycle count.

Quarterly Reporting Workshop

We will then follow up with your inventory control team and workshop with your inventory control team to review your first 90 days of results, and help this team prepare their first cycle counting efficiency reports back for management.

End of the Year-End Workshop

In this workshop, your consultant will review best practices for a year-end full physical inventory and work with your team as they prepare to answer a critical question for management: Is this our last year-end inventory?

The agenda will include time to:

  • Review cycle count reports to determine how well parts are being counted based on ABC codes.
  • Review methods to identify problem parts based on recurring variances and suggest probable root causes.
  • Provide best practices for preparing for the full physical.
  • Provide suggestions for reconciling year-end results and evaluating the cycle counting program’s success for the year.

Encompass is ready to partner with you today. For more information, please speak to your consultant, Customer Account Manager (CAM) or our team at info@encompass-inc.com.

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, and 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 Industry.


Encompass Solutions’ Managed Services offers a simple, structured patch management cycle to keep your on-premise Epicor installation aligned with Epicor’s update cadence policy.

The Encompass patch update program keeps your Epicor ERP system running at peak performance. This update cadence keeps your business in sync with the latest iteration of your Epicor software. The benefit Encompass provides is a dependable and iterative service that leaves you more time and energy to focus on revenue-generating activities for your business.

Stop spending time on tedious back-end tasks that can distract your teams from making real headway in the form of productive work.

What Is Patch Management?

Patch management is a component of overall system management that generally includes acquiring, testing, and installing multiple patches. Common patch management tasks include, but are not limited to:

  • Maintaining knowledge of available patches
  • Determining which patches are appropriate for specific systems
  • Proper patch installation
  • System testing prior to and following installation
  • Documentation of configurations and procedures

Patch Management Service Schedule

The whole patch process takes roughly two weeks to complete before the cycle is ready to start anew. Here’s how the Encompass Solutions Patch Management Service works:

Day 1 – A new patch is released from Epicor Software Corp. and notification follows

Day 2 –  Epicor ERP system patch updates are disseminated and installed

Days 3 through 12 – Testing of processes and Unique Business Cases (UBCs) takes place in the test environment to ensure no process is impeded with new patch rollout.

Day 13 – After testing is completed, the new patch is pushed to the live Epicor ERP environment.

Day 14 – A new patch is released from Epicor Software Corp. and notification follows

an image of the encompass solutions Epicor ERP Update Lifecycle - Managed Services patch management

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions, Inc. is an ERP consulting firm, NetSuite Solution Provider and Epicor Gold Partner that offers professional services in business consulting, project management, and software implementation. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and renovation of existing systems or addressing the emerging challenges in corporate and operational growth, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. As experts in identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of Industry.