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.


The Automotive Aftermarket is a tough business. To survive, you must provide exceptional customer service, optimize your inventory, track transactions, outwit your competition, and improve profits. To achieve all that, you need technology. Unfortunately, technology investments make many uncomfortable. That’s possible because, unlike your inventory, an investment in technology will reside in your business for several years. A poor technology decision can result in lost revenue, frustrated employees, and a reduction in customer satisfaction.

As a result, your choice of a business management system, which includes POS, Inventory Control, AP, AR, parts availability, and other important features must be made carefully. To help you with that choice, we’ve assembled a list of the ten most common mistakes made when choosing and implementing a business management system. The list isn’t prioritized because they’re all important, and making any of these mistakes could have an impact on your chances for success

 

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.


You have likely experienced the interminable hourglass spin while trying to open a large spreadsheet, or have spent multiple hours manually typing handwritten information into a system. In our data-driven world, it is safe to say that troubled encounters with large quantities of data are becoming the norm. Our data footprint has increased considerably over the past 15 years, jumping from 130 billion to 40 trillion gigabytes between 2005 and 2021. The data revolution opened up opportunities for organizations to analyze human behavior more deeply and develop more refined business strategies.

 

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.


Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) is pleased to announce that Epicor ERP by Epicor is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of ERP solutions for mixed-mode manufacturing in the ERP Evaluation Center. The TEC Evaluation Centers enable you to compare and evaluate functionality based on TEC’s comprehensive models of business software.

Data used in the Evaluation Centers are obtained from the vendors’ responses to TEC’s research questionnaire. Certification ensures that Epicor has demonstrated Epicor ERP’s support for specific real-world business processes chosen by TEC analysts and that TEC analysts have analytically and comparatively reviewed research questionnaire data about Epicor ERP against known benchmarks

 

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.


Founded in 1992, Metal-Tech Partners (MTP) has rapidly grown from a supplier of telecommunications products to a multi-million-dollar business providing custom manufactured and fabricated parts and services to the international telecom industry. This includes meeting exacting specifications for thousands of products ranging from racks, bays, and cabinets to pipe stands and support grids.

Success Highlights

Challenges

  • Lead the industry with high-quality products provided at the lowest possible costs and with the fastest turnaround times

Solution

  • Epicor® ERP Cloud

Benefits

  • Operate more efficiently by accessing production information on a daily or even hourly basis
  • Can track and review the time spent by every employee on projects
  • Eliminated paper trails so workers can focus on production
  • Better inventory control and prediction of shortages before supplies are depleted

 

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.


Database Health Check: Epicor Data Scrubber Utility

It’s good practice to check that your database health is at an appropriate level on a periodic basis. Over time, it’s possible to build up orphaned records, detail records that contain values that do not total to summary records, and other things that can cause performance and data integrity issues.

As long as you are current on maintenance, Epicor supply a tool that lets you check that your database is in tip-top condition, and will provide programs to resolve any issues that are uncovered. This is recommended not only before an upgrade to ensure things go smoothly but on a periodic basis for optimal database health.

The data scrubber utility is a collection of commonly applied data fixes, which the support technical team has gathered together into a package to do a “health check” of a customer’s system. They are continuously adding to it as they find additional opportunities.

The process:

  • The customer would log an issue requesting from support, we can do this under our customer’s site ID
    or Run the program against the database of choice
  • Each sub-routine will stop when it finds an invalid record and create an entry in a log file, then move on to the next routine (no tracking of the specific errors at this point)
  • Generates a log file which gets sent back to support.  Support will then send the relevant fix programs back to the customer
  • The customer runs each fix program, which will show all the relevant records and provide a chance to fix all, some or none of the records. This gives the customer enough information to troubleshoot the cause of the data problem and to fix it at source

This collection of assessment algorithms is new in the last few months, but the ‘fix it’ programs have been available individually for some time now.

An assessment should be considered as a maintenance routine and should be run for database health for all customers periodically, anyone going through a Business Process Review and anyone considering an Upgrade.

We will consider using this utility to get ahead of any E10 upgrades for database health and troubleshooting. We want to ensure that our customers upgrade with ‘good’ data. For larger databases, it may take a good couple of days, but it is really worth it!

The utility was discussed in several sessions at Epicor’s Insights 2015, so many of our customers will have heard about it and maybe asking themselves questions.

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.