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Welcome to the Epicor blog community, covering topics to inspire discussion where Epicor thought leaders, employees and partners alike can share insight across industries.
E-Commerce and the Need for Speed
6/18/2013
Category:  ERP; Manufacturing; Retail
In an earlier post, we looked at how smaller businesses were using e-commerce to establish brands, even premium ones, while getting closer to their customers. Along with the benefits that e-commerce provides smaller concerns comes new business requirements. Faster shipping is one of main ones.
 
In an article on searchmanufacturingerp.com, Brenda Cole discusses this development and one of the challenges:

While brick-and-mortar retailers have struggled to bring in customers in recent years, e-commerce has steadily grown and shows no sign of slowing down. Consumers, however, want more than just the convenience of shopping in their pajamas. They expect their purchases to arrive more quickly than ever, and e-commerce giants like Amazon are obliging with more same-day shipping capabilities. Small and midsize companies are feeling this trickle-down pressure to speed up their shipping times, and many are turning to their business application vendors in hopes of rising to the challenge.
 
Leslie Hand, research director for IDC Retail Insights, an IT analyst organization based in Framingham, Mass., observes that more manufacturers than ever are embracing e-commerce as a business model. According to Hand, by partnering with e-commerce sites such as Amazon, manufacturers can sell a broader range of products and deliver them more quickly to a wider range of customers than they could reach on their own. “In addition to finding the right software, small and midsize manufacturers that really want to reach consumers directly and quickly need to foster relationships with partners that can facilitate unit-level picking, the process of taking products directly from inventory to shipping,” notes Cole.
 
One of the benefits of speeding shipping times is doing a better job of juggling multiple sales outlets and logistics services. Cole cites a colorful example in her piece: Savvi, a manufacturer of novelty temporary tattoos in Tucson, Ariz. Savvi has been using Epicor's ERP system since June 2010, after 10 months of due diligence exploring vendor options. "We have three distinct divisions," says Chris Huff, vice president of operations at Savvi. "One deals with retailers like Walmart and Target. Another is a custom product, make-to-order division. A third is our vending machine division." The company also has a stock division, where an order can be shipped either same day or next day, depending on what time of day the order is placed.
 
We've got hundreds of thousands of stock images that you can pull up on our website," notes Huff. "You can place your order and get a confirmation number as soon as it ships. We have the same thing with our vending division, where orders that come in before 2:00 p.m. will be shipped same day."
 
The challenge for Savvi is multi-channel: it must juggle a number of different sales models and outlets when distributing its products, including e-commerce, major retailers, made-to-order manufacturing, and inventory control. Its shipping models are also varied, including overnighting products, shipping container loads overseas, sending truckloads for domestic sales, and going through FedEx and UPS.
 
According to Huff, Epicor ERP has helped simplify operations and speed order fulfillment. "This has been great for putting all our needs in one package," he says. "We were a mom-and-pop company initially, with a home-grown system. We acquired two or three competitors and at one time had five disparate systems running simultaneously; you can image the chaos that ensues from that." Now that the chaos has been put to order, orders are reaching customers when they expect them—a requirement for anyone operating e-commerce.
 
Posted by Epicor Social Media Team
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Data-Backed Insight Coming to the Forefront in HR
6/14/2013
Category:  HCM
A recent article on hrmagazine.co.uk addresses the rising expectations for data-backed insight in human resources. The upshot: investors and senior management are more interested in talent data than ever before. If HR departments aren’t primed to deliver, they had better prepare for it.
 
“Strategic use of data probably doesn’t take more effort than you’re doing now, but it requires new skills from HR,” says Jeremy Shapiro, executive director at Morgan Stanley. According to Shapiro, a trend toward more integrated reporting (i.e., where companies report on elements such as sustainability and talent management as well as financials) plus a rising awareness of how engagement links to performance means that senior executives are starting to expect more out of their HR data.
 
An article in Forbes further underscores why these expectations are rising:
 
How well do organizations truly understand what drives performance among their workforce? The answer: not really very well. Do we know why one sales person outperforms his peers? Do we understand why certain leaders thrive and others flame out? Can we accurately predict whether a candidate will really perform well in our organization? The answer to most of these questions is no. The vast majority of hiring, management, promotion, and rewards decisions are made on gut feel, personal experience, and corporate belief systems. This is like the vice-president of marketing spending millions of dollars on a new marketing campaign because he or she “always does it this way.” It’s an obsolete way to make decisions.
 
The Forbes piece cites an excellent example of how this pattern can work against HR success: a large company had operated under the belief that employees with good grades from highly ranked colleges would make good performers. Therefore, their recruitment, selection, and promotion processes were based on these academic drivers. An analyst within the firm did a statistical analysis of sales productivity and turnover, correlating total performance and retention rates against a range of demographic factors. The results were astonishing and contrary to long-held beliefs. Six factors were highly correlated with success:
  • No typos, errors, or grammatical mistakes on resumes
  • No quitting school before achieving a degree
  • Experience selling high-ticket commodities
  • Demonstrated success in prior positions
  • Ability to succeed with vague instruction
  • Experience managing time and multi-tasking
However, three stood out as not mattering at all:
  • Where they went to school
  • What grades they had
  • The quality of their references
Once this data was integrated into the recruiting process, the company saw more than $4 million in revenue improvement the next fiscal period.
 
Not surprisingly, leading enterprises are pioneering data-driven HR management. An article on TLNT.com highlights how HR is a data-driven function at Google, where the traditional HR function is called “people operations,” and an analytics team drives all HR decisions. A couple of tenets from that team show how removed their process is from the old HR world of relationships and gut feelings:
  • All people decisions at Google are based on data and analytics.
  • The goal is to bring the same level of rigor to people decisions that they do to engineering decisions.

This approach has resulted in Google producing amazing workforce productivity results that few can match (on average, each employee generates nearly $1 million in revenue and $200,000 in profit each year).

Quoted in the hrmagazine.co.uk article, Matthew Hanwell, business consulting lead for social media at NorthgateArinso, says that HR departments must get a better handle on big data and understand that any analysis must be connected to business strategy. "HR reporting is like an x-ray right now, black and white and in 2D," he says. "It should be an MRI scan, allowing you to plot, scan, and drill. This requires a different set of skills to interpret."
 
Hanwell and Shapiro agree that “data scientist” is a role that will be emerging in HR departments, especially considering their pressing need for data-driven insight.
 
Posted by Epicor Social Media Team
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E-Commerce and Manufacturing Convergence Benefits Companies and Customers
6/13/2013
Category:  Manufacturing
In the New York Times, Clair Cain Miller and Stephanie Crawford examine the phenomena of e-commerce being used to build premium brands. They chronicle a designer frame and eyeglass company, Warby Parker, whose roots trace back to its founders investigating why designer glasses cost several hundred dollars or more. The reason? Everyone in the process was taking a cut: designers, manufacturers, brands, wholesalers and retailers:

“I had been to the factories and knew what it costs to manufacture glasses and knew the cost didn’t warrant a $700 price tag,” said Neil Blumenthal, a founder of the company. Inspired by glasses they found in their grandparents’ attics, the founders sketched a few frames, hired the same Chinese factories that make designer glasses, and started selling directly to consumers online. By doing so, they eliminated enough of the cost to charge customers just $95 a pair. 
 
Warby Parker is part of what Miller and Crawford call a wave of e-commerce companies that are building premium brands at discount prices. The result, say the authors, is generally lower prices for consumers and higher profit margins for companies. This development is not attributable to e-commerce technology alone. Rather, it is also the result of operating without the fiscal demands of having physical stores and the new willingness of manufacturers to work with smaller brands.
 
A good example is the home furnishings industry. As home sales in the United States declined, and furniture sales went with them, Chinese furniture factories had excess capacity. While the factories had previously been unwilling to take small production orders, they became eager for business. Even though there was some concern about payment (i.e., they were already chasing their traditional retailers for slow remittance), smaller companies were able to negotiate terms appealing to the sector, such as paying for products as they are shipped.
 
In a ZDNet.com blog post addressing why even small local businesses should consider e-commerce, strategist Craig Zarmer encourages small and mid-sized businesses to consider e-commerce as a means of forging tighter relationships with customers. Among the strategies he recommends: consider multiple storefronts including Facebook, seek a solution that accommodates mobile shopping and administration, and don't forget to include real-world contact particulars.
 
The emergence of smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices is pushing e-commerce inexorably towards mobile capabilities. “Obviously, consumers are doing more and more shopping on the go,” says Zarmer. “Or not necessarily on the go—they could be shopping at the dinner table or in bed. They've got their smartphone or tablet handy. It is sometimes on the go, but it is also sometimes just because that is the device that they use most often. Clearly, you are going to see more and e-commerce sites have mobile-friendly offerings.”
To get more specific, an article on cpcstrategyblog.com identifies essential components to the implementation of mobile e-commerce:
  • Site speed is crucial. Google Research indicates that the number one asset a mobile site must have is a loading time of 5 seconds or less.
  • Convenience is essential. You never want a customer leaving your site because they couldn’t find your call to action.
  • The opening page is key. Since consumers will generally only be on your mobile site for about a minute, present all relevant information in half that time. Your first page should clearly display your contact information (the main thing people look for when browsing from a phone) and all your products’ information (the main thing shoppers look for when researching from tablets).
A further important benefit is the ability of brand owners to introduce products more rapidly, feeding customers’ huge appetite for the new. According to Miller and Crawford, start-ups are also using manufacturers as research and development centers, getting a firsthand sense of what larger brands are doing, to support this effort. “E-commerce is beautiful because it is natural to collect very valuable customer contact info as part of the checkout process,” says Zarmer. “If you are the sort of business that has new products or you sell a staple and you can remind people to come back, you would be amazed at how much possibility there is for generating repeat business.”

Posted by Epicor Social Media Team
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Software Hosting Capabilities Support Future Small to Medium-Sized Business Growth
6/11/2013
Category:  Retail
The recent availability of Epicor® Eagle® Hosting provides new and current Eagle customers the opportunity to outsource their server operations. The comprehensive hosting capabily of Epicor Eagle supports the SMB growth strategy. According to a survey conducted by Microsoft, Hosted services, also known as cloud services, are expected to grow from $9 billion in 2010 to $40-50 billion by 2015(1).
SMB business in the Cloud 2012 – Microsoft/Edge Strategies

The new Eagle Hosted solution offers an end-to-end architecture, and includes the associated implementation and integration services, support and maintenance, ongoing updates and upgrades. In addition, all proprietary information is protected for each business using the hosting service. The hosted servers are held in Epicor’s PCI compliant datacenter with significant redundancy in terms of power, HVAC, server hardware, network hardware, internet feeds, firewalls and security. Hosting offers a big advantage and possible cost savings compared to maintaining a server in a closet or on a table in the back of a business.

“Everything Central Network Retail Group (CNRG) is doing focuses on cloud-based solutions and our goal has been to operate without in-house servers,” said Boyden Moore, president of CNRG. “Epicor Eagle hosting service made more sense for our 21 Home Hardware Center stores. The architecture works much better for us as a growing company and allows us to integrate our multi-store locations faster—the infrastructure allows us to better serve our customers.”
 
Other features and functionality available with Eagle Hosted include:
  • Watchdog ISS Gateway and Kaspersky anti-virus protection services
  • Automatic nightly backups: no need to change tapes or DVDs for backup
  • Continuous server monitoring and quarterly server maintenance
  • Automated OS and software updates with eConnect

1SMB Business in the Cloud 2012 – Microsoft/Edge Strategies

 
 
Posted by Keith Lam
Sr. Product Manager for Epicor
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Leveraging Your Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) – a series on gleaning knowledge from the field
6/11/2013
Category:  Epicor University

 Life in the world of content development can easily turn into one in which your writers are under pressure to meet deadlines, where they are forced to stay focused on the job at hand and to overlook the outside world. By doing that, they sometimes miss using one of the most useful resources to them – the consultants, trainers, and technical support staff that deal with how the software works in the real world. It’s easy to fall back on only writing the academics of the software...the step-by-step processes to complete tasks, but what customers need to know are the why and how of the application, along with practical examples based on real-world scenarios.

Getting the ‘buy-in’
The challenge in working with this group of individuals is getting buy-in that their input is worth the time away from the next consulting engagement, training class, or a break between support calls. Start by building a solid relationship with your subject matter expert (SME) group. Meet with the leaders, for example the Professional Services Director, or Technical Support Manager; explain the value of their expertise and your willingness to make contributions from their teams as painless as possible. Next, find a way to motivate them to contribute. It may be as easy as recognizing these contributing individuals. An easy way to start is to add their names and titles to content produced. Another idea is to build participation into a compensation plan, if possible. Or, content contribution can be written into their job descriptions.

Smooth content process
Once you get the buy-in, it’s important to have a painless and understandable process for SMEs to send you their content. Have this mapped out before you begin the first call – it will help with your credibility and with building trust with the group.  For example, utilize Microsoft SharePoint® - long known as a tool for team collaboration. Create a site specifically to support your project.  Include areas to share documents, post your processes, and list out the project team. Test out the process with a set of supporters before releasing to the masses. Welcome all feedback and implement change requests quickly.

On the other side of the SME equation is the content producer. The content producers also need training on the process of interacting with the SMEs - both the formal process (as described above) and the informal etiquette. The informal etiquette includes things like learning what the average daily and weekly demands are of the SME, what their crunch times are, and when they are most likely to have a moment to work with the content producer. Typically the end of the month or the end of the quarter are not good times to launch these kinds of projects. Consultants in the field will most likely be working on finalizing customer projects and tying up internal loose ends. Emphasize patience and perseverance to your writers. Remember, SMEs are a very busy group of individuals who have different goals from content writers. During that first meeting, ask the necessary questions to learn about their current demands so you can properly set expectations for all involved.

Next time I’ll focus on creating a specific deliverable with an expert - working with a SME to create a job aid.

Posted by Staci Cummings, Senior Content Manager, Epicor University

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Establishing a Customer Journey with a Little Sparkle
6/7/2013
Category:  Retail

If you haven’t been in a charming charlie store, put it on your bucket list. The award-winning fashion jewelry and accessories retailer has been delighting women of all ages since 2004. The company has 242 stores in the United States and earned a 656th ranking on Inc. Magazine’s list of Top 5,000 Fastest Growing Businesses in 2010, which is about when I discovered them.

To extend this success, charming charlie implemented a comprehensive customer marketing and loyalty program using Epicor Retail CRM. They started small and achieved big results. The journey started with encouraging customers to visit their stores or Web site and provide them their e-mail address. This allowed charming charlie to build more awareness with their customers on merchandise trends, new stores, and offerings. This not only encouraged customers (me) to shop more frequently, it also gave them more insights into “my” preferences and needs. This then allowed charming charlie to tailor offers more specifically to “me” and reward me for “my” loyalty. A win-win for me and charming charlie.

To hear more of charming charlie’s new loyalty program, as well as its tight integration with Epicor Retail Store for real-time CRM and Rewards, review the recent article and video interview by RIS News, with John Hnanicek, CIO of charming charlie and click here to read the full charming charlie CRM case study on Epicor.com.

To quote charming charlie – they helped me find my “fabulous”, hope they help you find yours!

Posted by Diane Cerulli, director of marketing
Epicor Retail

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Bird’s Eye View of Scrum
6/5/2013
The word “Scrum” has been used quite extensively within the Epicor Development department for the past year. Surprisingly, it is not an acronym that stands for something. Instead, it is something.
 
Scrum is a word whose origin starts with a game that was unknown to me until last fall, when I went to my first rugby game to help cheer on some friends who were very passionate about the sport. The only thing I knew about rugby was that it looked like American football but they didn’t wear any of the protective equipment like shoulder pads or helmets. Seemed crazy for a full-contact sport, but I was excited to see what it was all about.
 
It didn’t take long after the kick-off for me to become lost in the plays. Without knowing the rules of the game, I only saw chaos on the field. I couldn’t tell the forwards from the backs, I was never sure where the ball was supposed to be, and couldn’t figure out why a seemingly dead ball could be scooped up and flicked to an advancing team member.
Instead of getting frustrated with not understanding what was going on, I kept noticing the beauty of the flowing formation on the field. From way up in the stands, my “bird’s eye view” of the entire field allowed me to see the strategy of the plays and therefore start to understand them. The team who controlled the ball positioned their players into a diagonal line, starting from the center of the field and stretching backwards so that the end person was standing near the sidelines.

And then when they got the ball, it looked like pure magic. The center would toss the ball to the player on his side and that person would run up the field as far as he could go, and at the same time, the whole line moved up, synchronized with the player carrying the ball. They travelled in a line, progressing forward, yard-by-yard, and as one player approached a block, he tossed the ball to another who was close by and then the line continued to advance diagonally behind the player with the ball.

The progression up the field, towards the end zone, was gained in a constant, team-driven effort. It was systematic. It was methodical. To someone unknowing, it may have looked like chaos. But to the players, it was well-planned and executed. Each player was simply performing the job that was expected of him.

And when the play stops, and the ball is declared “dead,” a scrum is needed to restart the play. A Scrum forms as the players huddle tight in a pack, interlocking themselves into several rows. The Scrum team has a single vision … to regain possession of the ball. Each player uses his best strengths to help his team gain control and achieve success. And after a team gains control, the ball is passed and the beautiful formations are again progressing down the field.
 
This is rugby and this is also Epicor Development.
 
In the book “The Elements of Scrum”, written by Chris Sims and Hillary Louise Johnson, it says that the term “scrum” was first used in the 1986 Harvard Business Review article by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka. The article titled “The New New Product Development Game” used scrum as a metaphor for a new kind of teamwork. It described an approach where the team tries to advance as a unit, passing the ball back and forth.

In Epicor Development, each Scrum team has a vision that is defined by the team as a whole. The vision might be to add enhancements, fix existing issues, or create new deliverables. Whatever the vision, each scrum team member takes seriously the responsibility to perform at his or her best to keep the team moving swiftly forward. Within each team, the players progress down the field, passing the ball back and forth. Together, they sprint down the field towards the end of the Epicor product release.

I have the privilege of being the ScrumMaster of the Epicor University Scrum team. As ScrumMaster, it’s my responsibility to facilitate the daily scrum meetings and to monitor our team’s progress. My main job is to remove any obstacles or blocks so that each team member can make forward progress each day.

As the Epicor University Scrum Team, we line up with our teammates at our sides in what is called a “sprint”. When one is given a task (passed the ball), the rest of the team runs forward synchronized with that player. Someone helps set up an environment, another assists with testing, and yet another performs a peer review. With each sprint, we gain confidence from the knowledge that we are surrounded by people who have the same vision, the same goals that we all agreed to before the sprint started. It’s definitely an all-for-one, one-for-all team dynamic.
 
If you ever have the chance to attend a rugby game, try to sit up as high as you can in the stands. And even if you don’t know the difference between the fly-half and a flanker, or a hooker and a prop, don’t fret. Just watch the beauty of the game as the diagonal formations start to flow up and down the field. Watch as players give it their all for the successful forward-motion of the team.
 
Watching rugby and scrum development can be quite mesmerizing. And very inspiring.
 
Posted by Linda Robinson, Senior Manager, Epicor University
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On the Front Lines of Big Data, Privacy Concerns Surface
5/30/2013
Our recent post on big data looked back to McKinsey Global Institute’s seminal report on the topic, and forward to a post on the Harvard Business Review Blog Network that sees big data planning becoming as much of an SOP for the corporate world as strategic planning. Today we look to the front lines, specifically to a huge barrier that needs to be addressed for big data to move forward: privacy.

A recent article on The New York Times compares the emergence of big data to the advent of mainframe computers, in terms of the privacy issues raised. “It really freaked people out,” notes Daniel J. Weitzner, a former senior Internet policy advisor in the Obama administration. Yet mainframes were an engine for growth and innovation, and big data is expected to be similar, enabling faster and smarter decision making in virtually every field of human enterprise. Nonetheless, the article notes, the idea of a data-driven society has raised at least one large red flag: “The latest leaps in data collection are raising new concern about infringements on privacy—an issue so crucial that it could trump all others and upset the big data bandwagon.”
 
This concern is echoed in an article on ZDNet.com that focuses on governments’ use of big data. The challenge here is “distinguishing between data collected for protection and data collection that violates our privacy, all while respecting the very core of our Constitution.”

On another front, the World Economic Forum, in a report prepared with the Boston Consulting Group, recommends a shift in the focus of regulation toward restricting the use of data. According to the report, curbs on the use of personal data, combined with the use of new technologies, can give individuals control of their own information while allowing important data assets to flow relatively freely. Here’s how the Times summarizes this idea:

“The Forum report suggests a future in which all collected data would be tagged with software code that included an individual’s preferences for how his or her data is used. All uses of data would have to be registered, and there would be penalties for violators. For example, one violation might be a smartphone application that stored more data than is necessary for a registered service like a smartphone game or a restaurant finder.”

Yet a criticism of the report is that it “puts way too much faith in the tools and too little emphasis on strong rules, particularly in moving away from curbs on data collection.”
 
Dr. Alex Pentland, director of the Human Dynamics Lab at MIT and an advisor to the World Economic Forum’s initiatives on big data and personal data, recommends several basic tenets on use of data. The individual:
  • Has the right to possess his or her data
  • Has the right to control how it is used
  • Has the right to destroy or distribute it as he or she sees fit

If these tenets are observed, creating what Pentland calls “a new deal on data,” the barriers seen most ominously in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Spielberg’s Minority Report may be overcome as big data assumes its role as a key driver of growth and innovation.

Posted by Epicor Social Media Team
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Lean Distribution and Inventory Management
5/30/2013
Category:  Distribution

The value of inventory to distributors is obvious. Distributors profit by selling inventory to their customers; but for many, inventory can be a liability when it ties up capital as it sits unsold, costing more than the products per se—in warehouse space, finance charges, operational and handling expenses, and so on. As such, one would expect to see a broad-scale adoption of Lean principles in distribution, if only to better manage inventory. After all, Lean inventory management allows distributors to meet or exceed their customers’ expectations with inventory optimized for maximum profitability.

 

One of the common arguments against the adoption of Lean practices is that it is basically a tool for high volume manufacturing practices, and that processes such as distribution, where variability is high, can be a difficult fit for Lean. However, a recent post by Gregg Stocker on the Lessons in Lean blog disputes this strongly. The author notes that three basic questions related to the application of Lean demonstrate it is not dependent on the volume of products or services produced:

  • How do your processes need to perform (i.e., what is the ideal condition)?
  • How do your processes perform?
  • How are you going to deal with the gaps between ideal and actual performance?

“Knowing how a process needs to perform has absolutely no relationship to the size of the organization, the volume produced, or the repetitiveness of the work,” says Stocker.

 

In a recent Supply Management article, procurement consultant John Hatton also considers why the well-established principles of Lean supply have yet to be more broadly embraced. Among the principal reasons he cites: supply matters such as inventory take a backseat to other areas in terms of technology and process improvement, and the awareness of Lean methods is surprisingly low.

 

Among the advantages that Lean management has over traditional management is lower inventory risk. “A Lean supply chain is one that produces or provides only what is needed, when it is needed, and where it is needed,” Hatton says.

 

To apply Lean to supply processes, he points to five guiding principles:

  • Involve people: engage colleagues to improve continuously through waste elimination and problem solving.
  • Build in quality: design processes to make them mistake-proof, thus preventing errors before they happen.
  • Reduce lead times: establish a continuous flow of materials, equipment, and process, such that products are pulled through the supply chain at the right place, the right time, and in the right quantity.
  • Standardize: document the best practices and make sure they are followed.
  • Improve continuously: no matter how good a process seems, there’s always room to improve it.

After all, Lean has its deepest roots in inventory management—a fact that distributors might reflect on profitably. Lean was first developed by Kiichiro Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno in the 1960s for Toyota. They received their inspiration not from the American automotive industry, which at that time was the world's largest, but from visiting an American grocery store: Piggly Wiggly. They were impressed by how the supermarket only reordered and restocked goods once they’d been bought by customers—the precursor of the just-in-time inventory system.

 

Posted by the Epicor Social Media Team

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Epicor ERP Documentation – Setup and Web Resources
5/29/2013
Category:  Epicor University; ERP
Having just returned from the Epicor Insights conference, I thought to review some information that I ended giving out in conversation with attendees in our Solutions Pavilion, including some basics of help installation.
 
Help installation
The help installation is, of course, covered in the Epicor installation guide, but there are a few items to highlight. Once you run the basic help installer (which more or less just unzips the help), there will be a folder below the Help folder named Setup. You could theoretically use the help without the next step but then the help files would be served up via the file system and performance would suffer. For best performance, go into the Setup folder, right-click the EpicorHelpSearchSetup.exe, and select Run as Administrator.
 
Next there is a step 1 button “Create Virtual Directory.” After you run this, you could again stop here. Now the files are served up via http which is a great performance boost for the help, but you still do not have server-side searching of help. Until you enable the server-side search, search indexes for a client-side Javascript search get downloaded which is a performance hit (also the client-side search is not as robust). To get the server-side searching, you click the step 2 button “Switch to Windows Indexed Search.” Once you complete this step (and wait for the initial index), your help is set up for maximum performance and usability. Also see my previous blog entry for ideas on leveraging the indexed documents (now that you are running server-side search) with your own additions for customization of help.
 
Technical reference guides
Now that you have your help installed and configured, in the help enter this search: technical reference guides. The first search result should link to an overview topic of the Epicor technical reference guides. Use the links in that topic to access the dozen or so guides we have that are aimed at the power user or system administrator who needs an end-to-end explanation of a subject. You can use the online or PDF versions of the guides.
 
Web resources/downloading documentation
All of the Epicor documentation is posted on the Epicor customer portal Epicweb – http://epicweb.epicor.com.  After logging into Epicweb (contact your Customer Account Manager if you need an account), click the Documentation menu item on the top level menu and select Epicor 9 from the sub-level menu. The documentation deliverables are organized by release. You’ll notice that a major release (usually one with schema changes) will have the largest number of items. For example, release 9.05.700 has something close to 100 deliverables while release 9.05.702 has 70. Some deliverables are not regenerated in each service pack, so if you are not finding a deliverable in a service pack, remember to go back to the last major release and look there.
 
User guides are another great resource. These are our illustrated guides that go step-by-step through application and system processes. Because of their size (due to screenshots), they are broken into several PDFs per guide. To find the user guides on Epicweb, click the Documentation menu item on the top level menu and select Epicor 9 from the sub-level menu. Then look to the right-most column under the heading More Information. You will find a link to the user guides there (as well as links to hosted versions of help and feature summaries).

I hope I covered enough in this entry to accelerate your use of Epicor documentation. Feedback is always welcomed at documentation@epicor.com.
 
Posted by Charles Lloyd, Sr. Content Manager, Epicor University
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