I'm writing this article as I sit in the airport after leaving Insights 2015 in Nashville.  Once again, Epicor successfully pulled off another epic event with lots of learning, networking and we even got some top notch evening entertainment.  One of the privileges I have of attending Insights is to represent you, our members, to certain Epicor Senior Executives.  Myself and several of the User's Group board members met individually with Celia Fleischaker - Senior VP Worldwide Marketing, Ian Ashby - Senior VP Global Support, and Janie West - Senior VP & Chief Product Officer.  Along with them, we met with the top level Eclipse specific Epicor employees such as Kami Kurth, Mark Artim, Bill Wright, Lisa Grantland, Justin Ward, Sean Smith, Louise Keppel, and Brad Riley along with several other key players.  The point of all this name dropping is just to highlight that we had plenty of opportunity to bend the ear of decision makers at Epicor...and bend them we did!  Just to keep you informed, I'd like to highlight the major points we discussed.  

1)   THANK YOU - The overarching message we relayed was one of thanks for the reinvestment in Eclipse.  When you compare where Eclipse was heading just two years ago to where it is going today you see a 180 degree shift in the relevance and importance of Eclipse to Epicor.  There is a consistent message from all levels of Epicor that Eclipse is one of their preferred platforms.  This is evidenced by the dramatic increase in the number of new companies going live on Eclipse and the dramatic increase in Eclipse related staff.  (NOTE: There was some confusion at Insights by a message by Janie West at the Executive Keynote session regarding CONVERGENCE of platforms. This was a joke only that was construed by some as a serious message.  Her message is that convergence of all platforms into one platform to rule them all IS NOT Epicor's objective.  I heard that directly from her as well in our Executive Board meeting with her.

2)   Vendor Relations - Epicor has moved into a more closed relationship with third party vendors and as a result we see fewer vendors at Insights than in the past.  This diminishes the value of Insights for many as we want to see complementary products to Eclipse to help improve our businesses.  I challenged Janie West to review that policy and create a more open relationship with vendors.  She informed me that they just hired a new person from Microsoft to manage their Alliance Partner program and expect to see some changes in that area.  She obviously wouldn't commit to any significant policy change at our meeting...but at least she heard us!

3)   Enhancements - We discussed creating a more formal process to adding user suggested content from the Ideas site.  There is lots of pressure from many sources for what gets included in each release of Eclipse.  Often, it seems that the suggestions from companies that already purchased Eclipse fall to the bottom of the pile for inclusion in each release.  I don't want this to sound like we, the user's, aren't impacting the direction of Eclipse because we certainly do, but this is mostly related to the new features and not smaller tweaks to save a person a keystroke or two to make their Eclipse use just a bit easier.  We will continue to push this message.

4)  Insights - This one may be a bit controversial, but the message the User's Group Board hears repeatedly is that Insights has become less of a value for many companies to send several people and instead opt to send staff to the User's Group's Encounter event in September.  This is an unaudited number but we are estimating about 360 Eclipse users were at Insights this year.  We expressed a consistent message to the executives at Epicor that we would sacrifice the flash of Insights if it meant a lower cost for us to attend.  We discussed classes and what makes a series of classes relevant or not and why we send or don't send people to Insights.  One surprise to them was that our employees don't really need to network with people on other ERP platforms.  They speak a different language and have different issues than Eclipse Users.  We strongly encouraged them to keep Eclipse people with Eclipse people for classes and meals as this is where the networking and relationships happen that improve our use of Eclipse as we learn real world applications from each other.  I have heard that the other ERP platform (P21, Epicor E10, etc.) users feel the same way about us!  

5)  Epicor Executive Team - For those of you that follow Epicor, you will know that there has been turmoil at the top for many years.  The result is an inconsistent message as new leaders take over.  Projects get delayed, scrapped, restarted, and changed as each new person brings their perspective to Epicor.   We expressed a concern that a consistent team needs to be in place in order to keep Epicor moving in an accelerated forward direction.  Side note: We are very fortunate that many of the key Eclipse players are still intact through the turmoil of the past!  The joke at Insights by an anonymous member of the Board of Directors, named Rich, was that the Epicor executives should put the word TODAY at the end of their title because they may not be there tomorrow...  Anyway, Joe Cowan, CEO of Epicor laid out his plan for Epicor during his keynote at Insights and expressed that many of the previous senior team was not up to the task.  His mission is to remove the silos of the old Epicor and create a more functional layout.  That mission has required change to put the right people in the right place.  Janie West expanded and confirmed that message and I am cautiously optimistic that their message is true.  The team they build is solid and quite frankly from my opinion is more believable than other executives in the past.

Those are the major issues we covered.  I would look forward to any feedback you have on these issue.  You can send any comments to me at cbohn@aprsupply.com