We´re Live! Now What?

We´re Live! Now What?
A practical guide to getting the most out of your investment in Epicor® Prophet 21®
We’re Live! Now What? | A practical guide to getting the most out of your investment in Epicor Prophet 21
Letter from Kevin Roach
Congratulations on your recent go-live on Prophet 21! Now what?
An Epicor customer once said about Prophet 21, “We have a Cadillac®, but we’re driving it like a Pinto
with the windows rolled down.” Most customers agree—Prophet 21 is a best-in-class solution for
wholesale distributors, but there’s so much power contained within the system’s functionality that it
takes time and focus to continually unlock the benefits of the software.
You’re probably like other distributors who invest in Prophet 21. They spend a lot of time and effort
getting ramped up on their new system, but slip into a period of complacency once they get over the
go-live hump. Keep up momentum by developing a project timeline for implementing the features and
processes that will have the greatest impact on improving your business.
The following pages outline Epicor recommendations for getting the most out of your Prophet 21
investment. The suggestions are based on a two-year roadmap that can take your company from an
average user to a “power distributor.” Being a power distributor means you are able to squeeze every
dime of benefit out of the system, resulting in significant return on investment in the form of increased
sales and margins, decreased costs, and better customer service. It means you are consistently able to
outperform other distributors in your market.
At Epicor, our job is to help you achieve your profitability potential, so please let us know how we can assist in solving business issues
with our technology and services. If we ever fall short of your expectations, I personally want to hear from you. My e-mail address is
included below.
I wish you and your business continued success.
Sincerely,
Kevin Roach
Executive Vice President & General Manager
Epicor Software
[email protected]
2
How to Use this Guide
Choosing Priorities
and Marking Your Calendar
We do not expect you’ll be able to accomplish
every item at every checkpoint. Work with your
management team to decide which items are most
critical to advancing your business. On page 18 of
this brochure is a consolidated checklist where you
can note which projects you intend to accomplish,
along with project start and end dates. Be sure to
plan adequate time and resources for execution with
full management backing.
Customer Tips
Learn from those who have already been down this
road! For every checkpoint on the two-year roadmap,
an Epicor customer offers their recommendation for
how to get the most out of your Epicor partnership.
Quick Reference Guide
We’ve inserted a separate sheet of company contacts and
information on how to communicate with Epicor staff and locate
important resources. You’ll want to hold on to this for reference
and perhaps share it with key people in your organization.
Did You Know?
These interesting facts or “hidden” features can improve your
knowledge of Epicor and your Prophet 21 system.
Recommendations in this guide that pertain to the LMS will
have a special icon next to them. Epicor strongly recommends
you continue to utilize the LMS, post-implementation, in order
to better educate your staff and drive costs out of your business.
IMPORTANT!
Utilization Meter
Your company’s goal is to get the most out of your
Prophet 21 system. The following pages contain a
utilization meter that displays how close you are to
becoming a “power distributor”… if you follow the
suggestions at each checkpoint. Think of a power
distributor as one whose sales per employee, gross
margin percentage, customer service levels, and
other Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are superior
to other distributors in their market.
This guide assumes that your organization will continue
to subscribe to the Learning Management System
(LMS) that you used to educate your employees during
implementation. The LMS contains a growing library
of courses on new and advanced features of the
system. In addition, it is a great tool for cross-training
employees in different aspects of your business and has
resources you can use to test on knowledge of your
company’s processes, product lines, service and sales
skills, and so on.
We’re Live! Now What? | A practical guide to getting the most out of your investment in Epicor Prophet 21
Immediate Action Items
1. Gather Feedback from Your Management Team
You’ve graduated from the implementation phase, which means
you should have a couple of successful month-ends under your
belt. At this stage, we recommend a thorough review with your
management team. Below are some questions you will want to
ask of everyone:
 Do your teams know how to find what they need?
Staff who deal with customers on a daily basis need the proper
support to answer any questions thrown their way. Are they
aware of information available in reports and drill-downs?
 Do your teams need access to better reports?
Do existing reports need to be modified? What reports still
need to be created to access, interpret, and act upon critical
business data? Keep in mind that Epicor has report writing
experts who can assist with everything from basic to advanced
report writing needs.
 What processes do your teams struggle with?
Verify that your employees have the necessary knowledge
and tools to execute their jobs and control processes going
forward. Have an application consultant come onsite and
address existing process issues while sharing best practices
with your organization.
2. Determine Priorities for the Next Year
Prior to implementation, your team probably had a lot of great
ideas for new processes. Don’t lose sight of those objectives!
Gather feedback and put together a plan for the upcoming year.
Review this guide with your management team and come to a
consensus on the items that will have the greatest impact on your
business, and commit to executing on those. At the same time,
be sure to avoid the most common excuse: “We don’t have time
to do that.” That’s like saying, “I don’t have time to learn how to
operate the washing machine because I’m too busy scrubbing my
clothes in the creek.”
“Establish a relationship with
your Customer Account Manager
immediately. This person will be
your liaison to all things Epicor
for the life of your business
partnership. When you have
obstacles in your path, they can
recommend resources to help you
achieve your goals and properly
budget for items on your roadmap.
They can also point you to other
distributors who have overcome
similar challenges.”
—Rene Savage
Vice President of Technology | Stellar Industrial Supply
4
3. Develop a Business Continuity Plan
If there is any recommendation in this guide that should NOT
be ignored, it is this: don’t wait another day to develop a
comprehensive business continuity plan. Your system data is
your lifeblood. Protecting that data and having failover solutions
for critical business applications can be the difference between
thriving and going out of business.
Your business continuity strategy should account for the following:
 Regular onsite and offsite backups to a secure location
 Regular testing of a restore from both onsite and offsite
backups
4. Review the LMS for Employees with
Incomplete Courses
During a company’s implementation, some training
courses assigned to employees may have been skipped
or not completed. All employees should have a solid
understanding of the Prophet 21 system as it pertains
to their job function. To view employees who have not
completed the required training, administrators can
follow these instructions on the LMS site:
1. Select “Assignments” from the main navigation
2. Select “Search”
 Warm failover for critical business systems
3. For “Search Type” select “Courses” and “Tasks”
 A crisis management plan that is available to all employees
4. For “Status” select “Not Started” and “In Progress”
Take our survey at www.epicor.com/businesscontinuity to see how
well your business is currently protected against significant data
loss and unexpected system disruption, or speak with Epicor about
our business continuity services.
5. Click the “Search” button at the bottom of the page
Results can be sorted by employee or department and
exported to Excel for review. Be sure to reassign all
incomplete courses to employees with a due date within
the next two months.
Did You Know?!
According to an Epicor survey of wholesale distributors, the #1 cause of data loss is hardware
failure, not natural disasters. A study by Labs indicates that, every day, 140,000 hard drives
will crash in the United States alone. For most distributors, it’s a matter of when—not if—
their data will be compromised, if they don’t have appropriate safeguards in place. Leading
firms estimate that every hour of downtime costs the average business $80,000-$90,000 in lost
revenue and productivity.
We’re Live! Now What? | A practical guide to getting the most out of your investment in Epicor Prophet 21
Checkpoint: Three Months Following Graduation
1. Review Business Alerts
Workflow alerts in Prophet 21 allow everyone in your organization
to quickly respond to changing business events. They reduce the
number of phone calls and faxes, and improve response time to
customers and vendors. They make your business proactive (not
reactive), and therefore, more efficient. Now is a good time to
review if alerts have been optimized for your business. Common
alerts that sometimes get overlooked include:
 Alerting a customer when their item ships, along with a
tracking number
 Alerting the sales rep and sales manager when an order falls
below a profit target
 Alerting a credit manager when an order goes on hold, then
alerting the original order taker when the order is released
from hold
 Alerting the sales rep when a quote is approaching its
expiration date
 Alerting the customer about related items that other
customers purchased when they buy an item from a specific
product group
An Epicor application consultant can help determine which alerts
can have the greatest impact on your business productivity and
profitability. These engagements can take place via the Web,
making this a cost-effective solution that can be implemented
immediately.
2. Assign LMS Courses That Were Not a
Priority During Implementation
More than 200 courses are available with your LMS
subscription, only a portion of which your employees
took during implementation. Now it’s time to revisit
those courses that will help improve your knowledge
of the Prophet 21 system, streamline daily business
processes, and cross-train employees in different
roles. You may even consider establishing a career
advancement program as employees progress through
the courses and tests available with the LMS.
“Don’t miss Insights, Epicor’s annual users
conference, under any circumstances!
In fact, be sure to send multiple people
from your organization. The conference
takes place each spring and it’s your
best opportunity to gain knowledge
on how to advance your distribution
business. The education and networking
opportunities are unparalleled, and
you’ll get to form relationships with
Epicor staff responsible for building and
enhancing your solutions. The return on
investment is immediate, thanks to all
the answers and ideas you’ll bring back
to the office.”
—Ed
Ed Albe
Albers
Director of Operations | Machinery Tooling & Supply
6
3. Take Advantage of DynaChange™
DynaChange Designer, included with your Prophet 21 software,
allows you to alter the appearance of screens to suit the needs
of your employees and business processes. For example, you can
move fields to more convenient locations, pull information from
other tabs to one master view, and even set up field security so
that sensitive information is protected from those without the
proper authority to view or edit it. In addition, you can create userdefined fields to track information vital to your operations.
DynaChange Navigator allows you to create your own drill downs
from any field in the system to information on another screen,
providing quicker access to the information each user requires.
Proper implementation of DynaChange Designer and DynaChange
Navigator can reduce errors and eliminate unnecessary keystrokes
from your processes.
Both of these solutions help cut costs, eliminate errors, save time,
and build efficiencies into your processes. Contact your Customer
Account Manager for more information.
DynaChange Extensibility Series
These optional modules provide incredible power over the
Prophet 21 application to further cut costs, eliminate errors,
save time, and build efficiencies into your processes:
•
DynaChange Portals allows you to create views
and interactive dashboards of real-time data that is
specific to each user’s needs
•
DynaChange Rules allows you to create business
logic within Prophet 21 that adheres to your
company’s unique processes and workflows without
the need for custom software
4. Opt-In for E-mail Alerts from the Epicor
Customer Web Site
Be sure you never miss important news about product
enhancements, support advice, educational opportunities, free
events taking place online, and more. By opting in for automatic
e-mail alerts, every time a newsflash is posted to the Epicor
Customer Web Site home page, you get an e-mail containing that
important information. Have your employees sign in to the Web
site and click the link on the home page for “Automatic Alerts”
(next to the “Recent Customer News” heading). They can select
the categories for which they would like to receive proactive alerts.
Notes:
We’re Live! Now What? | A practical guide to getting the most out of your investment in Epicor Prophet 21
Checkpoint: Six Months Following Graduation
1. Develop a Customer Relationship Management
(CRM) Strategy
Generally speaking, there are three aspects of a good CRM
strategy: contact management, sales force automation, and
marketing. For each of these, your management team should
decide how to best apply the powerful CRM capabilities within
Prophet 21 to meet your business objectives.
 Develop metrics and processes for customer satisfaction and
retention, such as customer inactivity reports and e-mail alerts
for “at risk” customers
 Automate sales and marketing communications, including
new customer thank-you letters, and establish a sales
document library
 Manage sales opportunities, with a focus on improving leadto-close ratios and accuracy of forecasts
 Take advantage of Outlook integration, including integrating
contacts, e-mails, tasks, and appointments for your sales reps
 Perfect your customer and contact records, with a focus on
organizing contact roles, classes, sales territories, lead source
information, and prospect qualification
To get an idea of your system’s CRM capabilities, review the
courses in the Customer Relationship Management directory of
the LMS course catalog.
Epicor offers a three-day consulting engagement with an
application and distribution expert who can help set your vision
and teach your company best practices for implementing Prophet
21’s CRM features in accordance with your businesses goals.
Did You Know?
You can access contact
information for any of the
leadership team at Epicor from
the Epicor Customer Web Site.
Simply click the Contact Us link
above the search field in the top
right corner of the site to access
e-mails and phone extensions
for top executives, company
directors, and your personal
Customer Account Manager.
We’d love to hear from you with
any questions or concerns.
8
2. Assign Shortcut and Efficiency Training Courses to All End Users
The Prophet 21 system contains many powerful features to make end users more efficient in their daily tasks. The following courses
are located in the All End Users > Productivity Tools directory of the LMS course catalog. We recommend you give employees six
weeks to take these courses and then assign follow-up tests on the course material.
 Accessing Data with Prophet 21 Query Tools
 Automating Work Flow with Business Alerts
 Effective Use of Document Links
 Entering and Editing Notes
3. Create a Business Intelligence Framework for Your Organization
Many people confuse the terms “business data” and “business intelligence.” Business data is simply information; it’s one of the
foundations that business intelligence is built upon. Business Intelligence (BI) refers to the systems and technologies that provide
the means for decision-makers to extract personalized, meaningful information about their business and industry. BI is not a
singular transactional or managerial report; it’s a dashboard where all data can be mashed together to deliver a higher level of
understanding. It refers to the capability of providing a 360° view of the latest competitive internal and external information in a
clean, consistent and easy-to-use manner.
Too many distributors still think of their inventory as their primary competitive differentiator. In reality, your access to complete data
about your business, your customers, your suppliers, and your market is what can set you apart from others. Epicor has BI solutions
that provide distributors with snapshots of the health of their organization and critical business trends. Executive dashboards can
be accessed from mobile devices, such as a tablet, or anywhere you have an Internet connection. Contact your Customer Account
Manager for more information.
“We firmly believe that if we don’t test our employees, our customers will. So we use the LMS to
get ahead of the curve by creating a short test for each job function in our business. Sometimes
they are procedure questions that relate to new processes or best practices. Other times they
are questions geared towards measuring our staff’s knowledge of our product lines. When the
results come in, we target training in the areas with the highest percent of incorrect answers.
Although we’re still early in our implementation of LMS, we expect drastic improvement in our
service levels over time.”
—Deborah Kloman-Lichter
VP, Operations & Business Development | Brenner Fiedler & Associates, Inc.
We’re Live! Now What? | A practical guide to getting the most out of your investment in Epicor Prophet 21
Checkpoint: Nine Months Following Graduation
1. Process Review: Prevent the Bad Habits
When employees “train” themselves into processes that are not
optimal, it tends to result in errors, inefficiency, and lost revenue
potential. It’s advised that you re-engage with an application
consultant and conduct a formal review of your accounting,
inventory, purchasing, and sales processes.
 AR – Don’t let profits slip away due to loose collection
practices. Review processes to shorten ARO days, control
customer credit, and maximize your profitability.
 AP – Just as you are often willing to make a deal with your
customers, your vendors may be willing to do the same. Don’t
let these opportunities go to waste. Learn ways to analyze
vendor information in Prophet 21 to minimize your payables
through negotiated pricing, terms, and incentives with vendors.
 Purchasing – Is your purchasing team aware of specific reports
and information in Prophet 21 that can help them strategically
negotiate with your suppliers, or ensure you’re capturing
correct costs associated with purchases? Are your supplier
control/target values set up properly to take advantage of free
freight and minimums?
 Sales – Are you servicing and pricing your customers
appropriately? Learn how to best analyze and rank your
customers by sales, profit, and payment history in order
to maximize profitability. Also review commission options
that can better incentivize your sales reps to higher levels of
performance.
 Inventory – Inventory can be classified as fast, slow, erratic,
new, or dead. Learn to properly classify, monitor, and trend
your inventory while introducing new levels of automation
for your business, and understand how advanced forecasting
principles can help you better anticipate replenishment needs.
2. Remove Time, Money,
and Errors from the Order Process
Epicor AutoOrder™ allows your company to receive incoming
customer orders electronically, directly from their business system…
with 100 percent accuracy and without the need for Electronic
Data Interchange (EDI)! According to Dave Christoffel, an Epicor
customer who implemented this optional offering, “We have
generally seen a 75-85 percent time savings with Epicor AutoOrder.
On complex accounts with larger orders, we are actually saving
even more time—90-95 percent.” Contact your Customer Account
Manager for more information.
Did You Know?
It’s critical that you continually look
for ways to improve your processes
with the aid of new features
and technology. Don’t simply do
things because “that’s the way it’s
always been done.” According to a
study performed by Cisco Systems,
“Companies that changed their
business processes at the same time
they implemented new technology
saw a 25-30 percent increase in
productivity. Without changing their
business processes to fit the new
technology, businesses actually lost
productivity at a rate of 6-9 percent.”
10
Notes:
3. Review New Feature Training Courses
The typical Prophet 21 development cycle is approximately four months per
release. At the nine-month checkpoint, managers should review the latest New
Features Release Overview course (available for free on the LMS or as an à la
carte purchase) to learn about the most recent enhancements to Prophet 21
that may impact each of their departments. When you upgrade to the latest
version of the software, install the release on your play database first, and
then assign the New Features Release Overview course to your end users with
instructions for those features you have determined are most critical to your
operational success.
“Don’t fall too far behind Prophet 21 version
upgrades. It’s easy to get comfortable with
the version you’re running, but each release
has features that can improve specific business
processes. Stay current with recent versions
by downloading or requesting them from the
Customer Web site. There is also a ‘Changes
Between Software Versions’ page on the site
that you can use to see what has changed
between the version you were on and the
version you’re upgrading to, so you’ll know
how to prepare your staff for the upgrade.”
—Joe Murphy
Director of Information Technology | Interstate Connecting Components
We’re Live! Now What? | A practical guide to getting the most out of your investment in Epicor Prophet 21
Checkpoint: One Year Following Graduation
1. Implement a Disciplined Pricing Strategy
2. Take Advanced Training Courses
There is no greater lever your company can pull to
immediately increase its profitability than a disciplined pricing
strategy. Unfortunately, research conducted by Strategic
Pricing Associates, Inc. (SPA) has shown that most distributors
either charge customers too little or too much for the
products they buy. Both have pitfalls: charge customers too
much, and they are less likely to do more business with you;
charge them too little, and you’re leaving money on the table.
Epicor’s optional Strategic Pricing module helps you get all
your transactions to that optimal price—not too high, not too
low, but just right.
One year after graduation, some additional educational
courses can take your staff beyond their intermediatelevel knowledge of Prophet 21. The following courses,
available for free to LMS subscribers, cover a range of
functional roles within your business:
If you haven’t done so already, now’s the time to give serious
thought to your pricing strategy and discount practices.
Often, distributors will pass on undeserved discounts to
customers without any actionable data that considers true
cost to serve. Implementing Strategic Pricing can result in
true pricing discipline and improve your margins anywhere
from 2-4 points in the first year alone on affected items.
Distributors have even commented that an investment in
Strategic Pricing returned enough in the first year to cover the
cost of the entire Prophet 21 system! Contact your Customer
Account Manager for more information.
 Creating Financial Statements (accounting)
 Managing Lost Sales (order processing)
 Using Sales History as an Order Entry Tool (order
processing)
 Perfecting Your Month and Year End Closing
Routines (accounting)
 Utilizing Vendor Rebates (accounting)
 Effective Cycle Counting (inventory & purchasing)
 Wireless Warehouse Management Solutions with
Lots and Bins (inventory & purchasing)
 Scheduled Orders: Typical Scenarios (all end users)
 Pricing Customer Orders with Margin of Last Sale
(pricing)
 Using SQL SELECT Statements (system
administration)
Did You Know?
You can let Prophet 21 automatically recommend go-together items based on your sales history.
You simply set the parameters as to what items to combine within the solution (based on items sold
together more than a certain percentage of the time) and Prophet 21 links those items automatically,
saving your sales team from having to set this up manually. You can do this on your own or have an
application consultant assist with this process over the Web.
12
3. Build Accessory (Go-Together) Items
Prophet 21 includes an accessory items feature to offer you
additional cross-sell opportunities during the order process. This
will increase your sales revenue by enabling your salespeople
to suggest possible items their customers may need, based on
products that are often sold together. For example, if you sell a
power drill, your salesperson should ask the customer if he needs
drill bits. When the master item is entered during the order or
quote process, an accessory items window prompts you to ask the
customer if they would like to purchase the accessory item, and in
what quantity.
4. Benchmark Your Company’s Key Performance
Indicators (KPIs)
One year into your new Prophet 21 system, you are likely showing
year-over-year improvement in many areas of your business. But
how do you stack up against “best-in-class” distributors? As
the saying goes, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.
Defining your KPIs, measuring your results, analyzing areas for
improvement, and controlling new processes are all necessary for
continuous business improvement.
Using a Business Productivity Scorecard developed by Epicor, our
Business Consulting team can benchmark your true KPIs across
many facets of your business, and reveal how you compare to
other distributors in your market, based on current industry data.
They’ll uncover areas where you lag behind the pack, help you set
“SMART” (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely)
goals against your KPIs, and deliver an action plan.
“Consider joining the
Prophet 21 Worldwide
Users Group, which operates
independent of Epicor.
Membership in the group
provides unlimited access
to an archive of more than
100 recorded webinars. In
addition, online member
forums average more than
1,000 posts per month,
discussing all aspects of
Prophet 21 and third-party
companion products from the
end user perspective.”
—Don
D P
Preston
t
IT Director | Contractors Pipe & Supply
We’re Live! Now What? | A practical guide to getting the most out of your investment in Epicor Prophet 21
Checkpoint: 18 Months Following Graduation
1. Identify the Optimal Storage Location for Each
Item in Your Warehouse
Warehouse slotting (or “profiling”) is the process of identifying the
most efficient placement for each item in your warehouse. Since
every warehouse is different, proper slotting depends on your
unique product, movement, and storage characteristics. The goal
is to pick items more quickly and accurately, with less risk of injury
to your workers. There are some common slotting guidelines all
distributors should follow:
 Store items by amount of product usage (fast-moving items
should be located by aisles, conveyors or the packing station)
 Move similar products together
 Have a separate location for each item number
 Store product vertically when possible
 Store product within easy reach of workers (frequently picked
items should be stored on the “waist to shoulder” shelves)
 Store heavy product low
Your Prophet 21 system can provide the data you need to
make proper slotting decisions. If your company resources are
stretched thin, Epicor has warehouse consulting experts who
can help your business achieve better efficiencies through proper
slotting technique.
“Contribute your ideas for
enhancing the Prophet 21
application using the Ideas
Network. The Ideas Network
can be accessed via the Epicor
Customer Web Site, and allows
you to submit new ideas for
feature enhancements, or
rank and discuss existing ideas
submitted by other users. It’s
a great way to communicate
feedback to Epicor’s product
management team and
influence the future direction
of Epicor products.”
—Chad Olson
IT Leader | Field Fastener Supply
14
2. Embark on Advanced Demand Forecasting
By this time, you’ve built up enough sales history in your Prophet 21 system to start employing Advanced Demand Forecasting
(ADF) methodology. Using an intuitive system of industry-proven weighted averages, standard reports, graphical views, and flexible,
user-defined formulas, ADF increases the accuracy of your forecasts, eliminates manual demand calculations, and improves your
understanding of the relationship between forecast and usage patterns.
ADF functionality applies a series of statistical formulas to each item within the demand calculation to give you a more accurate
performance forecast than that of a simple average. To forecast the performance of trending items, ADF applies a weighted trend factor
to the forecasted usage that provides you with an accurate understanding of the movement of an item.
While courses available on the LMS provide a basic understanding of ADF, Epicor recommends you speak with a seasoned Prophet 21
consultant who can show your inventory managers and purchasing agents how to customize the weighted formulas and trend factors to
best fit your company’s inventory needs.
3. Create Training Agendas for New Employees
As your business grows, you should prepare to on-board new employees as efficiently as possible. The LMS can help ensure new hires
are properly and consistently trained on the Prophet 21 system, as well as your company processes, product lines, customer service skills,
and so on.
Whatever your on-boarding process is, you can use the LMS training agenda feature to develop a reusable template for getting new hires
up to speed fast. Your new hire training agenda should be followed up with a job-specific training agenda to ensure rapid adoption of
the system and company processes. And don’t forget to monitor progress using the LMS training agenda reporting tools.
4. Understand Your True Customer Profitability
Not all customers are the same. Sometimes, you need to confidently, selectively, and smartly say “no” to customer requests.
Understanding a customer’s true “cost to serve” will help you make better decisions about discounts and services you offer to each
customer. The goal: protect your most profitable customers, and work with the others so they don’t continue to erode your margins. You
can start by tying your costs to customer activity, such as delivery costs, average order lines, average order value, average days to pay, net
profit, and percent of cancelled orders. Be sure to involve your front-line employees in the discovery.
Epicor has an optional solution that makes this process simple: Epicor Customer Profit Analyzer ranks your most and least profitable
customers, based on criteria and weighted rankings that you determine. Now you can know for sure which customers you should
protect at all costs and which ones require a change in strategy to make them more profitable for your business. Contact your Customer
Account Manager for more information.
We’re Live! Now What? | A practical guide to getting the most out of your investment in Epicor Prophet 21
Checkpoint: Two Years Following Graduation
1. Become Lean
Describing “lean” is difficult because it is not just a tool, but instead,
a culture, philosophy, process and methodology. Lean in its simplest
form is turning waste into value. More importantly, it involves getting
employees thinking and motivated to make processes better. Lean
analyzes end-to-end processes and determines how to deliver more to
the customer with much less. Lean means being more organized than
ever before, to free up capacity that can improve customer value. Most
importantly, it is striving for perfection in every process, customer order,
and dollar invested in the business.
Epicor’s Business Consultants are experts in lean business practices
and can work with your company to drive immediate results. These
engagements, on average, result in more than 50 percent improved
productivity per consulting activity, and free up more than five full-time
employees that can be reassigned to drive additional value in other
parts of the business.
Epicor can provide you with more information, including a free white
paper, An Operational Guide to Implementing Lean in Distribution.
The principles and tools discussed in the white paper can be applied
immediately and will result in significant improvement to your
operations.
Notes:
Epicor recommends you embark on the lean journey with a small scope
project, like organizing your warehouse floor, or performing a “Value
Stream Map” on three customer-facing processes to identify and
eliminate wasted time, effort, and non-value-add activities.
2. Develop Tests on
Company Policies and Procedures
In addition to delivering educational content and
testing employees on their knowledge of the
Prophet 21 system, the LMS allows you to develop
your own test questions on the topics most
important to your business. Perhaps you would
like to gauge your employees’ knowledge of your
product lines or company procedures, or their
customer service skills. Try developing a couple of
tests on critical processes that employees need to
know in order to properly serve your customers.
Track the scores and work on addressing the needs
of those who struggle the most with grasping the
procedures. Some distributors have gone so far as
to develop an entire certification program that
allows their employees to continually progress in
their job function.
16
3. Perform a System Settings Review
We designed Epicor Prophet 21 to help you manage day-to-day
business automatically with a wide variety of alerts and automated
functions. In fact, there are more than 1,000 system settings (and
more are added with every release) that can help automate your
business processes and lead to profitable, efficient operations.
If you have not had a recent evaluation of your settings, chances
are, you could benefit from new or existing automated settings to
help your business run more efficiently, and with better customer
service. For example:
 Did you know you can automatically place customers
on credit hold if their invoices are more than a specified
number of days past due? Not having to manually monitor
and adjust this status saves your AR person’s time, helps
reduce collection days, and improves cash flow.
 Did you know you can force an order entry pop-up
window when a requested item already exists on an
open customer quote? This prevents location-shopping
and scenarios where a customer gets upset because they are
quoted or charged different prices.
Epicor recommends you review your system settings at least
every other year. While you can attempt this on your own, a
single four-hour Web-based consulting engagement with an
Epicor consultant is your best bet to target the Prophet 21 system
settings that will save you money and make your employees’ jobs
easier. If your system settings are not properly configured, you may
be performing more manual steps than necessary. (We’ve seen
some distributors spend 15 minutes executing tasks that can be
done in seconds.)
“Don’t ignore ongoing
employee training as
a critical factor in your
company’s profitability.
The investment we put into
educating our staff each year
on better business processes
and new and advanced
features of Prophet 21 pays
off many times over, in the
form of higher customer
satisfaction and greater
revenue per employee.
You’re shooting yourself in
the foot if you cut ongoing
training and improvement
from your budget.”
—Renee Lytle
CFO | E.B. Horsman & Son
We’re Live! Now What? | A practical guide to getting the most out of your investment in Epicor Prophet 21
Beyond the Two-Year Roadmap
If you’ve made the effort to proceed with at least half of the
recommendations in this brochure, you are certainly well on your way
to becoming a more profitable business, and you can move forward
in developing a culture of continuous improvement. In many cases,
Epicor can assist with our products and services. The following action
items should all be considered as you continue your journey:
 Continue to measure and target improvement on your Key
Performance Indicators (KPIs) and work towards “best in class”
performance as it relates to your industry
 Attend Insights (Epicor’s users conference) every year, and
persuade your colleagues to come, so they can learn how
to be more efficient in their jobs and network with other
distributors
 Stay on top of new technologies that bring bottom-line value
and differentiate your business from the competition
 Let Epicor feature your business in a customer success story,
and you’ll have a piece you can show to prospects to prove
that you are a leading distributor in your market!
At Epicor, we believe in a long-term partnership between our two
organizations. We want you to be a customer for life. Please let us
know how we’re doing at supporting your business in its growth and
profitability, and how we can continue to improve ourselves. You
may occasionally receive a request to complete a survey; please tell us
what we’re doing well, and where we need to step up our efforts.
We realize that our success is predicated entirely upon
your profitability as a business. Let’s work together to
achieve great things.
“You can actually earn money
by referring Epicor to other
distributors! If you know of
a distributor who would
benefit from Prophet 21 or
any other Epicor solution (and
Epicor is not already engaged
with them), let your Customer
Account Manager know. If
that distributor invests in
Prophet 21, you can get a
check from Epicor, simply for
referring the business! It’s a
nice way to make extra money
on the side.”
—David Shaw
Director of Information | Selecta Products Inc.
18
Action Item Checklist
The checklist below is a consolidated view of the information contained in this brochure. Use this page to note which projects you intend
to pursue and the proposed start and end dates for each. This way, you will have a roadmap to which your leadership team can commit.
Your Implementation Graduation
Date:_________________________
Immediate Action Items
Objective
Gather Feedback from Your Management Team
Determine Priorities for the Next Year
Develop a Business Continuity Plan
Review the LMS for Employees with Incomplete Courses
3 Months Following Graduation
Review Business Alerts
Assign LMS Courses That Were Not a Priority During Implementation
Take Advantage of DynaChange
Opt-In for E-mail Alerts from the Epicor Customer Web Site
6 Months Following Graduation
Develop a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Strategy
Assign Shortcut and Efficiency Training Courses to All End Users
Create a Business Intelligence Framework for Your Organization
9 Months Following Graduation
Process Review: Prevent the Bad Habits
Remove Time, Money, and Errors from the Order Process
Review New Feature Training Courses
1 Year Following Graduation
Implement a Disciplined Pricing Strategy
Take Advanced Training Courses
Build Accessory (Go-Together) Items
Benchmark Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
18 Months Following Graduation
Identify the Optimal Storage Location for Each Item in Your Warehouse
Embark on Advanced Demand Forecasting
Create Training Agendas for New Employees
Understand Your True Customer Profitability
2 Years Following Graduation
Become Lean
Develop Tests on Company Policies and Procedures
Perform a System Settings Review
Target
Project
(Y/N)
Project
Start
Date
Project
End Date
About Epicor
Epicor Software Corporation is a global leader delivering business software solutions to the manufacturing, distribution, retail, and services industries.
With nearly 40 years of experience, Epicor has more than 20,000 customers in over 150 countries. Epicor solutions enable companies to drive increased
efficiency and improve profitability. With a history of innovation, industry expertise, and passion for excellence, Epicor inspires customers to build lasting
competitive advantage. Epicor provides the single point of accountability that local, regional, and global businesses demand. For more information, visit
www.epicor.com.
Worldwide Headquarters
San Francisco Bay Area
4120 Dublin Boulevard, Suite 300
Dublin, CA 94568 USA
Toll Free:
+1.888.448.2636
Direct:
+1.925.361.9900
Fax:
+1.925.361.9999
Latin America and Caribbean
Blvd. Antonio L. Rodriguez #1882 Int.104
Plaza Central, Col. Santa Maria,
Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, CP 64650
Mexico
Phone:
+52.81.1551.7100
Fax:
+52.81.1551.7117
Europe, Middle East and Africa
No. 1 The Arena
Downshire Way
Bracknell, Berkshire RG12 1PU
United Kingdom
Phone: +44.1344.468.468
Fax:
+44.1344.468.010
Asia
238A Thomson Road #23-06
Novena Square Tower A
Singapore 307684
Singapore
Phone: +65.6333.8121
Fax:
+65.6333.8131
Australia and New Zealand
Level 34
101 Miller Street
North Sydney NSW 2060
Australia
Phone: +61.2.9927.6200
Fax:
+61.2.9927.6298
The contents of this document are for informational purposes only and are subject to change without notice. Epicor Software Corporation makes no guarantee, representations or warranties with regard to the enclosed information and specifically disclaims, to the full extent of the law, any applicable implied warranties, such as fitness
for a particular purpose, merchantability, satisfactory quality or reasonable skill and care. This document and its contents, including the viewpoints, dates and functional content expressed herein are believed to be accurate as of its date of publication, April, 2012. The usage of any Epicor software shall be pursuant to the applicable end
user license agreement and the performance of any consulting services by Epicor personnel shall be pursuant to applicable standard services terms and conditions. Usage of the solution(s) described in this document with other Epicor software or third party products may require the purchase of licenses for such other products. Epicor
and Prophet 21 are registered trademarks of Epicor Software Corporation in the United States, certain other countries and/or the EU. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Copyright © 2012 Epicor Software Corporation. All rights reserved. Job #1,324.