Thanks Dale. You saved me a long email response as your experience mirrors mine (to a degree that I suspect we may be talking about the same software company in regard to users voting on enhancements).
Epicor is the only software provider in 25 yrs that routinely leaves me feeling angry (and like I've been mugged).
Rob
--- Original Message ---
From:"Walker, Dale" <dwalker@...>
Sent:Wed 9/29/10 9:49 am
To:"vantage@yahoogroups.com" <vantage@yahoogroups.com>
Subj:[Vantage] Re: Epicor 9.04.506c
No Thom; this isn't as good as it gets. There are a number of great posts made in this link and I don't want it to degrade into an all-out EPICOR bashing gig because that is not helpful. I do however; have a couple of decades of experience with other ERP solution providers that took a dramatically different posture towards how their existing customer base was supported. One ERP provider in particular provided stellar support and great value for our support dollars. Here are some stark differences...Customers had a direct channel to request enhancements, in fact most enhancements incorporated into the product came directly from the installed customer base, customers had a collective voice in voting for the enhancements most critical to their enterprise, any enhancement requests not acted upon were given full explanation why not, few bugs were found in production code, when bugs were reported by customers it was the vendor's responsibility to recreate the bug and to document the issue and own it until a fix was delivered, fixes normally took days to be delivered, fixes were provided at the software level where the bug was reported unless the customer was too far back (usually measured in years), releases provided more new features than bug fixes, very few (if any) bugs were found during new release testing, when calling support to report a problem we were never subjected to having to explain the situation multiple times because we were transferred to multiple support people, the first support person was the only point of contact and that individual owned the issue until the issue was resolved and then that person would reach out to the customer with the resolution. And lastly-----I was never told that it was "working as designed" in an attempt to end the conversation. If it was truly working as designed the support representative had an immediate conversation with us on how we felt that the current design could be improved, how it would specifically benefit our business, discussed some possible alternative steps, and what the ramifications would be to our business if they took no further action.
I NEVER took issue with the support fees that we paid to this vendor. I am more than willing to pay world class support fees if we receive world class support in return.
Dale.
[cid:073014913@29092010-0109]
Dale Walker
Director, Information Technology
Le Sueur Incorporated
1409 Vine Street
Le Sueur, MN 56058
ph.507.665.6204 x277
fx .507.665.8466
www.lesueurinc.com<http://www.lesueurinc.com/>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Epicor is the only software provider in 25 yrs that routinely leaves me feeling angry (and like I've been mugged).
Rob
--- Original Message ---
From:"Walker, Dale" <dwalker@...>
Sent:Wed 9/29/10 9:49 am
To:"vantage@yahoogroups.com" <vantage@yahoogroups.com>
Subj:[Vantage] Re: Epicor 9.04.506c
No Thom; this isn't as good as it gets. There are a number of great posts made in this link and I don't want it to degrade into an all-out EPICOR bashing gig because that is not helpful. I do however; have a couple of decades of experience with other ERP solution providers that took a dramatically different posture towards how their existing customer base was supported. One ERP provider in particular provided stellar support and great value for our support dollars. Here are some stark differences...Customers had a direct channel to request enhancements, in fact most enhancements incorporated into the product came directly from the installed customer base, customers had a collective voice in voting for the enhancements most critical to their enterprise, any enhancement requests not acted upon were given full explanation why not, few bugs were found in production code, when bugs were reported by customers it was the vendor's responsibility to recreate the bug and to document the issue and own it until a fix was delivered, fixes normally took days to be delivered, fixes were provided at the software level where the bug was reported unless the customer was too far back (usually measured in years), releases provided more new features than bug fixes, very few (if any) bugs were found during new release testing, when calling support to report a problem we were never subjected to having to explain the situation multiple times because we were transferred to multiple support people, the first support person was the only point of contact and that individual owned the issue until the issue was resolved and then that person would reach out to the customer with the resolution. And lastly-----I was never told that it was "working as designed" in an attempt to end the conversation. If it was truly working as designed the support representative had an immediate conversation with us on how we felt that the current design could be improved, how it would specifically benefit our business, discussed some possible alternative steps, and what the ramifications would be to our business if they took no further action.
I NEVER took issue with the support fees that we paid to this vendor. I am more than willing to pay world class support fees if we receive world class support in return.
Dale.
[cid:073014913@29092010-0109]
Dale Walker
Director, Information Technology
Le Sueur Incorporated
1409 Vine Street
Le Sueur, MN 56058
ph.507.665.6204 x277
fx .507.665.8466
www.lesueurinc.com<http://www.lesueurinc.com/>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]