I’ve recently started a project with a client where I’m trying to get Epicor rolled out fully, after a long delayed implementation.
To make a long and boring story short. Epicor was purchased and rolled out with great fanfare before the original third party suppliers left, and there appears to have been little effort to learn and train people internally. In fairness, there was no internal project team, people were left to their own devices and there was no designated “superuser” driving change. Cut to three years later, and people are using their own modules with no thought to others and some relatively simple things still haven’t been resolved.
To that end I have been seeking out user guides and course documentation and technical reference guides. My client no longer has a support contract and I’m now chasing to see if they purchased the education module and I can access the information that way.
Ultimately my question is, does anyone know of an alternative way to access Epicor University courses or Tech ref guides that they can send me links to? Current priorities include “Parts Course” and “Manufacturing Foundations Course” so I can train myself up and then train everyone else.
One thing I can point out is, if you ever downloaded the Base Version or an upgrade it usually extracts the MfgHelp and MfgEdu zip files on the server, the least you could get from that is the .pdf’s if you simply unzip it.
Thank you all for your help. Based on the replies I will go back to my client and advise that a support contract should be instigated to prevent this from happening again
Client should go for Maintenance Contract if they indent to use the software. You should also look at latest version as it got lot more functionality compared to what was purchased and implemented 3 or 4 years before.
If they had purchased embedded education it would still be available but you would still have no access to EpicWeb and some of the documentation in the embedded are links to EpicWeb which will not longer work. The customer really should be on maintenance. I would also recommend they contact the Epicor CAM about doing a Value Exchange Workshop, this cost nothing and can provide a great oppurtunity to get back on maintnenace.
As others mentioned, I’d try to convince this site to get a support contract.
Sticker shock is pretty common, and there are plenty of good arguments against but… in general (I think) sites are still better off for being on maintenance with Epicor.
In the meantime, you can still find some good info in the embedded help.
Maybe start with the section “Epicor ERP User Guides”
Also the help includes links to several “Tech Ref Guides”… in PDF format.
Not as nice as some of the course guides but by themselves, those course guides aren’t a magic bullet either.
Not out of the ordinary at all (in my experience).
All ERP systems are beasts to begin with and they grow ever more complicated.
Employees (usually) have plenty to do without having to worry about taking ownership of software modules and processes. In my perfect world, I would ask a site to come up with a general, realistic long term plan and a list of bite sized tasks aimed at that goal.
i.e. some of my favorite cliches, “don’t try to boil the ocean” or “this is a marathon not a…”