Hello wonderful Epicor Users I would like some feedback from you guys on a CRM my questions are below. If you are using on of the following Epicor CRM, Salesforce, HubSpot. If you don’t have the one of the above can you add the one your using.
How are you using the CRM. What integrations going to Epicor from other CRM platforms if not Epicor.
How many users if you want to disclose
If using Epicor Would you like to demo how you are using it.
Epicor CRM is a hot mess. I would avoid it like the rona. We started with it and very quickly realized that it was a mess. We ended up switching to Salesforce. Epicor does ERP really well but they don’t do CRM, HCM, etc. very well. We have found it’s best to just use Epicor for ERP and let other companies who do CRM, HCM, document management, etc. do that.
Accurate. It’s very feature lacking and feels like it was just square peg, round holed into ERP.
Our biggest challenge was actually the features we didn’t need/want getting in our way. But once we figured out how to properly suppress things like Campaigns, Tasks, Territories, etc. it has been okay for us.
I agree with @chaddb, and a good way to find out whether a tool is any good is to ask employees of the company whether they use it for their own purposes. Neither Epicor sales nor Epicor Consulting use their own CRM tools; when I asked this question of an Epicor employee with my boss standing next to me, his jaw dropped. Shortly thereafter my company began planning to migrate away…
They don’t use Clientele anymore? They did years ago.
On this topic, we’re trying to integrate Salesforce and Epicor. Epicor has a solution of Salesforce Integration + Jitterbit Subscription. Has anyone signed up on that offer?
We started to explore the Jitterbit solution last year and then revisited it earlier this year and determined we needed to better understand our CRM strategy first. We’ve been using SF for our CRM for almost 5 years now without an integration so our duplications of efforts and data integrity is not so good at the moment.
Good Morning Tom,
Would you be willing to have a virtual show & tell meeting with us for 30-45 mins to demonstrate the CRM and talk through some of the challenges you have had, what works well, what you wish would work better? We would be looking at early December time frame for a demo. Please let me know. Thank you!
We are using Jitterbit to sync E10 with Salesforce. It’s a complicated setup but once you get it setup it works great.
I always say a business should ask your Sales Team what they want to use. Probably Salesforce. Even if Epicor CRM was PERFECT I would not impose it. Epicor is an ERP.
It’s like telling Engineers hey you need to use XYZCAD made by a company in Taiwan, with only 100 people using it around the world, and not AutoCAD or SolidWorks.
Or telling your Graphic Designers, you must design in Micrografx and not Photoshop.
Sales Team has to go out there and collect leads and use the system and if you ask them probably 80% of them will ask for the same tools (industry leaders).
Is anyone familiar with Codeless Platform - another third party endpoint that advertised you can drag and drop your workflows with zero codes?
Using Codeless Platforms to load our EDI Sales Orders into Epicor and also link to our POD software provider allowing us to load our delivery runs and then receive updates when the product is delivered to the customer and record this in Epicor. You can drag and drop workflows with zero code (you can add in some VBScript if you need to code) and then link to Epicor using REST it works very well and not a massive learning curve.
On the CRM question we use Epicor CRM and the mobile CRM app, with the addition of a few custom fields it meets our needs and we have the added advantage that the Sales Team are used to using Epicor which made the implementation of Quotes easier.
There are some valid points in all the comments, and in the most part I agree, but I also disagree. Epicor ERP does try to be all things in one system, and in some areas, functionality is it better than other parts. Like a lot of aspects with Epicor ERP, just like other complicated software, is that the configuration and understanding how it works is critical. CRM is no exception.
In a past life, the company I was at we implemented Epicor 9 with CRM and used it for not only Sales, but for helpdesk for customer support and also for escalation to our development team changing a Helpdesk Case into an ECO and assigning it to the appropriate workforce. At the time the local expertise with the CRM module was very very limited even to the point of having consultant flown in from Europe!
For the most part it worked, but getting the users (and myself) understand the configuration, and the process, addition of an additional dashboard to act as a queue monitor (although we could have used tasks) and the solution works and as far as I’m aware still working today. It was implemented in 2013! Not sure what that really says actually.
My point is, before discounting built in functionality, investigate thoroughly, as the hidden benefits with regards to the way cases link to other parts of the system may outweigh the benefits and ongoing costs of adding to the ever increasing library of software maintenance.
Epicor offer Saleforce integration, I have no experience of it, so it is hard to comment. As always, it’s all about what is the best fit, but remember asking the users what they want to use, they will always go with what they know and you are then left potentially having to build an interface for it.
Three options I guess:
@Mark_Wonsil
Epicor have ITSM which is an offshoot of eFrontOffice/Clientele for IT Service Management. It is a third partly product built by mProof in the Netherlands. When I last used it, it had all the functionality of Clientele, but with the added ITIL bent including things like remote access from a button, and AD integration, as well as a SharePoint Support Portal. The client app was lightening fast. An interesting fact SLS was originally developed as a module for eFrontOffice/Clientele.
Apologies for the longwinded post, I’ve written it over a period of time.
I agree with this. Epicor CRM is not Salesforce, but it doesn’t try to be. If a company does due diligence on what they want a CRM to do, rather than simply being advised that they need a CRM, it should become quite clear what’s going to do the job for them.
Epicor CRM can be great with some customisation, as long as the needs are straightforward. If they need a full-strength CRM solution then they should already know that and not be comparing things that are barely comparable.
@dhewi, that’s the clearest, most cogent, and most comprehensive explanation I’ve ever heard in this regard.
Pretty great discussion here. I like what @hkeric.wci said about asking the sales team what they would like to use.
We took a peek at salesforce and the sales team said it was overkill… to Haso’s point. So we are going to try and adapt Epicor CRM to meet our needs after looking at that too.
With that said, I have experienced what @TomAlexander mentioned… The CRM module intertwines with many facets of the ERP system and must be respected… There may be things your company does not wish to maintain, but is forced to do so because CRM requires it.
I also would like to ask, how many of you are using mobile CRM? What is the feedback on it?
When we were using Epicor CRM we used the Mobile CRM app. Feedback was really bad from our reps. The app is buggy and slow. When we left 4-5 months ago for Salesforce, Epicor still hadn’t fixed the security bugs. So reps could see everything in the app regardless what security was applied. In the E10 CRM modules it was fine. But the app wasn’t following that. Reps also couldn’t see a lot of information in the app. It was available in the full client but not that app. Example, order shipping information. Another big one that didn’t work was the map.
We tried mobile crm about 18 months ago and it was not really fit for purpose.
At best - it ‘kind of worked’, but it seemed unfinished with some very strange bugs (e.g. notifications in the Chinese alphabet).
The decision was made at the time not to roll it out.
Thanks @chaddb and @aclements. I am really hoping it has improved a little bit to at least use it for case entry. I noticed it was pretty slow, but in the end retrieved quotes, etc.