Has anyone here taken advantage of Epicor’s Value Exchange Workshop? We’re wondering if it’s worth two day’s of our managers time, and how in depth Epicor could go in 30 minutes per department…
We’ve been on E10 since 2015, and just upgraded to 10.2.500 last month…
Epicor-Value-Exchange-Workshop-FAQ-Flyer-ENS.pdf (152.6 KB)
Epicor-Value-Exchange-Workshop-Flyer-ENS.pdf (358.3 KB)
Thanks!
My 2 cents:
We felt like after running Live for about 2 years, we needed a professional checkup.
We did the talk through with each department hoping to get a better understand of the user’s use of the software. It generally turned into a segmented gripe session. No one on the Epicor panel really connected any dots on how or why various groups could fix their gripes, nor related group A to group B for a better understanding.
I think there were two or three useful, minor suggestions for AR.
Anything that seemed to be a major point to move forward on was returned with a consulting package with a fee. This seemed to be the thrust for me.
If you have the potential to spend more money to get someone from Epicor to dig in to a problem or a specific area, it can be a useful exercise. We don’t have extra Epicor budget. We didn’t accept the consultant proposals.
Our best take away is that, in general, we are using Epicor generally as we need and are not outright broken in our use. Hard to say if that was worth the two-day engagement.
So its essentially scouting mission for the sales people - so they can make a more educated guess when they try to sell you consulting services.
I think one of the consultants was one of the fellows who visited.
Perhaps getting a consultant on site to hear of issues directly, instead of filtered through managers and salespeople might be what some company needs. Again, if you want / can afford consulting services.
That didn’t pan out for us.
@estm8ben - Thanks for your input. We’re scheduled for April. We’ll provide them a list of questions before they come, so they can come with solutions rather than a sales pitch for consulting.
How did the value exchange workshop go for you @aksulte ?
@utaylor - We pushed it out to Q1 (our quiet season) due to COVID this spring and summer. We’re on 10.2.500 now, and by then, should be recently upgraded to 10.2.700 as well.
Thanks Andris!
From the perspective of someone who did quite a few of these when I was with Epicor, the main objective is NOT to sell products or services. I was the main PS resource on the team and my goal, and the goal of most of my peers, was to always try and give suggestions of what could be done without having to spend additional money. However, there were definitely times when it was clear the company didn’t have the right resourcing or knowledge to take on what was needed. There were also times when a new product or module would solve a specific issue. Most of the time the real win from the meeting was building a relationship with the customer base so we were better prepared to help when they needed it.
Was this application the same across the board from all of these meetings? I’m certain it wasn’t, but thinking and socializing that these might be something nefarious is very far from the truth. This was exactly what some companies needed to start pushing for better use of the system or a 3rd party to reinforce what some had been saying. For other companies, it really didn’t click for whatever reason and the only investment was people’s time.
Now being on the customer side, I could really see this being a great tool to leverage groups that never talk to each other into the same room to air their grievances and realize how everything is interconnected. Bottom line, I recommend this for any company looking for some reasons why some regular issues keep popping, needing some direction on where to improve, and want this at a strategic level for their company.
Thanks for the comment, great substance.
Ah, sorry if my comment came across as overly negative. I tend to have unreasonable expectations and a strong sense of sarcasm, which can get me in trouble sometimes. Glad to hear you feel like it wasn’t used to push sales, but rather use what they already had.
Since I mentioned these workshops in a different thread today, I’m going to ask the same question that Utah asked a year ago… How did the value exchange workshop go for you @askulte?
Let me say this (as a Former Epicor Consultant who did 40-50 “post go-live” Process Reviews… in each of these, we spent 2-3 days going over each department’s usage (or lack of usage). During the interviews, I would ask 100s of scripted questions, plus many others that dug deeper into answers.
After gathering the data, I would consolidate the answers into a report (the deliverable)… this report not only summarized the findings, but made recommendations for change. There were sometimes where the change included additional consulting, an upgrade, or even additional module… but MOST of the time, the report simply recommended change in procedures. Some of the things that I found:
One particularly successful event was a customer where I visited, did my standard writeup, and delivered the report… There was no followup consulting needed, nor did they need to purchase any modules… BUT I know that they used the report, because about once per month, I would get an email from the customer asking for a little clarification on my suggestions… I would clarify with the simple email… this went on for over a year, telling me that they were getting every last dollar out of the recommendations.
Another was a customer in China… I visited them for a week. They needed some extensive changes in their procedures. after 5 days onsite (including an adhock MRP Training class) I delivered an extensive recommendation on some significant changes that they needed to make in their procedures… Over 6 months later, after they had done MUCH testing… I received a thank you email from their lead project manager… he said “After lots of testing, we finally were able to implement your changes you recommended… it worked!”.
Is it worth it? Well, that depends on how much you put into the process, and how much you tack back out of the recommendations.
We had it scheduled, then COVID hit, then it was for this November, and now pushed back to Feb. Unfortunately (fortunately?!!) our mfg is so busy that getting folks to focus on this for several days right now would be impossible. I know we’d get a lot out of it, especially on the scheduling side (we’ve got some crazy scenarios like everyone else here). Looking forward to it when we do.
Moral of story:
Once you’ve implemented, the fun is over and the real work begins!
Or something like that.
Once Live that is just the Beginning! As your Business changes over the years there also needs to be a Review of your Business System that supports those changes. Not all Companies perform this parallel task and over a period of time the actual no longer match to the systemic.
Continuous Improvement!