New role at Epicor - Product Manager of Kinetic Adoption & Kinetic Base

Kinetic ERP
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Well… this is my 3rd similar announcement on this forum in the past 2.5 years.

Automation Studio launch was a great success… we outsold our original estimates, and it is well on the way to being one of the best new product launches that Epicor has done. I am not abandoning Automation Studio… I love Automation Studio, but we also realize that Kinetic is a very important product for Epicor and for you, our customers. Getting our browser based UI to be the BEST UI is imperative to a successful cloud first mentality.

This time, I am announcing that I am “moving back” home to Kinetic full time. Kinetic is where I have great experience, knowledge and appreciation for what you (the customer) do, and how you use our product. You may have noticed my increased forum activity recent months, as I have been transitioning to this new role since September.

My first assignment/Initiative (as you may have guessed) is to improve the adoption of the Browser based UI. But in addition to that, i am getting very heavily involved in reviewing all the Epicor Ideas and helping to reprioritize them (Please do not shoot the messenger here). As you have probably seen, I have already started reaching out to you to get feedback. Here are several of those posts:

I did get some initial criticism as I started asking questions… (Why are you asking about xyz… why not fix zyx?)… well, we are doing a wholistic review. we have some sweeping fixes going in for Grids, Landing pages, general UI fixes, etc… those types of changes don’t really need new opinions (we already have those). but as we proceed with the other items that need addressed, we want your opinions.

Part of our initiative is to review the “top 20 apps used by every customer, every day”. You can all probably guess what those apps are, because, they are what they are… Quote, Order, Job, Engineering Workbench, Part, Customer Supplier, PO, Ship, Receive, AP, AR, GL, Time Phase, etc, etc… we are looking at each screen and asking “is this the best it can be?”, “Is this easy to use for enter a (quote) (order) (job) (part)?” “Is this better/stronger/faster than the old Smart Client?”.

EXPECT even MORE of this type of activity in months/years to come. Fun times ahead!

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Congrats!

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Proud I Did It GIF by myHQ

Congrats!

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Spongebob Squarepants Good Luck GIF

Congrats Tim!

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Well for once I can say Epicor’s Talent Acquisition Seeker Team has actually hit the nail in the coffin. Usually they just wander LinkedIn aimlessly looking for talent but always finding someone on CraigsList.

Tim is Someone who is involved in the community and engages users at Insights. Someone who was in the field, wrote bpms, baqs, customized the ui, and knows Epicor well enough. Someone who loved and probably still loves the Smart Client and who can translate its strengths into Kinetic.

Exciting News!

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Sounds like good news. Whether we agree with you or not, at least we know you care!

:heart:

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Yes! Good luck.

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Let me know how I can help :slight_smile: Since we customers dont get source access to uxp we are slowly building our own Angular framework, just for 3rd party apps building… I can send you some of my css and styles, or even create a mockup of something that may help you get a visual on “what others think something oughta look like”.

billboxes
billboxes904×858 17.1 KB

app2
app21888×969 235 KB

app1
app11888×969 134 KB

Now the hard part is always making it all Enterprise friendly, without alienating the mid-sized business.

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Congratulations @timshuwy. You have excellent knowledge of the application, a great understanding of how users make use or should make use of the software, and continue to look for feedback from the users.
Sounds like another podcast is in your future!!:rofl:

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Thanks for the offer… and i will probably be reaching out to you shortly to show you some of the things that are already in place for 2023.2 and to get further ideas. We are already addressing things like grid density, overall screen density, elimination of scrolling, etc.

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Years ago where I work, a woman who was in the C-suite made changes to our vacation policy. The new policy was better, but if you don’t like math, it sounded like it was a bad deal.

So she came to our location and several others in the region to explain this in person and take any question that any low-wage (or high-wage) employee had. Just walked right into the firing line. The questions were obvious and redundant but she just answered them anyway.

I’ll never forget that; that was one of the most awesome displays of leadership I’ve ever seen.

Point is, this is what @timshuwy does almost every day on this forum. The man has guts… and thick skin.

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hahah… well… yes, I have thick skin, but that doesn’t that I don’t feel a gut punch sometimes. I have learned to take a breath, not reach back in anger, and answer the question with grace… Hopefully, most times, I do this with no anger or malice, but there have been times when i need to post something in humor to release stress… which is why you sometimes see posts such as:

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Best wishes there @timshuwy, let us know if there is anything you need help with, and I will input where I can.

Looking forward to even more improvements.

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Glad to hear. Very soon I hope to be able to post a few cool screenshots showing some sample changes coming this spring.

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Congratulations!

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Congratulations Tim. Looking forward to the improvements ahead.

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That is great to hear, Tim. Investing in higher adoption means further innovation for everybody! I haven’t seen the JE topic come up recently for Kinetic but it’s close to my heart. I am working on a smoother process for journal entry creation, review and export into Kinetic for accountants that use spreadsheets as the workpaper/source document. It will support 500+ accountants and go live in Q1. If this area ever makes the priority list, would love to contribute to the ideas.

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We have revised the way that JE Groups are created/entered in Kinetic. The data behind the scenes is still the same but the initial launch page is much better, and pasting into grids is cleaner.

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Thanks Tim. That is good to hear it has gotten attention. I think the pasting into grids approach still leaves opportunity on the table. Would love to discuss someday.

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@timshuwy - This is very good news as you have demonstrated to the group here that you care about how the software works for the user.

It’s important from both the user and consulting community that we get Kinetic working better than Classic. I have many that still are clinging to the Classic screen and the Smart client. A lot is because they don’t have the time to test out new approaches when the current one works. They trust me and others to do the vetting of the application.

Here’s hoping for 2023 will bring more improvements into Kinetic so I can help these customers into a platform that they can trust to run their business.

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