[September 09, 2006]

Epicor Announces CRM For Automotive Product

By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

Two weeks after announcing extended service-specific customer relationship management (CRM) functionality to its Enterprise Service Automation product, Epicor for Service Enterprises, Epicor Software (News - Alert) Corporation has introduced new features and functionality "to address specific requirements for automotive manufacturers in the latest release of Epicor Vantage," its global manufacturing product, according to company officials.

The new offering, Epicor for Automotive, is a real-time product designed to support paperless manufacturing. The new functionality is aimed at Epicor's more than 240 automotive manufacturing customers, as well as future prospects.

Information technology spending in the automotive industry is on the rise; industry analyst firm Gartner Inc. estimates IT investments will total $1.6 billion this year alone.

Epicor for Automotive is for automotive manufacturers who operate in a complex engineering and make-to-order environment. The product has embedded Customer Relationship Management, Advanced Planning and Scheduling and Manufacturing Execution Systems functionality, along with out-of-the-box connectivity for supplier and customer collaboration.

Additionally, Epicor for Automotive offers real-time dashboards and over 250 analytics as standard.

Vantage puts BPM functionality in the hands of the business user, providing capabilities to modify business processes as needed. Using a wizard-driven interface, business users can assign business rules that define how the system handles transactions in response to various parameters and conditions.

Epicor has reported its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2006, with net income falling from $30 million in Q2 2005 to $7.1 million.

Total revenues for the second quarter grew 40.2% to a record $99.5 million, compared with $71.0 million in the prior year's quarter. Excluding stronger than expected total revenue contributions of $22.0 million from CRS Retail Systems Inc., which was acquired on December 6, 2005, total revenues increased 9.1% to $77.5 million.

Epicor had a rocky first quarter, reporting earnings for the quarter ended March 31 of $4.6 million, down 19% from the like period last year. Total revenues in the quarter reached $84.5 million, up 26.5% from the year-earlier period.

"Riding strong adoption of its ERP and CRM software from both new and existing customers," according to industry observer Alan Alper in April, "MBS license revenues jumped 28% jump in the period compared with the corresponding quarter last year, a company spokesperson said. Yet, the business unit lost $13 million in the quarter, which nonetheless represented a 66% improvement from the like period last year."

In March Epicor, listed on Nasdaq, announced it would be added to the Standard & Poor’s SmallCap 600 Index.

Epicor for Automotive offers new demand management functionality that enables manufacturers to plan and forecast demand and integrate the supply chain to satisfy this demand. This is for managing long-term Just-in-Time contracts, Epicor officials say.

Additionally Epicor for Automotive offers support of barcode labeling and handheld transactions. Upon the completion of a pre-determined list of transactions, the system will automatically print user definable barcode labels. This new functionality supports enterprises that re-label product upon return or need to address industry-specific or customer-specific labeling requirements. Support for handheld transactions enables manufacturers to leverage RFID devices to quickly and efficiently enter transactional data into the Epicor system by scanning barcodes on the shop floor.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]

Discussions: