May 15, 2025 • 26 mins
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Meet the team behind Epicor, the business software company on a mission to empower the world's hardest working businesses. For over 50 years, they've been serving manufacturers, distributors, building supply retailers, and the automotive aftermarket with specialized solutions that go beyond standard ERP offerings.
Fresh from their annual Insights conference in Las Vegas, which attracted over 4,000 attendees, Epicor has unveiled groundbreaking AI innovations designed specifically for supply chain management and business operations. Their flagship offering, Prism, represents a new approach to agentic AI with a patent-pending LLM inference pipeline that remains model-agnostic – allowing it to adapt to the rapidly evolving AI landscape and call upon the most effective models for each specific workflow.
What truly sets Epicor apart is their commitment to human-centered technology. While many competitors are racing toward fully autonomous ERP systems, Epicor deliberately chose a semi-autonomous approach that keeps workers in control. Their philosophy maintains that AI should empower employees rather than replace them, providing rapid information retrieval and analysis while ensuring humans make the final decisions. This approach has already shown remarkable results, with one manufacturing customer cutting delivery time in half and achieving 20% revenue growth by implementing AI for automating RFQ processes.
Equally impressive is their patent-pending carbon cost roll-up solution, which treats carbon as currency and leverages manufacturing ERP engines to report the carbon impact of specific processes down to individual jobs on the shop floor – bringing unprecedented accuracy to sustainability efforts.
Looking ahead, Epicor envisions an ecosystem where intelligent agents can communicate securely across business functions and between organizations, supported by their Grow Data platform that consolidates information from various business systems into a unified data lake ready for AI applications. Whether through their knowledge agent that saved one customer 55 minutes per support question or their recent acquisition of connected worker platform Acadia, Epicor continues to demonstrate how thoughtfully applied technology can transform industries that form the backbone of our economy.
Want to see how Epicor can help your business run smarter and grow faster? Visit Epicor.com to discover their full range of industry-specific solutions and learn why their deep expertise makes them the partner of choice for hard-working businesses worldwide.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everybody, Fascinating chat today with
Epicor, who are helpingbusinesses run smarter and grow
faster.
Carrie, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hi, evan, I'm doing well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Well, thanks for being here.
You have a lot going on.
You just had a huge eventcustomer event.
Before that, maybe introduceyourself and your mission at
Epicor.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
You bet, so I'm so glad to be here.
Thank you so much.
So I lead our product teams atEpicor, and Epicor is on a
mission to empower the world'shardest working businesses, and
so what that means is we are abusiness software company for
both ARP and AI solutions and, Ishould say, a variety of others
(00:46):
as well and we're reallyhyper-focused on our core
industries.
It's really important to who weare and who we serve, and those
are manufacturers, distributors, building supply, retail and
the automotive aftermarket, andwe go very deep to ensure their
success.
We're over a billion dollars,we're based in Austin, texas,
and we're working withorganizations around the world.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
And you have so much news released recently,
particular at your customerevent Epicor Insights.
Can you give us a snapshot ofthe event?
How was it and what were someof the headlines from the week
that's?
Speaker 2 (01:20):
right?
Yeah, thank you for asking.
So.
Insights is our annual customerconference.
This one is our flagship eventin the US.
We have a few others afterwardsthat will be in Europe and in
Australia, and so this is themain event, and we had over
(01:41):
4,000 attendees.
It's in Las Vegas and it's agreat opportunity for folks to
come together to learn aboutEpicor solutions, to network
with one another, and we had alot of big news, as you
mentioned.
So we have released expandedofferings for AI across our
portfolio, and the focus is onagentic AI as well as on
(02:07):
predictive AI, and we'rebringing both of these types of
AI solutions into the supplychain and across the business to
really help our customers makefaster decisions, quickly
interpret information andautomate action across the
business.
We're also working withpredictive modeling so they can
ask what-if questions.
(02:28):
So it's not only aboutunderstanding what's happening
and acting fast.
It's about understanding whatmight happen and prepare for
those scenarios.
So we had those two bigannouncements, and our other big
announcement was around ourcarbon cost roll-up solution.
It's a patent-pendingsustainability solution.
That the special way is we'retreating carbon as currency and
(02:52):
leveraging the engine within ourmanufacturing ERP solutions to
report out on a carbon impact ofany specific process job within
the manufacturing shop floor.
Because to date, you know, theability to really predict and
measure carbon, you know, hasn'tbeen as specific down to the,
(03:16):
to the material, to the job, youknow.
And so now we're enabling awhole new level of accuracy
within carbon reporting.
So we're calling that ourcarbon costs roll-up solution,
patent pending.
We're really excited toannounce that.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Oh, that's phenomenal .
Congratulations.
And on the topic of agentic.
You know very hot topic.
Is that something you developedinternally?
What was the process like andhow do you collaborate with your
customers in the productdevelopment process?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yes, yes, working closely with our customers is
always really critical.
This is something that wedeveloped.
We have partnerships withOpenAI and others, but I should
say this solution is calledPrism.
It's our agentic AI solutionembedded within Epicore
solutions.
It's our agentic AI solutionembedded within Epicor solutions
, and we actually have a patentpending on our LLM inference
(04:08):
pipeline.
So what that means is we'reactually model agnostic, so our
agentic AI can call on thespecific models that are going
to best serve the answer andaddress that workflow that the
user is asking for.
And that's because AI ischanging so fast.
(04:30):
There are new models, there arenew use cases all the time, and
what this allows for ourcustomers to do is to plug into
whatever is going to best servethem and their business and help
to get the best answer.
So we've developed this in closepartnership with our customers.
We actually have early adopterprograms, controlled release
(04:51):
programs and co-innovationpartners, because it was really
important to us to focus in onwhat are those tough problems
that need to get solved, becausewe haven't yet had the
technology to do so, and when wehave AI, that opens up a whole
new level of how we can solvehard problems, the kinds of
(05:13):
problems that are going to takeus to the next level, that are
going to take these hardworkingindustries to the next level to
work faster, smarter, moreefficiently and create more
business results.
And so it was really importantto us.
It's core to our innovationprinciples is to work really
closely with customers.
We actually deploy engineers onsite to sit with our customers,
(05:36):
to stand by them on the shopfloor and really observe what
are the challenges that they'refacing, and then maybe we use AI
to solve it, maybe we usesomething else, but it's not
about AI for the sake of AI.
It's about solving problems.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
I love that, and so I'd love some color commentary
on how these agents are helpingsupply chain customers.
Given all the uncertainty andchange in the market, how do you
navigate that with agents?
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Yeah, you know, I think the most critical thing is
being able to respond quickly,and here's why it's because we
can't ever predict exactlywhat's going to happen.
We can't ever predict exactlywhat's going to happen, but we
(06:30):
can certainly gather a lot ofdata to help us predict what
might happen in a variety ofdifferent scenarios.
And that's about not only thedata that you have within your
business, but the data that youcollect even from outside your
business Maybe that's furtherupstream and maybe that's
further downstream, it could befrom your suppliers, it could be
potentially even your customers, even a part of industry
(06:53):
associations and gathering thatkind of information and then
using that to predict what mighthappen.
And in those scenarios, howwould you respond?
And so this is incorporatingdata from a variety of different
sources and then applying AI,and we call this cognitive ERP.
This is how we are reallyinfusing AI and taking ERP to
(07:17):
the next level, because webelieve in, especially in
working with our customers byjust, you know, tacking on an
outside, you know, third-partytype of AI.
It's not as directly embeddedand closely tied to your data.
Therefore, you know, there arepossibilities for hallucination,
for inaccurate results, and sothat's why we believe ERP is
(07:40):
truly the vehicle and we'recalling it cognitive ERP to help
organizations take it to thenext level.
So, when it comes toorchestrating workflows across
the business, leveraging agentsto do so, they are so deeply
embedded within the datastructure itself, and we have
been working with manufacturers,distributors, for over 50 years
(08:03):
.
We have this deep knowledge andexperience in working with them
and they've really helped usunderstand not only how the data
is structured, but where theconfigurations, what's special
about each one of thosebusinesses, so that when we do
have Prism and agents so closelytied within the data, they know
(08:27):
where the configurations are tothat specific company and can
return highly accurate results.
So it's a way to ensure you cantrust the AI.
That said, I think there are alot in the industry that are
moving towards autonomous ERP,and that is not what we are
pursuing.
We believe in transparency andsemi-autonomous.
(08:50):
So that means, regardless ofwhat use case you're choosing to
leverage AI for that, you areable to first review, evaluate,
check the work and then approve,because you want to be in the
driver's seat.
Our customers, they wantcontrol, they want to be the
(09:10):
ones making the decisions and wefully believe to empower them
to do so.
So that's kind of how we seeagents working alongside humans
to help pull information veryquickly and automate action
across the business.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Fantastic, and at Epicor Insights you had a lot of
customers sharing stories andanecdotes, probably too many to
share here, but any insight intohow customers are using it and
applying Agentic.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, yeah, sure, there were a couple of different
stories, so one of them isaround automating RFQs, so
requests for quotes.
So what we learned in workingwith some of our customers is
that there's oftentimes andmaybe those listening in now
have this structure.
(10:01):
You know that there's, there'sa dedicated team of people that
are reviewing incoming requestsfor quotes and then determining
whether or not it's somethingthat they could, the business
can fulfill, and responding tothese, these quotes, and that
that requires a lot of emailingback and forth.
This is a classic use case forgenerative AI, because you can
(10:24):
use it to review the incominginformation, evaluate whether or
not you have all the rightinformation that you need.
Oftentimes, you have to respondback and say you know, can you
please clarify some aspect ofthis?
The price, the schedule, thejob, materials, maybe there was
supposed to be attachments thatweren't included.
You know all of this stuff justtakes a long time.
(10:45):
All of us you know dealing withemails.
You get it so automating that,that RFQ process, that
communications, being able toreview the emails coming in, and
then you know being able tosend it back, and all of this
then tied to the ERP, becauseyou need to have that for
auditing purposes and trackingand then being able to quickly
(11:06):
then go schedule these jobs, soautomating the RFQ process.
And there was a particularcustomer, olympus Group.
Actually they're an Epicormanufacturing customer.
They were part of our earlyadopter program.
Actually, they're an Epicormanufacturing customer.
They were part of our earlyadopter program.
They were tracking this usecase and they said that it
helped them affect theirdelivery time, cutting delivery
time in half with over 20%revenue gain, so just by being
(11:31):
able to accelerate thesecommunications.
When it comes to quotingAnother one that I'll share,
another pretty classic use ofgenerative AI is we have enabled
an agent we call our knowledgeagent, a part of Prism, and what
this does is it actually tiesto the learning library and for
(11:54):
any company that's like, unsureabout starting, this is probably
a great way to get startedbecause it's actually attached
to the Epicor learning data andthis is a great use case for, of
course, many out there in theindustry who are hiring,
onboarding new employees.
There's been a lot of attritionand we've got to bring on new
(12:16):
folks.
Maybe you're opening a newlocation.
There's been a lot of attritionand we got to bring on new
folks.
Maybe you're opening a newlocation.
This is a great tool becauseyou can ask it how do you create
a part, how do you create asales order, and it very quickly
finds the information withinthe library and serves up that
information so you can veryquickly then get back to work,
and at the conference peoplewere saying, oh, this is really
going to help me onboard my newemployees.
(12:38):
But also I tried it out and Ilearned something that I didn't
know, and I've been using thesystem for 20 years, so it was
really great, you know, to beable to have those conversations
and one particular company,because we're also tracking
results and they had said thatthis helped their support
employees respond to employeequestions faster, in fact,
(13:01):
saving up to 55 minutes aquestion.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
I know it's very specific.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
We're working hard on making sure we're tracking all
this information.
So 55 minutes a question onaverage.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
That's phenomenal.
And all these products are nowgenerally available, including
Prism.
Congratulations on that.
It must be a little excitingfor the team.
What's been, you know, some ofthe customer response.
Generally, you have quite alarge customer base.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yeah, very positive, very positive, I think you know,
early on in the AI journey acouple of years ago, I'm saying
like generative AI.
We've had a lot of experience,of course, with more classical
uses of AI, such as like machinelearning, expert systems, but
there was a general sense ofEpicor we trust you as our
(13:54):
technology partner of the future, help AI become achievable for
us.
And this year we delivered andthis has been really rewarding
for me, leading our productteams, to see all of this hard
work that we have worked soclosely with our customers to be
(14:17):
able to build and get out infront of the market and to
really answer their question andtheir expectation of us as
their technology partner of thefuture.
We've had so many conversationsabout I don't know if my data
is ready, can you help me?
And we've delivered there aswell.
We also launched our Grow Dataplatform that enables the Grow
(14:42):
AI predictive learning that Ihad mentioned, so you can you
know model what if scenarios inyour business.
But that's a really big piecebecause the Grow Data platform
includes interactive datapipelines and a data lake so you
can consolidate information.
You can consolidate data fromyour current business systems as
well as maybe legacy, thirdparty or even systems outside of
(15:06):
Epicor.
You know, maybe that's your HCMsystem.
If you have a separate CRMsystem and you want to bring
this information together and,you know, make decisions based
on that together and you know,make decisions based on that.
Now we can help our customersreally ensure that their data is
cleansed, harmonized,normalized and ready for the
(15:27):
world of AI.
We'd also been investing andthis is a big topic of
conversation in PIM productinformation management systems.
Right, so you have like atrusted catalog of data.
This one includes over sixmillion SKUs from a variety of
well-known suppliers and you canconnect in and that will feed
(15:49):
trusted data automatically intoyour system.
So then you can blend it withwith yours and right and so just
getting a handle on the dataand really helping our customers
do so, that has been socompelling and exciting to now
be able to deliver on and helporganizations around the world
and these hardworking businessestake it to the next level, you
(16:11):
know, and to really be able totake advantage of the promise of
AI.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Brilliant.
You compete with some very bigplayers in the space.
You see their names onbillboards and TV adverts.
I won't name names here, butwhy, should you know, folks
choose Epicor over the big techalternatives?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Yeah, we definitely have had these conversations,
and so I would say so for thoseorganizations that we do compete
with.
None are as specific anddedicated to the industries that
we serve for 50 years, and wedeeply understand how
(16:59):
manufacturing, distribution,retail, you know, these types of
data is modeled in the systemand how it can be leveraged with
AI.
I think when you're working withan organization that has, you
know, multiple different typesof industries that they serve,
it can be difficult to go sodeep to ensure that accurate
(17:20):
result from AI, because ifyou're trying to build AI for a
distributor and somebody in theentertainment industry, these
are very different, and so, withour focus, we're able to really
understand and ensure that theAI is going to be trustworthy,
and not only, you know, for yourbusiness, but and this is, I
(17:44):
think, an interesting, you know,thought experiment when we look
out to the future of softwarethree to five, seven, eight
years out, I think a lot oforganizations you know might go
out of business if they don'ttake advantage of not only the
(18:06):
data that you help anorganization create but the
connections within the communitythat you have built over the
years, and so at the conference,we really explored what it
could mean to have a tighterconnection, to be able to
communicate and exchange data ina trusted, safeguarded way
(18:27):
between distributors andmanufacturers, and do so in a
way that protects their businessright.
So you get to protect yourmargin, your revenue growth, and
still learn from your suppliersthat you know perhaps there's a
disruption coming and now youcan very, very quickly swap to
another one and we're workingtogether to, you know, ensure
(18:51):
the collective success.
So it's that aspect of thecommunity that I think, as we
look to how agents and AI willconnect to one another, will
enable this exchange ofinformation and orchestrate
workflows.
We'll be talking in the nextfive years about connecting our
agents to your agents and whatthat can do when it's in a safe,
(19:15):
secure ecosystem, when it's ina safe, secure ecosystem.
So we explored a lot of thatand I think we're headed for
some pretty exciting times.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Indeed, speaking of exciting times, you and your
leadership team have talkedabout AI potentially being a
great force for good forconnected workers in the
different industries you serve,from manufacturing, distribution
, retail, given all the mediabuzz and hype and concern, and
beyond out there.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Explain what you mean there.
Yes, okay, so I think, whenthis goes back to the aspect of
semi-autonomous versusautonomous and I think it's
important too that we do kind ofdig a little bit deeper here,
because you know, and you alsoasked about competition we see a
lot of vendors moving to thisconcept of autonomous, where you
can set the agents up toorchestrate information or
(20:15):
orchestrate action across yoursystem without having to involve
humans, and then you know itgoes faster and whatever.
But yeah, that is not theapproach that Epicor is taking,
because we've learned in workingvery closely with our customers
that they do not want the AI tobe acting without their
(20:37):
knowledge.
They want to empower theirworkers, their team.
They trust their teams to bethe ones that are evaluating and
making the decision.
They're looking forsemi-autonomous to empower their
workers.
And when you empower yourworkers, you really unlock new
(20:58):
revenue opportunities.
You bring your teams closer,you retain talent and there are
a number of ways that you canempower and, by the way, it's
not just ai, of course.
It's also about ensuring thatyou have modern technology in
place to really help.
One of the recent acquisitionsthat epicore had made is um.
(21:18):
We acquired a company calledacadia and this is a connected
worker platform.
We'd actually, um, you know,had been making a couple
acquisitions in this space.
E-flex is a related one.
E-flex is virtualized workinstruction, so when you're on
the shop floor, you can veryquickly, you know, follow along,
you know and track how you needto install a specific part and,
(21:41):
you know, do so in high qualitymanner.
But Acadia takes it to the nextlevel, kind of expands on the
connected worker concept and itallows for the deployment and
tracking of skills management,training, as well as supplier
certification, so this is agreat tool for those
organizations that are goingthrough.
(22:03):
You know hiring new employeesand you want to ensure that your
output is of high quality, soAcadia is a great example, too,
of us.
You know investing andempowering workers and enabling
you know the leadership teams tohave visibility across their
skill set, to be able to trackthe upskill programs and then to
(22:26):
know OK, this is an area thatwe maybe need to go invest in
and to ensure that you have theright workforce to take your
organization to the next level.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Amazing, so well said .
So it's going to be tough totop Insights 2025, but if we
were to fast forward, maybe toInsights 2026,.
How do you anticipate themarket customers?
You know Epicor evolving.
What are your thoughts there,looking at the year ahead?
Speaker 2 (22:55):
One thing that we're really excited about is how we
can further connect these agents.
So one of the things that weshowed on the main stage is
leveraging Prism within the ERPitself, but not only within the
ERP to get your ERP data, butthere are a variety of business
(23:16):
applications that organizationshave invested in to bring the
data in the ERP to life and newways to address customer maybe
pain points or revenuegenerating opportunities.
So, for example, the one thatwe showed was our enterprise
content management agent andwhat this does is, while you're
(23:39):
in the ERP, if you have aquestion about maybe something
within your document repositorymaybe it's buried deep in
folders, subfolders andsubfolders right, and you need
to be able to find thatparticular line item you don't
have to jump out to anotherapplication.
You can do so within the erpand you don't even have to say
(24:03):
like that, it's in your documentrepository.
You just ask the question thatyou are looking to answer.
And then the Prism has theorchestrating layer to know to
reach out to the enterprisecontent management agent and to
pull that information from yourcontent repository.
(24:23):
And so that's just one of theinitial agents.
But as we build out AI acrossthe portfolio, it will become a
much more seamless experience,and all of those you know
ancillary solutions, maybedifferent business applications
that you've purchased and are apart of your landscape now just
(24:46):
becomes so much easier to accessinformation from, and we really
see time to value very quickly,accelerating you know, reducing
you know, close to zero,because now you can just so very
quickly get access to theinformation you're looking for.
So I think there's going to bea lot we'll be able to talk
about in 2026.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Well, it's exciting and congratulations on all the
success onwards and upwards.
Thanks for joining and sharingan update and all the insights.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Thank you so much, Evan.
This has been wonderful.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
I appreciate that.
Thanks everyone for listeningand watching and go to Epicorcom
Tons of great content and more.
Take care.
Hey everybody, Fascinating chat today with
Epicor, who are helpingbusinesses run smarter and grow
faster.
Carrie, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hi, evan, I'm doing well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Well, thanks for being here.
You have a lot going on.
You just had a huge eventcustomer event.
Before that, maybe introduceyourself and your mission at
Epicor.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
You bet, so I'm so glad to be here.
Thank you so much.
So I lead our product teams atEpicor, and Epicor is on a
mission to empower the world'shardest working businesses, and
so what that means is we are abusiness software company for
both ARP and AI solutions and, Ishould say, a variety of others
(00:46):
as well and we're reallyhyper-focused on our core
industries.
It's really important to who weare and who we serve, and those
are manufacturers, distributors, building supply, retail and
the automotive aftermarket, andwe go very deep to ensure their
success.
We're over a billion dollars,we're based in Austin, texas,
and we're working withorganizations around the world.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
And you have so much news released recently,
particular at your customerevent Epicor Insights.
Can you give us a snapshot ofthe event?
How was it and what were someof the headlines from the week
that's?
Speaker 2 (01:20):
right?
Yeah, thank you for asking.
So.
Insights is our annual customerconference.
This one is our flagship eventin the US.
We have a few others afterwardsthat will be in Europe and in
Australia, and so this is themain event, and we had over
(01:41):
4,000 attendees.
It's in Las Vegas and it's agreat opportunity for folks to
come together to learn aboutEpicor solutions, to network
with one another, and we had alot of big news, as you
mentioned.
So we have released expandedofferings for AI across our
portfolio, and the focus is onagentic AI as well as on
(02:07):
predictive AI, and we'rebringing both of these types of
AI solutions into the supplychain and across the business to
really help our customers makefaster decisions, quickly
interpret information andautomate action across the
business.
We're also working withpredictive modeling so they can
ask what-if questions.
(02:28):
So it's not only aboutunderstanding what's happening
and acting fast.
It's about understanding whatmight happen and prepare for
those scenarios.
So we had those two bigannouncements, and our other big
announcement was around ourcarbon cost roll-up solution.
It's a patent-pendingsustainability solution.
That the special way is we'retreating carbon as currency and
(02:52):
leveraging the engine within ourmanufacturing ERP solutions to
report out on a carbon impact ofany specific process job within
the manufacturing shop floor.
Because to date, you know, theability to really predict and
measure carbon, you know, hasn'tbeen as specific down to the,
(03:16):
to the material, to the job, youknow.
And so now we're enabling awhole new level of accuracy
within carbon reporting.
So we're calling that ourcarbon costs roll-up solution,
patent pending.
We're really excited toannounce that.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Oh, that's phenomenal .
Congratulations.
And on the topic of agentic.
You know very hot topic.
Is that something you developedinternally?
What was the process like andhow do you collaborate with your
customers in the productdevelopment process?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yes, yes, working closely with our customers is
always really critical.
This is something that wedeveloped.
We have partnerships withOpenAI and others, but I should
say this solution is calledPrism.
It's our agentic AI solutionembedded within Epicore
solutions.
It's our agentic AI solutionembedded within Epicor solutions
, and we actually have a patentpending on our LLM inference
(04:08):
pipeline.
So what that means is we'reactually model agnostic, so our
agentic AI can call on thespecific models that are going
to best serve the answer andaddress that workflow that the
user is asking for.
And that's because AI ischanging so fast.
(04:30):
There are new models, there arenew use cases all the time, and
what this allows for ourcustomers to do is to plug into
whatever is going to best servethem and their business and help
to get the best answer.
So we've developed this in closepartnership with our customers.
We actually have early adopterprograms, controlled release
(04:51):
programs and co-innovationpartners, because it was really
important to us to focus in onwhat are those tough problems
that need to get solved, becausewe haven't yet had the
technology to do so, and when wehave AI, that opens up a whole
new level of how we can solvehard problems, the kinds of
(05:13):
problems that are going to takeus to the next level, that are
going to take these hardworkingindustries to the next level to
work faster, smarter, moreefficiently and create more
business results.
And so it was really importantto us.
It's core to our innovationprinciples is to work really
closely with customers.
We actually deploy engineers onsite to sit with our customers,
(05:36):
to stand by them on the shopfloor and really observe what
are the challenges that they'refacing, and then maybe we use AI
to solve it, maybe we usesomething else, but it's not
about AI for the sake of AI.
It's about solving problems.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
I love that, and so I'd love some color commentary
on how these agents are helpingsupply chain customers.
Given all the uncertainty andchange in the market, how do you
navigate that with agents?
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Yeah, you know, I think the most critical thing is
being able to respond quickly,and here's why it's because we
can't ever predict exactlywhat's going to happen.
We can't ever predict exactlywhat's going to happen, but we
(06:30):
can certainly gather a lot ofdata to help us predict what
might happen in a variety ofdifferent scenarios.
And that's about not only thedata that you have within your
business, but the data that youcollect even from outside your
business Maybe that's furtherupstream and maybe that's
further downstream, it could befrom your suppliers, it could be
potentially even your customers, even a part of industry
(06:53):
associations and gathering thatkind of information and then
using that to predict what mighthappen.
And in those scenarios, howwould you respond?
And so this is incorporatingdata from a variety of different
sources and then applying AI,and we call this cognitive ERP.
This is how we are reallyinfusing AI and taking ERP to
(07:17):
the next level, because webelieve in, especially in
working with our customers byjust, you know, tacking on an
outside, you know, third-partytype of AI.
It's not as directly embeddedand closely tied to your data.
Therefore, you know, there arepossibilities for hallucination,
for inaccurate results, and sothat's why we believe ERP is
(07:40):
truly the vehicle and we'recalling it cognitive ERP to help
organizations take it to thenext level.
So, when it comes toorchestrating workflows across
the business, leveraging agentsto do so, they are so deeply
embedded within the datastructure itself, and we have
been working with manufacturers,distributors, for over 50 years
(08:03):
.
We have this deep knowledge andexperience in working with them
and they've really helped usunderstand not only how the data
is structured, but where theconfigurations, what's special
about each one of thosebusinesses, so that when we do
have Prism and agents so closelytied within the data, they know
(08:27):
where the configurations are tothat specific company and can
return highly accurate results.
So it's a way to ensure you cantrust the AI.
That said, I think there are alot in the industry that are
moving towards autonomous ERP,and that is not what we are
pursuing.
We believe in transparency andsemi-autonomous.
(08:50):
So that means, regardless ofwhat use case you're choosing to
leverage AI for that, you areable to first review, evaluate,
check the work and then approve,because you want to be in the
driver's seat.
Our customers, they wantcontrol, they want to be the
(09:10):
ones making the decisions and wefully believe to empower them
to do so.
So that's kind of how we seeagents working alongside humans
to help pull information veryquickly and automate action
across the business.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Fantastic, and at Epicor Insights you had a lot of
customers sharing stories andanecdotes, probably too many to
share here, but any insight intohow customers are using it and
applying Agentic.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, yeah, sure, there were a couple of different
stories, so one of them isaround automating RFQs, so
requests for quotes.
So what we learned in workingwith some of our customers is
that there's oftentimes andmaybe those listening in now
have this structure.
(10:01):
You know that there's, there'sa dedicated team of people that
are reviewing incoming requestsfor quotes and then determining
whether or not it's somethingthat they could, the business
can fulfill, and responding tothese, these quotes, and that
that requires a lot of emailingback and forth.
This is a classic use case forgenerative AI, because you can
(10:24):
use it to review the incominginformation, evaluate whether or
not you have all the rightinformation that you need.
Oftentimes, you have to respondback and say you know, can you
please clarify some aspect ofthis?
The price, the schedule, thejob, materials, maybe there was
supposed to be attachments thatweren't included.
You know all of this stuff justtakes a long time.
(10:45):
All of us you know dealing withemails.
You get it so automating that,that RFQ process, that
communications, being able toreview the emails coming in, and
then you know being able tosend it back, and all of this
then tied to the ERP, becauseyou need to have that for
auditing purposes and trackingand then being able to quickly
(11:06):
then go schedule these jobs, soautomating the RFQ process.
And there was a particularcustomer, olympus Group.
Actually they're an Epicormanufacturing customer.
They were part of our earlyadopter program.
Actually, they're an Epicormanufacturing customer.
They were part of our earlyadopter program.
They were tracking this usecase and they said that it
helped them affect theirdelivery time, cutting delivery
time in half with over 20%revenue gain, so just by being
(11:31):
able to accelerate thesecommunications.
When it comes to quotingAnother one that I'll share,
another pretty classic use ofgenerative AI is we have enabled
an agent we call our knowledgeagent, a part of Prism, and what
this does is it actually tiesto the learning library and for
(11:54):
any company that's like, unsureabout starting, this is probably
a great way to get startedbecause it's actually attached
to the Epicor learning data andthis is a great use case for, of
course, many out there in theindustry who are hiring,
onboarding new employees.
There's been a lot of attritionand we've got to bring on new
(12:16):
folks.
Maybe you're opening a newlocation.
There's been a lot of attritionand we got to bring on new
folks.
Maybe you're opening a newlocation.
This is a great tool becauseyou can ask it how do you create
a part, how do you create asales order, and it very quickly
finds the information withinthe library and serves up that
information so you can veryquickly then get back to work,
and at the conference peoplewere saying, oh, this is really
going to help me onboard my newemployees.
(12:38):
But also I tried it out and Ilearned something that I didn't
know, and I've been using thesystem for 20 years, so it was
really great, you know, to beable to have those conversations
and one particular company,because we're also tracking
results and they had said thatthis helped their support
employees respond to employeequestions faster, in fact,
(13:01):
saving up to 55 minutes aquestion.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
I know it's very specific.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
We're working hard on making sure we're tracking all
this information.
So 55 minutes a question onaverage.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
That's phenomenal.
And all these products are nowgenerally available, including
Prism.
Congratulations on that.
It must be a little excitingfor the team.
What's been, you know, some ofthe customer response.
Generally, you have quite alarge customer base.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yeah, very positive, very positive, I think you know,
early on in the AI journey acouple of years ago, I'm saying
like generative AI.
We've had a lot of experience,of course, with more classical
uses of AI, such as like machinelearning, expert systems, but
there was a general sense ofEpicor we trust you as our
(13:54):
technology partner of the future, help AI become achievable for
us.
And this year we delivered andthis has been really rewarding
for me, leading our productteams, to see all of this hard
work that we have worked soclosely with our customers to be
(14:17):
able to build and get out infront of the market and to
really answer their question andtheir expectation of us as
their technology partner of thefuture.
We've had so many conversationsabout I don't know if my data
is ready, can you help me?
And we've delivered there aswell.
We also launched our Grow Dataplatform that enables the Grow
(14:42):
AI predictive learning that Ihad mentioned, so you can you
know model what if scenarios inyour business.
But that's a really big piecebecause the Grow Data platform
includes interactive datapipelines and a data lake so you
can consolidate information.
You can consolidate data fromyour current business systems as
well as maybe legacy, thirdparty or even systems outside of
(15:06):
Epicor.
You know, maybe that's your HCMsystem.
If you have a separate CRMsystem and you want to bring
this information together and,you know, make decisions based
on that together and you know,make decisions based on that.
Now we can help our customersreally ensure that their data is
cleansed, harmonized,normalized and ready for the
(15:27):
world of AI.
We'd also been investing andthis is a big topic of
conversation in PIM productinformation management systems.
Right, so you have like atrusted catalog of data.
This one includes over sixmillion SKUs from a variety of
well-known suppliers and you canconnect in and that will feed
(15:49):
trusted data automatically intoyour system.
So then you can blend it withwith yours and right and so just
getting a handle on the dataand really helping our customers
do so, that has been socompelling and exciting to now
be able to deliver on and helporganizations around the world
and these hardworking businessestake it to the next level, you
(16:11):
know, and to really be able totake advantage of the promise of
AI.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Brilliant.
You compete with some very bigplayers in the space.
You see their names onbillboards and TV adverts.
I won't name names here, butwhy, should you know, folks
choose Epicor over the big techalternatives?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Yeah, we definitely have had these conversations,
and so I would say so for thoseorganizations that we do compete
with.
None are as specific anddedicated to the industries that
we serve for 50 years, and wedeeply understand how
(16:59):
manufacturing, distribution,retail, you know, these types of
data is modeled in the systemand how it can be leveraged with
AI.
I think when you're working withan organization that has, you
know, multiple different typesof industries that they serve,
it can be difficult to go sodeep to ensure that accurate
(17:20):
result from AI, because ifyou're trying to build AI for a
distributor and somebody in theentertainment industry, these
are very different, and so, withour focus, we're able to really
understand and ensure that theAI is going to be trustworthy,
and not only, you know, for yourbusiness, but and this is, I
(17:44):
think, an interesting, you know,thought experiment when we look
out to the future of softwarethree to five, seven, eight
years out, I think a lot oforganizations you know might go
out of business if they don'ttake advantage of not only the
(18:06):
data that you help anorganization create but the
connections within the communitythat you have built over the
years, and so at the conference,we really explored what it
could mean to have a tighterconnection, to be able to
communicate and exchange data ina trusted, safeguarded way
(18:27):
between distributors andmanufacturers, and do so in a
way that protects their businessright.
So you get to protect yourmargin, your revenue growth, and
still learn from your suppliersthat you know perhaps there's a
disruption coming and now youcan very, very quickly swap to
another one and we're workingtogether to, you know, ensure
(18:51):
the collective success.
So it's that aspect of thecommunity that I think, as we
look to how agents and AI willconnect to one another, will
enable this exchange ofinformation and orchestrate
workflows.
We'll be talking in the nextfive years about connecting our
agents to your agents and whatthat can do when it's in a safe,
(19:15):
secure ecosystem, when it's ina safe, secure ecosystem.
So we explored a lot of thatand I think we're headed for
some pretty exciting times.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Indeed, speaking of exciting times, you and your
leadership team have talkedabout AI potentially being a
great force for good forconnected workers in the
different industries you serve,from manufacturing, distribution
, retail, given all the mediabuzz and hype and concern, and
beyond out there.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Explain what you mean there.
Yes, okay, so I think, whenthis goes back to the aspect of
semi-autonomous versusautonomous and I think it's
important too that we do kind ofdig a little bit deeper here,
because you know, and you alsoasked about competition we see a
lot of vendors moving to thisconcept of autonomous, where you
can set the agents up toorchestrate information or
(20:15):
orchestrate action across yoursystem without having to involve
humans, and then you know itgoes faster and whatever.
But yeah, that is not theapproach that Epicor is taking,
because we've learned in workingvery closely with our customers
that they do not want the AI tobe acting without their
(20:37):
knowledge.
They want to empower theirworkers, their team.
They trust their teams to bethe ones that are evaluating and
making the decision.
They're looking forsemi-autonomous to empower their
workers.
And when you empower yourworkers, you really unlock new
(20:58):
revenue opportunities.
You bring your teams closer,you retain talent and there are
a number of ways that you canempower and, by the way, it's
not just ai, of course.
It's also about ensuring thatyou have modern technology in
place to really help.
One of the recent acquisitionsthat epicore had made is um.
(21:18):
We acquired a company calledacadia and this is a connected
worker platform.
We'd actually, um, you know,had been making a couple
acquisitions in this space.
E-flex is a related one.
E-flex is virtualized workinstruction, so when you're on
the shop floor, you can veryquickly, you know, follow along,
you know and track how you needto install a specific part and,
(21:41):
you know, do so in high qualitymanner.
But Acadia takes it to the nextlevel, kind of expands on the
connected worker concept and itallows for the deployment and
tracking of skills management,training, as well as supplier
certification, so this is agreat tool for those
organizations that are goingthrough.
(22:03):
You know hiring new employeesand you want to ensure that your
output is of high quality, soAcadia is a great example, too,
of us.
You know investing andempowering workers and enabling
you know the leadership teams tohave visibility across their
skill set, to be able to trackthe upskill programs and then to
(22:26):
know OK, this is an area thatwe maybe need to go invest in
and to ensure that you have theright workforce to take your
organization to the next level.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Amazing, so well said .
So it's going to be tough totop Insights 2025, but if we
were to fast forward, maybe toInsights 2026,.
How do you anticipate themarket customers?
You know Epicor evolving.
What are your thoughts there,looking at the year ahead?
Speaker 2 (22:55):
One thing that we're really excited about is how we
can further connect these agents.
So one of the things that weshowed on the main stage is
leveraging Prism within the ERPitself, but not only within the
ERP to get your ERP data, butthere are a variety of business
(23:16):
applications that organizationshave invested in to bring the
data in the ERP to life and newways to address customer maybe
pain points or revenuegenerating opportunities.
So, for example, the one thatwe showed was our enterprise
content management agent andwhat this does is, while you're
(23:39):
in the ERP, if you have aquestion about maybe something
within your document repositorymaybe it's buried deep in
folders, subfolders andsubfolders right, and you need
to be able to find thatparticular line item you don't
have to jump out to anotherapplication.
You can do so within the erpand you don't even have to say
(24:03):
like that, it's in your documentrepository.
You just ask the question thatyou are looking to answer.
And then the Prism has theorchestrating layer to know to
reach out to the enterprisecontent management agent and to
pull that information from yourcontent repository.
(24:23):
And so that's just one of theinitial agents.
But as we build out AI acrossthe portfolio, it will become a
much more seamless experience,and all of those you know
ancillary solutions, maybedifferent business applications
that you've purchased and are apart of your landscape now just
(24:46):
becomes so much easier to accessinformation from, and we really
see time to value very quickly,accelerating you know, reducing
you know, close to zero,because now you can just so very
quickly get access to theinformation you're looking for.
So I think there's going to bea lot we'll be able to talk
about in 2026.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Well, it's exciting and congratulations on all the
success onwards and upwards.
Thanks for joining and sharingan update and all the insights.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Thank you so much, Evan.
This has been wonderful.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
I appreciate that.
Thanks everyone for listeningand watching and go to Epicorcom
Tons of great content and more.
Take care.
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