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customers at the counter,” added Mr Mitchell. “We’re also planning a refresh of the UI (user interface). Our goal there is to reduce training time for our customers to use the product, making it even easier and more intuitive.” In other developments across the sector, partner integrations are very much part of the mix for ERP providers. “We’ve introduced a new product to manage shared services, which we’re now starting to use in a number of different places and adding partner integrations all the time,” said Mr Mitchell. “We are currently forging an integration with a shipping provider and are also adding another provider for purchase ledger invoice registration and matching. And there will be more throughout the year. “We look to partner with companies where our customers want to invest in their solutions, enabling them to integrate into our application and gain benefit from that integration,” he continued. “It’s important that, as well as facilitating that ease of connectivity with partners, it enables us to be very quick to react to demand.” Ten-25 has also continued to link into more third-party e-commerce platforms. “We’ve continued to link into more e-commerce platforms and have just finished off one called ShopWired,” said Mr Oldrey. “We’re working on another three at the moment and they’ll come after we’ve moved the platform up. “We’ve started to do integrations into other platforms as well,” he continued. “For example, we’re offering NearSt to clients - a great service where people can effectively promote their products on Google to a geography local to where they are.” He added that while it was good for companies to have their own in-house web shops, being able to utilise broader channels of sales, such as eBay and Amazon and marketing through NearSt and similar platforms was both effective and increasingly popular.
“It suits some businesses more than others, but I think as consumers we all use a lot of this sort of technology to drive those buying decisions. For example, a customer is probably less likely to Google ‘where’s the nearest timber merchant to me’, and more likely to Google ‘I need some timber battens’. NearSt comes up with a merchant in the area that has them in stock and at so much a metre. “We have clients working with it who have said it has a multiplier effect. Customers look up one product they need to source, then come into the store and buy additional materials. One client told me they’ve had people who’ve come in for one relatively modest thing, realised they sold kitchens and bathrooms and bought a kitchen!” Some of the more nebulous developments in the IT world have become less so as
the years have passed. Take the cloud, for example – viewed with suspicion at the beginning but now widely accepted as an integral part of both business and leisure pursuits. There are still some who remain to be convinced, however.
Epicor reports that BisTrack as a cloud solution has become the majority choice “by clear margins” but that a handful of businesses aren’t ready for it, “invariably due to a lack of understanding, trust, or concerns over cost versus value”, according to Adam Lee. “Today, we are providing BisTrack predominantly as a SaaS solution via the Microsoft Azure platform, a recognised ‘best-in-class’ cloud option,” said Mr Lee. “Additionally, with BisTrack imminently to be released as a 100% browser-based option, we expect this trend to continue. “The scalability, performance, resilience and security of cloud is very much front of mind. Our application itself is tuned, optimised and best maintained by our team when delivered via our cloud. This provides customers with a more holistic support and all-round better service.”
KCS says it is investing significantly in the cloud and security. “Although all of our latest customer solutions go straight to the cloud, many of our existing customers are migrating across into the cloud from traditional on-premise servers,” said Mr Mitchell. “Nothing new there really, that trend has been happening for 10 years. But it’s now happening at a faster pace and that’s because of the amount of money that businesses now need to invest around security. The investment in security needed to protect your business is becoming quite prohibitive for a single company, whereas customers investing in our cloud solutions get that data security as part of the service.” Another somewhat intangible concept that has grabbed the headlines in recent times is artificial intelligence (AI) – a term that was coined way back in the 1950s. “AI is the single most discussed and prioritised topic in our industry, viewed through the lens of a technology provider,” said Epicor’s Adam Lee. “Since the arrival of ChatGPT in late 2022 there has been a noticeable surge of interest and engagement. Epicor has invested heavily in this area, focusing on ‘use cases’ for AI that our customers are prioritising.
“For instance, we’ve developed Knowledge Assistants – AI-powered bots that can generate actionable answers based on natural language inputs, both written and spoken. Our acquisitions in this space, such as Smart Software and
Grow.com have accelerated our journey to provide ‘cognitive ERP’. “This evolution transforms ERP from a system of record to a system of action with AI-powered insights and predictions,”
added Mr Lee. “There’s a long list of use cases including price optimisation, order intake automation, inventory optimisation and prediction, delivery route and load optimisation and many more. Our scale as a business allows us to invest in these technologies, enabling our customers to take advantage of the power of AI without needing to spend vast amounts of time, money, or resources.”
Mr Lee said that integrating the Grow Inc platform with BisTrack is central to Epicor’s strategy, enabling the aggregation and storage of data, both from its own platforms (such as BisTrack), but also from varied external inputs, Excel spreadsheets, third-party databases and so on.
“This data can then be accessed via low code/no code data pipelines, leveraging AI to provide actionable insights,” said Mr Lee. “Think of it as identifying the signal among the noise – we can spot the anomalies or trends, and the Cognitive ERP, powered by AI can recommend actions. For example, we can overlay weather or regional data on top of sales data to suggest recommended products for sale or purchase.”
Other software providers are keeping a very watchful eye on AI – keen to exploit its potential where it can bring benefits to customers but, as Ian Oldrey puts it, “not crowbarring AI into the system for the sake of it, for a bit of razzamatazz”.
“There are times when I have used AI over the last year and I have been genuinely impressed,” he said. “I think it will improve and there will be a place for it and it will do the majority of the heavy lifting. But there are still going to be times when customers want that human interaction.”
The rise of AI will certainly present both challenges and opportunities for businesses in the future, says Epicor.
“The rapid evolution of AI is both exhilarating and challenging,” said Adam Lee. “Even as a significant software provider with annual revenues exceeding US$1bn, we recognise the necessity of forming strong partnerships and collaborations with tech giants like Microsoft to remain at the forefront of innovation. The productivity gains and the creative opportunities for those who invest in AI and develop relevant skills are tremendously exciting. However, the economic conditions that our clients are operating in are absolutely key.” Those economic conditions may or may not improve with the advent of a new government, but Ian Oldrey believes that, whether people agree with the new government’s policies or not, change will be seen as refreshing.
“Hopefully a lot of commercial opportunity will be released by virtue of that decision being made and some confidence moving forward,” he said. ■
www.ttjonline.com | July/August 2024 | TTJ
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