What's Up with Tech?
Tech Transformation with Evan Kirstel: A podcast exploring the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry, and how businesses can leverage them for growth, diving into the world of B2B, discussing strategies, trends, and sharing insights from industry leaders!
With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Cloud, Telecom, 5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
Smart AI Means Faster Decisions and Better Business Results
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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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Hey everybody, Fascinating chat today with Epicor, who are helping businesses run smarter and grow faster. Carrie, how are you?
Speaker 2:Hi, evan, I'm doing well, thank you.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks for being here. You have a lot going on. You just had a huge event customer event. Before that, maybe introduce yourself and your mission at Epicor.
Speaker 2:You bet, so I'm so glad to be here. Thank you so much. So I lead our product teams at Epicor, and Epicor is on a mission to empower the world's hardest working businesses, and so what that means is we are a business software company for both ARP and AI solutions and, I should say, a variety of others as well and we're really hyper-focused on our core industries. It's really important to who we are and who we serve, and those are manufacturers, distributors, building supply, retail and the automotive aftermarket, and we go very deep to ensure their success. We're over a billion dollars, we're based in Austin, texas, and we're working with organizations around the world.
Speaker 1:And you have so much news released recently, particular at your customer event Epicor Insights. Can you give us a snapshot of the event? How was it and what were some of the headlines from the week that's?
Speaker 2:right? Yeah, thank you for asking. So. Insights is our annual customer conference. This one is our flagship event in the US. We have a few others afterwards that will be in Europe and in Australia, and so this is the main event, and we had over 4,000 attendees.
Speaker 2:It's in Las Vegas and it's a great opportunity for folks to come together to learn about Epicor solutions, to network with one another, and we had a lot of big news, as you mentioned. So we have released expanded offerings for AI across our portfolio, and the focus is on agentic AI as well as on predictive AI, and we're bringing both of these types of AI solutions into the supply chain and across the business to really help our customers make faster decisions, quickly interpret information and automate action across the business. We're also working with predictive modeling so they can ask what-if questions. So it's not only about understanding what's happening and acting fast. It's about understanding what might happen and prepare for those scenarios.
Speaker 2:So we had those two big announcements, and our other big announcement was around our carbon cost roll-up solution. It's a patent-pending sustainability solution. That the special way is we're treating carbon as currency and leveraging the engine within our manufacturing ERP solutions to report out on a carbon impact of any specific process job within the manufacturing shop floor. Because to date, you know, the ability to really predict and measure carbon, you know, hasn't been as specific down to the, to the material, to the job, you know. And so now we're enabling a whole new level of accuracy within carbon reporting. So we're calling that our carbon costs roll-up solution, patent pending. We're really excited to announce that.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's phenomenal. Congratulations. And on the topic of agentic. You know very hot topic. Is that something you developed internally? What was the process like and how do you collaborate with your customers in the product development process?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, working closely with our customers is always really critical. This is something that we developed. We have partnerships with OpenAI and others, but I should say this solution is called Prism. It's our agentic AI solution embedded within Epicore solutions. It's our agentic AI solution embedded within Epicor solutions, and we actually have a patent pending on our LLM inference pipeline. So what that means is we're actually model agnostic, so our agentic AI can call on the specific models that are going to best serve the answer and address that workflow that the user is asking for.
Speaker 2:And that's because AI is changing so fast.
Speaker 2:There are new models, there are new use cases all the time, and what this allows for our customers to do is to plug into whatever is going to best serve them and their business and help to get the best answer.
Speaker 2:So we've developed this in close partnership with our customers. We actually have early adopter programs, controlled release programs and co-innovation partners, because it was really important to us to focus in on what are those tough problems that need to get solved, because we haven't yet had the technology to do so, and when we have AI, that opens up a whole new level of how we can solve hard problems, the kinds of problems that are going to take us to the next level, that are going to take these hardworking industries to the next level to work faster, smarter, more efficiently and create more business results. And so it was really important to us. It's core to our innovation principles is to work really closely with customers. We actually deploy engineers on site to sit with our customers, to stand by them on the shop floor and really observe what are the challenges that they're facing, and then maybe we use AI to solve it, maybe we use something else, but it's not about AI for the sake of AI. It's about solving problems.
Speaker 1:I love that, and so I'd love some color commentary on how these agents are helping supply chain customers. Given all the uncertainty and change in the market, how do you navigate that with agents?
Speaker 2: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 exactly what's going to happen. We can't ever predict exactly what's going to happen, but we can certainly gather a lot of data to help us predict what might happen in a variety of different scenarios. And that's about not only the data that you have within your business, but the data that you collect even from outside your business Maybe that's further upstream and maybe that's further downstream, it could be from your suppliers, it could be potentially even your customers, even a part of industry associations and gathering that kind of information and then using that to predict what might happen. And in those scenarios, how would you respond? And so this is incorporating data from a variety of different sources and then applying AI, and we call this cognitive ERP. This is how we are really infusing AI and taking ERP to the next level, because we believe in, especially in working with our customers by just, you know, tacking on an outside, you know, third-party type of AI. It's not as directly embedded and closely tied to your data. Therefore, you know, there are possibilities for hallucination, for inaccurate results, and so that's why we believe ERP is truly the vehicle and we're calling it cognitive ERP to help organizations take it to the next level.
Speaker 2:So, when it comes to orchestrating workflows across the business, leveraging agents to do so, they are so deeply embedded within the data structure itself, and we have been working with manufacturers, distributors, for over 50 years.
Speaker 2:We have this deep knowledge and experience in working with them and they've really helped us understand not only how the data is structured, but where the configurations, what's special about each one of those businesses, so that when we do have Prism and agents so closely tied within the data, they know where the configurations are to that specific company and can return highly accurate results. So it's a way to ensure you can trust the AI. That said, I think there are a lot in the industry that are moving towards autonomous ERP, and that is not what we are pursuing. We believe in transparency and semi-autonomous. So that means, regardless of what use case you're choosing to leverage AI for that, you are able to first review, evaluate, check the work and then approve, because you want to be in the driver's seat. Our customers, they want control, they want to be the ones making the decisions and we fully believe to empower them to do so. So that's kind of how we see agents working alongside humans to help pull information very quickly and automate action across the business.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, and at Epicor Insights you had a lot of customers sharing stories and anecdotes, probably too many to share here, but any insight into how customers are using it and applying Agentic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, sure, there were a couple of different stories, so one of them is around automating RFQs, so requests for quotes. So what we learned in working with some of our customers is that there's oftentimes and maybe those listening in now have this structure. You know that there's, there's a dedicated team of people that are reviewing incoming requests for quotes and then determining whether or not it's something that they could, the business can fulfill, and responding to these, these quotes, and that that requires a lot of emailing back and forth. This is a classic use case for generative AI, because you can use it to review the incoming information, evaluate whether or not you have all the right information that you need. Oftentimes, you have to respond back and say you know, can you please clarify some aspect of this? The price, the schedule, the job, materials, maybe there was supposed to be attachments that weren't included. You know all of this stuff just takes a long time. All of us you know dealing with emails. You get it so automating that, that RFQ process, that communications, being able to review the emails coming in, and then you know being able to send it back, and all of this then tied to the ERP, because you need to have that for auditing purposes and tracking and then being able to quickly then go schedule these jobs, so automating the RFQ process.
Speaker 2:And there was a particular customer, olympus Group. Actually they're an Epicor manufacturing customer. They were part of our early adopter program. Actually, they're an Epicor manufacturing customer. They were part of our early adopter program. They were tracking this use case and they said that it helped them affect their delivery time, cutting delivery time in half with over 20% revenue gain, so just by being able to accelerate these communications. When it comes to quoting Another one that I'll share, another pretty classic use of generative AI is we have enabled an agent we call our knowledge agent, a part of Prism, and what this does is it actually ties to the learning library and for any company that's like, unsure about starting, this is probably a great way to get started because it's actually attached to the Epicor learning data and this is a great use case for, of course, many out there in the industry who are hiring, onboarding new employees.
Speaker 2:There's been a lot of attrition and we've got to bring on new folks. Maybe you're opening a new location. There's been a lot of attrition and we got to bring on new folks. Maybe you're opening a new location. This is a great tool because you can ask it how do you create a part, how do you create a sales order, and it very quickly finds the information within the library and serves up that information so you can very quickly then get back to work, and at the conference people were saying, oh, this is really going to help me onboard my new employees. But also I tried it out and I learned something that I didn't know, and I've been using the system for 20 years, so it was really great, you know, to be able to have those conversations and one particular company, because we're also tracking results and they had said that this helped their support employees respond to employee questions faster, in fact, saving up to 55 minutes a question.
Speaker 1:I know it's very specific.
Speaker 2:We're working hard on making sure we're tracking all this information. So 55 minutes a question on average.
Speaker 1:That's phenomenal. And all these products are now generally available, including Prism. Congratulations on that. It must be a little exciting for the team. What's been, you know, some of the customer response. Generally, you have quite a large customer base.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very positive, very positive, I think you know, early on in the AI journey a couple 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 machine learning, expert systems, but there was a general sense of Epicor we trust you as our technology partner of the future, help AI become achievable for us. And this year we delivered and this has been really rewarding for me, leading our product teams, to see all of this hard work that we have worked so closely with our customers to be able to build and get out in front of the market and to really answer their question and their expectation of us as their technology partner of the future. We've had so many conversations about I don't know if my data is ready, can you help me? And we've delivered there as well. We also launched our Grow Data platform that enables the Grow AI predictive learning that I had mentioned, so you can you know model what if scenarios in your business.
Speaker 2:But that's a really big piece because the Grow Data platform includes interactive data pipelines and a data lake so you can consolidate information. You can consolidate data from your current business systems as well as maybe legacy, third party or even systems outside of Epicor. You know, maybe that's your HCM system. If you have a separate CRM system 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 customers really ensure that their data is cleansed, harmonized, normalized and ready for the world of AI.
Speaker 2:We'd also been investing and this is a big topic of conversation in PIM product information management systems. Right, so you have like a trusted catalog of data. This one includes over six million SKUs from a variety of well-known suppliers and you can connect in and that will feed trusted data automatically into your system. So then you can blend it with with yours and right and so just getting a handle on the data and really helping our customers do so, that has been so compelling and exciting to now be able to deliver on and help organizations around the world and these hardworking businesses take it to the next level, you know, and to really be able to take advantage of the promise of AI.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. You compete with some very big players in the space. You see their names on billboards and TV adverts. I won't name names here, but why, should you know, folks choose Epicor over the big tech alternatives?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we definitely have had these conversations, and so I would say so for those organizations that we do compete with.
Speaker 2:None are as specific and dedicated to the industries that we serve for 50 years, and we deeply understand how manufacturing, distribution, retail, you know, these types of data is modeled in the system and how it can be leveraged with AI.
Speaker 2:I think when you're working with an organization that has, you know, multiple different types of industries that they serve, it can be difficult to go so deep to ensure that accurate result from AI, because if you're trying to build AI for a distributor and somebody in the entertainment industry, these are very different, and so, with our focus, we're able to really understand and ensure that the AI is going to be trustworthy, and not only, you know, for your business, but and this is, I think, an interesting, you know, thought experiment when we look out to the future of software three to five, seven, eight years out, I think a lot of organizations you know might go out of business if they don't take advantage of not only the data that you help an organization create but the connections within the community that you have built over the years, and so at the conference, we really explored what it could mean to have a tighter connection, to be able to communicate and exchange data in a trusted, safeguarded way between distributors and manufacturers, and do so in a way that protects their business right.
Speaker 2:So you get to protect your margin, your revenue growth, and still learn from your suppliers that you know perhaps there's a disruption coming and now you can very, very quickly swap to another one and we're working together to, you know, ensure the collective success. So it's that aspect of the community that I think, as we look to how agents and AI will connect to one another, will enable this exchange of information and orchestrate workflows. We'll be talking in the next five years about connecting our agents to your agents and what that can do when it's in a safe, secure ecosystem, when it's in a safe, secure ecosystem. So we explored a lot of that and I think we're headed for some pretty exciting times.
Speaker 1:Indeed, speaking of exciting times, you and your leadership team have talked about AI potentially being a great force for good for connected workers in the different industries you serve, from manufacturing, distribution, retail, given all the media buzz and hype and concern, and beyond out there.
Speaker 2:Explain what you mean there. Yes, okay, so I think, when this goes back to the aspect of semi-autonomous versus autonomous and I think it's important too that we do kind of dig a little bit deeper here, because you know, and you also asked about competition we see a lot of vendors moving to this concept of autonomous, where you can set the agents up to orchestrate information or orchestrate action across your system without having to involve humans, and then you know it goes faster and whatever.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that is not the approach that Epicor is taking, because we've learned in working very closely with our customers that they do not want the AI to be acting without their knowledge. They want to empower their workers, their team. They trust their teams to be the ones that are evaluating and making the decision. They're looking for semi-autonomous to empower their workers. And when you empower your workers, you really unlock new revenue opportunities. You bring your teams closer, you retain talent and there are a number of ways that you can empower and, by the way, it's not just ai, of course. It's also about ensuring that you have modern technology in place to really help.
Speaker 2:One of the recent acquisitions that epicore had made is um. We acquired a company called acadia 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 work instruction, so when you're on the shop floor, you can very quickly, you know, follow along, you know and track how you need to install a specific part and, you know, do so in high quality manner.
Speaker 2:But Acadia takes it to the next level, kind of expands on the connected worker concept and it allows for the deployment and tracking of skills management, training, as well as supplier certification, so this is a great tool for those organizations that are going through. You know hiring new employees and you want to ensure that your output is of high quality, so Acadia is a great example, too, of us. You know investing and empowering workers and enabling you know the leadership teams to have visibility across their skill set, to be able to track the upskill programs and then to know OK, this is an area that we maybe need to go invest in and to ensure that you have the right workforce to take your organization to the next level.
Speaker 1:Amazing, so well said. So it's going to be tough to top Insights 2025, but if we were to fast forward, maybe to Insights 2026,. How do you anticipate the market customers? You know Epicor evolving. What are your thoughts there, looking at the year ahead?
Speaker 2:One thing that we're really excited about is how we can further connect these agents. So one of the things that we showed on the main stage is leveraging Prism within the ERP itself, but not only within the ERP to get your ERP data, but there are a variety of business applications that organizations have invested in to bring the data in the ERP to life and new ways to address customer maybe pain points or revenue generating opportunities. So, for example, the one that we showed was our enterprise content management agent and what this does is, while you're in the ERP, if you have a question about maybe something within your document repository maybe it's buried deep in folders, subfolders and subfolders right, and you need to be able to find that particular line item you don't have to jump out to another application. You can do so within the erp and you don't even have to say like that, it's in your document repository. You just ask the question that you are looking to answer.
Speaker 2:And then the Prism has the orchestrating layer to know to reach out to the enterprise content management agent and to pull that information from your content repository. And so that's just one of the initial agents. But as we build out AI across the portfolio, it will become a much more seamless experience, and all of those you know ancillary solutions, maybe different business applications that you've purchased and are a part of your landscape now just becomes so much easier to access information 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 the information you're looking for. So I think there's going to be a lot we'll be able to talk about in 2026.
Speaker 1:Well, it's exciting and congratulations on all the success onwards and upwards. Thanks for joining and sharing an update and all the insights.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Evan. This has been wonderful. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that. Thanks everyone for listening and watching and go to Epicorcom Tons of great content and more. Take care.