Epicor has been a substantial part of our work for the last 18 months.  One client has made a wise decision to not customize the application, so most of the time, we have been working with business processes to get the most from the software and make people’s jobs easier.  There have been, however, the inevitable situations where an opportunity exists for someone to make a mistake and a simple tweak to the software will totally eliminate that mistake.  For the business, it is an easy decision.  Customize.

This is where Epicor  holds an advantage.  Building a business rule into the software does not introduce the complications that a normal software customization would.  Epicor provides us with a number of ways to insert rules into the workflow of the software, and they can easily be exported, either on their own or in combination with other tweaks, using the Package Manager.   For what it gives you, this rules engine is quite powerful.  For example, we can add a rule to the Sales Order Entry form that will warn a user if a customer’s purchase order number has been used before, or force the user to enter a disposition for non-conforming material.  Moreover, adding these types of rules takes a minimum of effort, say less than an hour.

We are pleased with the way Epicor has provided a way for small businesses to add minor business rules to their ERP software.