At Epicor Insights Europe, Enterprise Times spoke to Jos Greeve, Manager of ICT at Boers & Co Precision Solutions. Boers has used Epicor for a long time. In fact, Enterprise Times spoke to Greeve in 2018 at Epicor Insights about their move to Epicor ERP.
When we last spoke Greeve was using Epicor on-premise but using the cloud version that enabled him to update versions regularly. He has continued to roll out every update from Epicor, fourteen over the last seven years. However, despite saying that he would migrate to the cloud within four years back in 2018, he still hasn’t done so.
While he was considering it a couple of years ago, the internet cable snapping in the Baltic increased the risk of depending on internet connectivity. Boers has multiple locations, but they are close to one another, and everything works well, with lower risk, by keeping it on-premise. The nature of Epicor Cloud Software means that he can take advantage of every update with minimal disruption. Boers is already on Epicor 25.1.
He is taking advantage of several other Epicor innovations, the exception is Epicor AI. Boers will have to migrate to the cloud in order to take advantage of AI. Greeve has not ruled it out, and his disaster recovery plan is an immediate migration to a cloud environment. As Boers is using the same software as the cloud-hosted version of Epicor Kinetic, this is a sensible approach.
As Epicor is investing heavily in AI capabilities, one suspects that Greeve may move sooner rather than later. However, he has introduced AI into the technology stack at Boers, using a third-party AI-powered quotation solution. We spoke at Epicor Insights, UK, and he is impressed by what Epicor is doing with AI.
Growing around the edge of ERP
Staying with Epicor Cloud on-premise has allowed Boers to take advantage of Epicor’s continuous development over the last seven years. Greeve noted, “We’re using CPC now (Connected Process Control). We invested in EDI. That’s all the things around your core ERP system to make work easier.”
Greeve sees the main challenge of adding elements to ERP as integration. That’s why he prefers using Epicor products, as they provide the connections between the products.
Epicor add-on solutions are often add-ons, and Greeve inferred that integrations can at times be a challenge. However, he noted, ”luckily, they’re changing their release cycles as well to go faster with integration because just buying a product doesn’t mean that it’s integrated.”
According to Greeve, Epicor is moving to a more continuous release cycle for cloud customers.
Carbon Accounting vital
Greeve is also using the Carbon Accounting add-on that Epicor recently announced. While the solution is not having an impact at the moment, it will be huge. Greeve likes the Epicor approach; the carbon cost is calculated in the same way as a financial value. While there is no mandatory requirement for it currently, it will prepare the organisation by filling in the carbon cost data for all its products on the packing slip with no extra work.
Greeve has implemented this because of customer demand rather than compliance. Customers will need the carbon cost information in time for their compliance requirements. With only around 130 people, Boers are outside the scope of the new EU regulations themselves.
I asked Greeve where the customer demand was coming from. He said, “Within Europe, medical is much more carbon aware than non-medical. Petro-energy is not really carbon-aware at the moment.
“In the US, it’s there as well, but they’re not allowed to talk about it with the current president. UPS, a big American company, is providing carbon numbers on their invoices in the US and in the Netherlands as well. California is at the same level as Europe.”
To obtain the carbon cost for items, Epicor partnered with Climatiq Technologies GmbH. For Greeve, it takes the effort out of the calculation, with Climatiq providing the carbon cost for any component.
He explained, “You say it’s a coated metal part, and this is the invoice value. Can you give me the carbon number? They will give you the carbon number based on their analytics. They’re updating their analytics over time. It will be a better number every year as more and more numbers are being collected.”
“Is it a perfect number? No. Is it a good number? Yeah. And it’s getting better. That means I can still trust a small supplier, and I can get a carbon number for the small supplier as well. I don’t need to go to an enterprise that does have its carbon tracking fully engaged.”
Is upgrading straightforward
I asked Greeve how he rolled out the upgrades from Epicor. To date, he has rolled out 14 releases, and it gets easier with each one. With updates every six months, the release notes stretch to six pages rather than the 30 they once were. The strategic decision to update with every release is not without challenges, but Greeve has two tenets that support the approach.
- “We prefer new bugs to old bugs.”
- “Can we run the business with the new software and then make use of it.”
I asked him whether any updates stood out for him. He said, “Carbon Tracking is the biggest one, and the second one is the UI. I am using the same ERP, but no one sees it as the same because they moved to a web-based UI.”
Boers has already rolled out the browser-based version to the Shop floor and is looking to migrate the rest of the company to it. Greeve has also planned for this, making sure that all customisations have been developed within the browser-based version of Kinetic.
That customisation has seen Boers remove around 50% of the fields from every screen, following Epicor’s path to simplifying its UI. While he acknowledged that not everyone likes the new UI, he believes that it is better.
I asked Greeve how Epicor has evolved over the last seven years
“They continue to be a partner. They listen to and channel our requirements for the products we buy. CPC is literally in demand from the customers, and that’s good. We had issues with the integration. We thought it was too slow. So they’re changing their release cycles so they can adapt better. They’re listening more now.”
Epicor keeps up with the Boers’ evolution
Boers has also evolved over the last seven years, and Epicor has been able to adjust to support the new product that Boers is creating.
Greeve added, “We’re growing and we’ve got our first own product in manufacturing mechatronics. We set up a different Mechatronics company that assembly of high precision parts, including electronics. We’re building exoskeletons now, literally going from sheet metal milling and drilling to building your products with the product life cycle.”
What is next for Greeve?
He has a vision of an AI-enabled ERP and gave three examples. If a customer asks a question, they can do so via their preferred channel, email, voice, or chat. The ERP would answer using AI. The system would be able to indicate whether the item is being packed or is two days behind schedule. This might not be fully automated, as it needs a human in the loop who can check the message when the ERP provides a negative answer.
Secondly, the AI should be more proactive. It could highlight to customers when orders are later without a human having to ask or check the information.
The third area is that AI could help reduce the carbon footprint. As it understands what the carbon cost is of every component, he believes that an AI can help humans make the choice, comparing the different carbon amounts to select the best environmental option. He concluded:
“We can supply our customers with an alternative that would be better for them, for us, for the environment, because I think in Europe, we need to go there.”
With concerns rising about the carbon cost of AI, I asked Greeve whether he had considered the carbon cost of the AI they have implemented. Greeve stated that AI is at least four times more consuming than a Google Search. Boers’ current AI partner is Swiss-based, and the carbon cost of the AI was one of the questions they asked the vendor; he inferred their ability to calculate the carbon cost was one of the reasons he chose them.
Greeve is one of the few leaders that I have spoken to recently who is actively seeking vendors who can quantify the carbon cost of AI. This is partly because the steel industry falls under the latest EU regulations, though Boers is too small to have to report, yet its customers do.
