Epicor: Building Unified Intelligence for SMBs: The Foundation for CX with Epicor - Six Five Media Virtual Webcast

The future of business isn't just about data; it's about making that data actionable for everyone, not just data scientists. 🧑‍🔬 The Futurum Group 's Research Director Keith Kirkpatrick hosts John Carrico , VP of Product Management at Epicor , for a discussion on how Epicor's Grow Data Platform is improving customer experiences (CX) for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) in the manufacturing, distribution sectors, and beyond. Key takeaways include: 🔹 From ERP to Ecosystem: Epicor's Grow Data Platform goes beyond traditional ERP, connecting data from CRM, e-commerce, supply chain, and more, for a truly holistic view of operations. 🔹 AI-Powered Accessibility: Imagine AI-driven insights without needing a data science team. Epicor is delivering that with built-in AI that simplifies complex analysis, trend prediction, and customer personalization. 🔹 Empowering the Entire Workforce: No more data silos! Epicor is breaking down barriers with unlimited user access and no-code tools, enabling everyone to tap into data-driven decision-making. 🔹 Private Data Lakes for the SMBs: Epicor is bringing the power of big data to small and mid-sized businesses with private data lakes that offer enterprise-level security and scalability without the enterprise-level price tag. Learn more at Epicor , Unveiling the Power of Unified Data: A Deep Dive into Epicor's Grow Data Platform , and Leveraging Epicor's Grow Data Platform for Better Insights and Improved CX . Watch the full video on Six Five Media , and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channe l, so you never miss an episode. Or listen to the audio here: Disclaimer: The Six Five Webcast is for information and entertainment purposes only. Over the course of this webcast, we may talk about companies that are publicly traded and we may even reference that fact and their equity share price, but please do not take anything that we say as a recommendation about what you should do with your investment dollars. We are not investment advisors and we ask that you do not treat us as such. Transcript: Keith Kirkpatrick: Hi, I'm Keith Kirkpatrick, Research Director with the Futurum Group and welcome to the Six Five Media Virtual Webcast. Today I'll be speaking with John Carrico, VP of Product Management at Epicor, to discuss how Epicor's Grow Data platform brings enterprise level intelligence within reach in manufacturing, distribution and beyond. Now today's discussion will cover why a private data lake is essential for unifying structured and unstructured data, how businesses are solving key pain points with AI driven insights, and why having access to an entire data ecosystem, not just ERP, is a game changer. Most importantly, we'll discuss how organizations can move beyond their fragmented systems to make faster and smarter decisions that actually fuel business performance and lay the foundation for exceptional CX. So welcome John. Great to have you here today. John Carrico: Thanks Keith. Great to be here. Keith Kirkpatrick: Great. So John, why don't we start out, can you just give us a little background on who Epicor is and what Epicor's core data platform is? John Carrico: Sure, thanks for the question Keith. Epicor is a global provider of industry specific enterprise software built for the essential businesses that make, move and sell things that we all rely on every day. Now we serve industries such as manufacturing, distribution, retail, building, supply and automotive. These verticals are where operational efficiency and deep industry expertise make all the difference. Now our customers range from small and midsize businesses to large enterprises, but they all want the same thing. Solutions that fit their industry, connect their systems and help make them smarter AI assisted decisions. So instead of forcing businesses into a one size fits all ERP, Epicor builds configurable, connected, low code and no code solutions that businesses can adapt to how they actually work. Whether it's helping a distributor streamline their supply chain or giving a manufacturer real time production insights. So with little no coding required, IT teams don't have to spend all their time on customizations and upkeep and non technical users can get more done on their own without waiting for or needing IT support. That means businesses can easily integrate their systems and applications, automate workflows, and analyze data without the complexity or high cost of traditional IT solutions. Now in that same vein Keith, the Grow Data platform is a full stack AI powered, no code data platform designed to help businesses bring together data from across their entire ecosystem, not just the ERP. Now when we say full stack we mean that all the essential components, whether it's data storage, transformation, integration, AI powered analytics and visualization, are provided as part of a comprehensive package from Epicor. So unlike other solutions that require businesses to piece together tools from multiple vendors, often huge, expensive solutions. Grow Data platform delivers an out of the box experience with everything needed to ingest, process, analyze and act on data in one unified system. That means less complexity, fewer integration headaches and a faster path to value. While customers will have the option to extend the platform with third party add ons, they don't really need to rely on multiple vendors to get up and running. They get an enterprise grade AI and data capable solution in a single accessible, capable built product for SMBs as well as large enterprises. Now let me just finish with talking about what makes the Grow Data platform unique. It brings AI powered intelligence, no code, data transformation and flexible data management together in one complete solution. Businesses can analyze trends, predict demand, personalize customer interactions using built in AI without needing a robust data science team. There are no code tools. They make it easy to clean, join, prepare and data visualize content that users who don't have that reliance on IT to write complex code. Plus unlimited user access that we provide means that anyone in the company can tap into data driven insights, not just a select few because you only have so many seats available. Unlike traditional platforms that focus only on ERP, Grow Data platforms connect data from across the business. Whether it's CRM, E-commerce, supply chain, IoT and anything you can think of, companies can get a complete picture of their operations. Businesses can control cost by managing their data refresh and prioritizing clinical information, ensuring real time insights without unnecessary expenses. It's all because we've built it specifically for manufacturers and distributors. It delivers the tools and intelligence that matter most to those makers, movers and sellers without the complexity of a generic data platform. Keith Kirkpatrick: Yeah, John, thanks for that. It sounds like what you've really done is taken this aspect of understanding that at the heart of it businesses, manufacturers, they want to be able to, if they're going to buy a solution, they want to be able to get value quickly. And in order to do that, you need to have a purpose built solution that's built for them as opposed to everybody. So it's great that you're doing that. You know, one thing that I'm curious about is, you know, when we're talking about going beyond the ERP, I would assume it also involves things like data lakes. Why is that such an important component? John Carrico: That's a great question, Keith. And it's an important concept to really explain to our SMB customers. And a lot of SMB customers hear a lot about big data and data lakes and AI and machine learning. But those terms have traditionally been in the realm of large enterprises with teams of data scientists or data architects and cloud engineers, people who build and maintain massive data infrastructures. And that's not the reality for most SMBs. Their frame of reference is a traditional BI system. Their understanding has been that if you wanted to analyze large amounts of data, you really needed to have a highly structured data warehouse. Which means spending a ton of time up front cleaning, categorizing and formatting your data before you could even start to use it. That's a big lift, especially for an SMB with limited IT resources. But I'll pause here and say in reality it's not such a big lift with our low code data transformation tools from our Grow BI solution and now our Grow Data Platform application. Let me get back to data lakes here real quick. Data Lake changes the game. Instead of spending months structuring your data before you can do anything with it, you can just load it in as is, structured or unstructured, and organize it later when you need it. So that really means that you start collecting valuable business data right away from all kinds of sources inside and outside your company without getting stuck in IT bottlenecks. Unlike a traditional data warehouse that requires heavy IT involvement and expensive structuring, a private data lake in the Grow Data platform is a more cost effective way to store those vast amounts of data needed for AI and analytics. And instead of spending time formatting data up front, businesses can load that's structured like sales transactions or inventory records and unstructured data like emails, PDF or even sensor logs. You know they could do that as is making it available for AI driven insights. That's because AI models really need large amounts of data to detect patterns, predict demand associated decision making and a data lake provides an affordable way to store everything without driving up cost. Now Keith, additionally, I think when we think about generative AI including the network of vertical agents that compromise our Epicor Prism solution, we'll be able to interact with the data lake, allowing users to ask questions and get answers from their data in a n