I’m terrible at sales, so I’m just going to tell you where else you can go when you need Epicor expertise.

Chances are, however good your staff are with Kinetic and Epicor systems, you’ll at least consider getting some expert help at some point. You may be here because that’s what you’re doing right now.

1. The safest choice

You can go right to the source, and get Epicor Professional Services to assist.

Nobody has better access to knowledge, tools and the inside track on where your system is going. Nobody has a wider variety of experience of companies using Epicor systems, so it’s unlikely there isn’t at least somebody who has a good solution for whatever you want. And they’ll guide you in the most normal way of doing things, and the least likely to trip you up as the system is upgraded in future.

2. Official partners

Epicor also have official partner consultants.

These are usually staffed with people who have worked for the biggest companies, in a lot of cases Epicor. They pay to be partners so they get a lot of direct support. To do that, they usually have to be quite big, which means there is massive breadth and depth of experience.

I can’t vouch for many partners, but I know one example I’ve worked with a few times who are excellent: Clear Business Outcome.

These two options, Epicor and their partners, are the best options for a whole lot of work, and definitely for big projects.

If you’re implementing Kinetic from scratch, doing a major upgrade, shifting to the cloud, anything like that, you need the big guns. You may also choose to go that way anyway – you’ll have a project manager, an account manager, and a horde of specialists and developers all with their own area of expertise, and they WILL get your work done. They have tried and tested processes and systems, and they won’t be derailed by the unforeseen, because there’s plenty more resource and expertise beyond what you see.

3. IT Agencies

Some agencies do have departments specialising in particular ERP software, including Epicor. While they’d prefer to find you a new employee, they will help get you a contractor or specialist if you ask.

Two I’ve worked with are IT Works and Washington Frank.

This way, you get vetted people, and the backup and coverage of professional agencies who know all about putting specialist teams together and finding the right skillsets.

4. Independents (yes, like META eight)

These are last on the list for a reason. They’re frequently the last choice, because they feel like a risk.

They’re the individuals and little teams who have clear expertise, otherwise they wouldn’t be doing the work, but don’t have the reputation and support structure of the big consultancies, so you can’t be sure how good they are, or what you might be able to do if the work isn’t good enough.

Choosing –

Something to realise at this point is that you are NOT choosing a type of person here. The particular individual rolling up their sleeves and getting stuck into your Epicor system could be exactly the same through any of these routes. Not only do the same pool of experts change roles, and move between companies and try self-employment (some liking it, and some moving back to the security of a bigger company) … there is sub-contracting too, and you may find (or never know) that an independent is doing crucial work even though a big consultancy is handling your project.

And that individual is probably paid much the same whether they’re working directly or via another route, which puts the spotlight on the elephant in the room of this discussion: you will pay more for the same work from a big consultancy.

So are options one and two above bad value? Of course not.

What you get with a big company is all the things that are not the actual changes. Basically, security and peace of mind.

You get management, processes, back-up and redundancy. You can put a crucial project in the hands of a consultancy like this and nobody will blame you if it isn’t handled well, because it’s their reputation on the line and their processes controlling it. They have ways of doing things, people for each thing that needs doing, including liaison and management of what’s done. That costs, but it pays back in controllability, predictability and insurance (not literal insurance, because we should all have that, but the plans B, C and D that are sometimes essential). The backbone of any IT project are the advisers and developers, however it’s done, but as soon as something scales up there needs to be a lot more people doing things that are not that core work, just to make it all work smoothly.

The big message here is: do NOT opt for an independent to save money. That’s false economy.

And here I am, speaking for an independent consultancy, saying that.

What are the good reasons companies have for choosing us, or those like us, or contractors, then?

Well, the clue is in what the big options do well, and whether you want that. If you know exactly what you want to achieve, or want to move fast, or have an edge case to solve that isn’t common – the predictability and management layers of a “proper” project team may feel as though they get in the way. The thing I hear most from clients is “I just want to be able to talk to the person doing the work”.

That might be because you have your own team, and trust them, and just want a bit of specialist help or more personnel for a while (that’s why the big consultancies use independents and contractors too). Or it might be that you want a more personal approach. Even that you want to try something completely new that others have told you can’t or shouldn’t be done, and you think they’re wrong.

Companies come back to us regularly because they like being able to say “can you just …?” I’m pretty sure.

As I say, I’m terrible at sales.

We know who we can help, and the kinds of things we’re best at, and it doesn’t make sense to pretend otherwise. If this helps you realise that you’d be most comfortable with a bigger player in the Epicor space then that suits us too.