People don’t know what we do, or even what many of the words we use when explaining mean. Here’s where we fix that, as quickly as possible.

Feel free to skip what you know if you’ve arrived on this page even though you’re already an Epicor user.

What is ERP?

“Enterprise Resource Planning” has, for some reason, become the standard name for the software most medium-to-large businesses use for the central functioning of their organisation. Because it usually has to do quite a lot, it can be hard to grasp what that means.

It will store all the records that are needed for accounting. It will hold details of stock transactions. It will be the way orders are processed, both from customers and to suppliers. Probably it will hold details of those customers and suppliers. If the business makes things, it will control the process, usually. Whether things are made or bought, it will provide data and ways to say what is needed and when. And most ERPs will have plenty of options for almost everything a business might do, and each department in the business might need.

What is Epicor, and what is Kinetic?

Epicor is a company that sells ERP products, and “Kinetic” is the main, broadest-use, one.

They are smaller and more focused than SAP, Microsoft and Oracle, which are the biggest names in this kind of software, but still large as software companies go, with presence (and staff) all over the world. They aim at manufacturing and distribution companies, particularly mid-sized ones, and try to make sure they have parts of their offering which can handle the specific needs of particular industries. Historically, where something related has filled a niche very well, they’ve bought it and made it a direct option.

Kinetic is the newer name for the core product, which was previously called ERP10 (and has a lineage back to ERP9 and Vantage, names you may still see around). It has always been firmly based on Microsoft technology, from the database up, but the rename has been part of an ongoing effort to make it more flexible and platform-agnostic, particularly everything the users see, so more recent versions are steadily better used in any web browser, rather than the dedicated Windows client app.

It also used to be a product that needed to be run on a server, but these days everybody is strongly encouraged to pay monthly and use the cloud version. This is not just Epicor – it’s the way a lot is going everywhere.

If you want or need more detail than that, there’s plenty of information out there, not least from Epicor themselves.

What does META eight do, then?

We aren’t Epicor, obviously. Nor are we one of the big partners who work with Epicor.

Really, we’re here for the edge cases.

It’s nearly impossible to use a deep and complex software system like Kinetic without having expertise to manage it. Many businesses will make it a dedicated role or department. Kinetic has a lot of adaptability, and getting the best out of it means setting it up to do exactly what your business needs, and changing that as the business changes. There are also tools to automate a lot of processes, for example, and connect to other systems, and streamline the way people work. They’re all accessible to the system administrators.

The system administrators may not always be the best to make some particular change, though. You may want someone who’s done something like it before and has had experience in the deeper technical workings of Epicor’s system. You may want someone to tell you what way is likely to work for what you want to achieve, do it, leave the staff with the knowledge of how it’s been done, and not cost the salary of having them part of the business full-time.

Which is us.

META eight. Sevenoaks, Kent, UK. +44 (0) 1732 928888 Contact