WriteImage CEP Office Business Application Extends Reach ...



|Overview | | |“Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for our customers to use the information captured within |

|Country or Region: USA | | |Epicor applications...whenever and wherever they need it.” |

|Industry: Information Technology | | |James Norwood, Vice President, Product Marketing, Epicor |

| | | | |

|Customer Profile | | | |

|Epicor delivers innovative enterprise | | | |

|software solutions that enable companies | | | |

|around the world to meet business challenges | | | |

|today and empower them for greater success | | | |

|tomorrow. | | | |

| | | | |

|Business Situation | | | |

|Epicor sought to increase the reach of its | | | |

|applications to more workers and provide | | | |

|access to its applications within the context| | | |

|daily business activities. | | | |

| | | | |

|Solution | | | |

|Epicor developed Epicor Information Worker | | | |

|(IW), an Office Business Application (OBA) | | | |

|that delivers critical business data from | | | |

|Epicor applications on the Microsoft Office | | | |

|system. | | | |

| | | | |

|Benefits | | | |

|Improved value of LOB applications | | | |

|Improved worker productivity | | | |

|Improved developer productivity | | | |

| | | |To expand the value of its line-of-business (LOB) applications, Epicor Software Corporation, a global |

| | | |leader in integrated enterprise software solutions, sought to increase the reach of its applications to|

| | | |more workers and provide access to its applications within the context their daily business activities.|

| | | |To accomplish this, Epicor developed Epicor Information Worker (IW), an Office Business Application |

| | | |(OBA) that delivers critical business data from Epicor applications on the Microsoft® Office system. |

| | | |With Epicor IW workers now have access to data where and when they need it; while any data from |

| | | |business activities that is pertinent to Epicor is automatically captured, updated, and synchronized |

| | | |with the LOB application. By improving the reach and integration of Epicor applications, Epicor IW will|

| | | |help customers realize greater value from their investment in its LOB applications. |

| | | | |

| | | |[pic] |

| | | | |

Situation

Epicor is a global leader, providing integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM) and professional service automation (PSA) software solutions to over 20,000 customers in more than 140 countries. Employing innovative Web services technology, Epicor delivers comprehensive industry-specific solutions that help drive increased efficiency, improve performance, and build competitive advantage.

Broadening the value customers derive from their solutions is a common goal among enterprise software providers. According to industry research, training is a critical factor to successful ERP implementations – inadequately trained users can hinder the uptake and acceptance of an ERP system, and can severely limit overall success of a project.

Understanding this challenge, Epicor realized the value of making its applications accessible to end users through familiar desktop tools. Furthermore, to increase the benefits its customers derive from its line-of-business (LOB) applications, Epicor wanted to:

■ Extend the reach of its applications to more workers.

■ Ease the integration between business activities and business applications.

Extend the Reach of Applications

To be productive, information workers need access to the most current, useful business data to make the most effective decisions and take appropriate action. However, like many LOB applications, Epicor applications have often been underutilized by customers, due to:

■ Licensing costs: To keep expenses down, many businesses purchase licenses for just a specific number of workers, thus limiting the amount of data captured by the application and the use of that intelligence across the organization.

■ Training requirements: The time and cost of training current and future workers to become proficient in using the applications can also restrict the number of licenses purchased. Additionally, licensed workers, whose use may be less routine, can often lose their proficiency.

Ease the Integration Between Business Activities and Business Applications

Information workers often have to mentally and manually integrate disparate applications into their work environments to accomplish their work. This reduces productivity and can limit the quantity and quality of business information captured by a LOB application. Thus, in addition to increasing the reach of its applications to more users, Epicor also wanted to improve the value of its applications by simplifying how workers access and update the applications.

In the past, to get the information required for a business activity, workers have had to:

■ Leave the context of the business at hand.

■ Search for the data they need, not always knowing what data would be available.

■ Cut and paste the information they find for each use.

Thus, Epicor wanted to find a solution that would increase the value of its applications by:

■ Seamlessly delivering the data information workers need within their work environment.

■ Providing a way for workers to gather additional data from its applications without leaving the context of the business at hand.

■ Consistently capturing business information from more business activities.

Solution

To expand the reach and value of its applications, Epicor developed Epicor Information Worker (IW), an Office Business Application (OBA), to deliver data from its applications on the Microsoft® Office system. The current version of Epicor IW empowers information workers to perform most of their business activities within the familiar environment of Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003, while business data from their work is automatically integrated with the Epicor ERP solution, a real-time ERP, CRM, and supply chain management solution for make-to-order, make-to-stock or mixed-mode manufacturers, distributors, and combinations of the two.

Subsequent versions of Epicor IW will expand this integration to the 2007 Microsoft Office system clients, including Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Excel® 2007, and Word 2007; Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007; and to other major Epicor LOB applications.

As an OBA, Epicor IW continuously delivers the business data that workers need from Epicor to their desktops, via Epicor’s portal and service connect solutions (see Diagram 1). This data can be easily accessed through custom features built into the Epicor IW user interface. Additionally, any business data from their work that is pertinent to Epicor is automatically captured, updated, integrated, and synchronized with the application on the back-end. Finally, without leaving the context of the business at hand, workers can access information from Epicor through an Epicor LOB client.

According to James Norwood, Vice President, Product Marketing, Epicor, “Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for our customers to use the information captured within Epicor applications more effectively by enabling users to seamlessly interact with relevant and timely information whenever and wherever they need it.”

Data Delivered Where and When It Is Needed

As an OBA, Epicor IW delivers data to information workers where and when they need it, rather than forcing them to leave the work at hand, find the data they need, cut and paste the information, and then bring it back to where the work needs to be done. Epicor IW also automatically captures more business information relevant to Epicor LOB applications from ad hoc and people-driven processes. Finally, Epicor IW automatically integrates that data with Epicor behind the scenes, allowing users to:

■ Interact with data that previously required more expensive licensing, extensive training, or various additional steps to obtain.

■ Accomplish business activities without leaving the context of the work at hand.

■ Spend most of their time in the familiar environment of Outlook 2003 or 2007.

■ Use and organize Epicor IW as their primary database for business information they need.

■ Easily distinguish contacts, tasks, and calendaring related to Epicor from other items, allowing workers to create a single view of both business and personal items for better prioritization.

■ Subscribe to data from Epicor and have that data delivered to Outlook folders.

■ Take the most current and relevant data from Epicor offline.

■ Make CRM calls, create tasks, and make appointments that are all automatically updated in Epicor.

Developing Epicor IW

According to Bart Elia, Product Software Architect, Epicor, “The Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) 2005 was the key to developing this OBA.” He continues, “VSTO is the best integrated and most consistent environment available and is what made it possible for us to develop functionality that we would never have even attempted before. It is also what enabled us to build this solution in just three months.”

Making use of the consistent development environment provided by VSTO 2005, developers were able to:

■ Focus their development work in one environment, whether they were coding for Epicor applications, the business framework, or Office applications.

■ Re-use code, subsystems, and components across product lines.

■ Extend functionality as needed by building on previous code.

■ Develop the custom features of the user interface to most effectively integrate with the larger solution and align with the specific business needs of end-users.

■ Make use of better API’s and more abstractions to speed development.

■ Deploy add-ins in an easy, managed way through a consistent mechanism for loading application-level add-ins into Microsoft Office applications and improved add-in management controls.

■ Create a context engine to pull data out of Epicor and deliver it through Epicor Portal into Outlook.

■ Support Epicor customers whether they are using Office 2003 or 2007 clients.

■ Create tool bars, folders, forms, and menu items that allow clear, easy navigation into LOB applications, including widgetry to enable and disable buttons at appropriate times based on the process and context of the business situation at hand.

The Epicor IW User Interface

The Epicor IW User Interface, currently built on Outlook 2003 and soon to be released on Outlook 2007, includes three key components which present and capture business data pertinent to the Epicor LOB applications.

■ Custom Toolbar

■ Custom Folders

■ Custom Forms

Custom Toolbar

The Epicor IW user interface includes a custom toolbar (see Figure 1) with four buttons which provide the information worker various ways to interact with data from Epicor. While this version of Epicor IW is built on Outlook 2003, the buttons were developed using Ribbon UI coding. This enabled developers to build additional functionality into the toolbar, including the ability to light up buttons and items as appropriate, to provide necessary data and guidance to walk information workers through basic business processes.

■ Synchronize: In addition to scheduled synchronization, workers can use this button to immediately synchronize data, such as contacts, appointments, tasks, and CRM calls, cached in their Outlook application, with Epicor. They can then take the most current, relevant data offline and upon their return, seamlessly synchronize any data entered while offline.

■ Explore: This button provides a drop-down menu through which workers can subscribe to various types of data in Epicor and bring that information directly into Epicor IW on their desktop.

■ Outlook: This button provides a drop-down menu of data already cached within Epicor IW that is relevant to the particular contact or business process at hand (see Figure 2).

■ Epicor: This button provides a drop-down menu to obtain additional data from Epicor and allows users to navigate within context to the specific data they need.

Custom Folders

Epicor IW also includes custom folders (see Figure 2) through which users can subscribe to content they need from Epicor. This content is delivered through Epicor Portal which leverages Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows® SharePoint Services. The mechanism for this integration is a publication subscription process that takes information out of Epicor and brings it into Outlook folders. The folders can include items such as:

■ Cases and related calls

■ Customers

■ Invoices

■ RMA’s

■ Opportunities, Quotes and Orders

In addition, the data in these folders and data can be arranged according to functionality within Outlook 2003 or 2007. This allows information workers to easily arrange data according to the way they work and run reports without leaving Epicor IW and without having to cut and paste information.

Custom Forms

Epicor IW also includes custom, editable forms for specific business activities, including CRM calls (see Figure 3), tasks, and appointments. These forms capture specific data which is both cached within Outlook and synchronized with Epicor.

Expanded Integration

In the months ahead, Epicor IW will be expanded to support Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and will include integration with Excel 2007, Word 2007, and the full line of Epicor applications. VSTO 2005 SE ensures that the applications built on Office 2003 with VSTO 2005 will continue to run with the 2007 Office system. In addition, developers look forward to extending the functionality, using specific features and products of the 2007 Office system.

One example of what developers have created for the expanded integration includes the creation and workflow of business quotes. Soon, when users receive an Email request for a quote, without leaving Outlook 2007, they will be able to open a quote template in Word 2007. That quote will be pre-populated through Web services with the most current customer information, including any customer-specific pricing or discounts. Still, without leaving Outlook 2007, workers will be able to drag and drop items for the quote from custom task panes into the quote template. Once the quote is completed and saved, it will be posted to a SharePoint site which will initiate the appropriate workflow.

The features and products of the 2007 Office system that will make this type of scenario possible include:

■ An Extended Ribbon UI: By inserting Epicor items into the Ribbon UI of the 2007 Office system, users will have more intuitive, visually apparent, easier access to information and applications.

■ Custom Task Panes: By simply dragging and dropping Epicor information from custom task panes into Microsoft Office Word 2007 documents or Microsoft Office Excel 2007 spreadsheets, users will be able to populate documents such as quotes and reports without having to drill down for the data they need.

■ XML File Formats: This will allow the Epicor Portal and applications to exchange data from within each file without having to open the entire file or application.

■ Workflow: The workflow capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 will be used to improve the consistency of business processes on the front-end with the workflow within Epicor applications.

Benefits

Epicor IW has a small footprint on each information worker’s desktop, but promises big value to Epicor customers by delivering critical business data to information workers where and when they need it and seamlessly synchronizing more of their work with the Epicor applications on the back-end.

Increased Value of Epicor Applications

Epicor IW will increase the value customers derive from their Epicor applications by:

■ Expanding the user base: Epicor IW will allow more workers to access Epicor through more effective licensing. Because Epicor IW only requires a license while subscribing or synchronizing, one license will be able to support up to 20 casual users. Additionally, Epicor IW will eliminate the need to train workers to use Epicor since many will only interact with that application through the familiar functions and features of Epicor IW. Epicor IW will also improve the scalability of its applications by reducing the demands on the LOB application.

■ Capturing more business information: As more workers use Epicor IW, more business information will be captured by the Epicor applications for improved business intelligence and workflow.

Improved Information Worker Productivity

Information worker productivity will be significantly improved as they perform more of their work in a consistent, familiar environment and do not have to leave the context of that work or environment to obtain additional information. Information workers will also be able to focus more on their work rather than how to integrate that work with Epicor. Additionally, the ability to easily take the most current customer data offline will improve the productivity of those who perform their work in a mobile setting.

Improved Developer Productivity

By developing Epicor IW with VSTO 2005, developers have experienced improved productivity as well. Elia states, “We are so much more productive with VSTO 2005! What used to take days or even weeks to develop, now takes only hours or even minutes!” He continues, “In addition, by using VSTO 2005, there are fewer lines of code to write and maintain, thanks to better API’s and more, improved abstractions.”

Solid Foundation for Future Development

Finally, the consistent development environment of VSTO 2005 means that, as Epicor continues to expand the functionality of its Office Business Application with Office 2007 clients and other Epicor applications, they will be able to simply build on and reuse what they have already developed.

Microsoft Office System

The Microsoft Office system is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.

For more information about the Microsoft Office system, go to:

office

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Figure 3 – Epicor IW custom CRM call form to capture data to be synchronized with Epicor LOB application

| |Software and Services

■ Products

− 2007 Microsoft Office system

− Microsoft Office Excel 2007

− Microsoft Office Outlook 2003

− Microsoft Office Outlook 2007

− Microsoft Office Word 2007 |Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003

− Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

■ Technologies

− Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services | |

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Figure 1 – Epicor IW toolbar in Outlook 2003

Figure 2 – Epicor IW custom folders and drop-down menu of data from Epicor LOB application, cached within Epicor IW

© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Excel, the Office logo, Outlook, SharePoint, and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Document published March 2007 | | |

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:

For more information about products and services, call or visit the Web site at:

For more information about Epicor products and services, call 800-999-6995 or visit the Web site at:



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Diagram 1 – Epicor IW integrated with Epicor LOB applications

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