Epicor Announces Significant Enhancements to Leading Enterprise Service Automation Solution

Epicor Software Corporation (NASDAQ: EPIC), a leading provider of integrated enterprise software solutions for the midmarket, today announced significant functional enhancements to Epicor for Service Enterprises, its end-to-end, Web service-based enterprise service automation (ESA) solution that provides a single source for managing and automating every aspect of the project-focused organization. In this latest release, Epicor for Service Enterprises 8.1 adds enhanced project portfolio management (PPM), contingent workforce management, and advanced collaboration and customization capabilities, all enabling greater planning, performance and execution.

According to a recent Gartner research report, Many organizations still lack the appropriate tools to manage and optimize their resources. Although the economy has started to recover, organizations are operating with tighter budgets and a huge need for the better use of resources. (Market Share: Project Portfolio Management, Worldwide, 2003, (Executive Summary) by Nicole S. Latimer, August 10, 2004.) The new capabilities offered with Epicor for Service Enterprises 8.1, such as graphical capacity planning and portfolio decision support will empower organizations to manage resources with greater precision.

Project Portfolio Management
Todays service organizations rely more than ever on maintaining a comprehensive and balanced view of the entire project portfolio. Epicor for Service Enterprises 8.1 introduces new easy to use project health and portfolio views, helping monitor performance to plan and aligning projects to goals. By identifying which projects support key initiatives, resources can then be prioritized for maximum efficiency and returns.

Global Project Accounting
Epicor for Service Enterprises 8.1 also supports strong corporate governance with enhancements to contract management and project accounting rules, including new currency and multiple customer bill-to features that enable invoicing and expense reconciliation to be easily handled at the task level; a must for services organizations with multi-national engagements and stringent compliancy needs.

Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation (SMEC), a global leader in high-quality engineering consulting and development solutions headquartered in Sydney, Australia, will leverage the new currency and multiple customer bill-to for its geographically vast project portfolio. A truly global organization, SMEC may work on up to 500 active jobs across as many as 80 countries at one time, with each project involving multiple customers. Epicor for Service Enterprises provides a single-source solution for managing our diverse and complex engagement schedule, said Peter Busbridge, CEO of SMEC Holdings Ltd. By providing the ability to track multiple customers and currencies within a single project, the solutions extended capabilities provide greater flexibility, and will enable further precision in our project accounting and management.

Contingent Workforce Management
Rapid growth of the services sector has lead many companies to append in-house services professionals with outsourced staffers. Epicor for Service Enterprises 8.1 adds support for contingent workforce management, which enables companies to streamline the process of staffing projects with contracted service providers by integrating Epicor Sourcing, a highly configurable, Web-based solution for strategic sourcing, dynamic pricing, collaboration and negotiation, and complex auctioning.

This integration enables a project manager wishing to staff a project with external resources, to create a sourcing event and invite selected suppliers to bid on that business. The skill sets required to fill the position, as defined in Epicor for Service Enterprises, automatically populate the weighted attributes in the sourcing event.

Improving User Productivity and Business Process Flexibility
In addition to an enhanced feature set, Epicor for Service Enterprises 8.1 adds advanced customization capabilities and increased flexibility for users. The release includes a new version of Epicor Internet Component Environment (ICE), an application toolset used in the development of Epicor for Service Enterprises and built upon the Microsoft .NET Framework using Visual Studio .NET; now enabling customers to tailor the application to match precise business requirements, as needed.

Epicor ICE 1.2 offers midmarket enterprises a leading-edge service-oriented architecture (SOA), that leverages granular XML Web services to enable greater extensibility. ICE 1.2 also introduces FireSentry, supporting outside-the-firewall connectivity for the distributed service enterprise, ensuring that globally dispersed personnel can access critical functions, such as time and expense entry, at anytime and from anywhere via the Web.

The demands confronting todays professional and embedded service organizations are ever-changing. In order to remain competitive, these organizations must have a clear picture of the pipeline, staffing resources and service profitability, said James Norwood, senior director of product marketing for Epicor Enterprise Solutions. Epicor for Service Enterprises provides a complete toolset to help win business, staff projects, manage engagements, administer operations and analyze activities all within the parameters of shifting market conditions and changing business processes.

Epicor for Service Enterprises 8.1 is expected to be available in late October and Epicor ICE 1.2 is available immediately through Epicor and its authorized partners to service-focused organizations around the globe.