Epicor has a formula to bring success for partners in APAC

“Today, we have over 60 partners in Asia, half in South Asia with the other half in North Asia. We will see more revenue generated through the partners and that's why the partner enablement ecosystem is important,” says Vincent Tang, Vice President, Asia, Epicor.

Cloud-based ERP solutions continue to see a surge globally as businesses look to keep their application portfolio up to date. IDC predicts the market to be worth more than US$600 billion by 2028, especially with organizations now looking for GenAI capabilities integrated into their ERP.

For Epicor, its continued investment in its Industry ERP Cloud Platform meets the demand of its customers, especially when it comes to providing data-driven insights and AI-powered tools. Epicor has been positioned by Gartner as a Leader for the second consecutive year in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Enterprises based on completeness of vision and ability to execute.

Earlier this year, Epicor launched Epicor Prism, a network of vertical AI agents built specifically for the supply chain industries. Through intuitive, AI-driven conversational ERP, Epicor Prism simplifies the way businesses and their workers access answers and recommendations to complex business needs and enables organizations to take faster action.

In terms of growth, the industry leader has had a strong presence globally with the Asia Pacific region promising huge opportunities for them. Paul Flannery, Vice President International Channel Sales, Epicor and Vincent Tang, Vice President, Asia, Epicor share more about their plans for the region with CRN Asia.

How is Epicor bringing AI to ERP for its customers?

Tang (pictured above): AI is a very hot topic. Every vendor invests and uses AI as a differentiation. We consider Epiroc has having a fair advantage in offering AI, because we come from a very strong background. For example, the usage of AI in a messaging environment, businesses would need to manage many tasks at a particular time. This means there will be heavy scheduling with a lot of orders to deal with and requires a lot of time. The adoption of AI in the messaging environment can help streamline these tasks automatically, based on its requirements and such.

Another example is if a business wants to know which are their best performing products, the AI capabilities we offer can be the information quickly by analyzing the data. We are seeing a lot of this happening in the manufacturing industry, which is an area Epicor focuses on as well.

Flannery (pictured below): We believe in doing it within the system. One of the things that's interesting about AI is everybody's got it. But you’ve got to go deep into the foundation of what the data is that is important, and this tells you about your business and then you inquire about that.

There are very good examples of how the core ERP platform can answer some of the issues businesses have. We had an event recently with a partner and some businesses. Each of these businesses had several spreadsheets and their aim was how they can interpret those to make an informed decision.

They just want to hit an AI button on the platform, whereby it pulls all that data and gives them the options with benefits and risks. And this is the problem that we're solving with generative AI in the platform. We call it cognitive ERP and the product of the platform is called Prism.

We may not be the biggest billion company, but we are innovating faster and getting focused on what are the use cases to get a 10X return. Independent consultants will tell you don't just do AI for AI's sake, you've got to look at security of the model, the people that process it as well as the regulatory requirement around AI, and make sure that it's built into the platform.

The answers to these things are dealt with inherently within the code of the business and the platform, and we think that's the way to go.

How important is the partner ecosystem to Epicor?

Flannery: At our recent Epicor Asia Connect event in Kuala Lumpur, there were over 400 attendees including those from our partner ecosystem. We shared product knowledge and information as well as best practice, processes and disciplines. We also shared with partners the tools to be successful, all the way from what's their value proposition, to how to create the demand, qualify it, and then run through the sales cycle to give them a competitive advantage and a difference maker so that they can win more often.

We witnessed a massive collaboration between a number of partners because our product portfolio has got bigger and stronger. The product portfolio is now so broad, you can't be an expert in everything, so it was interesting to see companies that you would not have expected to talk to each other, sitting down and figuring out how they can all get a share of a bigger pie.

Now the product may be the same, but the value in the product and the outcome for that persona is very different. We spent a lot of time talking through that. Our partners are technically capable companies, and they understand the manufacturing processes very well in the industries that they serve. And when we're moving into new technologies, like AI and machine learning, it's about getting partners to understand and articulate that in a way that resonates with the customer's persona.

This includes how do we marry the product, the value proposition, the market dynamic, and help the partner to bring those things together and deliver a successful project for the customer. So that's been kind of the things that's come out of and clearly an area of importance for partnership.

Tang: The way we are growing our business is really direct through channel, and the channel partners are very important. But in terms of branding, Epicor may not be as good as the top three vendors out there, but partners still come to Epicor because they are challenged when every vendor moves to the cloud.

The reality is some customers are still looking for an on-prem solution. This is one of the driving reasons for partners to join Epicor community, because we are offering a choice. There are also partners that are challenged because they focus on Tier-1 solutions. However, when they have opportunities for smaller scale customers, they don’t have a solution to offer. Hence, they come to Epicor to help them close the gap in the market.

Some partners are also challenged in delivering the solution. They have really good capabilities in selling and closing the deal but struggle to deliver. At the same time, there are also partners that come from a service background that have the ability to implement solutions but don’t have strong sales capabilities.

How is Epicor ensuring its partners have the capabilities to address customer needs?

Flannery: We have Epicor University and Epicor Learning Center, and every partner and consultant gets access to that. We take them through a guided learning path of how they go from not knowing anything to understanding the product, from what to do and how to do it. Then, they take an exam and get certified. We've got a strong set of guided learning paths, onboarding guided learning path, and then certification process.

We've also built that not just for the core Kinetic ERP, but we've also built that for our advanced MES, for our enterprise content management, for our growing financial planner and inventory optimization. And we've got a formula for how we do that education, enablement, and engagement, with a lot of it is self-serve.

We give our partners the full demo image that they can play with and use and try out the best things and get ahead of it. And we also run a program for our channel called Fit for the Future, a series of webinars which we launched during the pandemic.

We run about 12 or 13 webinars every year, where we do deep dives for an hour into a very specific product area, whether it be core connectivity, content management, core ERP functionality, or Prism and AI. For us, it enables educated partners. We also have demo scripts built in our partner hub, where our partners go as a platform to get access to all the information. It's all about giving them access to information quicker, faster, better, and easier to digest that allows them to have that conversation with the customer.

On the marketing side for partners, we've built digital routes, so that partners can take our collateral, put their wrappers around it, and then engage the customer in that persona-based or demand generation-based marketing experience. They can see it can be very tailored to that client, and they can see what they're looking at, and then they can follow up with second- and third-tier information that allows them to go deeper.

We provide a whole load of tools and platforms, for partners to be educated and enabled to go and engage with the customer. In the safe cycle, this includes how do they execute to get the customer to sign with them, and then they make profits.

Tang: To build an ecosystem is the key to keeping the partner committed. And apart from the delivery piece, we also work with the partner to make sure their sales capability is there. We need to help the partner to gain knowledge and how to differentiate at the core of our competition.

What are your growth plans for APAC this year?

Tang: Our goal is to continue to deliver double-digit growth, which we have managed to grow quite well. Even though during the pandemic, we continue to have a double-digit growth. And in terms of business, we sell direct as well as through the channel. In general, it's an activity, but we do see a trend to contribute more for the partner.

Today, we have over 60 partners in Asia, half in South Asia with the other half in North Asia. We will see more revenue generated through the partners and that's why the partner enablement ecosystem is important.

In terms of the regional approach, we have made a plan to extend our business coverage to the second-largest city in Malaysia, Penang. Because there are quite a lot of manufacturing facilities over there. We'll also continue to grow Indonesia, which is the largest manufacturing country in Southeast Asia.

We’re also seeing business coming in Vietnam, which is a potential country for the manufacturing industry. While we were very much focused in Ho Chi Minh in the past, this year, we extend our coverage to Hanoi by working with a big partner there.

Flannery: The formula that Vincent has put together over these last few quarters and how he's built out Indonesia, we've built a partner community there and made it a country that's owned with a number of partners.

We just take that formula to Vietnam. We will take it to other countries, and we just replicate the model. It’s our engine for growth and that’s how we scale the business. And if the customer wins, the partner wins. And if the customer and the partner win, Epicor wins.