Epicor unveils ‘smarter business intelligence’ initiative

According to James Norwood, senior vice president, worldwide product marketing for Epicor, the goal is to harness Epicor's service-orientated architecture (SOA) and its analytics and Microsoft-based cloud computing to bring better "insights, predictability and performance" to businesses. "Epicor continues to turn the traditional concept of business intelligence on its head, by taking it out of the hands of a limited number of analysts and technicians, and letting all end users easily define, access and act on the information they need, wherever and whenever they need it," comments norwood. "Our smarter BI initiative is about delivering the right information to the right users at the right time based on their business role and their company's business performance goals. It's a unique new approach to comprehensive business insight," he adds. He explains that Epicor plans to deliver a series of "advanced analytic applications" to deliver broad financial reporting, budgeting, planning and modelling capabilities. The first of these, Epicor Advanced Financial Reporting (AFR) was delivered with Epicor 9.05, earlier this year – building on Epicor Financial Management software to deliver what global organisations need in the post Sarbanes-Oxley world. Users are being promised robust, global financial visibility and regulatory reporting, aimed at improving accuracy and ensuring the integrity of their financial data. Epicor Advanced Financial Planning (AFP) will be next, available as a Microsoft Windows Azure based service for financial budgeting and operational modelling – and using Microsoft's in-memory and data discovery analysis tool, PowerPivot.