Epicor University: Do we really need education and training?

Last week (March 15, 2011) Epicor announced the launch of a new university for its customers, partners and employees. Epicor University was created to address the challenge of delivering consistent high-quality training worldwide, and to expand the range of Epicor’s education deliverables. It also offers certification programs for Epicor’s partner channel. With the introduction of the university concept, all content, materials, and training is developed by a dedicated centralized team.

The primary objective is to provide customers with resources and tools to help them realize the greatest benefit from their enterprise software investment while allowing individuals to learn in the way they learn best. Epicor already offers a lot of resources, from embedded courses within their ERP system, to user guides, classroom courses and certifications, to an online help system that gets down to individual fields help and technical reference guides. According to Epicor, there are more than one hundred embedded courses associated with Epicor 9 and over 100 virtual or classroom courses available, 2,500 pages of content and graphics in Epicor technical guides, and 74,000 fields defined in Epicor 9 Field Help.

So why is a University needed? After all, user interfaces have become so much more intuitive and software has become easier to use. Navigation through an enterprise application is no longer cumbersome and confusing. And when was the last time you read the instructions for any kind of software anyway? If you can’t figure it out easily it just doesn’t get used.  

Exactly! That’s one of the reasons that education and training often gets ignored. Sure the user interface is intuitive. Sure it is easy to navigate through the various functions. But these are potentially complex business processes that are being modeled through an ERP. Are those business processes efficient? Are they standardized and repeatable? Do they produce a clean audit trail? Can they be easily audited? Do they put you in a position of competitive strength or hold you back from realizing your full potential? Most importantly, are you getting the most value out of your investment? Why do you think one company fails miserably while another succeeds beyond all expectations while they both use the same software?

Most every software company on the planet is working to enable self-service training and support. That makes sense. Like any other type of company today, most are attempting to grow while also reducing or constraining costs. The software business itself is very scalable. Create one piece of software and sell it dozens or hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of times. But services don’t necessarily scale as easily. Sure, you can make it more scalable by creating user guides and online on demand training courses. But there is a certain element of education and consulting that happens one person, one hour or day at a time. And even the very best software can be underutilized, used incorrectly or used to model inefficient and incomplete processes.

So kudos to Epicor for bringing education and training back into the spotlight. Are you getting the maximum value possible from your ERP?

Have you heard of the "he-recovery?"

While I mostly keep up with news online, once in a while I like to be nostalgic and watch world news on TV. Last night I managed to catch the news on ABC and learned a new term – the “he-recovery.” As Diane Sawyer said, “The race is on for jobs” and men are definitely winning over women. While during the recession men lost twice as many jobs as women, now the tables are turned. According to ABC, of the 1.3 million jobs gained in the recovery, 1.1 million (that’s 90%) have gone to men and 113,000 (10%) to women.

Why is that?

Some of it has to do with the kind of jobs that have been created through stimulus efforts… think construction and transportation in which women only make up a small percentage of the workforce (13% women in construction and 5% in transportation – also according to ABC). But even in retail, which has traditionally been dominated by female workers, men have gained 100,000 jobs while women have lost 100,000. Others that were interviewed in the segment last night also hypothesized that men were given more jobs because they needed them more as the traditional breadwinner of the family. Yet women are the chief breadwinners of 40% of households in the US. Hmmmm.

I’ve officially been in the workforce for 36 years, and I had summer and part time jobs (sometimes more than one) while I was in school for 7 years before that.  During that time I would venture to say that I’ve seen it all.  I’ve been associated with some male-dominated environments, and others that are not so much. My first job out of college was working for a manufacturing company. There were plenty of women, but one other woman and I were the only two that were salaried and managers. Later I worked for a software company started by a woman who was then the president and CEO. I had plenty of women peers but I carried the title of Manufacturing Consultant (or a Manager of that same position) and I looked about 18 years old (I was in my 30’s). I knew when I went into a company for the first time I had about 37 seconds to prove my credibility or they would write me off. Nobody wrote me off.

I went to college in the early 70’s, during the height of the feminist movement, but I have never been much of a feminist. I always just concentrated on getting the job done and expected to be paid fairly for it.  But I have also worked for companies where I experienced a glass ceiling in spite of the fact that I am damn good at what I do. This tended to be where the “old boys’ network” was firmly in place, but I have experienced a “young boys’ network” as well. Same result, but it hurt more.

The bottom line is there is still a gender gap. A different ABC news segment also reported that the amount women earn (as compared to men) had increased by two cents over the past year. That’s the good news. The bad news is that means women (in aggregate) still earn $.81 for every $1 earned by men in similar positions in spite of the fact that women are now as well-educated as men. There is always speculation about why that is. Men tend not to interrupt careers for babies, but then fewer and fewer women today do any more. Some point to personality differences, but let’s face it, women are not all alike just as men are not all alike.

I do however think that women in general need to be assertive, not aggressive and younger women need more female role models and mentors. I’ve done my part through the years in working for corporations mentoring both men and women. As I start my own company, I start down a new and different path – one that by definition has no ceiling at all, glass or otherwise. Any women out there in need of coaching and support, give me a shout (cindy@mintjutras.com) .

For those that would like to listen to the ABC news segment….

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/economic-covery-race-jobs-women-men-gender-byass-jobs-economy-13189214

Infor announces hiring plans along with Q3 software license growth of 17%

This morning  Infor announced it will expand its engineering organization by hiring approximately 400 additional software developers and plans to add significantly more new features and releases this year than ever before.  Reinforcing, the strategy shift away from building middleware, all these new hires will be focused on building business applications.

This signals an increase in investment in product development under the leadership of the new management team put in place by Charles Phillips who took over as CEO, bumping Jim Schaper to chairman of the board.  Infor also announced license growth of 17% and increased cash operating margins of 24% (which includes Infor and Softbrands Q3FY11 results over Q3 of Fiscal Year 2010). Infor added 400 net new customers last quarter. This is an important statistic since we have witnessed slowed growth of ERP solution providers, coupled with the downturn in the economy over the last two plus years. Indeed, Infor’s customer count has hovered around 70,000 for the past five years, ever since the acquisition of SSA Global, Systems Union and Extensity in August 2006. Since then, new customer growth has compensated for attrition, but has not moved the needle significantly.

New releases, standards based integration through Infor’s new ION platform, and planned changes to a new and universal user interface are all necessary components in order for Infor to break out this year and grow that number, especially if it wants to grow organically, as well as through acquisition. This announcement comes just days after the new of the proposed bid to acquire Lawson by Infor and its major investor Golden Gate Capital. Clearly Infor management wants to send the message that while acquisitions are likely in the near future, organic growth is also important.