August 29, 2006

Epicor Upgrades ESA To Extend CRM

By David Sims, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Epicor Software (News - Alert) Corporation, a vendor of enterprise business software, has announced enhancements to its Enterprise Service Automation product, Epicor for Service Enterprises.

Epicor for Service Enterprises has a service-oriented architecture built using Microsoft (News - Alert) .NET and Web services technology, and according to company officials, "now includes extended service-specific customer relationship management (CRM) functionality."

The product also offers integration with Microsoft Exchange Server, which means that "e-mail messages created in Microsoft Outlook create call records within the application, contacts are synchronized, and events scheduled within Epicor for Service Enterprises are automatically pushed to the Calendar within Outlook for straightforward time management," officials promise.

Also available in the newest release is Epicor Service Connect, a Web services-based visual business integration platform for "workflow orchestrations within the application to enhance collaboration and automate business processes."

Last month Epicor reported its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2006, with net income falling from $30 million in Q2 2005 to $7.1 million.

Total revenues for the second quarter grew 40.2% to a record $99.5 million, compared with $71.0 million in the prior year's quarter. Excluding stronger than expected total revenue contributions of $22.0 million from CRS Retail Systems Inc., which was acquired on December 6, 2005, total revenues increased 9.1% to $77.5 million.

Epicor had a rocky first quarter, reporting earnings for the quarter ended March 31 of $4.6 million, down 19% from the like period last year. Total revenues in the quarter reached $84.5 million, up 26.5% from the year-earlier period.

"Riding strong adoption of its ERP and CRM software from both new and existing customers," according to industry observer Alan Alper in April, "MBS license revenues jumped 28% jump in the period compared with the corresponding quarter last year, a company spokesperson said. Yet, the business unit lost $13 million in the quarter, which nonetheless represented a 66% improvement from the like period last year."

In March Epicor, listed on Nasdaq, announced it would be added to the Standard & Poor’s SmallCap 600 Index. 

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

(source: http://news.tmcnet.com/news/2006/08/29/1836892.htm)