Oil and Gas Software: 24 Reasons Customers Choose Epicor

Oil and Gas Software: 24 Important Capabilities Delivered with Epicor ERP 

There are very few ERP software options for companies in the oil and gas industry because these businesses have such diverse and complex requirements. For many oil and gas companies who have looked into replacing or upgrading their current ERP systems they find that all of their industry specific requirements requires an ERP system to patch on a multitude of third party ‘add ons’ to close the functional gaps. There are some ERP systems that handle field service well, but not assembly or manufacturing. Other systems may handle manufacturing, but not field service or project based requirements. Luckily, for those companies that need a combination of functionality in many areas of their business, there is hope provided with one ERP solution that has met the needs of this complex energy sector – Epicor ERP.

Most energy companies and energy sector companies can take advantage of technology and functionality Epicor offers. There are sectors in the solar, wind, fuel cell and other sources of energy that often need the same or similar capabilities as those in oil and gas.

Oil and Gas Software: Most companies need some or all of these 24 capabilities:

Financial Accounting

1. Multiple legal entities with intercompany billing, ‘arms length’ transactions, consolidations, multicurrency, multi-country, multiple languages etc

Manufacturing

2. Engineering the solution

3. Manufacturing the solution or subcontract manufacturing.  In some cases a combination of subcontractors and in house work such as final assembly, testing and shipping

4. Large scale situations where you need to track a project, phases, progress billing, engineering time, sales time etc.   Often you may require government or military tracking procedures such as DOD Flowdown.

5. The ability to do: Engineer to Order, Configure to Order, Make to Order, and Make to Stock all in one system

6. Integrated demand planning and MRP (Material Requirements Planning) to automate and optimize purchasing and production to minimize stockouts and maximize productivity

7. Integrated ‘drag and drop’ finite capacity scheduling to keep your people and equipment utilized most efficiently

8. Quality control that’s integrated including inbound inspection, QC during production and QC on shipment.  This along with serial and lot tracking throughout

Distribution

9. The ability to buy and sell products.  This includes buying a product only when you get the order from a customer and making sure you match up a corresponding purchase order and turn it around quickly so you aren’t putting it away and pulling it again right after arrival

10. The ability to drop ship, including handling ‘blind’ drop ship situations so the customer doesn’t know your source

11. Integration with both LTL and carriers such as UPS or Fedex

12. Supplier relationship management including managing RFQ’s, reverse auctions and vendor performance analysis

13. Integrated warehouse management including wireless management with handheld devices

Service

14. Dispatching both technicians and installers.  Options for integrated mobile devices based on IOS, Android or Windows Phone

15. Tracking of both time and expenses.  The ability to use a smartphone to take a picture of receipts and eliminate the manual processing of receipts.  Include multiple levels of approvals where required

16. Manage Maintenance for internal equipment used in your manufacturing or servicing businesses

CRM – Customer Relationship Management

17. Manage sales opportunities and customer service

18. Get a true 360 degree view of customers and vendors

19. Mobile access to all of this data from almost any device

20. Complete bidirectional integration with Microsoft Office

21. Manage tasks, appointments, conversations

22. True ‘social’ collaboration among employees with our integrated Epicor Social Enterprise platform

HCM – Human Capital Management (Human Resources)

23.    A comprehensive subsystem for manage all the HR and regulatory requirements for all your employees

24. Track information for EEOC reporting, PTO (Paid Time Off), payroll integration, investment information and employee portals

Epicor 9 and now Epicor 10 ERP support all of the above functional areas of an organization working in oil and gas industry and so much more.  Along with this deep functionality that works great if you need oil and gas software it has one of the most modern technical architectures available in order to take advantage of the latest technical advances.

Technology that the Oil and Gas industry can take advantage of includes:

•    BPM (Business Process Management).  This is the ability to develop workflow functionality among the modules, screens and fields to streamline and conform to whatever business processes you require without customizing the source code
•    Nearly 100% Microsoft Technology Stack: .Net Application, IIS middle tier, Microsoft SQL Server Database.  It’s more Microsoft than any ERP solution Microsoft sells.
•    Advanced Dashboards and Business Intelligence – The ability to monitor important information and manage by exception rather than running long reports that are out of date as soon as they are printed
•    XLConnect – Write financial statements and other reports by just using the Microsoft Excel you are already familiar with
•    Information Worker – Bidirectional integration with Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
•    Epicor Social Enterprise for real time collaboration on ERP data
•    Enterprise Search – Google like search for any of your ERP data
•    Drill down & drill around from anywhere to anywhere where data is related
•    True 360 degree view Trackers for seeing all related transactions
•    Multi-lingual, multi-currency, multi-company, multi-site design.
•    The ability to easily be hosted on popular platforms like Microsoft Azure using common inexpensive hardware configurations
•    Service Connect – The ability to do bidirectional integration with nearly any outside application automatically and unattended
•    Commerce Connect – One of the deepest and best integrated eCommerce platform integrations using the industry standard Magento Platform (owned by eBay)
•    So much more…

So if you are in the oil & gas industry (we also serve many other energy related and other industries) CONTACT US at Clients First 866-677-6290. Not only is Epicor built for the functional requirements of your industry, but our extensive and referenceable client base, physical presence in energy states like Texas, Oklahoma, Florida and California make Clients First Business Solutions your “go to” partner for ERP solutions to your needs. Just hit the chat button below or leave a message and we’ll be happy to discuss the options with you.

Don’t forget our free Epicor video demonstration site at www.erp-demos.net

Another version of this blog was previously posted on Client’s First Blog site on August 12, 2014:  “Oil and Gas Industry ERP and Epicor”

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