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Epicor Earnings Call Wrapup – 7/30/2010
Epicor reported quarterly earnings today. Total license revenue was up 9% and George Klaus the company CEO talked a LOT about ”new name license” theme.
He invoked the fact that Epicor 9 was doing well selling to new accounts – frequently.
I’m not entirely sure why – but the press didn’t follow up on this theme - instead mostly asking currency conversion and sales commission type questions.
Epicor didn’t have much to say about their retail software which apparently has undergone some management changes. At one point in the call they quickly mentioned a reorganization around retail.
They mostly mumbled through any discussion of the retail portions of the call. I had the impression that retail is definitely lagging. They also seem to sell hardware as there was discussion of ($8 million I think) or hardware sales. If I remember correctly the margin was fairly tiny.
They did talk quite a bit about on a 94% maintenance renewal rate — which somewhat puzzled me because the quarterly comparative maintenance revenue seemed pretty flat. One analyst asked about this (about the only good question asked) to which there was a very long Epicor pause. No real answer from Klaus or the panel on this (which I believe included CFO Michael Pietrini) .
They claim well over 100 Epicor 9 are out “on evaluation” but Klaus quips – “don’t quote” him (funny thing to say at an analyst press conference)….
Earnings report said over 140 Epicor 9 are ready to go live this year (as opposed to about 200 already installed).
Early on Epicor hit on three things that they thought were driving sales:
1. More prospects (I took this to mean people looking for niche software)
2. More industries served with Epicor 9
3. More localization – they apparently are able to utilize Epicor 9 in another 20 languages/locales (unsure on this number exactly as I was connecting via cell to the call and not near a computer)
The company made a clear point that sales to existing customers — upgrades, new modules — were relatively flat or down. This is another area they spent little time on – when questioned by an analyst of course the company expects to convert many of their install base to Epicor 9.
Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to ask any questions as it seemed to be softball analyst day.
Here’s The Relevant Epicor Questions None Of The Analysts Thought To Ask
A. What percent of sales are channel versus direct (I hear it’s 85% direct with a goal of 60% – which sounds like being a little pregnant. Epicor has a mixed track record here so caveat emptor)
In the past several years Epicor has toyed with a channel, then not using a channel, then going back to using a channel.
My .02 is that companies start going through a channel when they feel they’ve pulled all the low hanging fruit. Channels are expensive because you not only have to cut them in on compensation but you need to manage them, create rules and ultimately deal with infighting that occurs when your market matures.
Epicor touted about 1,000 channel partners on the call. How many of these are castoffs onboarded in the last year? The ramp up for new partners is slow and tedious. Especially in niche markets with more complex products.
B. Who are your three biggest competitors (because I believe Epicor is probably benefiting from a market shift to niche software)
C. What effect will the new emphasis by Microsoft and Oracle on specialization for their channel have on Epicor’s sales into market niches. (My guess is not a lot immediately but probably in 2 years quite a bit).
That’s all I remember — I was connected by cell while out of the office so some of the specific numbers I’m stating from memory could be a little off but in general this was the tone of the call.
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MAS90 Gets An Updated Roadmap
Yesterday Sage revised their MAS 90 and MAS 200 roadmap to provide an update on expected future releases.
The major new items were relatively minor. The Q4 product update for 2010 will now be a payroll only update. The MAS 200 SQL product is announced as being on track for end of year release and has just started a beta in early July.
What’s perhaps the most interesting about this version of the roadmap is the detail that Sage includes on their FRX replacement plans.
Of course Sage has announced previously that Alchemex – rebranded Sage ERP MAS Intelligence – is their Microsoft Excel based business reporting tool that’s slated to replace FRX.
There’s more information in the MAS 90 Roadmap which you can view in full here.
The directory in P/L Journal and Register Maintenance Is Invalid (SOLVED)
One again 90Minds member Alnoor Cassim to the rescue. After upgrading a MAS 200 and migrating the program to a new server — while leaving the paperless office files temporarily on the old server — Alnoor correctly diagnosed a tricky error message.
All users on the system were receiving a message:
“The directory in P/L Journal and Register Maintenance is invalid”
The solution?
Usually this is simply an indication that a user does not have sufficient rights to a folder. In this case it was a little more complex. Users could clearly see and write to the paperless storage folder. What they could not do is write to it through MAS 200.
It turns out the cause was the service account that MAS 200 (a new setup on a new server) had been configured to use.
As Alnoor wisely explains:
Try running MAS in MAS90 style then use SERVER1 for the path in PL Jrnl and Reg Maint. If it works, it may be MAS 200 is executing the path to SERVER1 from the server’s perspective. IOW, the Windows account running the MAS Application Server cannot see SERVER1 for whatever reason such as:
* Service is running using LocalSystem account which doesn’t work with UNCs and mapped drives
* A domain acct isn’t being used for the App Server.
Problem solved. Posted in case anyone else is running into the same issue.
via Alnoor Cassim
Sage MAS 90/200 Quick Tip from Zip: Excel Sheets Separator
This is a neat little tool: Excel Sheets Separator - “Are you still bothered by the cumbersome job of splitting multi-worksheet Excel files into single-worksheet ones? You may have created one too many sheets in Excel, and now you want to move the sheets to separate Excel files. Excel Sheets Separator is your right choice in simplifying your tedious Excel Worksheets Separation work. Excel Sheets Separator can divide an Excel file of multiple work sheets into several new Excel files each containing one of the work sheets of the original one. Excel Sheets Separator 2009.6 Office Tools software developed by Excel-Tool. ($50)
One situation with Sage MAS 90/200 where this could be extremely useful is for Visual Integrator (VI) importing. For example, lets say you receive an Excel file from your Vendor, and it contains 25 Sheets/Workbooks which represent 25 different invoices. To properly import you’d need to manually create 25 individual Excel files. Kind of a pain. But this $50 program helps to really automate the process. And don’t worry if the master Excel file contains a reference or VLOOKUP worksheet that all the other worksheets feed off of. The data in all the newly created Excel files stays in tact.
Posted by Brett A. Zimmerman - www.brettzimmerman.com.
