EPICOR INFORMATION WORKER
Enterprise Data
Within the
Microsoft®
Office Context
Have you ever been in the middle of emailing someone and you needed to get some
information from your enterprise application? Then, once you got into the enterprise
application and found the information you needed, you forgot what you needed it for in the
first place? This scenario happens constantly in virtually every organization and is a huge drain
on productivity.
According to current industry surveys, desktop productivity tools are used by 95% of business
workers, with Microsoft Office as the standard for desktop applications. Yet these same tools
have historically remained completely separate to a company’s enterprise business applications.
These applications, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions essentially provide a
dedicated and productive solution for a large percentage of the businesses user community, but
typically have not extended to the broader community of business users that are not involved in
using these applications day to day. However, these users still need real-time access to the data
captured and stored in your ERP applications in order to make better decisions, answer
questions or simply accomplish everyday tasks. So how can you connect all your people, your
business processes and the business application data they need? Epicor Information Worker (IW)
is an innovative productivity tool that works seamlessly within a familiar Microsoft Office
environment to enable business users to get all the information they need, in context, in realtime when they need it and where they want it. It does this by blurring the lines between
enterprise software and desktop productivity software to create a single immersive solution.
Epicor Information Worker (IW) is a set of plug-in applications for Microsoft Office that offers a
transparent user experience for Epicor applications within a familiar desktop productivity environment.
Epicor
Work in Context, Online and Offline
The ability to access data from any number of enterprise applications while remaining
within your current work context eliminates wasted time. Before Epicor IW, users were
required to leave the Microsoft Office environment, open one or more enterprise applications,
search for the required data (assuming they have security access rights), and either copy and
paste that data into Microsoft Outlook®, Word®, or Excel®—or worse, retype it. With Epicor IW,
you no longer have to leave what you are currently doing to get the data you need. Simply
download the data directly into your Microsoft Office application. With a few clicks of the
mouse, add Epicor contacts, tasks, calendar items, and other data into your Outlook lists or
email messages. Do you need to use Microsoft Word templates and mail merge to get your
message out? With Epicor IW, it’s a snap to create and save new document templates or load
existing templates and populate them with your Epicor data. We all know how useful Microsoft
Excel is for massaging data and creating great charts and graphs. Epicor Information Worker
simplifies the process by allowing you to bring the data you need directly into your worksheet.
Best of all, once you have downloaded the data you need, you are able to work with it in either
a connected or disconnected manner and then synchronize any changes back to your Epicor
ERP solution as necessary.
Extend the Reach of Epicor Applications
Many business workers simply don’t need to utilize all the powerful features of your Epicor
enterprise applications, but they do need access to the data they store. Epicor Information
Worker combines with Microsoft Outlook, Word, and Excel to allow qualified users to
retrieve, view, and modify Epicor data. Epicor application licenses are only required when users
are capturing or synchronizing data, which allows your business to extend the reach of your
Epicor information to a broader community of users while carefully managing additional
licensing requirements.
The ability to utilize enterprise data without having to leave familiar desktop applications boosts
productivity and encourages collaboration.
EPICOR INFORMATION WORKER
Reduce Training Time and Expense
You have already made the investment in your Epicor enterprise software to automate routines,
capture data, and adhere to corporate standards and policies. But not all of your people need
to use these applications. Enabling users to access enterprise data from within Microsoft
Outlook will take little effort—because they are working within an already familiar
environment—allowing them to become more productive very quickly. Business users will easily
accept and adapt to the menus and toolbars that Epicor IW incorporates into Outlook, and will
become more productive in a shorter period of time.
Support Your Customer Relationship Initiatives
Epicor IW can help you exceed your customers’ expectations. Every group in your organization
will have simple access to the data they need to provide the information necessary to keep your
customers informed and satisfied. Epicor IW extends the availability of enterprise information to
all authorized users within the desktop tools they use every day.
Consider how convenient and productive it would be for a salesperson to download customer
information and work with it offline. That same salesperson can add or update the customer
information from within Microsoft Office applications at any time and from any location, and
then synchronize those changes later with Internet access. Your customers will be impressed
with how well everyone in your organization knows the details of their account anywhere,
anytime. Now envision the surprise phone call from a customer and your ability to get the
information you need, in your Microsoft application, with just a few clicks of the mouse. Your
sales organization, customer service workers and business executives—everyone in the
company—can easily retrieve and update customer information within Microsoft Office while at
work or on the road. The powerful combination of Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, and your
Epicor data empowers all business workers to offer informed and responsive customer service,
which translates to higher customer satisfaction.
Increase Productivity with Easy Access to Relevant Data
Epicor IW allows users to become more productive through an immersive and transparent user
experience. With Epicor IW, your people are able to make more informed decisions in less time
by quickly retrieving the data they need without having to search for it and manually
manipulate or scrub it. Business workers typically work informally outside of their enterprise
applications. Epicor IW simplifies these informal interactions, allowing users to collaborate and
get their work done in familiar ways.
Epicor
DETAILED FEATURES
RICH USER EXPERIENCE
• Combines with Microsoft Office
for seamless access to Epicor
applications
• Reach more users with less
training effort
• Users work within the familiar
• Microsoft Office environment
• Highly configurable using standard
Office capabilities
COMPREHENSIVE DATA ACCESS
• Complete access to Epicor data
using XML schema*
• Work with Epicor information in
either connected or disconnected
mode
• Single point of access for all users
SECURE ACCESS
• Secure access to Epicor data
PREREQUISITES
• Microsoft Office 2007
• Epicor Portal*
• Epicor Service Connect (Full edition
required for data updates)
• Epicor application licenses
* Epicor Portal provides the XML
schema required to connect
Epicor IW to Epicor enterprise
application data.
EXTEND EPICOR INVESTMENT
• Reach more users without
substantial licensing costs
• Easier data access for more informed
decisions and timelier actions
Epicor Software Corporation
Worldwide Headquarters
18200 Von Karman Avenue
Suite 1000
Irvine, California 92612 USA
Inquiries
+1 (800) 997-7528 (US and Canada)
+1 (952) 417-5207 (international)
E-mail: [email protected]
www.epicor.com
Copyright © Epicor Software Corporation 2009. Epicor is a registered trademark of Epicor Software Corporation. All other trademarks acknowledged. This document and the presentation described herein do and shall include
descriptions of product functionality that is not presently available and which is not expected to be available until June 2009, which date is subject to change. This document is not intended to obligate Epicor or any other entity
to such functionality release dates, technology, initiatives and plans, but merely to inform the audience of Epicor’s current intentions and is accurate as of June 2009. However, Epicor reserves the right to make modifications or
changes to the functionality, release dates, and plans described herein without further notice. Epicor makes no warranties, express or implied in or by this document and disclaims all such implied warranties including
merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. For a complete description of the product features, please refer to the product’s user guides, reference manuals and release notes.