Blog

Our latest thoughts on all things CRM and ERP

February 26, 2026

Too Long. That's How Long It Takes to Prep for a Manufacturing Business Review.

Activity across eight locations. Fifteen ship-to locations. Dozens of contacts. A pile of open opportunities and service cases spread across the entire relationship. Everything is in the CRM. But the story? It's buried. A sales director shouldn't need half a day to understand a customer relationship before a quarterly review. But that's exactly what happens when account data is scattered across individual records with no rollup, no hierarchy, and no consolidated view.

February 17, 2026

The Value of Being a Leader: Functionality and Real Usability

But why is this distinction so important, and what makes Epicor stand out in such a competitive market?

February 11, 2026

Manufacturers Aren't Rejecting CRM. They're Rejecting CRM That Ignores ERP.

I was recently on a call with a sales leader who had written off CRM three years ago. He'd been burned before by a system that lived on its own island, disconnected from the Epicor Kinetic environment where his actual business ran. He assumed real integration wasn't possible. Not without six figures and six months of consultants. When I showed him what we had, he called it "lightning out of the blue sky."

January 21, 2026

How Manufacturers Leverage Field Sales Intelligence for Strategic Customer Relationships

In manufacturing, your ERP system excels at tracking transactions, orders, and shipments. But what about the relationships behind those transactions? When executives prepare for critical customer meetings, they need more than sales figures - they need context, history, and insight that can only come from your field sales team.

January 13, 2026

From Field Intelligence to Organizational Advantage: Why Sharing Matters as Much as Capturing

We have written about getting sales reps out in the field and giving them systems to capture what they learn while it's still fresh. But capturing field intelligence is only step one. Sharing that intelligence systematically across your organization is step two - and it's where the real competitive advantage emerges.

January 9, 2026

Your Sales Team is Hitting Every Target - So Why is Revenue Down?

Relying on single KPIs can sabotage your sales success. Discover why CRM dashboards with balanced scorecards are essential for driving real results, not just activity.

January 6, 2026

The Great Outdoors: Why the Most Productive Manufacturing Sales Happen Outside the Office

The most productive selling in manufacturing doesn't happen behind a desk. It happens in the field - on factory floors, in engineering offices, over lunch with customers, and during plant tours where real problems and opportunities reveal themselves. Your top sales reps already know this. Face-to-face meetings drive manufacturing sales in ways that Zoom calls and email exchanges simply cannot match. A single visit to a customer's factory yields more actionable information than ten virtual meetings. Lunch with your customer's engineering team unlocks more opportunities than any email thread ever could.

December 30, 2025

Maximizing Trade Show ROI - or How to Waste a $250K Investment

Your company just invested $250,000 to exhibit at your industry's premier trade show. Flights, hotels, booth design, show support staff, swag, meals, the works. All your best customers walked by. All your best prospects stopped to talk. Three days of concentrated, high-stakes opportunity. Now your team is flying home with 512 badge scans and a tote bag full of business cards. What happens next will determine whether that quarter-million-dollar investment generates meaningful return or joins the long list of "seemed like a good idea at the time" marketing expenses.

December 23, 2025

The Quoting Speed Problem: Why Most Manufacturers Take Too Long to Quote Custom Products

You just left a great customer meeting. They need a quote on a make-to-order product. The opportunity is real, the timing is right, and they're evaluating multiple suppliers. How fast can you get them a quote? For most manufacturers, the honest answer is five days or longer. Not because their teams aren't working hard or don't care about winning the business. But because they don't have the right tools for the job.