IN Archives - 2WTech

Dangers Of Running A Legacy ERP System

Sue Bresee — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 17:42:15 +0000

The decision to upgrade your legacy ERP system should never be taken lightly. There are upfront costs to consider, assimilation to your current business operations, a learning curve for your personnel and a slew of other stumbling blocks to overcome early in the transition process. But the rewards certainly outweigh the risks, especially considering the speed with which technology evolves in today’s day and age. Your business simply cannot idly stand by while technology, and the competition, continues to advance.

If a business is considering taking on a new technology or product for the organization, there is a lot of information available to help with the transition. What also must be considered is your current infrastructure and what changes are needed to be able to effectively take advantage of new technology trends. Manufacturers already are taking advantage of technological trends like big data, the Internet of Things and cloud solutions. However, as your business grows and technologies evolve, your legacy ERP system falls behind the demands needed to support daily functions. Legacy ERP systems can cause critical errors in data entry and manufacturing processes, and this works against what modern technology can achieve.
Furthermore, Legacy ERP systems are no longer patched which creates a security threat. Also, why spend money on new emerging trends that can help take your company’s technology to the next level while spending money trying to fix malfunctions in a legacy system? Legacy ERP systems don’t give you the automation of processes that are necessary to protect your company and its data. Epicor 10 already has updated its original version, and with every release, legacy systems fall further behind. Modern ERP systems are designed to help maximize current and sometimes future technology.
As a certified Epicor ERP partner and one of the only partners that still works with legacy ERP systems, 2W Tech can help your business get you off your legacy ERP and onto the newest version. Give us a call today.
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Choosing the Right ERP Solution to Support a Global Business Whitepaper

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Epicor 10.2 Boosts Smart Inventory Planning

Sue Bresee — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 23:45:39 +0000

The new release, Epicor 10.2, offers many new features and capabilities, all of which are intended to maximize business efficiency. Optimal inventory strategies are essential to drive profitability and growth and organizations need to compete in today’s day and age. One of the new features in Epicor 10.2 is Smart Inventory Planning and Optimization, which is an integrated set of cloud-based capabilities for demand planning, inventory optimization, and supply chain analytics. This allows businesses to drive best-practice sales and inventory operations planning (SIOP) and monitor myriad factors. By doing this, organizations can craft inventory policies and service levels that yield the lowest total cost.

The new package offers a new toolset for forecasting methodologies, optimization techniques, and consensus demand. Inventory planning is delivered via an easy-to-use interface accessible in any web browser, sticking with the ease of use theme that Epicor has been touting. Reporting and analytics provide inventory status to help uncover root causes of any operational inefficiencies, overstocks/understocks, excess inventory, order cancellations, and late deliveries.
To learn more about Smart Inventory Planning or any of the other features of Epicor 10.2, give us a call today. 2W Tech is a Certified Epicor ERP Partner and can help get you started on your installation or upgrade. Epicor 10.2 is now generally available.
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Best Practices for ERP Success Whitepaper

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Epicor ERP 10.2 Release Generally Available

Sue Bresee — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 16:23:49 +0000

After teasing us for a few months, Epicor ERP 10.2 release is now generally available. This version is intended to allow companies to compete and keep pace with all the digital transformations that are taking place. Businesses that adopt the latest technologies in cloud, analytics, and experiences will position their organization for growth for several years to come. New capabilities are offered with this cloud-first architecture such as ease of everything, enabling operational excellence and improved visibility to support organizations growth objectives. This release has many enhancements that continue to push the envelope on performance and quality with the user experience.

Highlights of this release include:

Cloud-first Strategy: New modules like Epicor Data Discovery, Epicor Field Service Automation, Epicor Payment Gateway, and Smart Inventory Planning and Optimization are built as cloud-first applications and offer new features and functionalities.
Globalization and Localization: This release rolls out of enhanced tooling to make it easier and simpler to add country-specific functionality (CSF) to support regulatory compliance and reporting.
Experiences: This version focuses on ease of use, product quality, streamlining and enhancing processes across the solution to help increase productivity and helps grow businesses. We also see the introduction of Epicor Active Home page which offers a new role based visual experience for users.
New data analytics: With this release is also the introduction of Epicor Data Discovery (EDD), a Business Intelligence solution intended to provide an extremely easy to use and intuitive data exploration, data visualization experience.
Ecosystem: Solution Manager has been enhanced with some new features for all users.
Deep industry focus: New and enhanced capabilities will be introduced, including Epicor FSA, Epicor Payment Gateway, CRM/SFDC integration Phase II, Epicor Smart Demand Planning and Inventory Optimization, and improvements to the Mattec MES-ERP Integration.
Ease of everything: Epicor provides ease of everything—deployment, training and education, support, maintenance and upgrades—that results in greater profitability, productivity, and growth.
Ease of learning: Epicor University focuses on a “blended” approach to learning for those upgrading to Epicor ERP 10.2, with a suite of tools designed to appeal to all types of learning styles and needs

Epicor ERP version 10.2 is now generally available and we encourage you to upgrade soon to begin reaping the benefits that will enable you to achieve greater outcomes for your business. 2W Tech is a Certified Epicor ERP partner and would be happy to work with your organization on your update. Give us a call today.
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Consulting for Epicor Solutions

Sue Bresee — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 16:15:09 +0000

Epicor delivers industry solutions that span manufacturing, distribution, retail, hospitality, and services with a focus on profitable growth and long-term business success. In today’s day and age, as technology is increasingly more sophisticated, more and more organizations are looking for solutions that best fit the needs of their organization. There is no denying that Epicor ERP is the best solution on the market for any sized Manufacturing businesses. The real question that these organizations face is what is the best approach to implementing and maintaining Epicor solutions.

Every business needs to look for an ERP Consultant that specializes not only in Epicor, but in the industry they work in. Regardless of what Epicor solution or service that is being implemented, these steps need to be followed:

Prepare: Requirement discovery and scope definition
Plan: Project and resource initiation and plan
Design: Education, configuration, business procedures, and proof of concept
Validate: User acceptance with preparation, testing and analysis
Deploy: End-user training, deployment and go-live, optimization, project close, and support hand-off

2W Tech provides a variety of Epicor services around implementation, training, process improvement, and software customization. We are also one of the only Epicor partners that specializes in Legacy ERP solutions. Give us a call today to see if 2W Tech would be a fit for your organization and your Epicor ERP needs.
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Is Running a Legacy ERP Dangerous?

Sue Bresee — Wed, 08 Nov 2017 14:11:44 +0000

Modern technology is upon us and with every passing day, new trends in technology are emerging. Manufacturers are already responding and implementing some of these trends such as big data, IoT, and cloud solutions, to name a few. With new emerging trends comes a lot of opinions and best practices talk, along with a benefit analysis for each. If a business is considering taking on a new technology or product in their organization, there is a lot of information available to help them to help with that evaluation. What isn’t discussed enough is your current infrastructure and what changes you need to make within that to be able to effectively take advantage of new technology trends. ERP systems are the heart of your infrastructure and if your heart is weak, the rest of your infrastructure can only be that strong.

As your business grows and technologies evolve, legacy ERP falls further behind the demands needed to support daily functions. Legacy ERP systems can cause critical errors in data entry and manufacturing processes, and this strongly works against what modern technology is trying to achieve. Legacy ERP systems are no longer patched and that is a security threat. Old systems are a liability due to unreliable maintenance. Why spend money on new emerging trends that can help take your technology to the next level, when simultaneously you are pouring money down the drain trying to fix malfunctions in your legacy system. Even if you are telling yourself that your ERP is running just fine, the minute you upgrade, you will realize this is not that case. Legacy ERP systems don’t give you the automation of processes that are necessary to protect your business and data. It is impossible to get anywhere when you take 2 steps forward, while taking 2 steps back at the same time.
Epicor 10 has already had a few updates to its original version release. With every release, legacy systems fall further and further behind. Modern ERP systems are designed to help maximize current and sometime future technology trends. Legacy systems are not. 2W Tech is a Certified Epicor ERP partner and one of the only partners that still work with Legacy ERP systems. We can help your organization create a business plan to get you off your Legacy ERP and onto the newest version. Until you are ready to do that, you are stuck in a technology rut and one that can ultimately harm your business and hinder your growth. Give us a call today.
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Manufacturing Software Uncomplicates

Sue Bresee — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 14:50:57 +0000

The Catch 22 in Manufacturing: You need ERP software but it also complicates your manufacturing environment. Once your business hits a certain size, you need ERP software to help connect all the departments of your business. Depending on the type of ERP system you are running, the level of complication varies. A system that handles and coordinates so many departments and data is bound to be complicated. Manufacturers by nature are simple creatures. They have an old-school mentality and in most instances, technology causes them more headaches than it alleviates. Manufacturing software can integrate with an ERP system and help simplify and maximize the efficiency of your overall environment.

In most factories, more than 99% of data is discarded without attempting to derive insights. Manufacturing software enables visibility into real-time production, so machine operators and managers can do their jobs better and run the business more effectively. It also helps improve shop floor performance by preventing errors from occurring and preventing defects that continue through the production process. When you can automate your systems, your data can be analyzed in real time allowing you to reduce waste and downtime, prevent failures, and improve output.
Epicor ERP is a solution that is designed for the manufacturing environment. Integrating manufacturing software into Epicor is an easy task and one that can really improve your manufacturing operations. Epicor already has many manufacturing modules built into the software so by integrating manufacturing software, you are essentially focusing on making the job of the employees on the shop floor easier. Their processes on the shop floor will be automated and you will help them better capture needed data without the redundancy of duplicating the data or having to use multiple systems. 2W Tech is a certified Epicor ERP partner and specializes in manufacturing solutions. Give us a call today to see how you can better automate your manufacturing operations and maximize your overall technology investments.
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Profitable Growth in Manufacturing

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Microsoft Azure Introduces Confidential Computing

Sue Bresee — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 15:51:18 +0000

Microsoft Azure Blog Series

One of the top concerns organizations have when considering implementing cloud technologies is security. Just last week, Microsoft announced Azure is the first cloud to offer new data security capabilities with a collection of features and services called Azure confidential computing. Confidential computing offers a protection new to public clouds, encryption of data while in use. This means that data can be processed in the cloud with the assurance that it is always under customer control.

Most security breaches can be traced to data that is accessed while in use, either through administrative accounts, or by leveraging compromised keys to access encrypted data. Microsoft has been working on confidential computing the last 4 years and felt it necessary to appease customers that were reluctant to move their most sensitive data to the cloud for fear of attacks against their data when it is in-use. Confidential computing protects again these 3 threats:

Malicious insiders with administrative privilege or direct access to hardware on which it is being processed
Hackers and malware that exploit bugs in the operating system, application, or hypervisor
Third parties accessing it without their consent

Confidential computing ensures that when data is “in the clear,” which is required for efficient processing, the data is protected inside a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE – also known as an enclave). This prevents data from being viewed from the outside, even with use of a debugger, and requires an authorization code to access the data. If the code is altered or tampered, the operations are denied and the environment disabled. The TEE enforces these protections throughout the execution of code within it. Microsoft already uses enclaves to protect everything from blockchain financial operations, to data stored in SQL Server, and our own infrastructure within Azure.
The number of data breaches are increasing month to month, so security needs to stay top of mind for all software vendors. Microsoft spends one billion dollars per year on cybersecurity and much of that goes to making Microsoft Azure the most trusted cloud platform. From strict physical datacenter security, ensuring data privacy, encrypting data at rest and in transit, novel uses of machine learning for threat detection, and the use of stringent operational software development lifecycle controls, Azure represents the cutting edge of cloud security and privacy. Microsoft is giving confidential computing access to customers through its Early Access Program, contact 2W Tech to find out more. 2W Tech is a Tier I Microsoft Cloud Solutions Provider and would be happy to discuss further benefits Microsoft Azure can offer your business.
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Best Practices in Disaster Recovery Whitepaper

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Scalability and Elasticity with Microsoft Azure

Sue Bresee — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 13:25:47 +0000

Microsoft Azure Blog Series

Estimating resources is a difficult thing to do and something organizations need to do often. It is particularly challenging in an IT environment when you stop to consider all the factors that have a role in dictating the resources used. Most businesses add and subtract employees monthly, sometimes planned but often unplanned. You do not want to pay for extra resources which may not be used, but neither do you want to lose business due to unexpected spikes in customer traffic. That is where Azure’s dynamic scalability and elasticity can solve both dilemmas and do it at an affordable price. Scalability includes the ability to increase workload size within existing infrastructure (hardware, software, etc.) without impacting performance.

With Microsoft’s Windows Azure Platform, you only pay for the time and capacity that you use and there are no capital expenditures necessary. You can scale your application up or down as needed as changes occur within your organization or within your circumstances. This is done by simply changing your application’s configuration or by utilizing Azure’s management API. The Windows Azure Platform will then handle the addition or reduction of instances for you.

Plus, there are the additional advantages of:

Reduced operational cost
Pre-configured platform managed by Microsoft
Completely integrable environment to support several platforms
Relinquishing operational concerns such as maintenance and availability, so you can focus on business logic
2W Tech support backed by Microsoft

Moving to the cloud is the wave of the future and to join the wave does not have to be costly or a waste of limited resources. You can make use of as much or as little cloud services as you need while meeting the demands of your customers. Discover the possibilities that the Windows Azure Platform offers. Give 2W Tech a call today and get started with the benefits Azure can offer your business. 2W Tech is a Tier I Microsoft Cloud Solutions Provider.

Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Azure IaaS

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Microsoft Azure Offers Load Balancing

Sue Bresee — Thu, 31 Aug 2017 16:22:18 +0000

Microsoft Azure Blog Series

Load balancing is when a device acts as a reverse proxy and distributes network or application traffic across several servers. Load balancers are used to increase capacity (concurrent users) and reliability of applications. They improve the overall performance of applications by decreasing the burden on servers associated with managing and maintaining application and network sessions, as well as by performing application-specific tasks. Load balancers ensure reliability and availability by monitoring the health of applications and only sending requests to servers and applications that can respond in a timely manner. You need at least two backend servers for high availability, and your load balancer will ensure that if one backend isn’t functioning, the traffic will be directed to the other backend.

Microsoft Azure provides multiple services for managing how network traffic is distributed and load balanced. Load Balancer is an integral part of the Azure SDN stack, providing high-performance, low-latency Layer 4 load-balancing services for all UDP and TCP protocols. It manages inbound and outbound connections. You can configure public and internal load-balanced endpoints and define rules to map inbound connections to back-end pool destinations by using TCP and HTTP health-probing options to manage service availability. Because Load Balancer is in front of the high-availability cluster, only the active and healthy endpoint for a database is exposed to the application. Additionally, a database administrator can optimize the workload by distributing active and passive replicas across the cluster independent of the front-end application. Load Balancer delivers connections to the high-availability cluster and ensures that only healthy databases receive connection requests.
Azure Load Balancer can:

Give you control over how inbound communication is managed.
Instantly reconfigure itself when you scale instances up or down.
Can probe the health of the various server instances. When a probe fails to respond, the load balancer stops sending new connections to the unhealthy instances. Existing connections are not impacted.

Load balancing is just one benefit Microsoft Azure can bring to your business. 2W Tech is a Tier I Microsoft Cloud Solutions Provider and can help get your organization started reaping the benefits from Azure.
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Finding Success in the Cloud

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Geographic Redundancy Security and Your ERP

Sue Bresee — Thu, 31 Aug 2017 15:09:56 +0000

Microsoft Azure Blog Series

With Ransomware making the headlines so frequently over the last year, with natural disasters such as the flooding in Texas happens, data security has become the top concern businesses are facing today. Your ERP system is the heart of your organization’s technology and the keeper of your most important data. Protecting your data is not an easy task, especially since there are hundreds of various solutions offered. It is not easy to choose a solution and it’s not easy to understand all the different ways and areas of your business you need to secure. Many cloud providers are using geographic redundancy to secure your data, and if you have deployed a cloud ERP system, your ERP data as well.

Simply put, geographic redundancy is operating at more than one geographic location, as a form of redundancy in case one site fails. Today’s cloud providers may eliminate server-level points of failure, but they don’t all have an answer for data center or city-level points of failure. If a cloud provider uses a single datacenter with no data replication to other diverse locations, then there is no ability to recover from a geographic event. You need a provider that has multiple datacenters, can successfully transition operations from one datacenter to the other, and do so without any disruption to your business. Geographic redundancy is disaster avoidance and by employing this method, you are getting your organization ahead of needing a disaster recovery solution. Microsoft Azure’s geographic redundancy allows for automatic failover between data centers of mission critical services including applications, databases, and websites to multiple remote datacenters. This failover happens between cities at the server and network level, without changing IP addresses, and with no human intervention whatsoever. This allows for zero detectable downtime.
The Azure Platform is supported by a growing network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. Microsoft has decades of experience running services such as Bing, Office 365, and Outlook.com. Microsoft has invested $15 billion (USD) in global datacenter infrastructure and Azure is already available in 140 countries. There are many benefits Microsoft Azure can bring to your organization and these benefits can extend to your Epicor ERP system as well. Running your Epicor ERP system on the Azure cloud will allow for you to no longer maintain equipment on your existing servers and minimize your footprint locally, instead focusing that time on your customers. 2W Tech is a Tier I Microsoft Cloud Solutions Provider and a Certified Epicor ERP Partner and can help you manage your Epicor ERP system on the Azure cloud. Give us a call today to learn more benefits your organization can gain by making this deployment switch.
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