The Path Ahead: Infusing Business Applications with Artificial Intelligence

At Epicor, we're collaborating with customers and technology partners on how best to infuse our ERP platforms with artificial intelligence (AI). Our current use cases for artificial intelligence go across our ERP platforms to address business challenges that many customers experience every day.

Epicor customers use AI and ERP together to:

  • Reduce the time to value in learning an ERP system
  • Drive better inventory decisions internally
  • Collaborate with suppliers
  • Automate manual data and document processes for improved data quality and decision-making
  • Better anticipate customer demand and buying decisions

These use cases are just the beginning of how Epicor is infusing artificial intelligence into our ERP platforms.

Let’s look at one of the new AI-infused applications we will be releasing in preview this spring, Epicor Knowledge Assistant.

“We foresee a more diverse workforce growing. Workers can use AI tools to make themselves stronger contributors. Neurodiverse workers, seniors, or even less well-educated candidates can now work faster, better, and with higher productivity.”

Gartner’s Top Strategic Predictions for 2024 and Beyond—Living with the Year Everything Changed, by Daryl Plummer, Frances Karamouzis, and 36 more. 23 November 2023.

Epicor Knowledge Assistant

Epicor Knowledge Assistant is a new artificial intelligence feature that offers Epicor users a faster and easier way to access relevant information from Epicor documentation. 

Instead of browsing through multiple pages of help search results, you and your team can simply ask Knowledge Assistant a question and get a concise and practical answer. Information is delivered in the ERP platform in the context of where the user is, without requiring them to leave the screen they are on. This tool offers access to all available Epicor learning and help content, without having to answer additional questions.

Epicor’s Knowledge Assistant is powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI with ChatGPT-4, cutting-edge technology that enables natural language processing (NLP) and generative chat.

When you ask Knowledge Assistant a question, it uses Azure AI Search to find the most relevant Epicor documentation articles that match your query. Then, it uses Azure OpenAI Chat GPT-4 to quickly read the articles and provide an answer for you.

This saves you and your team from the tedious process of looking through lists of articles to find an answer—instead, the information you need is served up immediately, along with the opportunity to go deeper into a topic. Knowledge Assistant  only uses Epicor-supplied sources, such as help guides, user manuals, and technical documents, to help ensure the accuracy, reliability, and security of the answers.

Knowledge Assistant saves you time and effort when you need to learn something new or troubleshoot a problem in Epicor. Whether you are a beginner or a power user, you can ask Knowledge Assistant any question related to Epicor and get a clear and helpful answer. For example, you might ask, “How do I create a part?” and get the exact steps needed to create a part record in Epicor Kinetic. Or you can ask, “How do I return a dataset from an Epicor function?” and receive detailed instructions, including code snippets.

Your team gets the information more quickly, allowing them to return to the task at hand. In addition, Knowledge Assistant supports over 100 languages. Knowledge Assistant will be available for selected customers in the spring releases of Epicor Kinetic and Epicor Prophet 21.

AI-Infused ERP

Our combination of industry-expert ERP, industry data platform, and artificial intelligence is what sets Epicor apart. Let’s look at our deep industry partnerships for developing AI-infused ERP.

Deep Partnerships

Epicor is developing artificial intelligence use cases with the leading companies in the world, like Microsoft, OpenAI, and Workato.

We're partnering with Workato to implement their new AI for Work technology within Epicor Automation Studio. Our teams have collaborated with Microsoft and OpenAI to understand the underlying AI that drives Copilot and ChatGPT 4. We've explored the technology's functionalities through proof-of-concept projects, ultimately leading to the development of our Knowledge Assistant. Integrating these advancements presents challenges, but the potential of AI to reshape our business landscape is undeniable. AI adoption is a gradual process, and we're committed to maximizing its capabilities beyond basic rules-based chatbots.

While Microsoft is creating these artificial intelligence tools, Epicor is applying artificial intelligence to solve real-world business problems. As the industry-leading ERP platform for make, move, and sell economies, Epicor is building AI-driven platforms that leverage leading-edge technologies to bridge the gap between business intelligence and actionable insights. This unlocks valuable data that was previously too difficult to analyze, ultimately driving better business outcomes.

Sophisticated Industry Data Logic

Epicor's data platform delivers a significant advantage for adopters of AI. Unlike other generic ERP systems, our data is meticulously organized and aligned to specific industries—like a library that is perfectly categorized—but here instead of books and periodicals, it's data relevant to your industry. This highly verticalized structure, with strong connections between data points, makes it simple for AI to retrieve, learn, and generate accurate insights.

Epicor's expertise in production, distribution, and retail gives us a major advantage. While competitors may struggle to train their AI models on industry nuances, our platform is completely ready to go. This technology delivers faster results and scales alongside your business growth.

And the benefits go beyond just ease of use. Epicor's sophisticated data structure allows us to tackle a major challenge with AI technology: hallucinations. This is where AI generates inaccurate or completely made-up information. Our approach combines advanced data retrieval methods with fact-checking. 

In simpler terms, this means Epicor AI builds on myriad data points, facts, and industry training. We use industry-specific data and leverage strategic partnerships to ensure the information is accurate and consistent. 

Epicor offers the advantage of specialized AI that understands your industry and can deliver fact-based guidance.

Embrace AI with Confidence

At Epicor, our 50+ years of experience combined with the latest AI technology and industry data gives your company the Insight Advantage.

Epicor's AI-powered ERP streamlines data for faster, quicker insights. Forget struggling with multiple systems, machine data, and business cubes. Here, everything integrates seamlessly for speed and accuracy so you can spend less time data-wrangling and more time managing processes that AI can’t. 

With Epicor ERP, teams work collaboratively alongside machines and AI bots. Machines get reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLFH) and humans get machine-generated insights. It’s machines adapting to people, not the other way around.

The result? A critical competitive edge. Epicor AI is a total game-changer for your business. Ready to see what Epicor AI can do for you? Learn more about our industry-focused solutions and the Epicor promise to drive 10x value for you and your business.

Mark Jensen
Director of Product Marketing

Mark is a Product Management and Marketing leader with over 25 years of experience in ERP software. He started his ERP career at Great Plains Software and worked at Microsoft after they acquired Great Plains. Mark has been at Epicor for over 8 years and leads a global, cross-functional Product Marketing team bringing Epicor products to market. 

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