Management Overview Flexibility and agility are essential for any business operating locally, regionally, or globally. Epicor s iscala ERP offers a flexible and agile sales solution designed to support modern business processes, globally. iscala Management is designed to support international sales activities across many different industries, from almost any size of office. Your sales cycle consists of several different value add activities, each of which may be unique to the way your organization operates and the order may need to vary depending on the type of sale being supported. In some scenarios your sales process may start when your team engages with the customer for the first time. In other scenarios the process may start by creating a sales quote, either via integration with a CRM solution (such as the separately available iscala CRM) or as a quote created directly into iscala. The quote may go through a number of revisions before being accepted by your customer and being converted into an order. Other activities can include adjusting the pricing and negotiation payment terms. If you regularly trade with the same customers your sales process may start by creating sales contracts to regulate sales terms and. As well as offering support for all of these scenarios, iscala supports orders for service items, entered via the iscala Management module or via the more comprehensive iscala Service Management module; or project related sales orders linked to complex sales projects in iscala Project Management. Whatever the process, at some stage a sales order is created. At this point iscala confirms the price and suggested discount. Comprehensive pricing and discounting functionality provides your sales team with the tools they need to offer the right prices to your customers with highly flexible rules based discounting schemas supported for full control. To ensure that the customer can pay for the goods or service your company provides you may require an advanced payment or the completion of several credit status reviews checking your customer s credit status against a predefined credit limit. About Epicor Epicor is a global leader delivering business software solutions to the manufacturing, distribution, retail, hospitality, and services industries. Founded in 1984, Epicor serves 20,000 customers in more than 150 countries, providing solutions in over 30 languages. Customers often require delivery of products in a variety of units of measure (UofM). This may be as a result of specific customer demands or warehousing and packaging requirements. iscala lets you sell in whatever UofM your customers desire. The UofM defined on the sales order is carried all the way through to the picking and shipping of the order. Regulation governing the distribution of goods locally, regionally and globally is increasing all the time. Sellers and distributors are no longer fully responsible for the sales process. They can now be held accountable for how the goods are used. To support this governance without complex additional activities, iscala supports controlled distribution and can check export control against registered customer export certificates and product restrictions simplifying your compliance activities.
iscala supports many different fulfillment strategies including: hard allocation of goods on hand; creation of work orders to support MTO, ATO or ETO environments: sourcing goods from your own central warehouse: or purchasing goods from suppliers (possibly via drop shipment). iscala enables your business to also manage inventory you have not yet purchased from your suppliers via vendor managed inventory (VMI) and to track your own goods while at your customer s locations via customer managed inventory (CMI) providing your customer with a cost efficient order fulfillment strategy. Once the goods or services have been delivered the invoice is created and the debt is transferred to the financials system for settlement. iscala supports these requirements by integrating into other modules such as Material Management, Manufacturing, Supply Chain Tools and Financials. Many businesses operate internationally with customers who speak different languages, use different currencies and where the tax treatment of local and foreign customers is different. Epicor software is used in over 150 countries and territories around the globe partially due to its international trading capabilities. You can print sales orders and invoices in the language of your customers, even though the iscala screens show the language of your staff. You can change transaction currency in the sales order, sales invoice and even accept final payment in another currency. The tax support available in iscala is amongst the most flexible and powerful of any ERP solution. Features Sales Quotation In many businesses a sales quotation is produced and sent to the customer before the final sales order is agreed. In iscala sales quotations are treated as a special type of sales order so that all the normal customer and product related pricing and discounts etc. are taken into account. When your customer accepts a quotation then your sales team can log into iscala and convert the quote to a confirmed sales order by changing the order type as long as the validity date of the quotation has not expired. In iscala a sales order is used to record your agreement to supply goods or services to your customers according to certain criteria such as an agreed shipping date, sales price, discount, delivery method, etc. The conditions may come from a sales contract (which can also reserve goods and define price). As well as traditional sales orders iscala supports other order types including repeat orders, credit orders (with reference to RMA if needed) and back orders (if the ordered goods are not currently available). Some of the many scenarios supported include where one customer places an order for delivery to a different customer or a different delivery address (where your customers run centralized purchase planning for multiple locations) or where a customer places an order that should be packaged for delivery to a distribution centre but split ready for onward forwarding. The customer that receives your invoice could be different again (e.g. customer s HQ). Bills of Material in iscala Management supports the ATO, MTO and ETO processes. As part of this Stock Bills of Material (BOM) in iscala Material Management Stock Bills of Material and production BOMs can be used to define logical or physical groupings of multiple products. These same BOM structures are available for use in iscala Management, including the ability to pre-define open item lists and accessory lists that can then be configured by your staff when they enter sales orders/quotations. Simple or complex BOM configurations can be reused from old orders allowing sales staff to create copies of existing orders easily. Flexible Pricing and Discounting The way you calculate sales price and discounts can be key to how you retain your customers and promote new items. In iscala you can set up many price lists, each individually calculated or linked in some way such as based on currency conversion or percentage differences. You can link different customers to price lists to simplify administration without losing the flexibility you need. Discounts can be as simple as a fixed percentage reduction on order or order line-level, or complex based on the value and/or quantity of goods they purchase in a period. Customers who purchase above a predefined value within a promotional period may receive further discounts. iscala also enables sales order pricing and discounting to be managed using Sales Contracts that control the item prices and discounts that should be applied to the sales order. Controlled Distribution iscala includes tools to assist your business meeting any controlled distribution and export controls regulations, allowing your organization to manage the sale and distribution of products to your customers. The iscala export control capability is based on a three dimensional matrix allowing you to define and manage relationships between customers, products, and countries. Licensed customers will be able to take delivery of controlled products in specific countries. Non-licensed customers will not be able to receive delivery of controlled products without prior approval, for example specific types of narcotics may only be shipped to hospitals or other advanced care facilities if these facilities are licensed and the destination country is not subject to an embargo. Authorized users are able to approve delivery of export blocked order lines. In most businesses items go through a life-cycle
consisting of several different phases. Each of these phases can be defined to control the sale and distribution of the product, for example a prototype can be flagged as a prototype and blocked for sale. iscala allows your company to define item life-cycle phases that match your business requirements. Stock Allocation If you are using iscala Supply Chain Tools then you will have access to Available-To-Promise (ATP) calculations during contract and order entry, otherwise you can view the planned stock transactions when entering the sales order. Once you have finalized a shipment date you need to ensure that the goods are not accidentally picked and shipped against a different sales order. In iscala your staff can select either hard or soft allocation. The difference is that soft allocation makes a general reservation against the available quantity for sale whilst hard allocation reserves the goods against specific serial numbers or batches of items. iscala Picking Module helps control allocation by preventing changes to sales orders during picking. Credit Control If you were always to accept sales orders without checking your customer s ability to pay then you would soon run out of funds and become bankrupt. Credit control is the process of ensuring that you only deliver to customers who can pay for the goods. You may do this informally if you only sell to a small number of large companies who you know through long term relationship. Alternatively, if you only sell to sister companies then you know that their credit rating is good. However, very often the sales person does not have a detailed knowledge about the ability of the customer to pay. In iscala your finance or credit team can set credit limits for each customer in iscala. iscala customers can take advantage of the business object plug-in capabilities in iscala to add in additional credit control check points. This combined with the standard iscala Credit Control feature can be used to ensure that goods do not get shipped if the customer has more debt than is approved. It can also be used to warn sales people if they are entering a sales order that takes a customer above their limit so that they can use to dialogue to request settlement of prior deliveries. The iscala Credit Control feature is fully integrated into iscala Financials and supports maintaining a single credit limit even where sales are valued in different currencies or are shipped to different locations. Credit management can be further enhancement through the addition of the iscala Credit Control Module that enables more comprehensive credit exposure management, for example setting credit limits that span multiple iscala companies or customers. Picking and Delivery If your sales team has already hard allocated goods then the picking lists will advise the warehouse staff of this so that the correct goods are picked. If you do not use hard allocation then you can select the preferred picking order of batches and serial numbered items so that the oldest or soonest to expire items are picked first. Once picked you can print standard transportation documentation for use by your logistics companies and print the customs documents needed if you are shipping across international borders. The UofM defined on the sales order line is specified on the picking lists and used during the picking and shipping of the sales order. Finally, if an appropriate iscala connectivity solution is installed the details of the shipment can be sent to your customer for them to use as an Advanced Shipment Note (ASN). Picking can be automated within the warehouse with the iscala Collect bar-code and warehouse management solution. Invoicing Once goods have been picked, your staff can create the sales invoice. Using the appropriate Service Connect integration packs, iscala customers can send invoices in XML format electronically. The creation and distribution of the customer sales invoices can be triggered manually or electronically by one of more business events such as the confirmation of the picking process. iscala has a very flexible reporting engine so that almost any business preference and legally required detail can be presented. This can include your company logos and other graphics as well as textual information. The invoice is calculated using the iscala tax engine and will automatically reflect the correct sales price based on the shipped quantity. Once the invoice is created it can be posted to the iscala Sales Ledger for accounting and debt collection. Prepayments, early payment discounts, settlement via post dated cheque or promissory note and many other variations on the settlement process are supported. Consolidated Invoicing Often your customers will place a number of orders and ask that you send them a single invoice. In iscala you can easily combine the invoicing of multiple shipments from multiple sales orders for the same invoice customer into a single invoice. Order History If your sales orders are small and normally different then your sales people might enter each order in its entirety. For larger orders from regular customers, your sales people might find it easier to copy old orders and then make whatever changes they need to. iscala can store a complete order history so that your sales people can easily look up and re-print old orders as well as use such orders as templates for repeat business. It is possible to store the complete order
details, including the components that made up any BOM items, or to store a compressed history with less detail, for use as the basis of sales and operational forecasting (S&OP). If you were to keep a detailed history, you still have the option to compress the data at a later date for archival and storage. Order Statistics Of course you need to support today s sales. Most companies want to also track details of what items and quantities were ordered, confirmed, shipped, sold and invoiced and then use this to create future sales forecasts. iscala Statistics, part of iscala Material Management, includes support to record detailed sales information and then present this as useful summary information. The data can also be exported to external forecast and S&OP engines for more detailed analysis. Additional Information, is a leading, globally available ERP solution fully supported by Epicor s Signature implementation methodology. A set of migration tools is available for existing Scala customers who wish to migrate or upgrade to the latest release. For further details please contact your local Epicor representative or visit www.epicor.com.
DETAILED FEATURES Sales Quotation Integrate with CRM Same discount and price engines Simple conversion from quote to order Unlimited quotes per customer Direct entry of sales order Can integrate with ecommerce Sell in any currency Ship to customer s preferred location Order can identify how to package delivery ready for customer s DC Integrated to purchasing and manufacturing View stock available to sell Integrated with iscala ATP Integrated with iscala Lead Time Model Integrated with iscala Sales Contracts Can soft and hard allocate goods at time of sale Sales Notes can be created for the order or order line Sales Returns Integrate with Returns Management System Record return code and RMA Integrated to iscala Material Management to track returned items Bill of Material Sell standard package of goods Accessory and open item lists Can have fixed price or rollup Offer promotional packages including free goods Pricing and Discounting Price lists can run for promotional periods Price lists can be customer specific Reason for non-application of discount automatically noted Value per order discount Value over period discount Volume based discounts Controlled Distribution Automate what products can be sold Track which customers have export licenses Permission control delivery authorization and release process Credit Control Warn during order entry if customer over credit limit Credit review prior to creation of picking list Group credit management if used with Central Warehouse Works even if sales are in multiple currency Picking and Delivery Picking in user defined format Picking by named batch/serial number if hard allocated Print transport and customers documentation Send shipment details to customer to process as ASN Invoicing Pro-forma invoices available Invoicing in any currency (can be different from order) Flexible invoice printing formats Calculation of tax Consolidated invoicing across multiple orders/shipments Invoices can be future dated if printed in advance Statistics Details of full order life-cycle Date, quantity, item, value, etc. quoted, ordered, shipped and invoiced Export to Forecast or S&OP systems Worldwide Headquarters 18200 Von Karman Avenue, Suite 1000 Irvine, California 92612 USA Toll Free: +1.800.999.1809 Phone: +1.949.585.4000 www.epicor.com Latin America and Caribbean Blvd. Antonio L. Rodriguez #1882 Int. 104 Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, CP 64650 Mexico Phone: +52.81.1551.7100 Fax: +52.81.1551.7117 Europe, Middle East and Africa No. 1 The Arena Downshire Way Bracknell, Berkshire RG12 1PU United Kingdom Phone: +44.0.1344.468.468 Fax: +44.0.1344.468.010 Asia 238A Thomson Road #23-06 Novena Square Tower A Singapore 307684 Singapore Phone: +65.6333.8121 Fax: +65.6333.8131 Australia and New Zealand Level 34 101 Miller Street North Sydney NSW 2060 Australia Phone: +61.2.9927.6200 Fax: +61.2.9956.8976 Disclaimer: This document and its contents, including the viewpoints, dates and functional content expressed herein are believed to be accurate as of its date of publication, October 2009. However, Epicor Software Corporation makes no guarantee, representations or warranties with regard to the enclosed information and specifically disclaims any implied warranties of fitness for a particular purpose and/or of quality. All information contained herein is subject to change without notice. Where reference is made in this document to other Epicor products or third party products, you should refer to the documentation available from Epicor or the third party (as the case may be) for details of such other products. The usage of any Epicor Software shall be pursuant to an end user license agreement and the performance of any consulting services by Epicor personnel shall be pursuant to Epicor s standard services terms and conditions. Usage of the solution(s) described in this document with other Epicor or third party products may require the purchase of licenses for such other products. For further details please contact your local Epicor representative or visit www.epicor.com. Epicor is a registered trademark of Epicor Software Corporation. Scala and iscala are registered trademarks of Scala Business Solutions NV, an Epicor subsidiary. All other trademarks acknowledged. Copyright 2009 Epicor Software Corporation.