Epicor says its customers should stop thinking about the company as just an ERP provider. That was the throughline when George Olaru, Vice President of Solution Engineers, and Lance Hutt, Vice President of Sales for Strategic Applications, joined Karthik Chidambaram on the Driven by DCKAP podcast. The conversation covered Epicor’s new Agent Foundry, how the company handles data governance as AI adoption spreads, and why its sales team is trained to know when to walk away from a deal.
Podcast Highlights
A portfolio, not just an ERP
Companies often approach Epicor expecting a single ERP system and nothing more, Olaru said. That framing misses most of what the company offers. “They may have these procedures that are written on Word documents that are not really easily trainable for new employees,” said Olaru, describing gaps that Epicor’s broader application portfolio is built to close.
His advice to prospects is simple: start with the business problem, not the feature list. “Let’s talk about the business challenges rather than only asking us about features and functions,” Olaru said.
Trust Travels With the Data
As customers connect ERP data to outside AI tools, security becomes a live question rather than a hypothetical one. Olaru does not pretend otherwise. “There’d always be security concerns,” he said, adding that Epicor routes that access through its own layers so governance stays intact.
“Governance, auditability, traceability, reversibility, that all stays with us, and that’s what we feel is really important and critical for all the customers regardless of what AI strategy they want to deploy,” Olaru said.
Knowing When To Walk
Hutt described a sales process shaped by the book Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play, which pushed his team to focus on the customer’s actual problem instead of the sale itself. He pointed to a recent case: a large hardware manufacturer already mid-implementation with a competitor’s ERP across 18 facilities, who came to Epicor after acquiring a business it had no capacity to absorb. “After a little bit of discovery, we identified very quickly that Kinetic was the right fit,” Hutt said. “Within 30 days, we were up and down in the sales cycle on a Kinetic sale, which is all based on the trust that we’ve built over the years with the customer.”
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About the Driven by DCKAP Podcast:
The Driven by DCKAP Podcast is an audio and video show that explores B2B leaders’ stories, digital journeys, and insights on trends in distribution and manufacturing. The podcast is hosted by Karthik Chidambaram, Founder and CEO of DCKAP, who grew the company from a startup to a global team of more than 200 employees.
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About DCKAP:
DCKAP is a leader in digital solutions that help distributors’ systems talk to each other. Its technology simplifies software integrations, e-commerce, and product information management for B2B companies. DCKAP’s flagship product, DCKAP Integrator, helps distributors and manufacturers automate data between ERP, e-commerce, and CRM systems. Founded in 2005, DCKAP is a global and distributed team headquartered in Austin, TX.
Visit dckap.com or follow on LinkedIn.
About Epicor:
Epicor Software Corporation is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software company founded in 1972 and headquartered in Austin, Texas. Epicor builds industry-specific ERP and business software for the manufacturing, distribution, retail, and services industries, including its Kinetic, Prophet 21, and Eclipse ERP solutions, alongside a portfolio of strategic applications such as EDI, GROW, and Kyklo.
Visit epicor.com.
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