Epicor Help Desk Customers and Success Stories

Epicor Help Desk Customers and Success Stories

Barry-Wehmiller Design Group

“Without an overall view at the organization we couldn’t fully understand the financial aspect of our business. Epicor for Service Enterprises provides a consolidated picture of our financial and operational data.” Jim Meier, Partner and CTO, Barry-Wehmiller Design Group

Barry-Wehmiller Design Group (The Design Group) is a world leader in manufacturing automation and consulting services, providing industrial automation and engineering services to a wide variety of industries. The Design Group is a professional services division of parent company and conglomerate Barry-Wehmiller Company, one of the largest equipment automation companies in the world. The company’s highly-specialized consultants work with customers to provide services ranging from feasibility studies for packaging design to validation work for the consumer product, pharmaceutical, biomedical, and medical device industries.

Founded in 1986, the company has undergone controlled and consistent organizational growth over the years. As the company grew, business and technology needs matured and the company realized the manufacturing solution that was utilized across the Barry-Wehmiller companies was not a fit for The Design Group’s project-focused business. Specifically, The Design Group needed to use a multi-tier rate structure based on their business and client requirements.   

The Design Group evaluated ChangePoint from Compuware and PeopleSoft from Oracle, but selected Epicor for Service Enterprises primarily because of its usability and flexible technology foundation.

 Managing the People-Driven Business

The Design Group invests in its project managers and engineers, recruiting highly-trained professionals with direct industry experience that bring engineering and operational background that will relate directly to its customers’ needs. The Design Group uses Epicor for Service Enterprises to manage its diverse project portfolio and serves as the go-to resource for its projects engineers and managers.

Operating in a business where time is money, the company was already proficient in its time reporting processes. The Design Group leverages the straightforward time capture functionality in Epicor for Service Enterprises which enables its project managers to focus on contributing expertise to client projects rather than administrative work.

Using Epicor for Service Enterprises, managing expenses is more streamlined now. Each of The Design Group’s professionals are required to pay for project-related expenses such as travel and meals with a corporate credit card. The Design Group integrated Epicor for Service Enterprises with its employee credit card issuer. On a daily basis, The Design group downloads a list of charges from the issuer and the user assigns them to different projects based on the project associated with expense.

Tighter Project Accounting

The Design Group often bills with variable charge rates and required a solution that would allow them to set up project-specific rates. The Design Group may bill 20% on project initiation for a down payment and then follow up with time and materials billings.   “Previously we struggled with setting up billing rates for time and materials the way our business demanded,” said Meier. “Epicor for Service Enterprises provides a much better tool for project managers to run the business by automatically handling multi-tier rates and billing caps.”

Using Epicor for Service Enterprises, The Design Group has improved financial control and the consolidation processes. The ability to run all of its financial and project-related data through a single application greatly minimizes the time spent compiling financials into the general ledger, which used to take a combination of several different applications to complete. The Design Group built custom reports based on its precise business needs. Collecting information from Epicor for Service Enterprises, the reporting process is more streamlined that it was previously. “When it comes time to report project financials, everything is compiled with a click of a button or scheduled for delivery in an e-mail.”

Developing Strategic Advantage from Reliable Information

In addition to improving the efficiency of compiling financials, Epicor for Service Enterprises provides a comprehensive view of The Design Groups business which provides a strategic advantage. “Without an overall view at organization level we couldn’t fully understand the financial aspect of our business. Epicor for Service Enterprises provides a consolidated picture of our financial and operational data,” said Meier.