Every business measures performance to some degree, but business performance management (BPM) is more than measurement. BPM is both passive measurement and active performance management. Vantage includes the tools you need for reporting and analysis, and real-time monitoring and triggers to generate alerts when a metric or process is outside a pre-established tolerance.

Business Intelligence
Shortening time-to-market. Reducing costs. Achieving zero-defects. Improving customer service. These forces have created a new level of urgency for clear understanding of your company’s performance. Business Intelligence (BI)—powered by the CorVu™ business intelligence engine—emphasizes the active use of the right information at the right time for the right person, to proactively guide and adjust the course of the business, rather than passively measure its progress.

BI can transform your data into actionable information. Quickly access and analyze your company’s data. Disseminate critical information in easy to read formats. Isolate pertinent information from a sea of data. Review data analysis from several perspectives (e.g., financial, production, internal, external). Create indicators to measure progress against strategic goals.

Workflow Management
Vantage takes into account the real-life circumstances that define your complex and dynamic manufacturing environment, both during planning and the actual process. Embedded within Vantage is a comprehensive and flexible workflow solution that gives you the tools you need to respond quickly to critical business requirements. The workflow facilities available within Vantage enable you to quickly begin managing and automating even the most complex business processes, including working toward ISO certification.

Task Management
Systematically automate and execute routine processes using a set of tools provided by Vantage. The inherent systematic nature of processing tasks via these tools contributes to the speed, consistency, accuracy, and ability to document procedures for regulatory compliance.

Business Performance Management
The BPM provides a wizard-driven interface to specify conditions and actions that modify the behavior of business logic methods. If you have ever set up rules using a wizard in Microsoft® Office® you will catch on to the BPM wizard immediately. Based on a specific condition, for example, “if this method is called by a specific user,” you can trigger an action. Here are just a few examples:

• Send an e-mail (you set up variables for what is in the e-mail and to whom it will be sent)
• Call an Epicor Service Connect workflow
• Invoke a .NET method
• Execute 4GL code
• Create a specific task

Service Connect
Workflow and Business Integration Platform Epicor Service Connect is a business integration platform, functioning as a central integration point for secure workflow orchestrations within Epicor® applications as well as external connectivity to Epicor and non-Epicor applications. Users can automate tasks and processes within the application to promote lean principles, continuous performance initiatives and Six Sigma quality within the organization or across the supply-chain. Service Connect lets employees focus on value added activities and management by exception instead of repetitive data (re)entry tasks.

Built to support collaborative processes, Service Connect links different business entities, applications or users using open, industry wide standards and technology that enables businesses to deploy solutions—confident that their investment will remain in tact for the future. Service Connect harnesses the openness of XML and includes service-bus functionality for Security, Messaging, Orchestration, Transformation, Scheduling, Notification, and Exception Handling to deliver rock-solid reliability combined with ease of use.

Service Connect, a rapid platform for incorporating workflow and system orchestration through visual designers with little to no programming effort.

Dashboard
Dashboard encompasses multiple different capabilities such as inquiries, ad-hoc reports, workbenches, graphical analysis, tactical business intelligence, alerts and business monitoring in a single entity. It is a robust one-stop interface that replaces traditional menu systems with personalized role- or context-based views and links into core transactions of the system. In addition, it puts the visual indicators and functions you use the most right at your fingertips. Tooled with unique flexibility, the Dashboard enables users to develop their own workbenches using a series of online views of information such as a tracker. From a tracker, “open with” technology is deployed to drill into any part of the system, whether it is to enter a new order, modify an existing one, or update a customer record. The power of the Dashboard is in how it enables users to specify how they work and tailor their workspace to fit their needs.

The power of the Dashboard is in its ability to act much like the instrument cluster of your car. The Dashboard is used to provide real-time exception-driven indicator flags which alert you to possible problems in your business. From these business activity indicators, you will be able to easily drill down to appropriate parts of the system to see more information.

Through integration with the Internet, the Dashboard is also fully customized to help drive your daily activities. From monitoring your employee intranet site to live access to industry-related Web sites, the Dashboard contains the information you and your employees need to more proactively run your business.

Optionally replacing traditional menu systems, the Dashboard is quick and easy-to-use. In fact, you can use the Dashboard as your default view to your daily workflow. By integrating access to all of your favorite functions, third-party applications such as Microsoft Word and Excel®, and online help topics, the Dashboard puts tremendous power in the hands of users and makes your Vantage solution one of the easiest applications to use.