How Epicor Sees AI Moving ERP Toward Business Outcomes

Mike Hockett: Having spent over 20 years in business software technology, Carrie Jordan has seen B2B's digital transformation since back when e-commerce gained steam to today's rapid influx of AI powering nearly every major tech stack offering. She's the chief marketing officer and senior vice president of product at Epicore, which has long been a leader in equipping distributors with the ERP solutions they need. A nine-year company veteran, Thanks for listening to this edition of the MDM Amplify podcast.

Like what you just heard, you can find our entire episode library at mdm.com slash podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Carrie is my guest in this latest episode of the MDM Amplify podcast, which is all about elevating vendor voices and solutions that service distributors. Epicore is coming off of its 2026 Insights Conference held May 18th through the 21st in Nashville.

And that event serves as the company's biggest annual user conference. It brought together more than 4,000 Epicore users, partners, and team members for four days of keynotes, technical sessions, product demos and plenty of conversation about where business software is headed. And that's really the focus of this discussion. Carrie and I unpack Epicore's latest announcements around agentic AI, its Prism agent foundry cloud implementation program.

But the most valuable part of our conversation centers on a bigger shift in ERP from a system of record. Kerry, welcome to the MDM Amplify podcast. Kerrie Jordan: Thank you, Mike. I'm glad to be here.

Mike Hockett: I mentioned your name and title in the opening to this episode, but it's always nice to start these discussions with a guest introduction. So would you mind providing a quick bio of your role and responsibilities at Epicore? Kerrie Jordan: You bet. I'm happy to.

All right. So I am honored to serve as the chief marketing officer and the SVP of product at Epicor. And just a quick overview of Epicor. We're a global ERP, AI and industry solution provider for industrial businesses and distribution, ⁓ building supply, retail, and the automotive after space, ⁓ automotive aftermarket space.

Mike Hockett: what Epicore calls a system of outcomes. For distributors, that means moving beyond software that simply tells you what happened and toward a system that can flag risk, recommend action, and help teams make faster, better decisions. Kerrie Jordan: We're based in Austin, Texas. We have over 20,000 customers worldwide, and we've been in business for over 50 years.

And in my role, every day I get to work with companies around the world who make and move and sell the stuff that we rely on every day. I've been in software technology for over 20 years. How I got here, early in my career, I started at a company called Agile Software. Mike Hockett: Carrie also shares her perspective for more than two decades in business software on how AI compares with past waves of technology.

And we even discuss country music star Miranda Lambert. Enjoy. Kerrie Jordan: they were in the product life cycle management space or PLM. It was a great place to start.

feel like software can sometimes be of fairly intangible. ⁓ with my personality, I like to build things. ⁓ I like to create things that really drives me. And PLM software is really all about that ⁓ because it's what a company uses to trace an idea through to design, to pull together the raw material.

raw materials or the bill of materials to really create your products. And then ideally to have visibility through, you know, disposal or recycle and reuse. And while I was in the PLM space, my job was to interview company leaders who were using the software, writing customer case studies. And so, you know, an otherwise sort of intangible thing became very tangible for me through those stories, those people oriented stories about they build their entire careers on the software that they were using and were inventing things and innovating things and the drama sometimes it would go wrong.

⁓ it was really compelling and interesting. So Agile got acquired by Oracle. ⁓ And at that time I then expanded ⁓ focus from to the full supply chain management category and then ⁓ eventually ERP solutions and the variety of business applications that are a part of a portfolio of ERP, right? So there's like e-commerce, CRM, HCM, AI solutions.

And I also spent some time in some marketing agencies during my career. But today, leading marketing and product teams at Epicore, it is highly rewarding. I've been with Epicore now for over nine years. Both marketing and product are highly rewarding, similar to what I did in the very beginning.

And I've always carried this through my career. It's really starting with the customer and really understanding customer needs, how to deeply listen to them and to then incorporate their needs into what you build and then watch how it creates value or doesn't and grow and improve and learn. So. That was always something that really stayed with me through my career.

Mike Hockett: Well, that's a wealth of expertise and perspectives over last, call it 20 years of your career here in, ⁓ like said, listening and hearing all these different stories. I can only imagine the number of case studies that you can kind of cite ⁓ over time, whether it's in distribution, like MDM's audience, or in manufacturing, or in retail, ⁓ a of ⁓ well-rounded background ⁓ Kerrie Jordan: I'll give you one. alarm products distributors. This is an Epicore customer, it's in the distribution space.

run Profit 21. They're a specialty electrical distributor. They supply components for alarm systems and associated products like networking equipment, switches, cabling, security cameras. They actually have two warehouse locations.

They're in Minnesota and they're in Texas. They serve customers across the US. They distribute. 55,000 product packages a year and each package can include up to 50 items each.

Before we started working with them, shipping was all paper-based. They didn't know how much it was costing the business. The staff would actually have to go to each courier's website in order to shop for the best delivery prices and schedules and options and it would take a long time and there were delays. So now they use Epicore Profit 21 and Epicore QuickShip.

They hold about 3.5 million in product stock across their distribution facilities. They use it to automate inventory, carrier rate shopping, optimizing spend. They have an average of 30 days of stock available to meet customer demand.

And ⁓ we were working with them, we all thought that the primary ROI was really going to be time saved. ⁓ as we continue to work with them, they were able to cut shipping costs ⁓ 7%, increase freight revenue by 17%, among other efficiencies. ⁓ This is just one example of these kinds of stories that when we work with our customers, can learn from them as to how we can better improve our solutions and really best serve the make, move, sell industry. Mike Hockett: That's perfect.

Well, we're recording this about a week after Epicore just wrapped its 2026 Insights Conference that was held May 18th through the 21st at the massive Gaylord Opryland in Nashville. That brought together, think it was cited at over 4,400 attendees that are comprised of a mix of distributor, manufacturer, and retail users of Epicore products, Epicore's technology partners, and more. for four days of education, networking, and an immense volume of product demos. I was happy to attend and interview Epicore product experts and a handful of distributor customers, and of course, wander the massive resort there.

There was so much interaction at the event, and I can only imagine how much work goes into hosting and planning a symposium like Insights was. So major kudos to Epicore's events team for a job well done. And I'm sure it's also a massive lift for the marketing team. So I have to ask, were you finally able to take a breather once the event ended and that of a week for you?

Kerrie Jordan: Yes, thank you. It was the largest conference that Epicore has ever hosted. So I'm just incredibly proud of the whole entire team. Everybody worked so hard to pull it together.

And I'm just so thankful that so many came, including you, to come see us and to reconnect. So it was great. I did take a breather. ⁓ I have a large extended family.

We all got together over Memorial Day weekend. So it was great to have that long weekend afterwards. Mike Hockett: I had to depart early Thursday morning, which was a tough turnaround for me after the high of attending the Miranda Lambert concert the night before. And my wife was able to tag along for that trip and she is a huge Miranda Lambert fan and we were basically front row for that concert.

So she had a blast and Miranda Lambert was a perfect featured entertainment to close out what was the last full day of insights. So I have to ask being leading the marketing side, did you get to meet Miranda Lambert? Kerrie Jordan: I did, I did. It was amazing.

I'm also a huge fan. I've been a huge fan for decades. She was so friendly. You know how they say like, don't meet your heroes, but this was incredible.

Like she was just so nice. I'll have to tell you. So, in addition to her music career, right, she has other business ventures. She has her Mutt Nation foundation.

She's raised over $13 million for pet adoption. She also has a line of clothing called Idle Wind. Your wife probably knows. When I was, When I was meeting Randall Lambert, I was wearing her brand.

Um, and when I walked up, she said, hi, I like your shirt. And I had to try to collect myself. I said, thank you. It's yours.

And she said, I know with this big smile, it was great. Mike Hockett: That's awesome. My wife and I, actually went to her bar on the Broadway Nashville strip there. My wife was like, we have to go here.

yeah, that's awesome. Well, MDM's audience is primarily comprised of distributor executives that are dealing with margin pressure, labor constraints, very high customer expectations for speed and transparency, of course ongoing supply chain complexity. With everything that came out of insights, what are you hearing from distributors about where legacy systems are really holding them back the most here? Kerrie Jordan: Yeah, so right on.

distributors do need to be very careful in order to control costs, to maintain business operations, to deliver on time for customers. Customers are increasingly requesting expedited orders. They're dealing with supply chain disruptions and labor challenges. So ⁓ what we're hearing from distributors about where legacy systems are really holding them back is sort of mostly around scale and lack of flexibility.

So What they've told us is that they need a system to support their growth as they're adding new facilities, as they're expanding markets or making acquisitions. ⁓ Another element is security and business resilience. They're worried about losing data or converting data if they were to move to a different system. ⁓ And of course, if they stay where they are, there's also the cybersecurity concerns, which is a massive risk to the business.

Then the other piece I'll mention is the customization. and the investment that they've made in their current system and then the time it would take to rebuild or to relearn a new system, obviously can't afford downtime, right? So they need a data conversion process that is rapid, that gives them transparency into the process and then easy tools to rebuild and recreate those new customizations or create new customizations in their new system. Mike Hockett: And then just backing up back to insights, days of excellent content and so much networking available there.

Was there ⁓ or two key themes or customer priorities that you maybe heard time and time again, any key themes that emerged from that event, ⁓ especially those distributor customers? Kerrie Jordan: Yeah, so among ⁓ distributors ⁓ of course the focus of the conference was ⁓ Hire and that is how do you elevate your business, take it to the next level ⁓ deal with the uncertainty to capture new revenue growth opportunities. So ⁓ lot of the conversation was around modernization and how do you take your business to that next level as far as the digital transformation and there were two.

⁓ primary topics that we were discussing that move to SAS if it's an organization that is running their system on premises. And that move to SAS is around security reasons, also taking advantage of the latest enhancements. So you're always on the latest upgrades available for that system. Then the other piece is, how can I leverage AI within Epicore Profit 21 or within Epicore Eclipse in a way that is meaningful and will be worth it?

How do I measure the ROI and what ROI can I expect? Mike Hockett: Yeah, hearing the same thing when we when we're interviewing ⁓ or just distributors about their ERP priorities, how they're approaching AI, very similar sentiments there. And on that messaging note, perhaps the biggest message that Epicore repeated throughout insights, especially on stage by CEO Steve Murphy, President Vaibhav. ⁓ I'm going butcher his name every time I try to do this, even though I ⁓ looked it before ⁓ leading up this, but ⁓ Can you pronounce Epi-Cles- Kerrie Jordan: And you were doing great, President Vaibhav Vohra.

Mike Hockett: ⁓ Yeah, it was the Vora that was throwing me off. Well, those two and yourself this message about how ERP is moving from a system of record to a system of outcomes. What does that mean in practical terms for a distributor or manufacturer that is running day-to-day operations? Kerrie Jordan: Yes, you're right.

This was a big focus of the keynotes. ⁓ So when we think about the evolution of ERP, it started out as a system of record, recording transactions. And that was really about what has happened in my business. ⁓ You could ask it, or you could look through the reports and dashboards and things and determine what has happened in the business.

ERP has since moved to a system of action. using analytics and business intelligence tools to create automated dashboards that help and give users ideas of what they could do ⁓ or to monitor ⁓ things that have happened in the past. ⁓ Moving to a system of outcomes means looking at ERP in terms of what it will help you accomplish in your business. So ⁓ in more practical terms, that system of record means ERP telling you what happened, system of outcomes means ERP telling you what the right thing is that could happen faster with less manual work, and it gives you recommendations as to how you can accomplish that.

So as an example, maybe the traditional ERP would say, here is the order status, right? But a system of outcomes, when it's enabled with AI, your ERP may say, it might send you a notification, it would surface up a recommendation, and it would say, for example, this order is at risk, here are the reasons why, here's what caused it. Do you approve this action that I recommend to recover this order? Another example could be your traditional system might show you that inventory is below the reorder point.

But an ERP that is enabled with AI and as a system of outcomes, it would send you a notification. It would say something like, demand is trending up, supplier lead time is slipping. and this PO should be pulled forward. ⁓ So for a distributor, this could look like, again, giving examples, your customer service representative might ⁓ those in the warehouse, can we promise this customer a Friday delivery?

And then the warehouse team, that CSR, they'd have to go check inventory, open order, supplier POs, warehouse capacity, cutoff times, credit status, right? They might have to then figure out what they could trade off, but... an ERP that is enabled with AI as a system of outcomes could say, yes, we can deliver by Friday, but only if we substitute from this other warehouse and we expedite this specific aspect of it and your impact to the margin is going to be XYZ, do you approve?

Right? And then you could take that action. So it's so much more about looking to the ERP to help you achieve the right outcome in your business, to align to your goals. Mike Hockett: Yeah, that extremely useful there and a quick sidebar here, cause you are on stage there at insights multiple times.

I think solo and with other Epicore staff, I've been doing increasingly more speaking engagements at industry conferences, but most of them have been pretty small scale events up to around 600 attendees or so. So I am curious to get your input on how challenging or intimidating it can be to be on stage addressing an audience of 4,000 people in a massive ballroom like at the Gaylord like you did, which you handled very well. And I know that it wasn't your first time, your first rodeo on that front.

So is it still intimidating or just have you done it enough times that it doesn't phase you at this point? Kerrie Jordan: ⁓ 4,000 people in the audience is definitely still intimidating. But you know, I scripted it out. We practiced.

We have a great supporting staff. Everybody really leans in and supports one another. And I've sort of learned to channel those nerves into excitement. And it's such a rush.

I really enjoy it now. Mike Hockett: Yeah, it's almost like if you're not nervous before doing anything like that, I feel like it's a good thing to be a little nervous, but not to the point where it's paralyzing. So I think you're right. Channeling it the right way there.

Epicore made a pair of ⁓ announcements the morning of May 19th during the conference, which included the introduction of an agentic stack that serves as the really the driving engine across ERP workflows within Epicore Prism. ⁓ Can you recap the details of that launch in a nutshell? Kerrie Jordan: You bet. Okay, so we were really excited to make this announcement because it's all about empowering our customers to build their own agents.

⁓ As Epicore, as we've been working with our customers, as they've been moving to the cloud, it's all about ensuring that they continue to have the autonomy and the flexibility that they need in their business. And now it's interesting to see this move to AI sort of mirror that to be able to not just deliver pre-built agents, but to give them the tools to build themselves. So the announcements that we made were all sort of around this. ⁓ The first one was Epicore Lux, which is our agentic design system.

This is sort of an underlying framework that enforces a consistent user experience and ensures that the security safeguards that are built into your ERP are then built into your agents as well. So when you're using an agent as the same access, that user has the same access to the information that they would have access to in the ERP otherwise. ⁓ So this really also helps every agent sort of look, feel, and behave like a trusted Epicore product. This is a really necessary foundation.

And these all kind of build on each other. So what that then allows for is an agent foundry. So we launched we announced our Epicore Prism Agent Foundry. It's a guided self-service workspace that allows users to build custom agents in the Epicore platform.

It's supported by Lux so that you can safely access your data and create those agents in a way that is simple, easy to use and allows you to tie those agents to your desired business outcomes. And this was important because other ERP vendors and other like... business technology vendors are restricting access to data. They're applying a tax in some cases so that you can't access your data.

But at Epicore, we believe your data is your data. And we want to ensure that our customers can build on the Epicore platform how you need to build. So this is a really important element. ⁓ What that then enables, we've got Lux, the agent foundry, is the Prism agent market.

So this is an extension of our new Epicore marketplace. that we're currently building and that will allow for anybody who builds those agents can go on to this agent market and share your agents. And even if you haven't built your own, you can still participate to find other certified agents that have been built using the agent foundry in Lux. ⁓ Then the other big announcement was around Headless ERP.

So we've enabled the connection to MCP, the Model Context Protocol. This is the universal interface that allows anybody to bring your AI tool of choice. So you could use Claude, you could use ChatGPT. What's exciting about Headless ERP is that it removes the requirement for a user interface that humans would use, the ability to click around on the screen and read dashboards.

Instead, it allows an agent to work within the system to create accurate responses that are again secure and guarded by the ERP safeguards that you already have in place. So all of this coming together is the cognitive ERP that we've been working towards building and now is here. Mike Hockett: It's a major rollout there. And another big announcement Epicore made that same day, May 19th was the expansion of the ascend with Epicore program that includes a 90 day go live target for qualified ERP cloud implementations.

And I found that announcement particularly interesting given that in distribution ERP implementations have long had a reputation of being these six to 12 month projects that are just huge and often painful. When I talk about ERP migrations or upgrades with an audience of distributors, you can almost hear a collective groan just from their scar tissue of having to go through ERP migrations in the past. getting that to 90 days in a cloud environment is very interesting. Can you touch on why this 90 day goal live target is a big deal for Epicore customers and what's enabling it to happen?

Kerrie Jordan: Yes. So when we were talking about ⁓ what's holding companies back, you know, their legacy systems, a big piece of it is time because customers, distributors, they really need to be able to minimize impact to the business. They need to minimize disruption. ⁓ And so in order to move to a system, they need to ensure it's going to be trustworthy, transparent and fast.

So That was important to us when we were designing the Ascend program. ⁓ So what we've done is we've built AI powered data conversion and data mapping tools to transform data either from an on-premises Profit21 or Eclipse system over to a Profit21 SaaS or Eclipse SaaS system. ⁓ We've also built connectors. So if you're moving from a different ERP and you need to come to Epicore, ⁓ we've got that covered as well.

So for those qualified ERP implementations that fit those parameters, they can go live in the 90-day window. So it's really exciting. We're continuing to enhance and build this out, and it's all about ensuring rapid time to value for our customers. Mike Hockett: That's amazing.

Well, I want to zoom out here. You've been in the business software provider space for, I mean, I'll call it 20 years with the past nine, more than nine at Epicore after nine at Oracle itself, after your previous company was acquired by them. Regardless, that's long enough to have seen the proliferation of e-commerce across B2B during your time and now seeing this rapid evolution of AI. They're obviously two very different technology animals, but how would you compare the two in terms of how B2B embraced or resisted e-commerce versus what's happening with AI?

Kerrie Jordan: Yeah, you're right. They're very different companies. ⁓ I will say that there are some common challenges, regardless of ⁓ the technology that you as a distributor are working with, and that is around change management. It always comes back to the people and ensuring that you're empowering and enabling your people.

And that's something that at Epicore we take very seriously. ⁓ You would have seen at Insights, but this is something that we do around the calendar year. mean, we're always working very closely with our customers, and that is ensuring that we are available. Our executive teams are very engaged in working directly with customers.

We learn from our customers and we incorporate that feedback, and that really does guide everything that we do, and we're focused on empowering our customers. And others aren't, but this is something that is really important to ⁓ our mission and what guides us every day. Mike Hockett: Yeah. Well, I can tell you're a natural, I want to say just a commentator in this sort of a format.

And I have to believe part of that is because you host your own podcast for Epicore called Manufacturing the Future. Tell me what that's about and the kind of guests that you have on there. Kerrie Jordan: Yes, Manufacturing the Future is a podcast that's really focused on business leaders, advisors, all across ⁓ supply chain. ⁓ ⁓ cover different stories about ⁓ new technologies that are transforming the way that makers, movers, and sellers are doing business.

⁓ I feature all sorts of people, as Miranda Lambert would say, all kinds of kinds. ⁓ I have business leaders, advisors, college professors, different ⁓ association leaders. So I love hosting this podcast and having these different conversations. I learn something every day.

Mike Hockett: That's awesome and I love that you like you said you get such a wide variety of guests. It's not just Epicor customers or manufacturers or distributors. It's kind of anyone that's a stakeholder in this environment and I think that gets people additional perspectives outside of their own bubble and that's perfect. ⁓ Carrie, that is really everything I had for you here.

Again, I hope you and the marketing team there are certainly able to breathe a little easier now that insights 26 has come and gone. though I'm sure the planning for the 27 event is already underway. I always like to have our guests give some closing thoughts here. So as you consider the B2B landscape and how fast everything is moving with AI, I see a mix of excitement, possibility, but also some understandable fear and uncertainty.

So what are your parting thoughts on this, I'll say, amazing time in the world of ERP's evolution and where things are headed? Kerrie Jordan: Yes, it is an amazing time. Okay, I have a couple things that I'll share. One is as ERP evolves to a system of outcomes, I advise you as a business leader to know the outcomes that you want to achieve in your business.

And this is something that is like the first step to using AI. And almost every business leader has this, right? Because it's your vision and it's your direction for your organization and where you're going. So.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by all of this change, know that it's still dependent on the fundamentals and you probably already have that. So don't be discouraged. The second piece I would say is enable your teams, get them started, get them access to these kinds of tools and listen to their feedback ⁓ and encourage them to really think fundamentally about how this can transform how their jobs get done. And even if you don't incorporate all their feedback, encourage them to think that way because I guarantee there will be some interesting ideas that come from those conversations.

The other piece I'll mention is make sure your technology infrastructure is ready. There's so much potential risk associated with security, so you want to make sure that you are running the latest and greatest, that you really take business resilience, disaster recovery, availability, stability into account in your system and your infrastructure. ⁓ The fourth one I'll say is be cautious of vendors who are restricting access to your data in order to build agents because the future will be won by those who can help guarantee the best outcomes.

Therefore, access to that data and those tools to do so will be really important. So I encourage you to retain control over your data, your access. Then the fifth one I'll say is, Speaking of an amazing time, with the growth of AI, the growth of ⁓ business technology, leveraging AI, there have been some real challenges that are in the news that ⁓ need, they call for innovators to really step up and solve these difficult problems. And I can't think of a better group than distributors, manufacturers.

building supply distributors, right? I mean, this is our moment and we can really make a difference. I encourage you, know, in this, and Steve Murphy is the CEO of Epicore, his keynote, he ended his, by saying, this is, you know, the time for humans to dream. We can leverage all these tools, ⁓ but it's still up to us to dream.

And I found that so inspiring and I hope you all do as well. And you're being called to this challenge and I hope that you- Take advantage of this opportunity. Mike Hockett: Just awesome insights there to end this on. So with that, Carrie, thanks once again for being on the MDM Amplify podcast.

Kerrie Jordan: Thank you so much.