Epicor sued by ParknPool

Case study presenter : Vineet Sansare

About ParknPool


Company Name ParknPool
Headquarters Lexington, Virginia, United States of America
Type Privately Held
Industry Retail
Founded 1998
Company Size 11-50 employees
Website http://www.parknpool.com
Clients Hotels, restaurants, apartment complexes, schools/ universities, military
institutions, HOA's, campgrounds, park and rec departments, and many more
Goal To provide unparalleled integrity & competence throughout the entire
purchasing & installation process
Mission Their mission is simple, but powerful to create happy clients.
Selecting an ERP system & a service provider
ParknPool was using QuickBooks system, an accounting software for
small businesses by Intuit Inc.
They were paying $3,500 a year for it.
ParknPool was looking to move up from its QuickBooks system, which
it was outgrowing.
ParknPool, evaluated a number of systems in the marker & the final
choice came down to Epicor & a product from Sage.
Problems during the implementation process
An Epicor partner, EstesGroup, performed systems integration work on the job.
Epicor said they could implement the project in seven weeks. ParknPool gave them seven
months, & got zero.
The faulty software from Epicor couldn't process orders.
ParknPool is a "drop-ship" operation, wherein it acts as a type of middleman, keeping no
items in stock. Instead, manufacturers, sometimes a number of them, ship orders once they
are placed.
As they're a drop-ship business, they need to invoice their client after the last item ships,
because they could ship from multiple locations. The Epicor system couldn't deal with that.
Another snafu led to doubled commission payments for ParknPool's sales representatives.
Epicor also performed something of a bait-and-switch with ParknPool, initially saying that the
company's need would be met with a specific set of software modules, but then saying that
more were required after the project started.
Results
A lawsuit was filed on November 23
rd
that year in U.S. District
Court for the Western District of Virginia.
ParknPool's suit asked for US$250,000 in damages along with
attorney's fees and other monies.
The company had spent at least $250,000 on the Epicor project,
according to Jim Fonner, Administrative Manager of ParknPool.

ParknPool continued to use QuickBooks system.