P21WWUG: The Prophet 21 Community

P21WWUG, the Prophet 21 Worldwide User Group, is an independent, non-profit, member-run organization for distributors on Prophet 21. Its officers are volunteers who hold day jobs at member distribution companies, not paid outside administrators. It is not part of Epicor, though it works closely with Epicor's staff and leadership. Epicor itself sponsors the group's annual conference.

Its stated purpose covers two things equally. Members help each other get more out of Prophet 21 directly. The group also keeps open, constructive communication with Epicor on behalf of the community as a whole. That way, no distributor is left to raise the same issue alone.

Membership works by company, not by individual seat. One annual membership covers every employee at that company. The company's primary contact manages who gets forum access.

That access covers a working discussion forum where members troubleshoot day-to-day Prophet 21 problems and business practices together. It also covers a shared library of Crystal Reports and SQL queries other members have already built. A report or query one distributor spent hours getting right does not have to be rebuilt from scratch by the next. The group's own archive of member discussion dates back to 2001.

Members also get live and recorded webinars through the year, plus seven regional chapters that meet regularly. The chapters span Lake Erie, Lake Michigan, the Midwest, New England, the Southeast, the Ohio Valley, and Canada. Chapter meetings mix informal user discussion with vendor presentations. They are closer to home and more frequent than the annual conference.

CONNECT is the group's annual conference, organized by and for its own members rather than by Epicor or any single vendor. Sessions are taught by members, Epicor staff, and outside specialists. They cover everything from peer troubleshooting to Epicor's own roadmap and cloud migration strategy.

Attendees come from every part of a distribution business, not just IT. Accounting, sales, inventory, purchasing, warehouse, management, and ownership all show up alongside systems staff. The session tracks are built to match, down to sessions designed for first-time attendees.

The conference moves around the country each August. Dallas hosted in 2023, Chicago in 2024, and Dallas again in 2025. Most recently, CONNECT 2026 ran August 16-19 in Orlando.

A pricing question, a stuck import, or an unfamiliar report is rarely unique to one company. The forum, the file library, the regional chapters, and CONNECT all exist for that reason. Each puts a distributor in front of someone who has already worked through the same problem and is willing to share the fix.

That peer-sourced model does not replace Epicor's own support. It fills the gap between a support ticket and a working answer, moving at the speed of the community rather than a ticket queue.