Eric has spent decades helping enterprise leaders turn technology investments into measurable business outcomes, guided by a simple principle: be honest with clients about what they actually need.
Ask Eric what clients can expect from him, and he won't start with a pitch. He'll start with how he shows up.
People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. I care enough to know that every client's experience is proprietary – what works for one company might be a waste of money for the next. So I listen first, ask a lot of questions, and then ask myself: if this were my business, what would I do? Sometimes the honest answer is "don't spend that money yet." I'd rather walk away from a sale than lose a client's trust.
– Eric Papcun, Senior Client Partner
For Eric, that mindset is personal. Papcun is a rare last name – only a handful of families in the country carry it – so it follows him everywhere he goes. His father and grandfather taught him that nothing mattered more than protecting it, and the way you protect a name is simple: keep your word. That's why he under-promises and over-delivers, and why he puts so much weight on discovery. Before recommending a solution, he wants to understand what a client's business actually needs, not what's easiest to sell.
Eric has seen both sides of data-driven decision-making: how complex it is to build, and how much it’s worth once it works. He helped a food manufacturing division that was making decisions on month-old data move to near real-time analytics. That took new systems, new processes, and a creative deal the client could afford. Once the data caught up to the business, the team could spot product nearing spoilage and sell it to discount retailers instead of throwing it away. The division went from last to first in the company on waste, with savings showing up in places like recipe costs, too. That’s why Eric starts every data conversation the same way: what decisions do you need to make, and how fast do you need to make them?
"We're building a team that wins, and that starts with people clients trust before the first proposal ever hits their desk," said Brody Deren, Chief Strategy Officer. "Eric has spent decades earning that trust with enterprise leaders. We didn't hire him to sell. We hired him to help our clients win."
Eric likes to say experience is proprietary. Two people can look at the Eiffel Tower – one sees scrap metal, the other sees elegant engineering. Every person brings their own lens, and behind every business problem are people living it in their own way.
I don't walk into a meeting with an agenda to sell a certain product. I want to understand the outcome a client is after, lay out the options, and let them be part of the solution.
– Eric Papcun, Senior Client Partner
That's why Eric starts with people, not problems. He'd rather get to know the humans across the table – what they're after and what's in their way – than walk in with an answer. Every expert at Trility brings a unique perspective to the work, and Eric brings his: decades of sitting down with leaders to solve the complex, nuanced challenges that make each business its own.
In college, a professor handed Eric a copy of Seeds of Greatness, and one lesson has stayed with him ever since: plenty of habits exist only because no one ever stopped to ask why.
Eric sees the same thing in businesses all the time – approval chains that loop back on themselves, data stored the way it always has been, reports that run overnight because they always have. He respects how a client got here, but he isn't afraid to ask whether it still makes sense. Often, the biggest wins start with a simple question: why do we do it this way?
Eric's sales career began selling cell phones, and he found his first niche back home on Lake Erie. Charter boat captains had always shared hot fishing spots over the radio – which meant every other boat on the lake heard it too. When cell phones were rare and expensive, the radio was the only option. But even as cell phones became more common, no one questioned it – that's just how it had always been done. Eric showed them they could simply call their own fleet instead. It's the same instinct he brings today: find the real problem, then solve it in a way the client hadn't thought of.
That instinct has carried Eric through more than three decades in technology, including VP roles leading sales teams across North America. He's learned to spot a wave before it breaks: he sold cell phones when they were still a luxury, helped companies modernize their core business systems, and watched cloud and analytics reshape how organizations make decisions. Years before most companies were talking about AI, he helped a client put it to work on its service desk.
For the past several years, Eric has watched data and AI take shape as the next big shift, and he's been looking for the right team to dig into it with. At Trility, he found a company and a group of experts he believes in, plus a chance to keep learning while applying everything past industry shifts have taught him to a modern tech stack. He knows the organizations that win won't be the ones chasing every new tool. They'll be the ones that get their data foundation right, so decisions happen in real time instead of a day late.
Every wave I've been part of came down to the same thing: helping people make better decisions, faster. Data and AI are the next step, but only if the foundation is right. That's what Trility does, and it's a big part of why I'm here.
– Eric Papcun, Senior Client Partner
Paired with Trility's data, cloud, and AI-assisted engineering teams, Eric is ready to help clients ride this next wave – with the same honest, people-first approach he's brought to every one before it.
If you are interested in partnering with Trility, email Eric Papcun or connect with him on LinkedIn.
