Typically, he was with companies for two years to three before they were sold. Cowan came after the prior CEO Pervez Qureshi left abruptly. The bets were his job was to sell the company, which had been owned by Apax Partners since 2011 when the private equity firm acquired Epicor and the former Activant Solutions and welded them together under the Epicor name. Apax sold its interest to KKR in July 2016 so the fact Cowan lasted more than a year after that was a bit surprising.