Acumatica
Replacing Legacy Systems with Modern ERP Solutions

Acumatica 2023 R2: Drive Growth with Best-in-Class Applications, Unified Finance and CRM

Friday, October 20, 2023

Acumatica 2023 R2, our latest release, is generally available. So today, in our second of three articles that dive in deeper on the themes that help define 2023 R2, we’ll examine the new release’s best-in-class cloud ERP applications, focusing specifically on the continued unification of our robust Financial suite and our customer-first CRM application. And we’ll review the many pro-growth benefits small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs) like yours can expect after implementing Acumatica’s comprehensive ERP technology and integrated financial management software.

If you missed my previous article on the 2023 R2 release, it’s worth a look: “Acumatica 2023 R2: Reimagine Your Business with Intelligent Technology.”

Growth Through ERP Technology

Financials are the hub of Acumatica’s cloud ERP solution, connecting all other applications and industry capabilities, from distribution and manufacturing to construction and retail. Such powerful financial management software allows you to manage your critical business assets, income, and expenses using real-time information from a single source of truth, making the complex simple.

In a recent article, James Mallory, Acumatica’s Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Manufacturing and Distribution, dives deep into this topic, discussing how ERP financial capabilities are the key to enhancing business productivity. He notes that a cloud-based ERP solution like Acumatica connects businesses end-to-end by pulling data from every department, allowing every team member to access the same data from a unified platform.

Essentially, Acumatica equips you and your organization with the features and functionality that drive business growth, including:

• Multi-Entity and Intercompany Accounting

• Project Accounting

• Payroll

• Reporting, Dashboards, and Business Intelligence

But that’s not all.

Acumatica’s ERP financial management software delivers a number of vital but often underappreciated financial capabilities powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). For example, you can enjoy seamless multi-vendor payments using automated payment processes, automated tracking of your payment due dates (whether they’re your payments to vendors or your customers’ payments to you), comprehensive cash flow management, proactive monitoring of rising costs, automated invoice processing, and more.

Understanding and appreciating these capabilities goes a long way to ensuring business growth but having a firm grip on your financials is only a part of the growth equation. How well you meet your customers’ demands and satisfy their expectations is a huge factor in your success. Customer loyalty not only boosts your bottom line, but it also provides meaningful testimonials that help attract new customers.

Unifying Finance and CRM with Acumatica 2023 R2

With the importance of customer service in mind, Acumatica embedded our CRM (or ERP CRM) application within its core offering. By doing so, you have the marketing, sales, billing, finance, and customer data you need in one, centralized solution to effectively manage the customer journey from start to support.

Acumatica 2023 R2 improved Acumatica’s already stellar and award-winning cloud ERP software by bringing Finance and CRM together.

Financials are at the core and the heartbeat of every ERP system. Acumatica’s robust financial suite is designed for companies with complex requirements yet easy to use in smaller organizations and provides a feature-rich accounting portfolio seamlessly integrated with the product applications providing a financial engine for growth. In addition, Acumatica’s embedded CRM provides system-wide visibility of customer data, empowering your employees to provide fast, informed, and more personalized customer service. Unified financials with CRM give you a financial engine for growth while providing a cohesive customer relationship experience to delight your customers.

And, with R2, we’ve boosted the capabilities in Financials with an integrated payment processing system (Acumatica Payments), improvements that make it easier to track employee hours and payroll, and upgrades to meet financial compliance obligations in the U.S. and Canada. For CRM, R2 will help teams close more deals, organized contacts, enhance customer satisfaction and manage e-mail accounts.

Growing Businesses, Making Life Easier with Acumatica

The ultimate goal of every Acumatica release is to nurture significant business growth while making your life easier, like we did—and are doing—for Edward Cohen and Bruce Cohen, the CEO and president of Boca Terry, respectively.

Boca Terry is a family-owned and operated business launched in 1996. The company provides customers with top quality, luxurious bath robe and spa products and manages its own manufacturing, wholesaled distribution, and eCommerce operations. Unfortunately, brothers Edward and Bruce initially relied on QuickBooks for accounting, ACT! for CRM, and a customized Microsoft Access program for sales order entry.

The disconnected programs, hand-written orders, manual data entry, siloed information, lack of real-time financial information/reporting, and more led the Boca Terry founders to seek a better solution—one that could combine their three different applications. Sadly, their first choice didn’t pan out.

“NetSuite was pretty difficult to use,” Bruce says.

According to Bruce, NetSuite limited inventory IDs to a certain number of digits, which would have required a major change due to the fact that Boca Terry used dashes. In addition, the out-of-country support teams were difficult to deal with, so, as a result, they went back to the ERP drawing board.

And found Acumatica.

Says Edward, “Acumatica’s integration and ease of use seemed better than NetSuite. When we viewed the demos, it was so much more outstanding than anything else we looked at. It fit like a glove and the integration of what we do as a company seemed like it would be a smooth transition.”

After implementing Acumatica, they eliminated their frustrating challenges and began enjoying:

• Full visibility into critical business information, enabling real-time, data-driven decisions.

• Decreased number of days to ship an order due to accurate inventory data.

• Improved order-to-cash cycle.

• Automated administrative tasks, including order entry and tracking order status.

• Automated customer order confirmations (saving Boca Terry $6,000 annually).

• Remote access to information anywhere, anytime.

Now, with Acumatica’s integrated ERP financials, CRM, and other applications, Bruce and Edward are ready to take Boca Terry to the next level. Says Edward, “Acumatica is a no brainer. Acumatica is allowing us to run the company better. We’re much more efficient, we have answers quicker, and it gives us the confidence in what we’re doing on a daily basis. We have accurate information at our fingertips and can make decisions quickly.”

He adds, “Acumatica made my life so much easier. It’s unbelievable.”

We can do the same for you and your business. Contact our experts to find out more about our latest release and to schedule a demonstration. In the meantime, stay tuned for the third and final installment in our Acumatica 2023 R2 series, “Acumatica 2023 R2: Win in Your Markets with Tailored Industry Capabilities.”

Acumatica Recognized as a "Great Place to Work," Opens New Corporate Headquarters in Bellevue, Washington

Friday, June 07, 2024

BELLEVUE, Wash., -- Acumatica, a cloud ERP solutions pioneer, today announced that it has relocated its headquarters to the Corporate Campus East complex in the heart of Bellevue, Wash. The new office, which officially opens this week, will enable Acumatica's ongoing growth by providing expanded space for more employees.

Acumatica has nearly tripled in size since 2018, boasting nearly 700 employees globally, with more than 60 based in the Puget Sound region. The company recently earned "Great Place to Work" certification, with 98% of employees stating they are proud to tell others they work for the cloud ERP provider. In addition, Acumatica was honored as one of Washington State's Best Companies to Work For in 2023. These workplace recognitions highlight Acumatica's achievement in fostering a dynamic environment where employees can excel.

As a testament to its growth, Acumatica's new 12,000+-square-foot headquarters marks a significant expansion from its previous office. This upgrade nearly doubles the desk capacity and increases the number of conference rooms, delivering on the company's commitment to providing a collaborative and innovative workspace for its expanding team.

"Moving to our new, expanded Bellevue headquarters marks a significant milestone in Acumatica's growth journey. We're not just opening doors to a larger office—we're setting the stage for the future growth of our team and our business," said John Case, CEO of Acumatica. "The new headquarters reflects our commitment to invest in our people and enhance our operational capabilities. Together with an evolving partner ecosystem and expanded customer base, the new office clearly shows that we have embarked on a new era of growth for Acumatica."

Under Case's leadership, Acumatica continues to grow, planning to increase its global team by 20% in 2024. By situating itself in the heart of the thriving Puget Sound tech landscape, Acumatica is well-positioned to attract top talent and innovate alongside leading companies, setting a new standard for modern workplaces in tech.

"Our priority is to continue building on our flexible, hybrid work model, where employee collaboration and creating a friendly environment are key," said Martha Lucia Groulx, chief people officer at Acumatica. "We know that our people are our greatest and most vital asset, and our new space empowers them to collaborate while having leadership support, allowing employees to leverage their skills and drive impact at Acumatica."

Acumatica Customers Leverage Cloud ERP to Achieve Growth Ambitions

Tuesday, June 25, 2024

Small and mid-sized companies cite Acumatica's scalable solutions and unlimited user licensing in driving efficiency, innovation and expansion

BELLEVUE, Wash., -- Acumatica, a leader in next-generation business management solutions, today spotlighted the tremendous growth its mid-market customers are achieving by leveraging modern ERP technology to streamline operations, strengthen decision-making and achieve ambitious growth goals. Beyond product capabilities, customers cite the company's unlimited-user licensing as essential to organizational growth and employee empowerment.

A recent SMB Group report found that despite economic challenges facing small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs), leaders remain resilient and optimistic about the future. The majority of SMBs surveyed regard technology as "fundamental to staying competitive and achieving growth." Acumatica is designing its solutions and aligning its approach to help businesses realize their top strategic objectives.

"Every company's growth journey is unique," said Acumatica CEO John Case. "Our role as a cloud ERP provider is to deliver scalable solutions that enable businesses to grow on their terms. By integrating innovative functions into a cohesive platform and offering a growth-friendly licensing model, Acumatica empowers today's mid-market businesses to leverage data-driven insights and capitalize on their unique growth opportunities."

Acumatica customer Telesis, Inc.'s unique growth journey started with the challenge of managing five separate companies—in a diverse range of business areas, including data security, real estate holdings, urban farming, a brewery and a collection of local restaurants—under one organizational umbrella. Previously, Telesis, Inc. used several disconnected software solutions to manage operations, producing inefficiencies and errors in repetitive data entries. The company's leaders knew they needed a single system to consolidate business information, reduce errors, streamline operations and open the door for growth.

"Acumatica helped us exceed our growth goals," said Renee Schafer, director of operations at Data Security, Inc. "[We've scaled] from $14 million to $21 million in revenue since implementation, and that was only three years ago. We could not have done it without Acumatica."

Part of this growth included launching a new business. Historically, ERP applications posed obstacles to growth, but Telesis, Inc. had a different experience with Acumatica Cloud ERP.

"We launched Avert, our hydroponics farm after we implemented Acumatica. As a group of serial entrepreneurs, this was the first time we found it so much easier using an ERP to grow and launch a new business than any time in the past," said Schafer.

Schafer also cited Acumatica's unique unlimited user consumption-based licensing model as another catalyst for growth. Telesis, Inc.'s previous ERP was a user-based licensing model that made it difficult and expensive to add users. Telesis, Inc.'s data security company only had two users in that ERP system. Now, 62% of the company's employees use Acumatica. "Limiting our users slowed us down, and we didn't even know it […] Acumatica makes it easy. We can easily add any user at any time, across any of our companies.

Acumatica customer Dukathole Group has had similar success using Acumatica to add new businesses, citing the cloud ERP provider's licensing model as vital to its growth.

After implementing Acumatica, Dukathole grew from three brick manufacturing sites to eight, with operations spanning the entire value chain from brick manufacturing to delivery and construction of subsidized houses. Having Acumatica as its foundation for financial, manufacturing and construction operations provided Dukathole with the information it needed to transform from a concrete brick manufacturer into one of South Africa's leading home builders and home-building product suppliers.

"The flexibility in Acumatica helps to support our entrepreneurial spirit," said Graham Leonard, chief financial officer and operations manager of Dukathole. "When we add a new company, we don't have to buy extra software user licenses. Instead, we just create a new branch in Acumatica and quickly integrate them into Dukathole Group. Growth has never been easier."

Pavement maintenance company American Asphalt Repair & Resurfacing has continuously grown between 7% and 10% each year since implementing Acumatica. The company has praised Acumatica's scalability and ease of use in expanding operations to new jurisdictions.

"We can run multiple companies with one platform, and Acumatica gives us the flexibility to set up new tax IDs with a click of a button versus making a major investment in IT," said Shel Waggener, president of American Asphalt Repair & Resurfacing. "Any company looking to grow into the future needs an IT strategy that advances its business. If you need to integrate data and you want to move faster with your business, then Acumatica is the perfect solution."

Since it's inception in 2008, Acumatica has been commmited to providing small and mid-market companies with modern ERP that could help them scale and grow. Thousands of organizations leverage Acumatica's versatile and scalable platform to simplify complex business processes, enhance operational efficiency and achieve their growth potential. As scores of Acumatica customer stories illustrate, whether it's launching new ventures or scaling existing operations, Acumatica remains a pivotal partner in the entrepreneurial journey of today's mid-market businesses.