90 Minds Community

Day 2 Keynote:

Focusing more on where the product is going and more of what everyone needs to know.

Started with 4 Customer Industry Edition Awards

1. Construction
2. Manufacturing
3. Distribution
4. Retail

Although I was never a fan of award time at keynotes or even success dinners, supporting a focus on industry has always been important.  Each bundle has a product manager 

• 40% growth in Acumatica Marketplace
• Community has over 22,000 members
• 95% of customers chose SaaS on Acumatica

Acumatica has two major releases per year.  2024 versions should include:

• Order orchestration for multi-warehouse fulfilment
• Advanced kitting called Product Bundles
• Enhanced Assemblies - Capable to build, kit profitability and component availability.

It is interesting how new amazing features are available in competing products today.  Single repository, centralized tool, real time field reporting...    For example, Sales Allocation Manager seems to have the same functionality that the SAP Pick and Pack Manager has had for almost 10 years!     However, it looks good and is presented from the perspective of sales management rather than inventory management which differentiates it with the customer.  The retail edition Amazon functionality sounds great.  Amazon is a bear, and any tool is better than no tool.  Fulfilled By Amazon integration will be awesome and included in core in 2024 R1 release.

It appears that Acumatica is listening to customer requirements and delivering significant enhancements on a continuous basis.   It is great to see a publisher having a customer advisory board by industry.  Although they have the industry focus, they are also looking at cross industry functionality as distributors, kit and often sell direct or install.  Without saying it, it sounds really promising with similar endearing qualities of third party product compatibility and similar coordination issues.

The core demonstration of workflow and integrated payments was almost quite impressive (the capture did not go through on screen).  These functionalities typically require third party tools.   The new UI is probably a welcome improvement to current users.  The best part was its backward compatibility with 3rd party products and adaptability to different resolutions and screen sizes.  Overall it is clear that Acumatica has become a more mature product.  The field service calendar view was quite impressive.  If the scheduling aspect works it could be a winner in the market.  Apply that to manufacturing and WOW!

Like most publishers, their roadmap includes all the key buzzwords.  It appears that Acumatica is putting its investments into these key technology areas and will be a force in the market for the foreseeable future.

It was impressive that demos were done by the lead product managers.  

Construction seemed to generate the least amount of oohs and aahs.

i asked Acumatica about not disclosing a customer count this year. They said they're only going to do that at specific (completely unspecified) "milestones". My WAG is they did not grow at a pace they wished to disclose although they claim they're growing at least as fast as in prior years. 

more notes:

John Case

Will be issuing customer counts when unspecified milestones are hit. Growing at least as fast as in past.

Construction and MFG will be standalone businesses some day. (Note: They've said this before - so I think this is their stressing optimism in this area)

5-200 million is sweet spot for the type of customer who uses (or could use) Acumatica

VAR channel

Over 50% of new deals are VAR

Compartmentalizing channel - what does my channel in construction look like, in Canada, etc.  Rather than casting a wide net they are strategic in picking VARS with skills they need.

White label (OEM) still happening

Don't see this growing/ or adding new ones

It's possible a new OEM will pop up but it doesn't seem like a strategy they are looking to grow

Customers attending Summit outweigh VARS (no numbers mentioned) - this was in response to a question about why it seemed like partners were less visible at the event.

Hundreds of prospects here

Day 2 Keynote:

Focusing more on where the product is going and more of what everyone needs to know.

Started with 4 Customer Industry Edition Awards

1. Construction
2. Manufacturing
3. Distribution
4. Retail

Although I was never a fan of award time at keynotes or even success dinners, supporting a focus on industry has always been important.  Each bundle has a product manager 

• 40% growth in Acumatica Marketplace
• Community has over 22,000 members
• 95% of customers chose SaaS on Acumatica

Acumatica has two major releases per year.  2024 versions should include:

• Order orchestration for multi-warehouse fulfilment
• Advanced kitting called Product Bundles
• Enhanced Assemblies - Capable to build, kit profitability and component availability.

It is interesting how new amazing features are available in competing products today.  Single repository, centralized tool, real time field reporting...    For example, Sales Allocation Manager seems to have the same functionality that the SAP Pick and Pack Manager has had for almost 10 years!     However, it looks good and is presented from the perspective of sales management rather than inventory management which differentiates it with the customer.  The retail edition Amazon functionality sounds great.  Amazon is a bear, and any tool is better than no tool.  Fulfilled By Amazon integration will be awesome and included in core in 2024 R1 release.

It appears that Acumatica is listening to customer requirements and delivering significant enhancements on a continuous basis.   It is great to see a publisher having a customer advisory board by industry.  Although they have the industry focus, they are also looking at cross industry functionality as distributors, kit and often sell direct or install.  Without saying it, it sounds really promising with similar endearing qualities of third party product compatibility and similar coordination issues.

The core demonstration of workflow and integrated payments was almost quite impressive (the capture did not go through on screen).  These functionalities typically require third party tools.   The new UI is probably a welcome improvement to current users.  The best part was its backward compatibility with 3rd party products and adaptability to different resolutions and screen sizes.  Overall it is clear that Acumatica has become a more mature product.  The field service calendar view was quite impressive.  If the scheduling aspect works it could be a winner in the market.  Apply that to manufacturing and WOW!

Like most publishers, their roadmap includes all the key buzzwords.  It appears that Acumatica is putting its investments into these key technology areas and will be a force in the market for the foreseeable future.

Next year's event is back at the Wynn on Vegas during the same time period January 26-29, 2025. 

I would say that so long as Acumatica continues to live stream keynotes that you can get 75% of the value about Acumatica direction from watching remotely. 

Acumatica Summit doesn't do training any longer so product knowledge is all through sessions  

I generally like to eat lunch and talk to users to find out how things are going with Acumatica. I had bad luck getting much information as the lunches were packed and it was so tough to get a seat as the tables might hold 12 and 3 of those seats were blocked by people putting their backpacks on the chairs… I thought I got to lunch pretty quickly but it looks like people were starving and ducked their late class to get to the lunch table .

Acumatica cut costs and only served a continental breakfast to 3,000 attendees !! 

The problem here is that by the time you walk .25 mile to the breakfast area if you want breakfast you either need to backtrack and eat in the Wynn ($$$&) or head out on the strip for what is a .5 mile walk to Denny's.  This was a very big miss for Acumatica IMO  

I did sit in on what I'd describe as a really odd session on how to reverse billing in Field Services. Nearly the entire session was on the exact steps you had to follow on an 8+ item checklist (with warnings to follow this exact process or face possible failure ). To me this looked like "same old same old" and not the way a "modern ERP" works.  Then toward the end they announced an update - whose primary benefit seemed to cut the steps from 8 to 6. 

(insert shrug emoji)

It was impressive that demos were done by the lead product managers.  

Construction seemed to generate the least amount of oohs and aahs.

i asked Acumatica about not disclosing a customer count this year. They said they're only going to do that at specific (completely unspecified) "milestones". My WAG is they did not grow at a pace they wished to disclose although they claim they're growing at least as fast as in prior years. 

more notes:

John Case

Will be issuing customer counts when unspecified milestones are hit. Growing at least as fast as in past.

Construction and MFG will be standalone businesses some day. (Note: They've said this before - so I think this is their stressing optimism in this area)

5-200 million is sweet spot for the type of customer who uses (or could use) Acumatica

VAR channel

Over 50% of new deals are VAR

Compartmentalizing channel - what does my channel in construction look like, in Canada, etc.  Rather than casting a wide net they are strategic in picking VARS with skills they need.

White label (OEM) still happening

Don't see this growing/ or adding new ones

It's possible a new OEM will pop up but it doesn't seem like a strategy they are looking to grow

Customers attending Summit outweigh VARS (no numbers mentioned) - this was in response to a question about why it seemed like partners were less visible at the event.

Hundreds of prospects here

Day 2 Keynote:

Focusing more on where the product is going and more of what everyone needs to know.

Started with 4 Customer Industry Edition Awards

1. Construction
2. Manufacturing
3. Distribution
4. Retail

Although I was never a fan of award time at keynotes or even success dinners, supporting a focus on industry has always been important.  Each bundle has a product manager 

• 40% growth in Acumatica Marketplace
• Community has over 22,000 members
• 95% of customers chose SaaS on Acumatica

Acumatica has two major releases per year.  2024 versions should include:

• Order orchestration for multi-warehouse fulfilment
• Advanced kitting called Product Bundles
• Enhanced Assemblies - Capable to build, kit profitability and component availability.

It is interesting how new amazing features are available in competing products today.  Single repository, centralized tool, real time field reporting...    For example, Sales Allocation Manager seems to have the same functionality that the SAP Pick and Pack Manager has had for almost 10 years!     However, it looks good and is presented from the perspective of sales management rather than inventory management which differentiates it with the customer.  The retail edition Amazon functionality sounds great.  Amazon is a bear, and any tool is better than no tool.  Fulfilled By Amazon integration will be awesome and included in core in 2024 R1 release.

It appears that Acumatica is listening to customer requirements and delivering significant enhancements on a continuous basis.   It is great to see a publisher having a customer advisory board by industry.  Although they have the industry focus, they are also looking at cross industry functionality as distributors, kit and often sell direct or install.  Without saying it, it sounds really promising with similar endearing qualities of third party product compatibility and similar coordination issues.

The core demonstration of workflow and integrated payments was almost quite impressive (the capture did not go through on screen).  These functionalities typically require third party tools.   The new UI is probably a welcome improvement to current users.  The best part was its backward compatibility with 3rd party products and adaptability to different resolutions and screen sizes.  Overall it is clear that Acumatica has become a more mature product.  The field service calendar view was quite impressive.  If the scheduling aspect works it could be a winner in the market.  Apply that to manufacturing and WOW!

Like most publishers, their roadmap includes all the key buzzwords.  It appears that Acumatica is putting its investments into these key technology areas and will be a force in the market for the foreseeable future.

This was my 10th Acumatica Summit and for the past few years, the first-day keynotes are basically skippable. This year, the customer stories were actually interesting to me, though they were obviously reading cue-cards. The second-day keynote is always must-see and didn't disappoint this year (unlike last year where it was really lame CRM stuff) with some really great new features like actually-useful allocation of Kits, Distribution Resource Planning (think MRP without productions), and a heavy focus on eCommerce (native two-way integration to Shopify, Amazon, and BigCommerce).

I enjoyed most of the sessions I attended (educational and entertaining) and was happy to see they still push product managers and other leads to present the material and be available for questions. Some of the ISVs bonded together and offered a show and drinks at the Sphere, which was really cool and only a 10 minute walk from the Wynn.

They definitely cheaped-out on breakfast and I also missed the afternoon sugar/caffeine snacks they used to offer, but the other food was really good (I especially liked that taco-tuesday-themed lunch). I didn't get to attend the Tuesday night dance party thing, but I heard good things about it from everyone the next morning.

I just noticed the 24R1 Beta documentation is out and its release notes (think new features) are 250 pages. Coming from Sage 100, it still baffles me that they do this twice a year, and that doesn't include the semi-monthly-ish builds they issues for compliance and bug-fixes...

Next year's event is back at the Wynn on Vegas during the same time period January 26-29, 2025. 

I would say that so long as Acumatica continues to live stream keynotes that you can get 75% of the value about Acumatica direction from watching remotely. 

Acumatica Summit doesn't do training any longer so product knowledge is all through sessions  

I generally like to eat lunch and talk to users to find out how things are going with Acumatica. I had bad luck getting much information as the lunches were packed and it was so tough to get a seat as the tables might hold 12 and 3 of those seats were blocked by people putting their backpacks on the chairs… I thought I got to lunch pretty quickly but it looks like people were starving and ducked their late class to get to the lunch table .

Acumatica cut costs and only served a continental breakfast to 3,000 attendees !! 

The problem here is that by the time you walk .25 mile to the breakfast area if you want breakfast you either need to backtrack and eat in the Wynn ($$$&) or head out on the strip for what is a .5 mile walk to Denny's.  This was a very big miss for Acumatica IMO  

I did sit in on what I'd describe as a really odd session on how to reverse billing in Field Services. Nearly the entire session was on the exact steps you had to follow on an 8+ item checklist (with warnings to follow this exact process or face possible failure ). To me this looked like "same old same old" and not the way a "modern ERP" works.  Then toward the end they announced an update - whose primary benefit seemed to cut the steps from 8 to 6. 

(insert shrug emoji)

It was impressive that demos were done by the lead product managers.  

Construction seemed to generate the least amount of oohs and aahs.

i asked Acumatica about not disclosing a customer count this year. They said they're only going to do that at specific (completely unspecified) "milestones". My WAG is they did not grow at a pace they wished to disclose although they claim they're growing at least as fast as in prior years. 

more notes:

John Case

Will be issuing customer counts when unspecified milestones are hit. Growing at least as fast as in past.

Construction and MFG will be standalone businesses some day. (Note: They've said this before - so I think this is their stressing optimism in this area)

5-200 million is sweet spot for the type of customer who uses (or could use) Acumatica

VAR channel

Over 50% of new deals are VAR

Compartmentalizing channel - what does my channel in construction look like, in Canada, etc.  Rather than casting a wide net they are strategic in picking VARS with skills they need.

White label (OEM) still happening

Don't see this growing/ or adding new ones

It's possible a new OEM will pop up but it doesn't seem like a strategy they are looking to grow

Customers attending Summit outweigh VARS (no numbers mentioned) - this was in response to a question about why it seemed like partners were less visible at the event.

Hundreds of prospects here

Day 2 Keynote:

Focusing more on where the product is going and more of what everyone needs to know.

Started with 4 Customer Industry Edition Awards

1. Construction
2. Manufacturing
3. Distribution
4. Retail

Although I was never a fan of award time at keynotes or even success dinners, supporting a focus on industry has always been important.  Each bundle has a product manager 

• 40% growth in Acumatica Marketplace
• Community has over 22,000 members
• 95% of customers chose SaaS on Acumatica

Acumatica has two major releases per year.  2024 versions should include:

• Order orchestration for multi-warehouse fulfilment
• Advanced kitting called Product Bundles
• Enhanced Assemblies - Capable to build, kit profitability and component availability.

It is interesting how new amazing features are available in competing products today.  Single repository, centralized tool, real time field reporting...    For example, Sales Allocation Manager seems to have the same functionality that the SAP Pick and Pack Manager has had for almost 10 years!     However, it looks good and is presented from the perspective of sales management rather than inventory management which differentiates it with the customer.  The retail edition Amazon functionality sounds great.  Amazon is a bear, and any tool is better than no tool.  Fulfilled By Amazon integration will be awesome and included in core in 2024 R1 release.

It appears that Acumatica is listening to customer requirements and delivering significant enhancements on a continuous basis.   It is great to see a publisher having a customer advisory board by industry.  Although they have the industry focus, they are also looking at cross industry functionality as distributors, kit and often sell direct or install.  Without saying it, it sounds really promising with similar endearing qualities of third party product compatibility and similar coordination issues.

The core demonstration of workflow and integrated payments was almost quite impressive (the capture did not go through on screen).  These functionalities typically require third party tools.   The new UI is probably a welcome improvement to current users.  The best part was its backward compatibility with 3rd party products and adaptability to different resolutions and screen sizes.  Overall it is clear that Acumatica has become a more mature product.  The field service calendar view was quite impressive.  If the scheduling aspect works it could be a winner in the market.  Apply that to manufacturing and WOW!

Like most publishers, their roadmap includes all the key buzzwords.  It appears that Acumatica is putting its investments into these key technology areas and will be a force in the market for the foreseeable future.