Part I: The Overview
Acumatica is one of those newcomers to what is becoming a very crowded marketplace. We’ve had the privilege of working with the software on a large scale integration project with Mach1 for 12 months and our experience has been very positive, both from the problems it solves and from the integration abilities that it allows you to leverage.
From a market and industry fit, Acumatica is the best solution we’ve had first hand experience with to date (and we’ve dealt with many of players from SAP/Oracle all the way down to Timberline and Quickbooks) for small to mid-size ($30M-$500M) construction and industrial service firms. Our Mach1 product is used by several contracting firms providing these services and without a doubt, this is the only system we would feel comfortable recommending for Turnaround and Maintenance providers. Other systems of course will work, but Acumatica is a better fit for a fraction of the cost of other systems.
The layout and overall navigation of the system is very straightforward, consistent, and easy to learn. As part of the project team, we were able to witness a reduced learning curve for our customers users in finding features that the implementation team did not get to. In addition, the UI team has found a decent blend of functionality and form, which can be difficult to do in web-based, heavy-data applications.
In 2019, in order for a system to really be treated seriously as an ERP or large scale accounting system, integration must be treated as a first-class citizen within the application. The industry is just starting to recover from a decade of attempting to fit their custom processes into large scale systems ERP and is now learning the power of a multi-tenant architecture where integration is at the forefront. The companies adopting this have been able to harness the power of an back-end system for what it was designed for, while still being able to combine other off-the-shelf and custom products in a completely integrated environment.
The integration ability of Acumatica to me is what really separates itself from other competitors, particularly common industry competitors such as Timberline, Foundation, and Dynamics. While all of those systems have methods of integration, one gets the feeling that integration was added on as a bolt on to those systems whereas Acumatica feels much more as if it was part of the original design. In fact, there is one method of integration where the developer’s code mimics the user entry, step-by-step, field-by-field, which makes for a very easy time trying to perform complicated processes while making sure the correct data is sent from each system.
Acumatica also has a really neat web-hook based architecture that is surprisingly modern for an accounting system, allowing for flexible integration in a variety of ways. These web-hooks can be tied to direct queries in the system that the user creates, allowing for a greater control of data by the customer, rather than the development team.
Overall the integration story and industry feel of Acumatica make it an excellent choice for any mid-size organizations looking to improve their back-office functionality while providing a great foundation to build upon for other systems. It’s cloud based pricing, low-cost deliver, and consistent UI make it an extremely affordable solution for companies of all sizes and market share.
In Part II of this series, we’ll show you an example of integrating the systems together to create something simple such as a Purchase Order from an external mobile requisition application.
