Acumatica Summit 2024 Day 1 Keynote Highlights
It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day and Acumatica is feeling good! The 2024 annual Acumatica Summit promises a new, bigger and better era for the cloud ERP company.
Every year, thousands of Acumatica customers, partners, ISV’s, and potential customers come together at the Acumatica Summit event to learn about the company, the product, and to have some fun. This years Summit returned to the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada for 3 days from January 29th to the 31st. The majority of learning happens during the breakout sessions each day with a variety specific classes to choose from. However, we all come together to learn on the mornings of day 1 and day 2 at the keynote presentations. The keynote on day 1 is known for highlighting the successes of the past year, offering a look into the roadmap ahead, and announcing any company related news.
Let’s dive into the highlights from the day 1 keynote:
“Building the future of business, together”
Acumatica CEO, John Case, is welcomed on stage to begin the day 1 keynote and highlight what’s to be expected during the upcoming hour-long presentation. He begins by acknowledging that Acumatica has been and always will be a ‘customer focused’ solution. Using feedback from real users and working closely with customers, Acumatica has continuously worked toward their goal of “building the future of business, together”. Unlike the competitors, Acumatica is the only solution fully focused on helping small and mid-market enterprises.
Case notes the positive event turnout with over 3,000 in attendance and the companies’ hope for even bigger crowd next year as they look to have a year full of growth fueled by an increase in confidence and optimism in the small and mid-market enterprise sector. With this projected business growth, Acumatica continues to work on new and innovative ways to boost already great businesses. John Cases addresses that he is often asked about emerging technology, such as AI, and answers by promising that they are harnessing the power and advantages of these new tools while using same security and privacy model that they have always used.
Keeping the energy going, Case announces that 2023 was their best year yet by a wide margin, beating all their expectations. With the introduction for this keynote beginning to wrap up, we hear that there is so much in store for the future of Acumatica because their “aspirations are so much greater than you think”. To welcome in the new era, an updated, modernized logo was unveiled.
The Chief Revenue Officer, Sanket Akerkar, comes on stage next to talk about what make’s Acumatica’s Cloud ERP valuable and what customers love about the product. He expresses the key ways that Acumatica has helped businesses grow and scale their success. Implementing Acumatica has helped mid-market organizations grow by reaching new customers, empowering their employees’ productivity, and streamlining operations. Akerkar notes three reasons why The Cloud ERP is able to help it’s users grow:
Acumatica has built in scalability - “Acumatica is designed to scale quickly in many different dimensions.”
Acumatica has growth friendly licensing - Customers only pay for what they use. Consumption based pricing means ALL employees can collaborate and work together through 1 connected solution.
Acumatica’s multi-national capabilities - “Cross border operational connectivity that centralizes a full range of financial operations.”
“You can trust us, we have your back”
Next we hear from the VP of Global Support, Aliya Rakimgulova. She focuses on the intangible value of the ERP solution, beyond the software itself, and how Acumatica delivers these ideals. Rakimgulova highlights the ‘behind-the-scenes’ community and features that build the foundation for unmatched support and growth in success. Some of the most important foundation components:
Acumatica SaaS model - Acumatica is monitoring your business 24/7 to prepare for proactive support during operational fluctuations throughout the year.
Security - Acumatica has the highest security rating amongst peers according to BitSight. This is achieved with multiple security layers, 24/7 monitoring systems, and firewalls.
The Acumatica Always Current Program - a unique way to take advantage of the latest technology and the most up-to-date protection.
Rakimgulova sums up her time on stage by reinforcing that the Acumatica community is what makes them stand out from the competitors. The support and engineering team works hard behind-the-scenes to provide users with the best, safest, up-to-date technology. You can join the over 22,000 registered members of the online Acumatica Community to chat with actively engaged customers, partners, ISV’s, and the Acumatica team in meaningful conversations and find helpful solutions.
So far, the day 1 keynote has touched 2 of the 3 themes of the presentation, scalability and support. To talk about the final important topic of the day, innovation, is Chief Product Officer, Ali Jani. He begins by stating that “Acumatica is so much more than just ERP, it’s a platform that will take you well into the future.” One of the ways Acumatica achieves this is through connected cloud technology. Acumatica is built to seamlessly integrate with thousands of tools and softwares that increase your functionality immensely.
One of the biggest technological changes in recent years is the use of AI and LLMs, which have a big impact on data driven business decisions and automations. Jani reiterates some of the features added to the product recently that help users make easier and better business decisions, like push notifications and side panel insights.
Jani addresses the growing amount of questions about the opportunities and risks around new and emerging AI technology. Utilizing the power of AI, Acumatica will be able to develop new software faster and more powerful than before. Similar to the ‘Customer Bill of Rights’, Acumatica will soon publish their ‘Principles of Innovation’ to ensure customers that the Acumatica team will always be moving in a safe and conscious way. The Principles of Innovation consist of 3 pillars:
Responsible - Always making sure your data is safe through strict security measures.
Practical - Solving real world problems while always making users aware of capabilities and risks.
Valuable - Enhancements are primarily driven by customer input.
Circling back to the “new era” John Case mentioned during the beginning of the keynote, Ali Jani adds that we are now coming into a new era of product development for Acumatica. Ushering in this new era, it was announced that a brand new Professional Services edition will be released soon, to expand product functionality even further.
To wrap up the day 1 keynote, John Case returns to the stage to introduce a few customers to tell their story on how implementing Acumatica ERP helped their business succeed. Every year, Acumatica hands out an award for Customer of the Year. This year, the honor was given to Portacool, a Texas based company that manufactures and distributes industrial portable evaporative coolers. Portacool worked hard to implement Acumatica in only 7 months during Covid. Shortly after, they suffered a tragic fire and Acumatica worked with with them, side by side, to quickly get their operations back up and running, even better than before.
That concludes the 2024 Acumatica Summit Day 1 Keynote! If you are interested in more information about Acumatica please check out our Acumatica page or contact us. Be on the lookout for our Day 2 Keynote recap filled with new product announcements and more updates. Click below to watch a recording of the Day 1 Keynote.
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