Acumatica Summit 2019

Each year, the Milestone team attends Acumatica’s Summit – an opportunity for VAR Partners, Customers and ISV’s to learn about new products, new product features, ideas and innovations. There are training opportunities, as well as time to network and idea-share with other members of the Acumatica ecosystem.
I wanted to share some of my thoughts and highlights from what I got out of the 2019 Summit.

All of the things I have come to expect from Acumatica have been reinforced. The majority of funds raised and sales revenue goes back into product engineering and development. An incredible 74% of the employees at
Acumatica work in R&D. Acumatica’s uptime continues to be 99.9%. The company has prioritized investment into the development of the product, resulting in more development resources than any other ERP Software company in the United States. Acumatica continues to be the fastest growing cloud ERP company in the US. I’m constantly impressed by the drive to be cutting edge in the industry and strive to be technologically forward thinking. There are additional resources that are building the AI machine learning opportunities with Acumatica. And finally, they are testing using virtual reality headsets to record relevant data that is then being integrated into the system.

At the Summit, Acumatica introduced new software version 2019 R1 – continuing their aggressive “two major software releases per year” trend.

Acumatica 2019 Release

Some of the Key 2019 R1 Features include:

• Enhanced Side Panel – gives additional visibility into records based on selected parameters (for instance, allows us to see customer information when we click on a specific order). This allows you to utilize your screen “real-estate” more efficiently.
• Ability to personalize your site with various colors. Each company and or branch can select a color to differentiate the user’s experience.
• Added the ability to create conditional highlighting within generic inquiries (example: overdue dates on an Accounts Payable Bill Generic Inquiry could be highlighted in Red, or Sales Opportunities that have not been assigned to a Salesperson could be highlighted in Yellow).
• Added easily defined totals on Generic Inquiries.
• Multi-Factor user authentication. This has been a highly-anticipated feature for the team at Milestone. Working with companies who have security concerns such as Banks, Investment Firms, and Casinos, can benefit from this built in feature. In the past, we needed an additional module and costly integration. Security codes can be sent via text message to a mobile phone, push notifications through the mobile app with thumbprint recognition, email authentication, and generating codes within the Acumatica App.
• AI (Artificial Intelligence) machine learning integrated into the Help Files within Acumatica. Acumatica will now recognize articles that are helpful to you as a user based on your search and click-through trends.

Staying Ahead of the Curve

After being in the business for 18 years, it’s easy for software and technology conferences to become stale. But each year at the Summit, Acumatica introduces not just new products and product enhancements, but also new ideas. I continue to be energized by the Acumatica team’s attitude toward technology - constantly testing all of the latest and greatest technology tools available to determine whether they make business sense to implement into the Acumatica framework: examples include Amazon Alexa Integration, AI Machine Learning and Virtual Reality Headset integrations. It’s exciting to be a part of a community that embraces technology and how it can propel business functions into the future!

From Houston to Vegas

Finally, it’s always fun to explore a new city. This year’s Summit
was held in the heart of downtown Houston, right in between where the Astros
and the Rockets play. I enjoyed new culinary and cultural experiences and I
appreciated catching up with colleagues from all over the country (and world)
from Acumatica reps, other VARs, customers and ISV’s. Looking forward to what
Acumatica brings to Las Vegas in 2020!