Acumatica Summit 2023: A Recap

Acumatica Summit Celebrates, Discovers and Imagines Where Digital Transformation Can Take Wholesale Distributors and Retailers

As the community came together this year for the Acumatica Summit in Las Vegas, each day’s events and activities were laced with three themes:

• Celebrate the community, reconnect with friends and recognize the achievements of innovative businesses that have overcome challenges and transformed their operations.
• Discover the latest capabilities and best practices that are empowering users to reach new heights of efficiency, productivity and growth.
• Imagine where technology is taking us, where we can take technology and how this progress can apply to your business and enable you to maximize your impact and control your future. 

The ever-present drive toward digital transformation, that is, the digitizing of manual tasks and continuously improving business models and processes to keep pace with the modern digital world, gave attendees much to celebrate, discover and imagine – particularly within the wholesale distribution and retail industries. New functionality previewed at Acumatica Summit now allows the purchase and return of counter sales with transactions involving negative and positive balances to be completed within one screen.

An additional enhancement shown accommodates optional variants within products for easier eCommerce. Acumatica user Jeffree Star Cosmetics reported that the cosmetic company went from two employees generating SKUs to one employee, steering employee priorities towards value-generating activities. Other Acumatica development efforts will encourage experimental retail by bringing the “brick and mortar” experience to the digital environment. “Experimental retail essentially allows companies to display products for a short duration, like two weeks, and look at conversions and time on page to determine the ultimate mix of matrixed products,” says Chris Cleary, Acumatica Practice Director at technology advisor Net at Work, a 2023 Acumatica President’s Club member.

Net at Work Acumatica Practice Director Chris Cleary joined BigCommerce to discuss the latest technology to transform digital sales at the 2023 Acumatica Summit

THREE PILLARS OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: PEOPLE, PROCESS, TECHNOLOGY

One session at Acumatica Summit, entitled “Manufacturing Operations: Improving Efficiency and Data Collection,” cited the three major areas of digital transformation related to accounting and finance, according to McKinsey & Company. Digital transformation no longer comprises one major initiative but is an ongoing process to optimize the entire business with financial operations playing an integral part.

This first area centers on the improvement of processes in finance through automation, such as scheduled bank feed imports. McKinsey & Company indicated that 40% of finance activities (e.g., cash disbursement, revenue management and general accounting and operations) can be fully automated, and 17% can be mostly automated.

The second area of digital transformation involves the ability to give end users access to real-time financial data to improve organizational performance through data visualization. An example of this level of visualization includes the creation of multi-currency, multi-company financial reports with the ability to drill-down to transactional details from consolidated report levels.

Through advanced analytics available through Acumatica, companies can fulfill the third major area of digital transformation to accelerate decision support and uncover hidden growth opportunities.

Lastly, the third area focuses on advanced analytics for finance operations to accelerate decision support and uncover hidden growth opportunities. Success varies, cautions McKinsey & Company, as “organizations with fewer than 100 employees are 2.7 times more likely to report a successful digital transformation than are those from organizations with more than 50,000 employees.”

Discover how to achieve success with your own digital transformation by contacting the Acumatica experts at Net at Work