This Spring, I attended the Acumatica Partner Summit 2016 Conference in Orlando, Florida. It was my first opportunity to meet members of Acumatica’s corporate team and Acumatica partners across the United States. Ironically, during the exact same time period, on the other side of the country, in Denver Colorado, Oracle was hosting their own Summit, the Oracle JD Edwards Partner Summit. These events, like their locations, were opposites in many respects.
I’ve been involved with the JDE community since 1998. The JDE partner Summit was founded back in 2012 when JDE became the best-selling ERP product in the Oracle universe. But time in technology is fleeting. Cloud and SaaS is where the industry is moving. Oracle is powerful and directs its sales team to pursue what makes sense for Oracle to pursue – in this case — the Oracle ERP Cloud. Now while improvements are being made to JDE all the time – they are just improvements to an already mature and expensive ERP product. It’s just the facts of life as it relates to companies out there selling what has become legacy software. The foundations can’t be re-built nor can they be started from scratch.
Now I bring this up because there I was missing the Oracle JDE Summit and as fate would have it — here I was attending the Acumatica Summit. Now let’s face it. Acumatica is tiny compared to Oracle or for that matter, compared to some of the other huge software companies out there. But the Acumatica outlook and growing footprint is growing by leaps and bounds. It reminded me of something I had seen before. Attending the Acumatica Summit I encountered the following:
- A software vendor open to innovation and discussion with customers and partners
- Partners excited to be working with a software company that listens to them and to their customers
- Partners that have bet their future business on Acumatica
- Partners and customers that are evangelistic and enthusiastic about an ERP product
- A software vendor that expressed respect and acknowledgement
- A feeling of excitement that what we are witnessing in a “game changer” a “technology shift”
- Strong annual growth—100% growth since last year
That is the Acumatica Summit and Acumatica community—an open space where the canvas of opportunity is still being painted. And it’s being painted with Acumatica and their partners working together. The Acumatica CEO Jon Roskill and other members of the Acumatica management team could be found roaming through partner booths and grabbing a coffee and/or beer with partners and customers. Their minds and ears are open. The reason Acumatica is going to continue to grow is that Acumatica listens to its partners and to its customers. Every customer is important — no matter your size or revenue. When was the last time you met a company that listened and then responded? Your opinion and interest matters. That is Acumatica.
By Josh Marcus, josh@nexvue.com
NexVue (now Net at Work) Information Systems, www.nexvue.com
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