Hello everyone, welcome to today's webinar. I am Stacy Wright, Senior Demand Generation Manager at Acumatica, and I will be your webinar moderator. Before we explore this exciting topic, I'd like to share a few housekeeping notes with you all. So Please note that this webinar is meant to be interactive. So what that means is basically we encourage you to explore all the resources that are located in the resource list to learn more about today's topic. And if you happen to have any questions about this webinar and it's related topics, please reach out to your VAR partner. Or if you're not currently working with an Achematica reseller, click on the Contact Us widget. This Contact Us widget is located in the screen, the attendee viewing platform that you're on right now. So clicking on this Contact Us widget will enable us to connect you with an Acumatica expert who could provide the answers that you need. And if you happen to experience any technical difficulties, please reach out to to us. Using the Q&A box, you can also access the help document that is located on the top right hand corner of your screen. And note that this webinar is being recorded so you and your team can access the recording, and that will be shared with you via e-mail. And lastly, your feedback is valuable to us. So please take a few moments to share your thoughts using the short survey so that we could better understand what you would like to see in the future. And with that said, I'll pass it off to David Dirigo, who is the Vice President of Product Marketing at Acumatica. Welcome, David. Thanks, Stacy. Hi, this is my name is David Rago. And as Stacy said, I'm the VP of of Product Marketing here at Acumatica and I'm super thrilled to be Co presenting today with James Mallory. So, James, I'll turn it over to you to take us through the agenda and do the first part of the the webinar. Fantastic. Thank you, David. I'm also very excited to be here with you all today. James Mallory, been with Acumatica for about 5 years now. Boy, it's been a quick ride there and super excited to continue to be at Acumatic. I love the company, love the product, love my team, love our customers, and really super excited to talk to you about what is cloud ERP today. What we're going to do is we're going to, we're going to walk through kind of an introduction to ERP, talk a little bit about some of the elements of ERP, the history of ERP. We're going to talk about cloud versus on premises ERP, some of the advantages of going with a cloud ERP solution and we're going to do a real high level overview just so you can get a flavor for what a a modern ERP platform looks like. Like Acumatica and rest of the presentation, we're going to run through kind of ERP for small and medium sized businesses overcoming investment risks and then why Acumatica? So that'll be our our agenda for the day. So let's start with what is ERP? And you know, there's a million definitions out there on what is ERP and there's really two types, right? There's what is ERP conceptually like? What does it do for me as a, a business owner or as a business leader? And then there's what is it in terms of, you know, a noun or a product? I really like this definition from Wikipedia. And this, this kind of encompasses both. So what is ERPERP? It's an integrated management system, helps you manage your main business processes. It's also a suite of integrated applications that can help you organize, collect, store, manage, and interpret data from your daily business activities. So in a nutshell, it's the platform that you use to run your business. And So what are the components of an ERP system? Fundamentally, at the core, you have a platform and you have the technology and you have accounting, right? You're going to have your general Ledger, your accounts payable, your accounts receivable. You're going to have all those peripheral financial applications, could be bank feeds, fixed assets, payroll. But then around that you have everything that ties into that and extends the accounting into like line of business type functions. Things like sales or customer relationship management, inventory management. What do I have in stock? Where is it stored? How much do I have order management, whether that's purchasing or requisitions or again sales orders, production if you happen to be a manufacturer, project management or project accounting if you happen to be a professional service firm as well as e-commerce, right. And e-commerce isn't just for retail anymore. You know, there's manufacturers doing, we are doing retail and e-commerce, there's distributors that are doing retail and e-commerce. And then surrounding all of that functionality is, is something crucial. And that's the BI in the reporting. And then the community, it's the community of people that are extending the core applications, whether that be an ISV with a, with a solution or a VAR that's helping you implement and train you how to use the software. So these are all fundamentally some of the components you're going to see in an ERP system. So what's the evolution of ERP? You know, this stuff dates back really to pen and paper. And you know, pre 1960s, it was very much a manual process to figure out things like material planning. It's kind of where ERP was born, was in manufacturing. And So what happened is in 1960s and 1970s, companies like IBM partnered with manufacturers like Ji Case and the agricultural industry, and they started to develop ways to plan for material requirements. Now, this may seem pretty simple, but think about a big piece of like agricultural equipment with multiple levels of bills of material, and it's very complicated. There's different revisions, different stocking levels at different warehouses. And all this information had to be kind of crunched to determine what do I have on hand, what do I have on order? What do I forecast into order and when do I need to buy it, how much and from who? So these early systems, you know they're like punch card driven and you had to feed a lot of the data into them. Fast forward into the 19 kind of 70s into the 1980s and we get early precursors of MRP with some tie insurance to systems like inventory. So we no longer had to feed this information and this information was readily available to feed into like an MRP system from inventory for sales orders, purchase orders. Again, all the state is kind of coming together. You get into 1990s and I think it was Gartner in 1991 originally coined the term ERP or enterprise resource planning. And what this really represented was the the evolution of MRP systems into an enterprise wide system. That's what we have today folks. This is everything down to your general Ledger, your payables, your receivables, and this continued to evolve into the 2000s with extended solutions like CRM and into things like e-commerce and retail. Then we get into what we have today, which is intelligent ERP and that's the advent of AI and machine learning and all these technologies converging to make these systems even more impactful on your business. So let's talk a little bit about cloud versus on premises software. Again, going back to the, you know, the pre 1970s technology was predominantly mainframes. These are monolithic, very large, very inflexible systems, very expensive, not available to the general public. That's why only the the larger companies had them. We get into more of the 1970s, nineteen 80s and things started to move toward mini computers. Prices started to come down, the functionality started to increase dramatically. We get into the the 80s, you had a little bit of, you know, Microsoft DOS and then you get into client server architecture with platforms like Windows and you know, different 4th generation language development platforms. You get into 2000s. This is where we start to see everything moving away from client server into very early versions of the cloud and hosted applications and then 2000 tens in the current we got into remote servers kind of hosting your application and to where we are today with a product like Acumatica, which is a serverless cloud, right. It's multi tenant flexible deployment options for you. So let's talk about some of the advantages and disadvantages of on premises solutions. And I want to, I want to predicate this by saying most of these advantages aren't really advantages anymore. You know, it used to be that on premises you had more data security. But I'd argue that you have more security on the cloud today because companies like Acumatica, I have a whole team of people that are worried about in monitoring the system security and your data is hosted on a platform like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. And guess what? They have teams of people ensuring this the safety of your data as well, a lot more so than you could ever do with an application that you're hosting on your own servers, customization on premises. You know, you have the ability to customize the software. And some may argue that you can customize a little bit further with an on premise application, but I'd argue again with with modern day cloud applications like Acumatica with low code, no code technologies, you can do a lot of customization with open AP is and extensibility that you don't really need to make source code modifications to tailor the software to meet your unique needs. And then you know, some other advantages. Operational control, sure, maybe a little bit with on premise and cost management, large organizations can manage their costs maybe a little bit better, again, arguably, but there's a lot of disadvantaged on premise software. It's really expensive upfront. You've got to maintain the software, you've got to upgrade it. It's not a scalable, you don't have dynamic scalability. You can't just add more resources to it. It's hard to implement. It's limited accessibility. You know, you, you have to log into AVPN to get into the software and disaster recovery is quite honestly sometimes disastrous. So what is cloud ERP? Again, we, we saw this earlier, so I'm not going to talk about the elements, but there's a couple ways to deploy a cloud ERP business application. The 1st is with a private cloud and this is where you would host it or you would host it in a private cloud environment. You have the ability to go in and administer that environment or have somebody administer that for you. Downsides that the hardware and software is typically on site or on somebody else's servers where you have to go and and access that information. You have to maintain the environment, potentially high initial costs and possibly there might be some remote access limitations there. With a true SAS application like Acumatica, you have a lot more flexibility. The software's hosted, administered by us, anytime, anywhere access. You can be on a boat in the middle of the ocean. As long as you have Internet, you can connect. It's maintained by us, so you don't have to worry about updating. You know, your operating systems, your databases, doing backups for security, you name it. All that we take care of. Again, though, one of the beautiful things with cloudy RP is there's choices. So SAS doesn't make sense for everyone. So we do offer you that, that opportunity to go with a private cloud. So let's talk about some of the advantages of cloud ERP. And there's, there's a number of them. I want to talk real quick about 8 of them. We talked about customization, low code, no code, open APIs, extensibility, huge marketplace of connected applications you can choose from, scalability. If you grow, you acquire a company, you want to bring in a new branch, you're getting your busy season, all you have to do is add more computing resources, more computing power, and boom, you're off to the races. Accessibility again, accessible anywhere you have an Internet connection. Improve collaboration. Whether you want your CPA firm to be able to log in and maybe you audit your books remotely. Maybe you got an ISO auditor or OSHA auditor and they want to look at some of your data. Maybe you want to extend some of that data to your customers or vendors online. Super easy to extend that with the cloud technology for improved collaboration, insights and analytics. Again, we're in this kind of next evolution of ERP with Intelligent ERP, you've got so many capabilities to do inquiries a customer ports. You can do Power BI, Microsoft Power BI and advanced analytics right within the right within the product platform. Continuous updates, right. We're applying updates as they're available, so you don't have to wait and deploy those. Lots of cost savings, reducing your IT burden, and then as I mentioned earlier, tremendously improved security. So let's take a look real quick at what a modern ERP system like Acumatica looks like. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. Let's see here. Here we go. You guys should be able to see my screen. I'm going to start from my home screen. So you can make any screen in the software your home screen. A lot of our our customers like to make a dashboard their home screen and these are role based dashboards. They have security, so you can prevent who gets to see what information all the way down to kind of the field level, if you will. So let's talk about what the software looks like. I'm going to kind of walk through some of the different elements. So the first thing you'll see is it's deployed via web browser. So again, I can access this on my phone, I can access it on a tablet, my computer, my desktop, you name it. Anywhere with a secured Internet access, I can get to the product. I've got search capabilities here. I've got multi company. So if I have different companies set up, I can set up different structures. I can quickly go through and view information at different companies without having to log out and log into another account. We also have your your role in your administration here. There is also online help both at the form level or the screen level, as well as at the application level and down to the field level. And you can search all this information. In fact, one of my favorite parts of a system like Acumatica is what we call intelligent search. So let's say I'm looking for something regarding service. Well what am I looking for for services? Am I looking for a menu item? Maybe I'm looking for a field service manager information, my technicians. Maybe it's web services. Or maybe I'm looking for transactions. Maybe I'm looking oh here's a a purchase order, 2 purchase orders for my supplier who happens to have service in their name. Or maybe I'm looking for help around service with the software. Maybe it's my service contracts or service classes, or maybe it's a file that happens to contain the word service. So you can see here with one quick, very easy little search, I can get access to all kinds of information. The other thing that I really, really like about systems like this is the ability to take action on the information. So all this this, this information is connected in real time so I can look at things like late, late orders. If you want to find out which orders are late, very easy, click on it, drill down into that information and it's a little slow with the on 24 app, so let's give it a chance to load up. So from here, you know, I could see my sales orders. So these are all my late orders. I can click in and drill into these as well. And there we go. What the data here? The other nice thing with some of these modern applications are things like side panels. So if I'm looking at a sales order and I want additional information, I can look at things like invoices and memos related to that sales order. Or maybe I want to look at customer details or maybe I want to look at related return documents. So all this information available with just a few clicks, I think you're getting the picture here. Lots of information. It's modern, it's what we should expect in a, in a modern user interface. So I do want to show you a couple other things on these are workspaces down the left. And you know, depending on what you're licensed for, you're going to have different applications and workspaces available to you. So things like sales, orders. And here's all the things that I can do. Well, actually, it's kind of my short list, but there's more. And I configure this very simply, very easily. And maybe I want to look or add, create and manifest, want to add that to my menu when I had it hidden before. So let's go ahead and exit. You can see some of these I've starred. These are my favorites. So me and my role, maybe I want to create a favorites list of all the things that I'm going to access on a daily basis. So very easy here. Last thing I want to do is just walk you through a very simple transaction. I want to go ahead and create a sales order for you. Let's let this load up here again. The the on 24 platform does slow me up slightly. I also have my modern UI turned on too. That might be slowing me up a little bit. There we go. All right. So sales orders, we have different types of sales orders. The important part of this is that we have different work flows that we can associate for things like quotes or maybe it's an online commerce order come from Shopify versus return or return for credit. The different order types. I like the the type of head feature. So if I just know part of a record or information, it'll actually find that for me. So there's my customer, Alta Ace. I'm going to go ahead and add an inventory item here and I'm going to add my good old fashioned Easter computer. And you can see once I add that here at the bottom, you can see that I can see my on hand and available quantities. So real nice there. And I'm going to go ahead and add 10 of them to my sales order. And then from here I can add, you know, additional items. I could do matrix items, things like T-shirts that have no varied attributes. And I can just go ahead and quick process this. So I go ahead real quick and create the shipment, confirm the shipment, do things like updating the invoice and preparing the invoice. And I'm not going to do that because we're running out of time today. But just one example of one of the many types of transactions that you can do within the software. So let's go ahead and return back to our presentation and we're going to turn it over to David to talk about ERP for SMBs. Fantastic. Thank you, James. Appreciate that. Yeah. So let's take this down a notch and let's explore ERP specifically for small and mid sized businesses, which we often refer to as SMBs. So growing businesses often rely on a tech stack that consists of an accounting piece of software along with other applications or point solutions. Much like what is depicted on the left hand side of this graphic. This approach causes inefficiencies and leaders really lack the real time insights needed to manage business. An approach like this is not just it's not sustainable and employees waste a lot of time piercing together data just to get a sense of the financial health and position of the business, a sense that is often inaccurate because the point solution applications can't communicate with each other. This could and definitely will have an impact on customer satisfaction. Elite employee burnout force leaders to spend their days working in the business rather than just being strategic and working on the business. And of course, this will ultimately impact growth. So really what growing companies need is a future proof ERP, cloud based ERP solution that scales with them. It eliminates Dale, eliminates data silos, and saves employees time by eliminating manual processes. So as we mentioned earlier, Acumatica is 100% focused on the needs of the S&B market. With that in mind, we thought it would be good to address some of the common misconceptions on what S and BS believe about ERP solutions. We believe understanding these misconceptions can help you make informed decisions about implementing ERP solutions that will truly enhance your operations and fuel you for growth. So the first misconception is really about ERP solutions being only for large enterprises. Many SM BS believe ERP systems are designed specifically for large companies when in reality modern ERP solutions are scalable and can be customized to fit the needs of businesses of all sizes. Secondly, SM BS often think ERP implementation is prohibitively expensive. While there is an initial investment, cloud based ERP solutions make implementation more affordable by eliminating the need for costly on premises infrastructure and extra in house IT resources to manage the the software. Third, SM BS may be deterred by the perception that ERP systems are too complex to implement. However, with proper planning and support, ERP implementations are streamlined and manageable. 4th, some S and BS believe ERP systems are limited to financial management. However, as we saw earlier, ERP solutions integrate multiple business functions, including supply chain management, CRM, project management, inventory control, and more. And the 5th misconception is one that I that I really always get a kick out of and and that's the fear that ERP systems will replace jobs. Instead, really, ERP solutions automate repetitive tasks, empowering employees to pull away from the tedious tasks and focus on strategic activities, improving overall job efficiency. And finally, concerns about data security can make SM BS hesitant to adopt ERP solutions. It's important to know that modern ERP systems with advanced security features including encryption and multi factor authentication. So now that hopefully we've put some of those misconceptions to rest, let's explore some of the benefits specifically for SMBs. First off, cost savings and James kind of spoke to this already, but cloudier P solutions operate on subscription based model, reducing the need for large upfront investments in hardware and software. This makes it very affordable for SM BS. Secondly, accessibility being cloud based, these systems can be accessed 24/7 from anywhere on any device as long as you have Internet connection. This will facilitate remote work and real time data access. 3rd, scalability. Cloud systems can easily scale with your business, allowing you to add or remove users and functionalities as needed without significant additional cost. And 4th, reduce IT overhead. This includes automatic updates managed by the cloud ERP provider, which ensures that your software is always up to date with the newest features, has the latest security patches, and is protected through data backups and disaster recovery measures. 5th Visibility. The system will serve as a central repository, connecting multiple systems and applications and storing data from every department in one, easily accessible up-to-the-minute database. And last but not least, powerful automation. This will streamline simple tasks and eliminate manual workarounds, enhancing overall operational efficiency of your business. These benefits really make cloud ERP a compelling choice for SMBs looking to improve efficiency, reduce their costs, and support growth. All right, so now that we understand the benefits and we hopefully have dispelled the misconceptions about cloud ERP, I'd like to focus on things that you might want to think about in terms of whether or not you're in need of a cloud ERP solution. I'm not going to go through through through this list, but what I do ask is that you take your time to assess your own business against what you're seeing in the list provided. If any of these apply to you, resonate to you, cause a visceral reaction to something, then that means you're probably in need of a cloud ERP solution. So just to hit some of my favourites is, you know, spreadsheets nightmares. If you're spending a lot of time exporting data from from different systems and aggregating in an Excel spreadsheet and using pivot tables to manage your business, very likely you could benefit from a cloud ERP solution. If you have a lot of manual processes and you're re keying data from one system into another one to keep them In Sync, you most definitely could benefit from a cloud ERP solution. And if you're spending a lot of time closing out your books or a lot of time, you know, you know creating reports and doing the analytics, most definitely you could benefit from a cloud ERP solution. So if any of these resonate with you, it might be time to explore some other solutions. So let's talk next about. I want to take a few minutes to just highlight some of the risks that can be associated with making an investment in new technology, such as a cloud ERP solution, as well as look at ways of mitigating those risks. So just as the benefits of cloud ERP apply across the organization, so do the risks that may arise as well. So it's incredibly important to have leadership support for the investment in a new cloud ERP solution. Without it, the organization will question the investment and more than likely resist change. All of this will result in adoption resistance. With that, let's talk about ways to overcome adoption resistance. First off, effective communication. You need to clearly communicate the reason for the change. Tell your employees the why behind the implementation and explain to them the benefits of the new technology and the expected outcome. It's important to manage up, down and across the organization. Transparency will build Trust and will reduce uncertainty. Also, commit to inclusive decision making. Involve employees in the decision making process, Seek their input and feedback on digital initiatives to help them feel valued and engaged, and invest in comprehensive training and support. Develop and implement training programs to equip employees with the necessary skills and knowledge to use new technologies technologies effectively. Offer ongoing support through help desk tutorials and mentorship programs. And if you're partnering with Akumatica for your solution, be sure to leverage our free professional online training. Highlight benefits and quick wins. Demonstrate how the new technology will positively impact employees daily lives and the overall business. Show small, immediate improvements to build excitement and buy in and in identifying Empower Change champions. Every organization has somebody who will embrace this, and what you want to do is use those individuals within your organization to be advocates for the benefits of technology adoption and becoming an inspiration and motivating force to the rest of their colleagues. And last but not least, address concerns proactively. Listen to your employees worries and reassure them with plans for training and support. Addressing concerns early can help pave the way for smooth transition into the new system. Some examples on how to do this might be holding office hours a specific time on everyone's calendar where they can just drop in and ask them questions, investing in lunch and learns, buy and lunch and get them to to ask questions about the solution, or even starting something simple like a weekly newsletter. Be creative. But whatever you do, make sure it's it's impactful to the rest of your organization. Definitely, by implementing these strategies, you'll be able to foster a culture of innovation and smooth the transition to the many benefits associated with cloud ERP. All right, So what I'd like to do next? Let's see. My computer's not responding. Stacey, can you advance the screen for me? James, are you able to advance the screen? Ah, there we go. OK, we got it. All right, thank you. All right. So now that we've discussed the numerous benefits of cloud ERP, what I'd like to do is share with you some, some stories from our customers, real world examples of how some of our customers have benefited from Acumatica. We had Everest and we needed better support and the bar said, well, have you thought of cloud? We were having issues with our branches and the connectivity to the hub here in Nashville. So we researched NetSuite, Sage products, SAP. Everything felt like it was legacy. Old Akumatica was on the rise, while the others felt like they were fading away. Working life has definitely changed over the years. We are very into hybrid working. Everybody needs to have that flexibility. We no longer have the requirement of people need to be on site all day every day. The way the world is. That's not what our employees want either. I'm with Acumatica. It is allowing us to give our staff that ability. I love that it's in the cloud. All I need is a web browser and I'm good to go. My wife works from home and she's going to login into the VPN and it's annoying. When looking for AARP, especially in a company like ours where we weren't really too tech savvy, I had to make sure that it was a system that was cloud based where we didn't need infrastructure to run it, we didn't need dead servers, and the cost was also important. With acumatic visibility into the financial statements is great. That allows me to take a 10,000 foot view and look at the company overall, but also look at individual branches to try and find if there are issues. Being able to analyze every aspect of our production process and drive efficiency through that data has helped us immensely. And so if you think across your entire organization where you've got finance and payroll and operations and all these different people pulling data, sorting and filtering it, then using that data to make a decision, Acumatica allows you to do that in a matter of seconds. I want us to be able to support our guys in the field the best that we can. Acumatica and implementing that has really helped stream some of the things that we used to do. The cloud based is completely scalable. If we go on to other divisions or make other companies, we can use the same system and implement ecometica to those companies as well and we don't have to worry about hardware and Technical Support. I love the cloud. Aspect because we one less thing to worry about, but also the. Openness. Of it makes integrations possible. That just were completely. Out of the question before. So we went from Stone Age to digital age. There was no in between. It's future proof. Being a subscription model, we don't have to worry about upgrades not being available for us. There's a business in our business park that just had a fire, and I can't imagine having an ERP system that's posted on servers in the building that caught on fire. We don't have to worry about one of the most critical parts of our business being corrected or being lost. Because Acumatica is reliable, our uptime is fantastic. We don't really have any issues and it gives me a lot of comfort that I can maintain business continuity. Awesome. Well, hopefully some of that resonated with you and what I'd like to to do, you know, we're almost in the home stretch here. So before we before we end here, what I'd like to do. OK, so what's going on with the screen here? We had Everest and. What's happening? Oh, just keep on going, I'll edit it out. OK, All right. I'm like, do we have to do this whole thing all over again? No. Just keep on going. OK. OK, here we go. Hopefully these stories and results of some of our customers resonated with you. We're in homestretch now. Before we conclude, I'd like to highlight some of the key reasons you should consider Acumatica if you're thinking about a cloud ERP investment. First of all, we offer unlimited user access without having to purchase users licenses. We have a consumption based program, not a user license model, which means if you have a temp or you have an auditor, somebody who needs access to Acumatica, you can do that without incurring additional costs. We have an industry specific functionality. We offer manufacturing, distribution, retail, construction and professional services edition of the software as well as a general business edition is that applies to a number of different industries. And then we also have Stace. I'm going to start this all over again. OK. So hopefully these stories, hopefully these stories and results of some of these customers resonate with you. We're in the homestretch now, But before we conclude, I'd like to highlight some of the key reasons you should consider Acumatica. First of all, we offer unlimited user access without having to purchase user licenses. We have a consumption based program, not a user license model, which means if you have a temp or an auditor who needs access to Acumatica, you can do that without having to incur additional cost. We also offer industry specific functionality with a manufacturing, distribution, retail, construction and professional services edition of the software. We also have our general business edition that applies to number of different industries and you can deploy our solution on a public or private cloud. So if you have real concerns about being on a in a public situation, you can still deploy Acrimatica on premise on your own private cloud. And we also offer an open platform with robust AP is to rapidly integrate with other systems. In fact, check out our marketplace on acumatica.com for a full feature of all the different solutions that are a part of our marketplace. And we offer a complete security model that covers your application access, your data, your reports and your devices. And you also own and access your data now and always in full usable data formats. So if you decide for whatever reason to leave Acumatica, your data goes with you and you have that data at your fingertips. And last but not least, we ought our offer professional online training that is free and completely comprehensive. So with that, and on behalf of James, I'd like to thank you for attending. We appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day. And with this, I'll turn it over to Stacey. We can't hear you, Stacy. OK, sorry. Yeah. So thank you to James and thank you to David for sharing your insights on what is cloud ERP to everyone in the audience. If you would like to learn more about today's topic, again, we do encourage you to visit the resources that we have available in your attendee viewing console and also to get in touch with us using the contact us form. And with that said, thank you so much for your time and participation today. Goodbye.