According to McKinsey & Company, technological changes are quickly reshaping the future of IT and business.
Below is a Q&A session with Ali Jani, Chief Product Officer at Acumatica, covering the implications of these changes, their rapid acceleration, and how SMBs can use modern, user-centric cloud ERP technology to become agile organizations equipped to thrive in today’s changing world. Ali has been with Acumatica for over 13 years and currently leads product development, executing on the company’s vision of delivering modern cloud ERP solutions to small and midsized businesses. Ali has 20 years of experience in the software industry and an accomplished track record as a high-tech entrepreneur with multiple successful start-ups.
What is the outlook for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) over the next five years?
We are in the middle of a dramatic period of change. Over the past ten years, cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions have changed the world, but the world itself has also changed. New economic headwinds are forcing companies to rethink
their business strategies. Recent research from McKinsey says that we can expect more technological progress in the next ten years than in the past 100 years combined. That rapid change means SMBs need to come up with new ways of doing business, new methods of operations, and new ways of serving customers—who have new expectations of their own.
Over the next five years, SMBs should be equipping themselves with cloud ERP technology that has the features and functionalities they need to be agile. They should be implementing software that can easily adapt to their new ways of doing business—not tech that forces them to change to fit a rigid mold. They should be looking for scalable solutions that are designed to stay modern and current. And, over the next five years, cloud ERP companies, like Acumatica, will be pushing forward to create future-proof, state-of-the-art solutions on which customers can truly rely.
What are some examples of how today’s SMBs are transforming? What should cloud ERP companies be doing to keep up with those transformations?
There are many great examples, but, recently, there have been major changes particularly in Distribution and Manufacturing. Evolving markets and innovative businesses are pushing these industries toward a new kind of agility. Today’s customers expect goods to be delivered to them more quickly than ever, so, to make this happen, manufacturers and distributors are turning away from traditional wholesale/retail operations and are moving to direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales. But with this D2C journey comes added concerns about complying with ever-changing regulations and keeping customer data secure.
Cloud ERP solutions, like Acumatica, can help make the D2C journey much easier by providing powerful automation, centralizing data in one secure location, keeping track of legal and tax requirements, and more. But the key really is this: ERP solutions drive transformation when they empower individual employees to imagine what’s next.
What does “empowering employees” involve?
Companies are propelled into the future by their people—their employees. And it’s just not feasible for a modern company to have only a handful of people in the IT department who are able to create business management innovations. Everyone needs to be involved. A modern cloud ERP system can empower employees by letting them make low-code or no-code customizations to the software, so they can truly mold that system into something that meets their unique, changing needs.
Acumatica’s customers have been very creative in using our solution to enhance their organizational processes and meet their business needs. They take the base version of Acumatica Cloud ERP and add dashboards, business events, KPIs—anything they need. They often customize Acumatica’s side panels to put the exact pieces of data they need to see right at their fingertips. It’s a great example of how modern cloud ERP software empowers employees to imagine the future of technology and what it can do for their businesses.
How does Acumatica make development decisions and prioritize each part of its product roadmap?
Acumatica is committed to standing behind our customers and building the future of business, together,” so our product roadmap is based on what we call customer-driven innovation. We constantly collect feedback and ideas from real users—from the Acumatica Community. The Acumatica Community votes on features that they would like to see added to the product roadmap, and we invite those voters to focus groups so that they can provide more detailed feedback about how those features could be designed to best fill their needs.
To prioritize these customer-driven features, Acumatica considers three points: pervasiveness, return on investment (ROI), and alignment with Acumatica’s themes.
- First, we take note of how many people are asking for a specific feature. That pervasiveness reveals how important the new feature would be to the Acumatica Community as a whole.
- Then, we look at ROI from the customer’s point of view. How will this possible new feature boost their revenue, make them more efficient, increase their security, improve their risk aversion capabilities, and more?
- Finally if the pervasiveness and ROI measures sync up well, we then consider how the feature aligns with Acumatica’s overall themes: usability, intuitiveness, future-proof development, innovation, etc. If the feature aligns with our themes, we will add it to the product roadmap.
What advantages does a modern cloud ERP system give to SMBs?
Cloud ERP itself is a game changer, and Acumatica was purpose-built for the cloud. So, we are particularly equipped to help SMBs set themselves up on a growth trajectory. Modern cloud ERP systems, like Acumatica, specialize in accelerated engineering processes, so their customers can quickly and easily benefit from updated features. Acumatica rolls out new product releases twice a year through the power of the cloud. And, with our flexible “Always Current” program, customers can update twice a year—or, if they would rather, just once a year. A modern ERP system should be flexible in that way.
But, most importantly, after investing in a modern ERP solution, the users’ technical debt should be behind them. What I mean by “technical debt” is the future cost of changes companies will have to make if they stick with limited software rather than adopting modern systems. They shouldn’t have to worry that their business management system will become outdated or that they’ll get stuck on an old version that they can’t ultimately move off of. The cloud prevents all this. Modern cloud ERP is the best way to grow your business without having to always worry about managing your own software.
About Acumatica
Acumatica’s business management solution is purposely built around the real-world needs of small and midsized companies. Our customer-friendly business practices, growth-friendly licensing, and industry-specific editions are designed to help companies grow on their terms and control their own futures. We are a community of partners, customers and creators that are driven to continuously seek out better ways to work and to build the future of business, together.
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