Acumatica cloud ERP aims for industry-focused AI value
New AI functionality in the company's cloud ERP platform could help customers evolve back-office transactional systems into strategic centers in their organizations.
The Acumatica cloud ERP platform has a new dose of AI functionality that aims to make everyday business processes more efficient.
Acumatica's ERP offers editions for specific industries -- construction, distribution, manufacturing, retail and professional services -- as well as a generic General Business Edition. The platform is designed for small to medium-sized enterprises, and two releases -- R1 and R2 -- are planned for each year.
At the Acumatica Summit 2025 conference in Las Vegas this week, the company introduced new AI functionality for each industry edition of Acumatica ERP. The company also unveiled two new offerings to help with AI development -- Acumatica AI Studio and Acumatica Labs -- along with integrations with e-commerce platform Shopify and other industry-focused software.
The AI capabilities in the industry-specific editions are designed to help customers evolve their ERP platforms from back-office transactional systems to more strategic centers in the organization, said Ali Jani, chief product officer at Acumatica, during a conference keynote session on Tuesday.
Acumatica's AI capabilities and services can help organizations improve decision-making while keeping organizational data private and secure, he said.
"We want to arm you with the power of AI," Jani said.
The industry edition updates are all designed to address real problems faced by organizations in those industries.
The Distribution Edition now includes price and catalog controls; the Manufacturing Edition includes real-time material availability for open production and advanced planning and scheduling views; the Construction Edition includes pro forma project billing enhancements and partnerships with construction software vendors Stack and JobPlanner; the Retail Edition includes a partnership with e-commerce platform Shopify; and the Professional Services Edition now integrates with the ProjectManager application for resource planning and project scheduling.
Customers will also be able to create or extend their own AI functionality with Acumatica AI Studio and collaborate with other customers through Acumatica Labs. Using Acumatica AI Studio enables organizations to automate complex workflows in a low-code environment while keeping sensitive data private and secure, according to the company.
Acumatica Labs establishes a customer preview program that provides early access to new features for testing and direct feedback. There are several programs and features coming into Acumatica's 2025 R1 and R2 releases that are part of Acumatica Labs, including advanced kitting, order orchestration, shop floor kiosks for manufacturers, customer special orders and document templates for the Professional Services Edition, Jani said.
Acumatica CPO Ali Jani delivers a keynote address at Acumatica Summit 2025.
Practical AI functionality
Acumatica's updates should prove valuable for customers, but are not particularly distinguished in the cloud ERP market, according to analysts.
The new scheduling and work instructions are interesting and could help Acumatica catch up with manufacturing ERP competitors like Epicor and Plex, said Predrag Jakovljevic, principal industry analyst at Technology Evaluation Centers.
The new functionality in the Professional Services Edition could help Acumatica compete better with professional services ERP platforms from Oracle NetSuite and Certinia, he said.
The Acumatica AI Studio offers a low-code mode for developing AI agents that should be useful for customers, but is not significantly differentiated from other vendors' offerings like Epicor Prism, SAP Joule and Microsoft Copilot, Jakovljevic said. However, Acumatica could stand out in the midmarket ERP space.
"Salesforce offers a studio to design your agents, and perhaps SAP, Microsoft and Oracle," he said. "But Acumatica seems to be a bit ahead in the midmarket ERP vendors. For example, Epicor Prism currently offers mostly the ability to view, but not to create AI yourself."
This is refreshing, as they're looking to solve business problems, not just building a tool that they say can do everything and afterward figuring out what to do with it.
Joshua GreenbaumPrincipal, Enterprise Applications Consulting
Acumatica's AI approach is notable because it's a little more pragmatic than some of the other vendors, said Joshua Greenbaum, principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting.
Acumatica Labs formalizes the company's co-innovation processes with customers to solve different problems, Greenbaum said.
"This is refreshing, as they're looking to solve business problems, not just building a tool that they say can do everything and afterward figuring out what to do with it," he said.
There were no startling announcements at the conference, Greenbaum said, but the new functionality in the industry editions is very practically oriented and should meet the day-to-day needs of Acumatica's customers.
Greenbaum also noted that the partnership with Shopify should prove useful for its customers.
Shopify is an important platform particularly for a lot of Acumatica customers trying to serve both the B2C and B2B customers from the Acumatica platform, he said. This means they can offer a single catalog with different views depending on whether you are coming in as a wholesale customer or as a consumer.
"That integration with Shopify allows [Acumatica] to have a much more efficient process for these customers to follow, based on an acknowledged market leader," Greenbaum said.
This is very practically oriented toward making processes that these customers are already doing more efficient, he said. It also improves the stickiness of the Acumatica platform because it adds a layer of business efficiency to something they're already using.
Jim O'Donnell is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget who covers ERP and other enterprise applications.
