I
am not referring to the weather which did reach about 28 degrees C and we did
have a few days that looked like the weather in the picture, but we all left
with a very warm feeling of confidence.
The thing about an annual
conference is that it is a place where the host presents their plans and
strategies. After hearing the presentations and seeing the brilliant slides you
then have to ask yourself whether this team will deliver on their promises and
whether their understanding of the future trends is accurate. As you can
tell, we left with the answers of “yes” and “yes” which gives us a very warm
feeling indeed.
So
why do I say this?
I'm
going to start with one of the last presentations of the event from a company
individual that doesn't normally speak at such a gathering. The major
shareholder and one of the founders. In this case it is Mr Serguei
Beloussov. His commitment and desire to see Acumatica grow into a
multi-billion dollar company were impressive particularly when his track
record with his other start-ups, Parrallels Inc and Acronis, both providing
cloud-based services, are well on their way. What I also found impressive was
that it was Mr Beloussov who got into accounting systems because he wanted to
change the accounting system he was using for his business in Singapore and
thought that he could do a good job of it. He contacted the executives of
Solomon in the US and convinced them of his idea and they allowed him to set up
a development team in Russia.
The
next reason for my confidence was as a result of the presentation by the
founder of Solomon which is now owned by Microsoft and called Microsoft
dynamics SL. Mr John Howell who seems to have been a mentor to Mr Beloussov who
himself confessed that in the beginning when he became a Solomon reseller he
had no idea about accounting software or how to sell it. Solomon may not be the
prized accounting system in Microsoft's portfolio but it is acknowledged by
most that Solomon is very well designed and I understand that Mr Howell has
been a main contributor. So we have a senior American with a wealth of ERP
experience and a middle-aged Russian IT entrepreneur who have influenced this
new ERP system and it seems to be a very good foundation.
At
the start of the conference the other key executives spoke. All very
impressive and many had come from senior positions in Microsoft. What was
notable right from the start was the variety of accents. First it was Dutch
then Russian then Chinese then Danish and eventually American. Although in the
US I would not suggest that there is an American accent ! Compared to
other Sage and Microsoft annual conferences that I have attended in the past
there was not as much hype at this one but more quiet commitment. It was
like watching an interview with the tennis player Novak Djokovic.
It
was these indirect observations that struck me the most.
Directly,
the system is brilliant. A panel of six of the top business partners in the US
were asked about their favourite feature and every one of the responses was unique.
The Wiki feature to map processes and workflow, the pricing which is not based
on user count, the web services integration, the deep security, the screen and
process customisation features and finally ease-of-use. Version 4.1 was
officially released this week and it has the best Excel integration I have seen
and a customer portal on the CRM system.
We
also heard from a company called Visma who have used Acumatica and branded it
for their business which supplies systems and accounting services in Scandinavian
countries. They are a business with close to $1 billion turnover. It is
not clear what proportion Acumatica represents but even at 20% it would be
huge. What was very impressive was to see how they had customised the
Acumatica screens for their purposes.
In
a similar vein a further announcement was made about a deal with a big ERP
developer for small businesses. MYOB. Many people know of MYOB and this
deal is to create a web-based ERP system for the larger MYOB businesses of
which there are many particularly in Australia.
It
is good to have a warm feeling as the summer ends.
So
we prepare for the year ahead with a lot of enthusiasm for our future with
Acumatica in the UK.
