This year, the Acumatica 2018 R2 Roadshow in Columbus was at the Sheraton in Capital Square, directly across the street from the state capitol building.
Those who stayed at the hotel would have had a view like this:
I had wanted to bike like I did to the Acumatica 2017 R2 Roadshow last year (click here), but my Fall allergies decided that would be a bad idea. So I drove instead and spent a fortune for downtown parking.
It was good to see a lot of familiar faces and friends. Columbus has become an important location for Acumatica. There are several partners in the area, the JAMS Manufacturing solution is headquartered here, Acumatica has a support/services office located here, and Columbus is close to a lot of Midwest Distribution and Manufacturing companies which Acumatica is a great fit for.
Columbus was actually the smallest metro area of any of the Acumatica Roadshow 2018 cities. I grabbed the list of Acumatica Roadshow 2018 events (click here) and then populated the metro area for each event according to this Wikipedia article (click here). You can see that Columbus is the smallest based on 2017 Estimate.
But Columbus ranks right in the middle by population growth between 2010 and 2017 even though it ranks the smallest by metro area. That fits well with Acumatica. Acumatica might not be the largest player in the market, but it’s growing fast.
The official presentation portion of the event went from about 12:30pm to about 3:00pm and included demos of Acumatica 2018 R2, a partner spotlight, ISV spotlights, and an analyst session with Cindy Jutras.
I took notes from the Acumatica 2018 R2 demo portion. And I took them on Twitter as usual.
Here I have collected all of my tweets together so we have them in one place. Enjoy!
About to start the #Acumatica2018R2 roadshow here in Columbus, Ohio pic.twitter.com/2PPKHozBCd
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Hmmm, which bucket does #Acumatica2018R2 fit into? pic.twitter.com/oGYQkARkcO
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Some examples of legacy software getting replaced by #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/mJPKDFQfv3
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Acumatica now has over 4,000 customers globally doing anywhere from 5 million in annual sales to 500 million in annual sales #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/qR3bsIQesK
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
The growing Acumatica product line #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/Hb9WWeioXH
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Acumatica won the Codie award two years in a row, voted on by competitors #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/9VkDGVD4CX
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Nucleus and Gartner analyst firm recognition #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/0Mac7IMrP2
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Gotta love the flexible deployment options #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/9DSIX1v5S0
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Of course, Acumatica thinks the SaaS option is the best 🙂 #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/5cWWLKiMkF
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
An important KPI from the first half of 2018 #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/rmScnaM2tY
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Acumatica had a SaaS customer that was under 5 feet of water after a hurricane, but they continued to run their business for a whole weeks out of a Starbucks #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/PLlWf5pu7l
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Acumatica licensing is not based on number of users, but based on your transaction volume #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/rEuSk2g2NF
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Acumatica continues to invest big time into the native mobile app #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/ALwqkkS2ba
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Acumatica's API framework is very open #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/ZGUu4KuYMG
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
75% of Acumatica's team sits in Engineering, a very important and significant strategy #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/O5UbSf8dDE
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
How Acumatica got from version 1 in 2010 to the current version in 2018 #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/8aSbFcAXFn
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
An overview of #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/Zk8oWEf7bO
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Platform and Technology improvements in #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/mqbxfyAIDr
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Now for the important stuff, demos. Starting with Usability and Mobile #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/v7NMLYUTTS
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Moving the Branch selection to the upper right-hand corner makes A LOT more sense #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/rAMCTUUaKI
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Pop-out Workspaces by Module #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/T5hmNhHDEi
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Global Search makes navigating to a screen a lot faster. Showing "1099" here. #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/UTfhM8E5ZP
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Searching through Transaction and Help articles happens in the same Global Search area #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/hDlVcJnHxO
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Searching through file attachments in Global Search searches on document names, not document contents #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/lmFqZmgZlG
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
The importance of Dashboards in Acumatica is that they are highly configurable, built on a Dashboard Engine, not "what you see is what you get" #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/4NENsMEGyV
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Parameters in Dashboards allow you to build a customer-specific Dashboard #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/5MhNZFviF4
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
You can remove categories on the fly from Dashboard charts #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/5vECyi3CGO
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Moving the Branch selector to the upper right-hand corner makes A LOT more sense #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/BgCVQKypOo
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
The new side panel feature on Generic Inquiries allows you to quickly edit data #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/FqvUCLV8Ze
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
You can also access the customer-specific Dashboard in the new side panel #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/aHZTJzphTF
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Pivot Tables can now be added to the pre-filter buttons, good example of Acumatica improving existing features, not just adding new ones. #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/vgLq0ucRnm
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Attributes are now called user defined fields and are more predominantly displayed on the top of a screen #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/EsAM9tF79j
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
CUSTOMIZATION -> Manage User Defined Fields is how you define them. So easy! #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/MBx47vMfUk
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
I wonder if you can get to the User Defined Fields tab with a keyboard shortcut #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/rA889EV3nR
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Pop-ups are new. If you have a pop-up note defined on a Customer, it will get displayed when you select the Customer on a Sales Order #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/y2bEvEl8K7
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Mobile Push Notifications. As soon as we saved the opportunity with a Salesperson defined, it popped a mobile notification on their phone #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/hyR6w0I3eL
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
The important thing to me about Mobile Push Notifications is that they are a third option on Business Events, joining the existing Email Notifications and Import Scenarios, making them extremely flexible to define. #Acumatica2018R2
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Module improvements in #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/LelkDMdXlG
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Now a demo of the new Project Quotes feature #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/u6vA8CoSol
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
We're going into the "Rip and Replace NotSuite" opportunity 🙂 #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/CiN0Qn8Vjv
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Creating new quote from the Opportunity. Notes and File Attachments get copied over automatically. #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/IYOKiVixx0
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Using the Project Template defaults in values from the template #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/lfGbKFG7t1
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Gross Margin is updated real-time as you are building a quote #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/BrjIWJE0bq
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
The email notification gets added as an activity and you now have one button to click to go back to the Opportunity #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/zJgGxvvyta
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Just a couple of clicks to turn the Quote into a Project #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/BIwDlRNfL0
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
We now have 10 active projects instead of 9 #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/qJb0y0Ez8D
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
List of improvements to the Industry Editions #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/MsNJKQhWC4
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Field Service demo showing a new Service Order to install an air conditioner, just in time for November 🙂 #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/Idi88pRHVb
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
You can now create a Purchase Order from the Service Order #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/QfqE599kyr
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
"Waiting for Purchased Items" gets unchecked when the PO is placed #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/qGHjbdetFA
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Simply drag the appointment to the calendar to get it scheduled with a technician #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/A5LCHp9qSC
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
You can easily navigate to Google Maps, take a picture, or use phone voice recognition to take notes on the appointment #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/KNmcpyKdIN
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018
Our appointment is now gray since the work has been done and the invoice displays the signature that we captured on mobile #Acumatica2018R2 pic.twitter.com/CrSH6YSPtE
— Tim Rodman (@TimRodman) October 3, 2018