Startup Acumatica Brings CRM, ERP To The Web

Company:

Headquarters: Bethesda, Md.

Technology Sector: Software

Key Product: Accumatica Financial Management Suite

Year Founded: 2006

Number of Channel Partners: 8 worldwide

Ideal Channel Partner: Midmarket-focused solution provider

Why You Should Care: Accounting systems have been primarily on-premise, but by delivering them online through a Web browser, Acumatica makes them more suitable for companies with distributed offices.

The Lowdown: Accounting systems are vital to the smooth functioning of many companies, but customers with distributed offices have had a tough time tapping into all of the benefits. Startup Acumatica believes the way to solve this is by moving systems like CRM and ERP to the Web, where they can be accessed anywhere and at any time under a modified SaaS model.

Bethesda, Md.-based Acumatica offers an integrated suite of business applications via SaaS that has been engineered with bandwidth optimization, security and granular access to applications in mind. All of these rank as top-of-list concerns for companies that are just dipping their toes into SaaS.

Acumatica is similar to Netsuite in that users access applications through a Web browser, but its functionality is more akin to an advanced Microsoft Dynamics solution, according to Doug Johnson, Acumatica's vice president of marketing and business development. Acumatica builds its applications using .NET with a SQL Server backend, although other databases can be plugged in as necessary.

"It's like an internal type of SaaS: Customers can deploy the server wherever they want and access it anywhere," said Johnson.

Acumatica launched its integrated suite of business applications in May, and in the third quarter will begin offering its distribution suite. The company is also in the process of building out its channel ranks and is looking for solution providers with accounting expertise. Acumatica's model is similar to that of Microsoft, in that the company generates leads and passes them on to VARs, and doesn't distribute its offering directly to customers.

Rajev Bricksin, vice president of sales at Dynlink, an Arlington, Va.-based solution provider, says the fact that Acumatica uses a .NET-friendly environment makes it easy for partners to customize applications any way they see fit.

Acumatica also gives solution providers the option of adding their own workflows and customer objects to the core accounting functionality within the application, according to Bricksin. "It's very similar to Visual Studio in the sense that we can be creative and fit the product to a specific industry or vertical without having to bring in a full time programmer," Bricksin said.

By moving critical business systems to the Web, Acumatica obviates the need for client software while also giving flexibility to customers, Johnson said "We found that companies wanted software offered as a Web-based solution that can be accessed from anywhere and deployed on premise or in the cloud," Johnson said.