One of the key reasons why Acumatica has established itself as an ERP Leader is that we put customers and innovation over profit and prestige. This is evident in a range of practices and initiatives from our ‘unlimited-user’ licensing model to our approach to product development which relies on customer input. As part of this customer-driven innovation, we’re committed to providing exceptional ERP usability, which is a critical requirement for businesses in today’s digital economy.
Why is ERP usability so important, and how has Acumatica made it a priority? We’ll unpack these two questions today.
Why ERP Usability Matters
Most definitions of “usability” revolve around how easy a product or application is to learn and how well it helps users meet their goals. Though not incorrect, from an ERP perspective, these definitions are slightly oversimplified. In addition to being helpful and easy to learn, an ERP product must also make its users more efficient and less error-prone. To fulfill this usability requirement the solution should provide:
- An intuitive interface.
- Personalization capabilities.
- Accessibility from any device.
- Concise platform documentation.
Users should then be able to leverage the solution’s capabilities (e.g., access to real-time and accurate data, smooth collaboration between team members, streamlined workflows, and more) to help their businesses succeed.
Acumatica understands the incredible importance of all facets of usability. We know that they are vital to ensuring every team member uses our cloud ERP technology to the fullest. When businesses implement Acumatica, they place their trust in our technology. And our customers’ success is our success.
When Acumatica users tell us what they want and need out of their ERP solution, we listen, and we use that feedback to enhance our software. This customer-driven innovation is the foundation of our latest update, Acumatica 2023 R1.
Exceeding “Exceptional Usability” with Acumatica 2023 R1
For our 2022 R1 and R2 releases, we promised to deliver usability enhancements, and we did. How do we know? Our users are telling us! In G2’s Fall 2022 ERP Systems Usability Index report, Acumatica—out of 33 ERP systems—secured G2’s “Best Usability” badge, with an overall Usability score of 8.84 or 88% (10% above the average). With Acumatica 2023 R1, we are delivering updates that will exceed this high standard.. Our latest release will empower users to:
- Highlight and provide additional information about new features via the hover functionality, which will not interrupt the user’s workflow.
- Improve business event transparency by sending notifications about event activity to users who previously owned the event, such as support or sales staff.
- Optimize the approval process by choosing a user to receive another user’s approval requests over a predefined period.
- Increase visibility and find data faster with the preview mode, which renders recognized documents in the side panel.
- Balance user experience and security by allowing users to adjust the system’s default logout time in their preferences.
- Increase the accuracy of internal controls and reporting by uncovering errors, omissions, or duplications via synchronizing fixed assets and GL periods.
- Boost precision and reduce manual errors with automatic tax zone assignment based on entered addresses (country, state, postal code).
- Track and analyze a business’ pipeline’s performance and overall health while identifying opportunities for growth via robust out-of-the-box opportunity summary reports.
- Enhance tax reporting processes for Canadian businesses by reviewing history and surfacing remittance reports in Acumatica before submitting the T5018 form to the Canadian Review Agency (CRA).
During the Day Two Keynote at Acumatica Summit 2023, Doug Johnson, our VP of Product Management, explained that working more efficiently, eliminating manual processes, and easily correcting mistakes are hallmarks of 2023 R1.
“By talking to all of you, we figured out ways to make things easier to use,” Doug said. “We’re eliminating clicks, so you can work more efficiently. We’re utilizing new technologies that you’ll see, so that you can streamline your business processes. And most importantly, we’ve made the system more forgiving. So, if you manage to click something the wrong way, you’re going to find error messages that are more meaningful and insightful and guide you.
“You’re also going to find the help files are easier to access so that they’re only a click away, and they get you exactly the help you need when you need them.”
By working directly with Acumatica customers, we better understand their challenges and can work together to help themsolve their real-world problems. For example, with Acumatica AP Document Recognition, custom cabinet company Deslaurier receives emailed PDF invoices from vendors and processes them automatically. This has worked very well, but team members were still having to manually make changes to the vendor field for each invoice. Now, Acumatica 2023 R1 will remember these changes and automatically make them in similar-looking documents—removing another manual step and boosting efficiency.
