Acumatica Summit 2026 - SMB customers air out their views on AI, automation, and data quality

The Acumatica Summit pushed my buttons in all the best ways - and now I need to explain why. My first volley is in the books: Acumatica Summit 2026 - taking the pulse of cloud ERP, AI, and customer realities, and yet, I didn't quite get there. 

Part of my disposition is the relentless "AI eats software" debate. But there is more. Every enterprise event has a handful of standout lines. 

One of them comes from Ali Jani, longtime Acumatica Chief Product Officer, who is moving on this spring (we met with Acumatica's new CPO Jon Pollock at the Summit). 

During an analyst debrief, Jani spoke to the mood of Acumatica customers: "They know what they want, but they don't know how to get it, and they need it yesterday."

During my Acumatica Summit podcast review with Brian Sommer, I got to the same point  - while criticizing AI obsessions. What do customers really want? Shiny new tech bots toys? No. I made a different case: 

Isn't the goal that a customer has of a system like Acumatica, to do what I just described? It [should allow] them to adapt quickly to market conditions, seize new business opportunities and make smarter decisions - all within the context of the platform that they're investing in at this point in time? Regardless of how much AI or not is in there, what they really want is the ability to do that in volatile conditions, and knowing that they're not stuck on systems that can't adapt quickly.

My cloud ERP-versus-AI case - the short version

Ergo, my ERP-versus-AI case: 

1. The problem isn't (ERP) software. The problem is rigid systems that are not fluid enough for market conditions (many older ERP systems aren't real-time/fluid enough).
2. AI is most effective when embedded into data/apps platforms that have these fluid characteristics, ideally sourcing a so-called "single source of truth," or harmonized data layer.
3. AI has many flavors and is one of many tools. Deterministic workflows come in handy also. It's about all the 'smart' automation and best human talent you can get, not how many AI agents you have deployed.
4. Applying AI to your industry specializations is what drives better results, and vice versa. Therefore, a crucial ingredient to a modern ERP platform is vertical capabilities, honed by domain experts. Adding AI to this mix works better than an out-of-the-box LLM.

But how does that case hold up against Acumatica customer sentiment? Let's dig in - but first, a few proof points on Acumatica. If AI threatens ERP software, Acumatica hasn't experienced that directly yet. As I said to Sommer: 

In our initial discussion with CEO John Case and Sanket [Akerkar,] who has been promoted to President and Chief Operating Officer, one of the analysts asked about the numbers. Acumatica selectively releases those, but tends to be pretty open. They have not updated their customer number from 10,000 a couple years ago, because they consider that a milestone number.

Case also said they had all-time record growth in the last year, and record profitability... They also said the lowest churn of all time, and the best net retention ever...  I thought that was interesting Brian, because small businesses are not necessarily in a universally awesome position in this economy, and Acumatica itself has talked about the impact of things like inflation and tariffs and all of that. 

Acumatica, like all ERP vendors, is emphasizing a vigorous AI strategy - but how did it land? Sommer and I went through that in our podcast, also embedded below. 

Acumatica's customers are smaller to medium enterprises. From the feedback I heard on the ground, they welcome using a platform that will deliver AI to them, so they don't have to build/manage their own internal AI deployments. 

Hot topics for customers: sources of truth, real-time decision support, and data quality

With that in mind, what were the hot customer topics in Seatlle? 

During a day one keynote interview, Acumatica customer of the year Storm Smart hit on the good data/bad data theme, and the power of classic workflow automation within Acumatica. As Jennifer Pellechio, Storm Smart Director of IT, told attendees:

Automation is what we all want. Let's be honest, right? We want to move faster. We want to make things easy. We want to be simple, and we really don't want bad data. That's the reality of it. So the more that we can automate and do things in faster clicks in our system, the better data and data integrity we can have for the company as a whole. We have been very instrumental in trying to make sure that our automations are fast, easy clicks... I like to call it magic. It's really automation, but we've been doing that along the way, and we were able to do that through [Acumatica] business events.

Later in the keynote, Acumatica Impact Customer Award Winner PSI Family Services weighed in. Shawn Rubin, PSI's Chief Advancement Officer, explained why he calls Acumatica their "financial truth engine."

Well, it means that it really tells the truth, and the numbers don't lie. But what it really means day-to-day is that we could finally reconcile our clinical effort with a financial reality. 

Before moving to Acumatica, Rubin says, his team was "constantly balancing uncertainty." Yes, uncertain external conditions are a constant, but Rubin says there's been a big change: 

We continue to balance uncertainty, but we are now able to... We can see the true cost of care by program in almost near real-time. Acumatica has allowed us to make informed decisions without compromising care.

Acumatica customers may be small to medium size, but their business models are often complex, with global locations and interests. When we asked Andy Wiliamson, Director, Venture Engineering about why they chose Acumatica, similar themes jumped out: 

The flexibility of the platform and the ability to sort of modify tune and work with your integrating partner to get exactly what you needed out of the system was definitely something that really brought us to the product.

For Venture Engineering, a UK-based "precision engineering and manufacturing specialist," this means capitalizing on new opportunities quickly - rolling out new business models and services literally on a per-client basis. I asked Williamson: surely you've had to customize the system, or run into roadblocks as you rolled out new service lines? His surprising answer? "No, not so far." 

Williamson hit on another key aspect of real-time ERP: traceability. You can't deliver quality products in the automotive sector without that: 

We use Acumatica for the traceability on the quality side. Because of the industry we're in, the quality is almost inherent, like it's just expected. There's no kind of discussion about quality - It's an expected level of deliverable.

That's where modern ERP is crucial: 

I would say the software side, for us, is about all about the record-keeping, the batch numbers, the deliverables, in terms of what's coming out, and when. So if there is an issue or something that needs investigating, we know, 'Okay, it came from that batch with that material spec on this date,' and we can go and trace it back.

I challenged Williamson with my modern ERP go-to question: how does Acumatica help you serve your own customers better? Williamson says with the help of their Acumatica partner Cedar Bay, Venture Engineering has literally given customers a seat on their system, where they can monitor deliverables in real-time. One big outcome?  new level of customer trust: 

We trialed it two years ago... It improved our efficiency, because they weren't coming back to us and saying, 'We want a daily report. We want to understand where you are. We want to understand where this is.' They could see it live for themselves, and just being able to make that offer, and then follow through with it and build it instantly, built a level of trust between us and them that you couldn't instill in any other way. 

My take - do customers need AI, or do they need business agility?

These customers are not far along with their agentic AI adventures, either with Acumatica or not. Acumatica customers are a practical group; they'll employ AI wherever it might help, from predictive scenarios to anomaly detection. Venture Engineering, for example, uses plenty of conventional Acumatica automation. As Williamson told a small group of analysts: 

My general feeling on AI is that we're kind of blowing it into something. A lot of it is already happening, but it's just not called AI. It's like you say, it's automation and parts of systems, isn't it, and alerts and and triggers - a lot of that already exists.

I attended a standing-room-only Acumatica workflow session, for configuration synchronous and asynchronous business events. Though AI did not come up in this session, this all leads to the same place. It's all about that talent/automation mix I alluded to earlier. Furthermore, these same automations will eventually be invoked by Acumatica's agents and assistants. We'll hear a lot more about that in 2026, with the Acumatica AI assistant set be rolled out this year.  

Venture Engineering's ability to push out out new business models and services in the automotive industry - all within Acumatica - stuck with me. Isn't this the kind of business agility customers really want, AI or not? As I said to Josh Greenbaum during our show review podcast: 

Talking to customers, I heard [consistent] things about benefits from a single source of truth, a different level of visibility and traceability within their systems. The workflow session I intended was wall to wall [with attendees] - it had nothing to do with AI. It was all about configuring all kinds of synchronous and asynchronous processes...

The strength of enterprise AI is tapping into strong data and process foundations. The idea that you can create this process/data foundation with an API and a prompt is absolutely affecting software share prices, but I believe reality will land differently. In an ERP context, the strength of agentic AI is helping users to engage with the system in new ways, moving ERP beyond the traditional domain of the so-called super user, where it has been stuck for so long. 

LLM agents will also be able to automate some scenarios that traditional workflow automation struggles with - and stitch processes together with better orchestration. That will unfold over time, as we figure out how to use the semantic strengths of LLMs while mitigating their probabilistic nature. Tying LLMs to industry data and processes is very different than trying to get ChatGPT to help you with your business. I thought Acumatica could have made that difference clearer in the keynotes, given the wacky output we've all received from consumer AI prompts at times. 

I don't question Acumatica for its "AI First" keynote emphasis. Given the massive hype - and fair questions - on the impact of AI on SaaS, all software vendors need an aggressive play here.  (In my Executive Intelligence podcast with Acumatica's Ali Jani and Miten Mehta , we got into that strategy in detail... You can see Acumatica's AI news overview here). 

At the Acumatica Summit, Acumatica branded ERP and AI together, as a "system of intelligence." That's a nice high bar to deliver on. But in my view, Acumatica was at its strongest when it shifted the AI keynote focus to industry impact. The reviews of how AI will be embedded in the construction edition were especially compelling.

With Seattle behind us, one thing is certain: Acumatica customers are now vividly aware of the downsides of bad data, and the imperative to address data quality, not as a one-time project, but a governance discipline. 

Inflation, global market uncertainties and tariffs are keeping Acumatica customers with their hands full. And yet, there was more small business optimism than I expected. Will AI help Acumatica customers execute better amidst these pressures? I expect so. But call me old-fashioned; I think it's more compelling when the results are happening along the way, rather than waiting for a more magical tech to save us from the harder job of market traction. 

As Shawn Rubin, PSI's Chief Advancement Officer, said to attendees: "When you're classified by your limitations rather than your talents or your strengths, it weakens your sense of self. Technology should never, ever overshadow mission. It should strengthen it." Now we're talking...