Winter event highlight - how Tech Electronics turned cloud ERP into a force for organizational change (and AI readiness). An Acumatica story

I've been hitting back on the so-called SaaSpocalypse. That doesn't mean SaaS vendors don't need to change. Market wake-up calls are a customer-value-reality-check... Not all vendors will pass. 

My case for SaaS longevity: 

• modern (multi-tenant) SaaS imposes a data discipline that supports AI readiness (and better AI results, period).
• most SaaS vendors are not sleeping on AI investments themselves, Acumatica included.
• building agentic AI on top of deterministic workflows is a much bigger edge than agentic AI enthusiasts grasp at this point in time. 

But then again, not all SaaS vendors are created equal. Answer me this: if your SaaS platform is flexible enough to build out new business models while managing risk, is third-party AI truly a disruption? Especially if your ERP pricing is already very close to consumption-based? As I argued in Acumatica Summit 2026 - taking the pulse of cloud ERP, AI, and customer realities: 

ERP modernization is not the only way to get that AI context in place, but it's one avenue that takes companies smack into process and data improvement. What comes next? I don't think it's tech-first. I think it's really about competing in your industry in new/agile ways, while managing risk via a different level of visibility.

Tech Electronics' pivotal moment: compete and grow, or fall behind on older systems

Okay - but how does this stack up to ERP customer realities? I took a crack at this while I was still on the Seattle tarmac. But I saved one in-depth interview from the Acumatica Summit: my sit-down with Manish Chandak, President and CEO of Tech Electronics. As the first CEO of Tech Electronics outside the company's founding family, Chandak had a different leadership challenge.

From an AI standpoint, Chandak looks beyond the cost efficiency/headcount framing; he sees growth as a big driver. But as Chandak told me, he can't take that on alone. Chandak brought the change imperative to the entire company. 

We made it a pivotal moment. We said, 'Look, we can function with what we have, but we're not going to be able to compete and grow. Are we accepting that?' We made it pivotal because the way we were operating, we were wasting cycles and doing things that are not productive for a customer, or for revenue generation. 

We set some high goals for ourselves, and then we said, 'Okay, we can never cross 100 million if we are going to be having these type of systems and this type of customer experience. So when you set that goal, you go, 'Okay, for that goal, this is really important, right?'

Chandak didn't sugarcoat the change or upheaval. Proof? He named Tech Electronics' ERP initiative "Project Twister". Why this generational change, and why Acumatica? Chandak says it built up to a realization: our old systems are holding us back. 

What happens is employees adjust to inefficient systems; they figure out how to go around it. They figure out how to do it with paper. So you never really have that pivotal moment because your pain tolerance just keeps going up. The real issue is having the courage to say: 'We're going to replace all of this.'

That is a huge risk for an owner, for a CEO - it's probably the biggest career risk they're going to take is to say, 'I'm replacing all this.' For me, having the support from the ownership, having the employees so motivated... I asked all of them - all my leadership team - what is the number one thing you want? And they said: new systems. I said, 'Okay, we're gonna go through this, and we're gonna go through this together. Are you guys in?'

Tech Electronics went live on Acumatica in March 2025. But for Chandak, it started three years ago, when he joined the 65 year old building automation company.

The "intersection of hardware and software" needs new business models

But like many Acumatica SMB customers, a smaller business doesn't necessarily mean a less complex business. The midwest-based Tech Electronics has multiple business angles: they sell building automation into construction sites, but also into post-construction. They also have a services business line.  

Behind those three channels, there is a diverse set of products - including fire alarms, security/video monitoring and intrusion detection. Offices, theaters, schools, gymnasiums - a range of building structures are in this mix. Tech Electronics' new ERP system had to include all that in scope - as buildings get  "smarter" and more technically complex every day. Chandak:

We're at the intersection of software and hardware. Hardware was not cool probably ten years ago, and now hardware is cool again - because everything we're looking at hardware now is driven by AI, and all the sensors.

Chandak's team did their due diligence on ERP vendors; Acumatica met those expectations. The stakes? This was not going to be a gradual rollout, but a big bang waterfall of a go-live. Chandak explains: 

We got a lot of feedback from a lot of people saying: 'This will be much harder. You have to have a five year journey. You need to replace one system at a time.' The challenge for me was, if I replace one system at a time, I would have to integrate Acumatica to that legacy system, and then I would have to integrate Acumatica to the next legacy system, right? So I sat down with our team, and we basically said, 'We're going to take the waterfall approach. We're going to replace it all at once, because that way we don't have to integrate with any of the old systems.'

And the energy we would spend integrating with all the old systems, let's just spend it doing the new system. I think that was probably the riskiest and toughest decision. 

We're back to that change imperative: 

If you have the support and blessing of everybody around you, and you know that the timeline and cost will literally be a third of doing it the other way... The risk is much higher, but the cost and the timeline is much lower. So we said we're willing to take the risk, because we're going to put all of our personal efforts to make sure that the risk is minimized. 

Employee buy-in on Project Twister: "It was their transformation"

How do you get employees onboard with such a disruptive change, however good the outcome might be? Chandak:

Once you tell the employees what you're trying to do, how you're trying to drive efficiency, they embrace it. Acumatica, for example, was probably the biggest change we've ever made. We replaced many of our systems with one big Acumatica system. We did it extremely fast in one year, which is unheard of, absolutely unheard of. But if you ask our employees, they all feel so involved in that transformation.

Leadership buy-in is one thing - but buy-in across the company? How did Chandak's team pull that off? 

Because it was their transformation. It wasn't the CEO's transformation. They all took it upon themselves to transfer their department, to transfer how they serve customers. Acumatica gave everybody an example, like, 'Hey, you can be very modern, and you can use all the tools, and that actually makes you even better.' 

Assessing the upgrade results to date

Gut check time: it's now a year since the go-live. Where do we stand on change/growing pains versus results? Chandak: 

Sometimes it does take a little bit longer to get your returns, because for the first six nine months, you're just spending time trying to learn, trying to optimize, and those kinds of things. I think we're hitting that point now where we actually are starting to see the change. 

For example? 

On the services side, we're seeing our margin go up quarter by quarter, and we feel like we're just scratching the surface. 

Efficient growth now seems like a viable goal: 

The internal cycles of invoicing and project controls and material movements, which needed multiple people and multiple systems to get on the same page. Now, there is a single source of truth. So as we look forward into the next year, we feel like we can achieve another 15% growth with basically no addition to any of the corporate headcount. Now, we'll need some people in the field, but we wouldn't need to add any other sort of headcount in any of the administrative or dispatch, or any of the other roles that are in-house.

I asked Chandak: why the services margin gain? He attributes this to a common benefit I've seen on good cloud ERP projects: better operational visibility.

We know when we last went into a building, and what our experience was. We have clear documentation on what systems the customer owns. So when we can proactively add the right parts to when a technician is going out to the building, these kinds of things are reducing any extra trips we have to make. These types of things are optimizing the labor. Now we are much more precise in how much labor we are going to need. So we can totally say, 'Well, this job is not going to take more than four hours, because we already have history that is very clearly accessible.'

I would urge those who question the relevance of modern SaaS to re-read that paragraph. Isn't good AI really about proper data context? And isn't this type of operational data capture exactly what you'd want your AI capabilities to be pulling from? Chandak is thinking along the same lines: 

We had history before, but it wasn't in your face, accessible and easy to use. And now, with the next set of AI, think we'll be able to look at the job that the service team has coming up next week, and we're going to hopefully be able to use that AI to go in and look at that previous information, look at the system and make recommendations about parts, service, all of those kinds of things.

My take - on AI readiness, and how experimentation drives change

I see old school automation and AI on a tools continuum. For predictable workflows, why wouldn't you want to use configurable automation that follow rules paths, and basically never break - at a lower energy price point? 

From what I can tell, Acumatica customers are on the same page. Customers tell me good things about Acumatica's AI plans, but they crowded in for a standing-room-only session on automation with business rules. Chandak says the common thread is freeing up humans from the repetitive: 

When it comes to the automation, being able to know that the material has shipped and arrived, proactively being able to know that the customer has missed their payment deadline, and reminding the customer again with the invoice and things like that. All of these activities took a human to go try to do these things. So now we still have the humans, but they are now focusing on more critical issues, right?

But as I've documented, even with workflow automation and AI agents, you're not getting value of out cloud ERP by default. You have to keep pushing (Extracting value from cloud ERP in a customer-first world - does AI change the equation?)

Doesn't look like that will be a problem for Chandak and team: they have a year-round roadmap. It's all about making the most of the ERP data foundation that's now in place: 

We have a roadmap all year. This year, the two things, automation and AI, are really on our roadmap - things we think we could do better... It's so good to feel like you have a foundation of data, because now the fun part begins. And the fun part is automation and AI: you cannot do the fun part if you don't have the foundation.

But it's only the "fun part" if employees buy-in - and they don't fear the change afoot. Chandak says he understands why that could be an obstacle, if you were focused solely on headcount efficiency. But for Tech Electronics, the growth mindset is also a skills expansion mindset. That gets to the heart of their standout change effort. As Chandak told me: 

When we first started the Acumatica implementation, I made a comment to a lot of the employees. I said, 'Companies go through an ERP transition like this, probably once in 10 to 15 years. This is the moment and the time: you have to decide whether you want to enhance your career, or you want to be a bystander. If you want to enhance your career, jump into Acumatica. Do testing; do learning.' And we opened up that opportunity to as many employees we possibly could, and it gave a lot of people that opportunity. 

Opening up ERP access led to some surprises: 

We found people who were in the lower ranks of the organization or in the middle of the organization, who learned faster and better than a lot of our senior members of the team. All of a sudden, guess what? Who's gotten the most promotions lately, right? So it's not a force thing. You give people the direction like, 'Hey, we are investing so much in Acumatica... If you jump into the flow, you'll come out on the other side being a even better employee than you ever were.'

Don't force tools on your employees? Chandak is aligned with my own stump speech. I don't care if "AI First" is a religion now. When you shift from imposing tool use on employees to a culture of experimentation, I like your chances. Chandak: 

They all did it within their departments, within their groups. I wasn't involved. They had their own small groups. They said, 'Let's go test how we're going to create tickets. Let's go try this.' So a lot of the middle managers got a chance to play a role in all of this, right? I think there are ways to do ERP implementations that enhance everybody's career. And there are ways to do it where you create a threat or chaos in your company. The sponsor has to choose which way you're going to go.

That's a fair summary of the divergent ways executives present the AI imperative as well. The difference in employee response between the two is instructive. Let's see how Tech Electronics fared when we catch them at the next Acumatica Summit.