Based in Las Vegas, Nevada, CARMA Group is the go-to general contracting company for businesses in the hospitality, entertainment, and gaming industries. Founded and owned by Angie and Chris Rowe, CARMA provides extensive construction services, including estimating, design, engineering, project management, logistics planning, disruption avoidance, cost tracking, and so much more.

CARMA’s revenue grew to nearly $100 million in its first seven years thanks to the Rowe’s obsession with giving their customers value-filled service with the help of their hand-picked, skilled, and dedicated team members they consider family. But their dramatic growth was not supported by the team’s accounting solution.

That’s why CARMA embarked on a search for a new, more sophisticated system, and it led them straight to Acumatica.

From QuickBooks to Acumatica: The Road to Success

CARMA’s tagline is “We Build Fun,” and its long list of impressive projects, like the Vanderpump Cocktail Garden in Paris, Mandalay’s Bay Terrazzo, and the amazing  grandstand built over the Bellagio Resort’s Fountains at Bellagio (to protect them from the annual Formula One race), support the claim. But fun wasn’t anywhere to be found when CARMA was relying on QuickBooks Online as its accounting package.

Bob Scott, CARMA’s Chief Financial Officer, says QuickBooks was unable to meet their needs, especially when the company’s revenues exceeded $10 million in its second year. “If you want to bounce along at $5 million, you can get away with it, but if you want to do what we’re doing now, you absolutely cannot. You’re driving blind.”

Replacing the simple accounting system with a comprehensive business management solution that could seamlessly integrate with Procore (while also being easy to use, affordable, customizable, and built to serve the construction industry) was Scott’s plan, which he executed by evaluating various ERP solutions, including Acumatica. According to Scott, Acumatica Construction Edition—with its job costing, change order, and commitment functionality—was exactly what he and his team were looking for.

“One of the things that I really liked about Acumatica is they started being cloud based. Acumatica was built from the ground up and cloud-based all the time.”

Relying on a cloud-based platform came in handy during the pandemic. Instead of shutting or slowing down, CARMA was able to shift to remote work easily. Plus, not having to spend money on expensive technology infrastructure was a huge bonus.

“If it’s on the cloud, it’s just simply done,” Scott says. “I don’t have to worry about updates and taking the server offline. With Acumatica, it just happens.”

Another thing that just happens as an Acumatica customer? Saving hours of time by accessing operational data in one place. “[With Acumatica], I can filter, and I can sort, and I can get the information the way I want it. I can hit this button, and it dumps data right into Excel. I don’t need to dump it into Excel and then manipulate it again.”

“Acumatica gets me information really, really quick.”

Even More Acumatica Benefits

Remote work and at-your-fingertips data aren’t the only benefits Scott and the CARMA team have experienced. They’ve taken advantage of Acumatica’s highly configurable solution (that doesn’t require a developer) to personalize screens and dashboards, gaining actionable insights in the process. Seamlessly integrating with third-party application Velixo to improve their reporting and budgeting has been another impressive benefit.

“[Connecting with Velixo] basically creates a whole new set of formulas, and it reaches Acumatica, pulls data, and puts it right where I want it. I absolutely love that,” Scott explains.

He enjoys that he can color code his dashboards to establish his priorities for the day and that his team can enter data “in the order that makes sense to them.” CARMA project coordinator Keisha Baum is also a big fan of Acumatica.

“I’ve found Acumatica to be very time efficient,” she says. “I can pop into the system and find information inside of probably less than a minute. Compared to other systems, it’s definitely a lot easier to find information because you don’t have to go to 8,000 places to find it. I found it very, very, very user-friendly and very navigable.”

Additionally, their ability to attach documents—whether they’re invoices, spreadsheets, or financial statements—is something they can’t say enough about. Scott notes, “I put notes on anything. I can leave breadcrumbs, put work papers up there, and attach spreadsheets.”

Scaling with Acumatica

As the CARMA team continues to take on more projects and to serve their customers with a forward-thinking, collaborative approach, they know that Acumatica will help them grow unhindered. And they know they can do it their way.

“Instead of bending your ways to the way the ERP systems works, it’s so easy to change Acumatica to accommodate something the way you want,” Scott says. “it’s the little things that make Acumatica different.”

Reach out to our experts today to learn more about how Acumatica can make a difference for you.

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