Once a year, thousands of manufacturing and supply chain professionals attend ProMat, a premier trade event that covers the industry’s trends and best practices while offering attendees the chance to see—and experience—state-of-the-art equipment and technology solutions geared for their specific needs. This year’s event, ProMat 2025, returned to Chicago’s McCormick Place, March 17 – 20, 2025, and featured over 1,100 exhibits, provided more than 200 educational sessions, and offered four keynote sessions.

Sponsored by MHI, the nation’s largest material handling, logistics, and supply chain association, ProMat 2025 equips industry members with the knowledge they need to find success in today’s changing and uncertain marketplace. Daniel McKinnon, Chief Exhibitions Officer, MHI,  in a Business Wire press release,  summed it up this way:

“From hands-on demonstrations to unparalleled education experiences, attending ProMat is your best opportunity in 2025 to gain the tools you need to innovate your supply chain operations for the next level of success. If it’s your job to innovate your manufacturing and supply chain operations, you can’t afford to miss ProMat.”

As a product manager for Distribution at Acumatica, I attended ProMat for the first time and soon discovered this is indeed an event that should be on every manufacturing, material handling, distribution, and supply chain professional’s to-do list.

ProMat 2025 Impresses  

My first impression of ProMat is that there is so much to see and do. Thousands of people and supply chain exhibits filled three large rooms, offering attendees days-worth of things to see and do.

My three main goals for ProMat 2025 were to observe trends, explore solutions and learn from visitors to the Acumatica booth.

During our time at ProMat, we had many Acumatica customers, partners and future customers visit our booth, which featured a barista. Over a cup of coffee, I got to hear firsthand about the need for digital transformation, which is especially critical now given the macroeconomic pressures that manufacturers and distributors are facing.

Pictured: Acumatica’s booth at ProMat 2025

Supply chain disruption and economic uncertainty are nudging late adopters to cloud technology to take that leap as costs continue to rise and margins are squeezed even further than before. I was able to share with ProMat attendees that Acumatica is geared to the mid-market, offering them possibility of technology democratization with an ERP investment that isn’t out of reach. ERP enables operational efficiencies, helps to manage the supply chain, and leverage data in a single source of truth.

The days of living with a patchwork of disconnected systems are on the way out.  Seamless, frictionless user experiences in a connected platform that acts as a unified solution is the trend, I was proud to share how Acumatica helps businesses thrive in uncertain times.

I had an opportunity to walk the exhibit floor for two days. I visited numerous booths, including our Acumatica integrated solution partners that were at the show. One of the questions I know SMBs ask is if these technologies are becoming more accessible for the mid-size market. As we see more competitive solutions in this space, the more financially viable the technology will become.

For example, robots in the warehouse can compensate for labor shortages while assisting with optimizing picking productivity so that pickers spend more time picking and less time walking, which ultimately helps get shipments out the door faster.  Automation helps to standardize and streamline repetitive, manual tasks resulting in workers doing less busy work and being able to focus on value-add activities instead. Automation is needed more than ever today, both as a competitive advantage and a way to help scale the business.

To top of my visit to Chicago, I was able to visit Prevue Pet Products, a distributor of pet supplies. Here at Acumatica, we make a point to visit our customers in person, to learn about their business, its challenges, and to hear their product ideas and feedback. This helps us to stay close to the customer and introduce innovations that our customers need and want.

Pictured: Myself with Tony Enrietto and John Kasprzyk of Prevue Pet.

Key Takeaway from ProMat 2025

For me, the key takeaway from ProMat 2025 is that user experience (UX) across integrated systems is a must for a resilient supply chain. I visited several of our Acumatica solution partners at their booths (including EasyPost, Netstock, RIC Group WMS, CipherLab, infios, and Cargo Spectre.and we spoke about how important seamless, frictionless user experiences are essential in today’s world.  Our solutions must look and feel like a single, unified user experience to tackle supply chain complexities.  

Acumatica is all about UX (User Experience), and customer Sunshine Lighting is a great example of our success. Sunshine Lighting needed to replace their decades-old software, and after reviewing several ERP solutions, they discovered Acumatica with its unique licensing model and flexible, open development platform.

According to Sunshine Lighting’s Yisroel Hartman, COO, watching a demo by Bruce Baron of Appsolute Consulting left them impressed.

And Joel Gross, VP, points out Acumatica’s outstanding ease of use. “When we were considering SAP Business One and others, we knew that training on those systems usually takes weeks if not months to onboard. But with Acumatica, onboarding new users is as easy as cake. It’s very simple and straightforward. And the help is amazing.”

As Sunshine Lighting’s customer story shows, Acumatica’s focus on UX and especially, our collaboration with customers, sets Acumatica apart from other ERPs. During my time at ProMat 2025, I shared this with the attendees at our booth. Acumatica helps SMBs thrive—on their own terms—in today’s uncertain economy. To learn more, contact our experts today.