The Acumatica ERP Podcast Recap: Inside Acumatica’s Latest AI-enabled Product Release

As advancements in AI continue to accelerate at lightning speed, SMBs are becoming increasingly aware of their need to invest in modern AI-enabled tools, but many are overwhelmed by the sheer number—and complexity—of solutions on the market. They’re looking for an all-in-one, intuitive, and AI-powered business management solution they can trust and that delivers powerful results, including real-time visibility and insights.

That’s precisely what Acumatica’s cloud ERP solution does for over 10,000 customers operating across diverse industries, and the latest version of the product is the focus of my recent conversation with Acumatica’s Chief Product Officer, Jon Pollock, and Acumatica’s SVP of Vertical Solutions, Jeremy Larsen, in Episode 9 of The Acumatica ERP Podcast.

We explored how, through our latest innovations seen in Acumatica 2026 R1, we are bringing practical value to our customers. This release delivers innovative AI capabilities that help users attain next-level efficiency without taking humans out of the equation.

“AI should augment the human expertise and not replace it,” Jon says, and he’s right.

Acumatica 2026 R1: AI Capabilities for Superhuman Powers

During Acumatica Summit 2026, we showcased our core product pillars—being future‑ready, adaptable, industry‑specific, intuitive to use, and AI‑first in innovation. These priorities are fully reflected in Acumatica 2026 R1, demonstrating how our latest release brings our product vision and roadmap to life.

“26R1 really demonstrates that we’re executing on our broader vision, delivering a platform that is future ready, adaptable, industry focused, and increasingly intelligent,” Jon says. “We’re rolling out an AI Assistant, which will give them guidance and help them complete tasks faster, and we’ll do it in…a way that feels natural to the end user. Basically, giving them superhuman powers as they engage with the platform.”

Superhuman powers? That’s a big statement, but Jon supports it by laying out what Acumatica 2026 R1 does for our users, including providing critical decision support.

“AI reporting and anomaly detection will help them quickly identify areas that need attention, be it workflows and or data that just needs specific attention in order for them to optimize their business.”

He also points out that Acumatica’s AI automation capabilities free employees from having to manually manage repetitive tasks and workflows. “That allows the teams to focus on high value work, and we do that by building trust with the user over time.”

In a blog post on Acumatica 2026 R1, Jon outlines these specific AI capabilities, including Acumatica’s AI Assistant and AI Studio as well as our new AI-powered reporting and workflows. He also notes that the applications in our manufacturing, distribution, retail, construction, and professional services editions all received extended capabilities, empowering operational success for SMBs.

But none of these advanced updates and innovative improvements mean much if they’re built on top of a platform that’s not ready for them. That’s why Jeremy says Acumatica made sure to start from the ground up.

“In true Acumatica form, we attacked AI at a platform level first. And so, over the last several releases, we’ve been making progress that has built a strong foundation for the user experience to be built on top of,” he says. “When we talk about AI Studio and the insights and the automation that’s going to be delivered through AI Assistant, it’s been done with foundation in mind.”

Strong AI Platform for a Strong Customer Foundation

Acumatica’s powerful foundation underpins our customizable, affordable, and enterprise-level solution. But far from being passive users, our customers influence our product development and roadmap. For Jon, this customer-first mindset is what makes being a part of the Acumatica Community so special.

“The culture… is really focused on customer success, customer-driven innovation, and quite honestly, that combination of a great product, a great Community, and the people who work at Acumatica is…rare,” Jon says. “I’ve been really impressed with how deep the teams are and how committed they are to allowing our customers to succeed.”

A big part of that customer success can be attributed to Acumatica’s reliance on what we hear from our customers. Jeremy explains further.

“We have several ways for our customers to interact with us. One, we have an Acumatica Community where they can go and create forums or provide feedback through what we call our ‘ideas portal.’ Our team of product managers are constantly listening to our customers through that channel.”

The other is through our product management team, who is focused on having one-on-one interviews with customers. “They’re going on site to our customers and engaging in full days with them, understanding their businesses in real time. We take all that input…and when you hear things more than once or more than five times, you start to build a case around that.”

Industry-Specific Features For All Customer Success

Every Acumatica release incorporates industry-specific features inspired by customer feedback, and 2026 R1 is no exception.

For example, Jeremy says many of our construction customers have been asking for a better way to manage project documents, so we provided automated document management. As explained in our 2026 R1 press release,  this new capability provides automatic tagging, templates, and live-level attachments enhancing collaboration between field and office teams while strengthening audit trails across the project lifecycle.

As for manufacturing customers, Jeremy says they wanted a way to capture and utilize their shop floor info to better the production process. So, we created our shop floor kiosk application.

“[Our shop floor kiosk] is the ability for a new set of users to engage with Acumatica, folks that are not in the office but actually out in the warehouse or the shop floor [who can] check in and enter time and things like that against their workflow,” Jeremy says.

Says Jon, “We teach our product managers…the art of product discovery, and so it’s identifying what the core pain points and problems that customers are trying to solve and then thinking creatively on how to go build products that will satisfy and solve those needs.”

He adds: “Oftentimes, people think just go do exactly what the customers are asking for and that’s innovation. But when you get at the heart of what they’re trying to get done, you fundamentally understand the workflows, and you ask questions about how might we do that in a different way, that’s where innovation really takes off.”

Innovation Across Verticals

Innovation driven by a deep understanding of customers’ needs and by thinking outside the box has enabled us to differentiate ourselves from our competitors. Jeremy says that looks like creating specific features for businesses in different industries based on their unique requirements as well as designing features that businesses can use while operating in multiple industries.

“[For a business] that’s doing workflows across all of those industries, we’re delivering unique workflow solutions to all of those components or all of those industries [that] tie together,” Jeremy explains.

It was a great conversation, and Jeremy and Jon had plenty more to say on this topic as well as about how Acumatica is:

• Collaborating across teams to deliver cross-industry features.
• Delivering a new, modern, and more user-friendly UI that’s reducing complexity.
• Building user trust so that their daily work is easier and even more enjoyable.
• Meeting customers’ changing expectations about AI.

I hope you’ll listen to Episode 9 and subscribe to the podcast to hear more about Acumatica 2026 R1 and the future of ERP, which Jon says is “intelligent, connected, and automated.”