Incubeta

Many of the ERP solutions they evaluated charged per seat, which made their licensing fees cost prohibitive for Incubeta, which employs 500 people. Acumatica’s ease of use, unique pricing model, and open API, plus the robust Gartner endorsement, made it a natural choice, Reuben says.

“The cost of the solution was a key factor,” he adds. “Acumatica’s pricing solution aligned with our acquisition strategy, allowing us to add new users with each business acquired without having to concern ourselves about ballooning costs. We also needed to easily handle multiple currencies in one integrated solution.”

Before Incubeta implemented Acumatica, its four accounting teams agreed on a single chart of accounts and developed a single system architecture for all operations. However, they encountered multiple challenges, exacerbated by their different languages. They eventually chose best practices from an array of different processes and learned how to connect homegrown solutions with functions not native to Acumatica via Acumatica’s open framework.

Incubeta went live with help from Acumatica partner Palladium Business Solutions, based in South Africa. As Incubeta launched on Acumatica, they reconfigured the technology infrastructure and decommissioned many servers.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, Incubeta was fully prepared to transition to “work from anywhere” with no disruptions. “We didn’t need VPN connections or to worry about the speed of our connections,” he says. “We were seamlessly able to support the business on Acumatica.”

Once Acumatica Cloud ERP was fully implemented, “We could easily review general ledgers and access a lot more detail,” Reuben says. “I could dive into a legal entity and look at an account to see what was going on, versus just seeing a trial balance and having to call and ask people for information.”

Since each of the four accounting offices conducted business differently, the company conducted regular knowledge sharing sessions to developing new best practices and efficiencies.

“We have a standing meeting every two weeks between the financial team and (implementation partner) Palladium where we talk about business improvements and what if’s, and some really good solutions have emerged,” Reuben says. “We’ve started to use Power BI, and now have the ability to select & transform data from each currency and pull them into one dashboard. That’s brilliant.”

Data Visibility Drives Efficiencies

“Acumatica is flexible and allows you to do business the way you do,” Reuben adds. The solution’s drill-down features and ability to deliver a high level of data in real-time helped Incubeta “see where inefficiencies were and address them,” he says. Making those decisions was impossible before Acumatica because Incubeta lacked access to that level of detail.

Acumatica allows Incubeta’s 500 employees to work from anywhere seamlessly and not be tethered to physical infrastructure, which is “most compelling,” Reuben says. “In addition, we didn’t have a glitch or misstep when we went into lockdown because we were live on Acumatica. We’ve never been more grateful to have complete flexibility in running our global finance function from literally any location.”

Streamlined Operations

Incubeta automated and streamlined operations with Acumatica. The Cloud ERP solution eliminated paper processes and handles more tasks automatically and digitally, saving Incubeta a lot of time and money.

The company’s largest supplier routinely submits more than 2,000 invoices per month, which were previously printed and captured at different locations. These are now uploaded from csv files, saving time and paper. In addition, audits are easier, with auditors able to access data no matter which entity they need to see.

The cloud-based platform coupled with its unique licensing model allows Incubeta to add acquisitions rapidly and easily into the fold, he says. “Since launching on Acumatica we acquired two businesses, one in the U.S. and another in Northern Ireland. We’ve brought them on very quickly into our accounting structure, allowing us to visualize reporting, which was a massive benefit for us.” Because Acumatica’s licensing is not based on users, “When we look at acquisitions we don’t have to worry about per-seat costs, the server loads, or the licensing,” Reuben says.

“We continue to improve our utilization of Acumatica and derive efficiency through business process audit and finance process review within a program of continuous improvement,” he says.