Kelly Products, Inc.

The Kelly team considered numerous platforms, including building its own ERP before deciding to take a cloud-based approach. Acumatica was recommended by their consultant, who introduced Kelly Products to Acumatica partner Emerald TC, based in Cumming, Georgia.

Affordable ERP Handles Multiple Businesses

Kelly Products chose Acumatica because it was affordable and easily handled intercompany transfers, allowing Kelly Products to automate financial reporting, inventory transfers, vendor payments, as well as cash management across its multiple related companies.

“It was partly an economic decision.” Wynn says. “Acumatica’s all-inclusive user licensing model made the cloud-based ERP provider very affordable.”

From an IT-perspective, Wynn was impressed with Acumatica’s Cloud xRP platform and its open API, which enables developers to easily and quickly create customizations, connect external systems and build add-on solutions. Kelly Products has a software development business that built its own inventory control system and manufacturing resource planning package, both of which have been integrated with Acumatica.

Connected Business Transforms Kelly Products

Acumatica automated and eliminated many of Kelly Products’ manual accounting tasks and digitally transformed the way it does business. All 13 businesses now have standard financial operating procedures in place, and intercompany transfers are automatic. The company’s accounting team is now able to be more strategic and efficient. While Kelly Products hasn’t documented just how much time the accounting staff has saved, Wynn says he’s certain that they are saving a lot of time and money, thanks to Acumatica.

“One of the key benefits is being able to link companies,” Wynn says. “We can make an update once and it translates the update for all our companies rather than having one person manually enter the update into many systems.”

Allocating services from areas of the business such as IT Services or manufacturing among the 13 entities is no longer individually invoiced. It’s now as simple as making a cost percentage entry into Acumatica, and the finances on the back end are distributed accordingly.

The company also saves time tracking inventory in one system rather than two. Our legacy system, he explains, was not connected to our inventory management system, which meant they had to track inventory and manually move information between two systems.

“Acumatica allows us to integrate our own software into the system so we can now push inventory information through Acumatica. We can invoice in real time, see invoice payment data, and see inventory levels with accuracy,” says Wynn.

Acumatica’s open API Stimulates Innovation

The connection between Acumatica and the inventory system is seamless thanks to Acumatica’s open API, which offers the flexibility and inter-operability required to make customizations and provide for integrations when necessary. The open API framework was another key benefit of the cloud-based ERP, says Wynn.

Kelly Products connected its manufacturing resource planning software, MRP2, to Acumatica and other developments are in the works. The software team recently created a connection through the Acumatica API for its credit card payments, which allows a customer to view an invoice online, pulling the information from Acumatica, pay the bill, and then the information is processed and pushed back into Acumatica.

Easy-to-use Software

Wynn says company employees find Acumatica easy to use and its navigation intuitive. “Acumatica is not a complicated system to maneuver around in and the modules have the same look and feel, which makes it easier to train employees while the built-in search functionality makes finding what you are looking for a breeze,” he says.

“The help feature is tremendous,” Wynn adds. “You just click on something and get the information right from the same screen. That alone speaks volumes as to the ease of use of the application.”

Kelly Products Poised for Growth

“We now have access to real-time financial information and access to that data is transforming the way we do business.”