Raubex

Acumatica: Easy to Use and Affordable

Van der Merwe says the companies evaluated a South African construction ERP, SAP
Business One, and Acumatica Cloud ERP.

The executives at both companies liked that Acumatica was easy to use, didn’t charge
licensing fees by the number of users, and included inventory management and credit checks
as part of its platform. Acumatica also had an open API that allowed third-party developers to
connect applications like Weighbridge Software seamlessly. They also liked it was developed
as a modern system.

“From the system side, Acumatica is simple and intuitive to run, maintain, and manage,” says
Jankowitz. “You do not need a lot of people or consultants with years of experience joined to your hip just to get the most basic of things running. That is where the system design itself shines.”

“There was very little that we needed to change in the (out-of-the box) system to give us the
answers we needed,” he adds. “Acumatica’s most basic functionality provided 99% of the
requirements that we had from the business. It was very, very simple to get what we wanted
out of the system with as little customization as possible. In our old ERP, we were scared to
death the moment there was talk of a patch, upgrade or a license upgrade.”

That’s because when patches and upgrades happened, Raumix and Tosas systems went
down. The two firms lost business because of those technical issues, executives say.

Once the decision was made to switch to Acumatica Advanced Construction Edition, the
companies carefully vetted implementation partners and chose Astraia based upon its previous
Acumatica implementations. Astraia proposed a phased approach to deployment, one that
could get each entity up and running quickly given their past struggles. It also helped that
Astraia had previous experience with the legacy system.

“After three months of planning with Astraia, it only took us two months to implement
Acumatica,” says Van der Merwe. “That was quite impressive.”

“If you plan properly, then implementation will be a breeze. We can definitely say from our side at
Tosas, our implementation was very well done. We are very happy,” says Jankowitz. “Our lives
are so much easier. The amount of time that we actually have on our hands now to actually do
value-add to the companies as financial people, it’s so much more now than what it was.”

Adds Van Zyl, “It was probably one of the easiest implementations that we’ve experienced.”

Executives at Raumix and Tosas now access data instantly whether they are at their desks,
on their phones, or at construction job sites, which is access they didn’t have previously. With
a larger amount of critical data available, they are making better data-driven decisions and
making them faster.

Employees are more productive and no longer waste time printing paper. They also have
mobile access to the data, which has streamlined work at jobsites.

The companies know their true costs and have improved stock management. Employees
manage their own day-to-day functions and run reports by themselves.

“The whole point of an ERP is to empower the people that make the decisions with
information,” says Van der Merwe. “We can see people on site are empowered to get the
information out of Acumatica to facilitate business decisions. Before they were flying blind
trying to make a decision without that information. We had all that info (at headquarters) but we could never use it properly to facilitate decision making.”

“The more information you feed Acumatica, the more you’re going to get benefits out of it,”
adds Anton Du Piesanie, Administrations Manager at Raumix, ticking off a number of benefits.

“Stock management is more effective. Management is aware of stock levels and can plan
accordingly. Administrative reports are easily accessible. Users can easily navigate the system for reports. These include but not limited to expense reports, asset costs allocations, stock transactions, and open order reports. I also like the ability to trace an expense from a request level all the way back to the bank and from the bank all the way back to the request.”

Traceability was a big win for Herkie Sandenbergh, Managing Director, at Raumix. “Having
access to all the information, I can drill down into any cost that I want to have a look at. I can
look at approvals and who has done what.”
Self-service Reporting

Jankowitz now delegates responsibility and accountability to others with Acumatica. “The
old system bound me to my desk for probably eight years where not a single report could be
generated unless I had my hands in it,” he says. “That was my life for eight years. Getting
to value-add functionalities and getting our staff to take ownership for their own work was a
nightmare. It was impossible because the system required so much effort to just get reports out
to the people who needed them. With Acumatica, I can now help somebody help themselves.”

Data Instantly Available

Du Piesanie says his team is more productive because information is instantly available.
For example, he says, when Raumix decided to consolidate suppliers for its oils in the old
system meant researching every invoice to determine what they bought. The task would have
taken two days.

“Acumatica is Excel on steroids,” he says. “I just exported all our lubricants from the warehouse and, at a click of a button, had the information. I literally did that in two minutes.”

“We’re definitely seeing time savings,” he adds. “Even just creating something as simple as an
order. We are running in a fast-paced industry, and to create an order, we can’t wait two hours
a day” as the company did previously.

Going Paperless

Many construction firms using siloed systems are drowning in piles of paper. For initial
contracts, material orders, project and material change orders, architectural drawings,
subcontractor change orders, and invoices, managing paper is a major task, and finding the
latest data is a constant challenge and storage nightmare.

“One of the most important things we are driving at is going paperless,” says Tosas’ Jankowitz.

“Acumatica provides a very transparent way of operating. Everybody from my most junior
person to managers can open any transaction and get right down to the source document, be
it an email, a PDF, a letter or a photograph.” That kind of transparency was very difficult before.
Boxes of paper often had to be couriered or scanned, so someone else could download an
email and print the information, which then had to be stored, he says

Many construction firms also struggle to get information, mostly on paper, to and from a job
site in a timely manner. “Our old ERP had a big problem running off Android or an iPhone,
Jankowitz says. “You could access it on a cell phone, but using and navigating it was a
nightmare because it ran so slowly. It was terrible to work with.”

He says that with Acumatica, managers with cell-phone signals can access data, make
approvals, and see all of a project’s supporting documentation and actions.

Fixed Asset module

“Another thing we found helpful and easy-to-use is the fixed asset module,” Jankowitz says.
“Very few ERPs have the ability to run a fixed asset module but Acumatica is able to do so. It’s
very simple and straightforward with minimal effort needed. It just works.”

Van der Merwe says the companies previously managed fixed assets on Excel outside of
the system because it was too complicated and expensive. “At one point I got a quote to
incorporate fixed assets, and I think that quote alone was as much as our whole Acumatica
implementation. Even if you wanted to add or sell an asset later, you would have to get a
consultant to do that.”

Seamless Connections with Outside Apps

Van der Merwe praised Acumatica’s open API which allows third-party developers to create
specialized applications that seamlessly connect to the platform. In addition to the additional
reporting capabilities provided in Velixo, the application helped the operational teams access
the data they needed more easily, he says. “Some operational employees that aren’t used to
working on an ERP system prefer Excel, so that add-on was also very beneficial for us.”

Building for the Future

Raumix and Tosas executives look forward to adding functionality in Acumatica and growing with the
platform well into the future. Raumix, for example, is implementing Acumatica’s project accounting.
The executives like that Acumatica shares its future roadmap with customers, and incorporates
customer suggestions in future releases, which in turn allows them to better plan for the future.

“Acumatica is built with a holistic view with modules designed to connect seamlessly,” says
Jankowitz. “There aren’t legacy issues or connectivity issues between modules. You can tell
bright minds were creating Acumatica resulting in an intuitive system I’m sure will be able to
adapt with the times. This is just a nicer, cleaner, newer, and tidier design language and design.”

Adds Van der Merwe, “You can see that Acumatica is very well thought out with a three to four-

year roadmap. You can tell they listen to what customers say and that it is important for them
to stay on the forefront of technology and to make the system as easy to use as possible. And
for the user, that’s music to their ears.”

Van der Mere says that, seeing the success Raumix and Tosas have had with Acumatica, two
other Raubex companies are switching to it, and a third and fourth are evaluating it