As corny as it may sound, there was something special about this year’s Acumatica Summit. It may have been the year; 2020 is the start of a brand-new decade, and if you’re going to start a whole new decade, you want to kick it off with a bang. And what better place to start things off on that note than at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas.

What first struck us was the sheer scale of Acumatica Summit 2020. Since this was Kensium’s 6th year at Summit, we could see how the conference had grown exponentially since 2014. That year, the conference mainly consisted of a few long tables crowded around a small stage. This year, Summit hosted more than 2,500 product, sales, marketing, developer, and ERP experts from more than 60 countries. So, without further ado, here are Kensium’s top 4 highlights from Acumatica Summit.

1. The Keynotes: 2020 Acumatica Innovations

Acumatica’s CEO, Jon Roskill, kicked things off with his rousing Day 1 Keynote speech, beginning with a video recap of the past year. Jon also named Power Storage Solutions Acumatica’s Customer of the Year, and FoodMaven their Impact Customer of the Year.

The main focus of both keynotes was the preview of new features for 2020 R1. With a customer-centric focus, Acumatica is updating every single one of their industry editions, including the Commerce Edition. We are most excited about the fact that Acumatica has purchased the BigCommerce Connector originally designed by Kensium, and are natively adding it into the Commerce Edition.

Acumatica made it clear that their BigCommerce partnership was here to stay. They unveiled enhancements to Version 3 of the Acumatica-BigCommerce connector, touting the ability to handle configurable items, real time syncs, B2B functionalities, and more. This BigCommerce integration will provide omnichannel sales, allowing companies to interact with their customers and seamlessly integrate sales, delivery, and support for B2B and B2C models.

They also rolled out Acumatica Payroll (no pun intended), a new product that is being integrated on top of the Acumatica platform that ensures employees get paid correctly, every time. 

The Day 2 Keynote went even more in-depth, with a focus on usability that will result in product advances, new native modules, cross-connected workflows, and codeless personalization. Other highlights included: 

• We got to see how Acumatica would use machine learning tech in a practical setting. Acumatica demonstrated how Microsoft’s Azure form recognizer automates the extraction of data from a simple photo of a receipt. The Acumatica module began filling out the expense claim fields by categorizing the expense type and recognizing relevant data such as the amounts, descriptions, dates, and more.
• This year’s enhancements to wave and batch picking were huge improvements to Acumatica’s warehouse management system and will be exceptionally useful to our customers with high-volume warehouses. Having the ability to manage warehouses with these enhancements will expand sales and speed warehouse operations

That evening, world-famous oceanographer Bob Ballard, the man who discovered the remains of the Titanic, closed out Summit with a wrap-up speech that brought together the major themes of this year’s summit: The importance of creating new avenues for collaboration and efficiency across all facets of an organization.

2. The Marketplace: Who We Met And What We Saw

As we mentioned earlier, it’s our sixth year at Acumatica Summit. Coupled with the Las Vegas setting, this was the most bustling Marketplace that we had ever seen. Thanks to the unbelievable amount of foot traffic, we met what felt like hundreds of new people looking to discover more about Kensium’s expertise in eCommerce and Acumatica. With almost double the attendees as last year, we were engulfed with interested (and interesting) people at our booth.

3. The Breakout Sessions: What We Learned

Dozens of speaking and workshop sessions populated Monday and Tuesday’s agenda, from tips and tricks for new Acumatica users to advanced techniques for veteran developers. It wasn’t just technical knowledge being dropped; a lot of the sessions revolved around customer-centric strategies and expertise in specific industries. We had our own industry experts up there as well: Kensium developer (and Acumatica Developer of the Year) Yuriy Zaletskyy taught attendees some best practices for developing on the Acumatica xRP platform, while Marketing Evangelist of the Year Tyler Mullen hosted an interactive session on effective B2B email content and targeting.

The real standout this year was the Women in Tech luncheon. This two-hour event served up education and inspiration in equal measure. Hosted by Constance Turman, Digital Marketing Director of Acumatica,  the session was dedicated to hearing from some of the most accomplished female leaders in tech on how they earned their success, and what we all can do to create workplace cultures that give women the same opportunities as men. Notable speakers at this event included Dani Carbary and Tara Buchan, National Directors for the Women in Work program at The Riveter, a female-founded coworking, and community gathering space.

4. The Awards: What We Brought Home

We had a couple great company-wide achievements:

• We won the Commerce Edition Award, given to the partner that had the most Commerce Edition Sales in 2019. Special shoutout to our own Rick Stefanone, our top Commerce Edition Sales rep, for helping us bring home the hardware: 

• Kensium was also honored as part of the President’s Club, an achievement given to the top 2.5% of global Acumatica partners: 
• We are extremely proud of Kensium for winning these awards, but truly makes us ecstatic is seeing individual Kensians being honored for truly exceptional work: 
• Our fearless leader, Kensium CEO Rahul Gedupudi, won a Most Valuable Professional award for the 5th year in a row!
• Our phenomenal developer Sharif Ahammad won the MVP Developer award for his 3rd year in a row.
• Head of Kensium Marketing Tyler Mullen got a huge surprise when his name was announced as the Marketing Evangelist of the Year.
• Last, but certainly not least, was our biggest winner of the year: Kensium developer Yuriy Zaletskyy, who was part of the winning Acumatica Summit Hackathon team, won a Most Valuable Developer Award, and (drumroll please) the Developer of the Year trophy.

Okay, we’re done bragging. We could have won zero awards and still been happy. Acumatica Summit 2020 was unlike any one we had been to before, and we could feel it in the air. The atmosphere was rich with new ideas, friendships, and discovery from the early morning to the party-filled evenings. We’re still reeling a little bit from all the excitement, and I’m guessing we won’t feel that way until next year’s summit. We hope you will, too.