Soundcast, LLC

Bentley says key factors involved in their decision to choose Acumatica included price, the licensing model, and the ability to have ownership and customize Acumatica to fit their needs. And Soundcast’s Accountant, Elia Sepulveda, reports that Acumatica met all of the company’s requirements for a new ERP system, “Everything that we wanted in our software, Acumatica had it.”

Price played a big role in their decision. “If we would have gone a NetSuite route,” Bentley says, “we would have been out at least $10,000 more for the service, per year.” Acumatica’s unlimited user licensing also factored into their willingness to switch, he says, “Acumatica offers us the flexibility to add incremental users at our discretion, without the waste and expense of adding entire blocks of users.”

Another advantage of switching to Acumatica is its flexibility, according to Bentley, who says, “NetSuite is solely a Cloud service—in my eyes, that seems like more of a lease. You never own the system.” He likes the options that Acumatica offers Soundcast: “If the company grows to a certain point, we can actually have ownership of the software and we can have our own data hosted on our own premise. So that for me is a big deal, being in IT. That for me is what sold me.” In fact, Bentley adds, “There’s even an option to have a hybrid system, where you can have the data and sync up to the Cloud for more security.”

In the fall of 2015, Soundcast decided to implement Acumatica on a SaaS license, with the Financial and Distribution Management Suites. The new system went live in early 2016 and has been customized to provide specific reports.

Soundcast Accountant Elia Sepulveda reports that Acumatica is user-friendly. In contrast with their old system, she says, “It is easier to navigate. It’s easier to find things.” In addition, Ms. Sepulveda says Acumatica has helped improve their financial reporting: “The reports are easy to look at, to implement.”

Bentley agrees that Acumatica is easier for staff, adding, “It’s very easy to get lost in the amount of menus NetSuite has … It’s like a relearning process every time you log into NetSuite … Acumatica is easier to navigate.”

Soundcast has connected a data conversion system, EDI, with Acumatica, which helps them avoid duplication of effort. For example, when retailers that use EDI (e.g., Best Buy or Magnolia Audio / Video) make a sale of Soundcast equipment, Bentley says, “EDI will send us a notification that an order has been placed; we go to Acumatica, the order is already there, we don’t need to do anything else.”

Another feature he appreciates is having access to Acumatica from virtually anywhere. “It works perfectly on a mobile device or a tablet. It doesn’t matter where you’re at,” he says, adding, “It doesn’t matter the operating system; I even tried Acumatica on Linux, proprietary OS, and it works perfectly.”

Bentley also likes having access to a data channel that Acumatica recently opened. He says, “You can expose your data to a public network, to the Internet. Now I can grab that data and funnel it through Crystal Reports or another program.” He says NetSuite doesn’t allow for that kind of access, so that’s another benefit of their switch: “That’s another big deal, another good point for Acumatica.”

Bentley reports he’s very happy Soundcast made the switch: “I only see good things coming out of Acumatica at this point.”