Last week, news hit that Acumatica was acquired by Vista Equity Partners, a US-based private equity, from EQT. This is significant news for both Acumatica and IFS, which were both owned by the same Swedish-based PE, EQT. This provides EQT with considerable working capital, which they can now apply to IFS, a new but formidable ERP solution for the construction industry, among other segments. As ERP Today* reported, Acumatica has a strong, construction-focused partner network in the US, including Strategies Group, Aktion, Accordant, and CLA.

BCG is fresh off two large selections for $1B contractors and has been busy evaluating COINS, CMiC, Acumatica, Dynamics, and IFS. A few things are becoming clear:

• Integration capabilities are top-of-mind for everyone. Most mid-market and larger contractors are focusing on best-in-class applications for a portion of their business. If their core ERP doesn’t have the best HR, PM, or Service applications, they will buy and bolt those on. This was not the case some years ago when companies were trying to keep most functions in the ERP. The ERP vendors can no longer keep pace in all areas and are ceding ground to some of these best-in-class solutions like Procore and Fieldpoint in favor of concentrating internally on AI, data and analytics, and integration capabilities.
• Native workflows will continue to mature in these best-in-class solutions. This means contractors will continue to keep users within these applications, eliminating e-mail for workflow and spreadsheets for data capture and processing.
• Mobile applications will continue to mature, allowing more functions to be completed in the field using easier-to-use tools, often without requiring a persistent connection.
• Data and Analytics strategies will transform these applications from being report-based to being more dashboard and query driven. This could reflect a decline in the dependence on Crystal and SSRS reports. The dashboards in these modern applications are combining workflow and reporting such that a given role (e.g., Project Managers, AP Administrators) can have one screen from which to operate and access information, necessary workflows, and user-specific functions. As the data in these systems matures and is piped into the data warehouse, the analytics capabilities will become richer and more valuable.

Further, all the ERP platforms are touting AI-enabled applications. As with any hype-cycle, there is promise coupled with mixed delivery. BCG has seen some interesting and compelling use-cases of Copilot in some of the ERP applications at this level.  BCG continues to lead the way in ERP software selection for the Construction industry, always looking for the optimal combination of technical and functional requirements for each client.

The implementation capabilities of the vendors and their partners are also becoming a priority consideration. In days past, this was viewed as a somewhat lower priority since all vendors were nearly equal in this area. But now, with some vendors getting overwhelmed with too much work and some partners lacking the requisite construction background to implement successfully, contractors are seeing the importance of having a successful implementation partner.

With all of this new technology being deployed within organizations less accustomed to the experience, they must staff accordingly. BCG has been recommending the role of a business analyst in most organizations with over $50M in annual revenue for a number of years now. Feedback on this has been overwhelmingly positive with executives reporting a high-ROI from the position. Additionally, contractors are ensuring they have “power users” or “super-users” available for most primary applications in use within the company. These individuals are not only critical during implementation, but also afterwards when it becomes possible to leverage advanced capabilities in these high-end solutions.

*Source: The $2 Billion Cloud ERP Shake-Up: Why Vista’s Acumatica Bet Changes Everything