The Acumatica ERP Podcast Recap: Modernizing Construction Finance

The recently launched The Acumatica ERP Podcast delivers insightful episodes featuring Acumatica customers, partners, and experts who share how smart solutions can help businesses thrive in today’s digital economy.

In Episode 3, Acumatica’s Lauren O’Hara, Senior Production Marketing Manager, sat down with three partners who are helping drive customer success. During their talk, they offered some great advice from the Value Added Reseller’s perspective to our listeners. We also love learning from the most important members of our Acumatica Community – our customer, Cassie Moore, CFO of Alpha Insulation & Waterproofing, who was the featured guest in Episode 4.

Cassie chatted with me about her company’s digital transformation, the challenges the team faced, and how they overcame them with Acumatica Cloud ERP. Here’s a recap of our one-on-one conversation.

About Alpha Insulation & Waterproofing and It’s Challenges Pre-Acumatica

Alpha Insulation & Waterproofing offers 40 years of experience in commercial insulation and waterproofing services. From commercial insulation, waterproofing, and spray fireproofing to spray foam insulation, firestopping, and restoration, Alpha does it all and is a trusted specialist in Division 7 construction (excluding roofing).

Alpha was acquired by Installed Building Products, Inc. in 2017 and believes that exceptional service begins with exceptional professionals. The company sets rigorous standards for recruiting, training, and developing top tier talent, and it prides itself on offering multi-disciplinary expertise as well as its strong leadership and proactive oversight during every construction project.

Though a thriving business, Cassie says Alpha faced a common challenge. “We struggled to get the office and the field to communicate in a timely manner. And when you’re on commercial construction projects like that, it’s extremely important. They need to have real time feedback and have all the tools that they need to be able to do their jobs.”

According to its Acumatica success story, the company also ran on a multi-tenant project management and financial system for construction that crashed often, didn’t work well for the users in the field, and was not SOX compliant, forcing the team to calculate their financial data and create reports manually.

The team evaluated various ERP options to replace it, looking for one that was reliable with a stable platform, provided visibility into their operations, and offered real-time communication. Says Cassie, “We whittled it down to three, and we actually brought the operations team and everybody into score the three that we ended up with. So, everybody kind of got a choice in what software we ended up going with.”

Acumatica’s construction ERP scored the highest, and Alpha went live on Acumatica in January 2021. “It went really well. We had no business interruption.”

New Acumatica Use Cases for Alpha

Alpha also has a distribution side, and the team was looking for a scalable software that could replace what they had. With the commercial division already on Acumatica, Alpha set up a separate tenant for distribution, which they customized, and they implemented Acumatica’s manufacturing software, which also required some customization.

“Me and my team jumped in and helped them with the implementation of Acumatica on the distribution side. We’ve been live for roughly a hundred days now,” Cassie says. “So far, it’s going well. No one’s cried. It was a culture change, right? But the people were so amazing and so patient and really wanted to understand and be able to grow their business.”

Shifting from disconnected systems to an integrated platform changes how a business operates and how people think about their work. Instead of managing isolated tasks, teams begin to see how every action is connected and how upstream processes affect downstream outcomes across the organization. From procure-to-pay, where purchase orders flow into accounts payable, to order-to-cash, where sales orders turn into collected revenue, each step touches multiple departments and impacts the entire business.

Building that shared understanding takes time, but once systems communicate seamlessly, it creates greater visibility, accountability, and alignment across every facet of the organization. “It is exciting and terrifying all at the same time, but the teams have really taken it and kind of made it their own.”

As for the implementation process itself, Cassie has some advice for other businesses going through their own: “The partner is huge. When you’re looking to bring in an ERP, they will guide you. They’re the experts, right?”

She says ensuring a successful implementation also requires the whole team getting involved.

“One of the biggest things is my team owned it. We had SMEs for each functional area (AR, AP, billing projects, general ledger, reporting). Everybody had their area and their specialty, and they really owned it. So now, not only did they implement it, they’re able to support the end users because they know exactly how their modules work.”

Modernizing Construction Finance Transforms Alpha

Investing in the right technology has a huge impact, and for Alpha, the impact was positive.

“We used to spend so much time on manual processes, so we had to run shadow systems because the system we were on wasn’t reliable. The team spent a lot of time doing non-value adding tasks,” Cassie says. “Now, they can spend more time doing financial review and digging into stuff that makes sense or doesn’t make sense, and [they’re] learning and being able to go through the upgrades once a year, so it has really changed how they spend their days and what they spend it on.”

When Cassie joined Alpha, her goal was to bridge the gap between finance and operations. She wanted her team to see the transactions and the volume of transactions so they could understand and appreciate what happens in the field.

“I’m a big proponent of field trips. I want them to go out there and see where these transactions are coming from. This is how they’re getting here. This is where the bread is made, if you will. Like, this is how we make our money. And so being able to take that and combine it with the transactions in the system electronically, I think has been really invaluable for the team.”

As a CFO, Cassie is excited that Alpha is growing and technology will help support that growth. “By employing technology, an employee…can focus on… the things that excite them, the things that are value added, the things where they see impact being made.”

And Cassie when asked about CFOs and finance leaders who are only considering a digital transformation, she says, “If you haven’t thought about it more than just considering, by now you’re behind. Really. The good news is that it’s never too late.”

Exciting Future for Alpha

The future is looking incredibly bright for Alpha, and Cassie is excited to take advantage of Acumatica’s AI innovations that will help her in the construction and finance space, including our Anomaly Detection capabilities. “I want to leverage some more of [AI] to again, handle some of the stuff that’s not as value added.”

Alpha’s continuing evolution will include refining their processes and procedures, and with Acumatica, Cassie doesn’t have to worry about regulatory compliance. Instead, she can put her energies into growing the business. “It’s not a fire drill anymore. I can focus on the growth, and the improvements, and all the positive things.”

My conversation with Cassie, a successful woman in construction, was a great learning experience for me, personally, and I encourage you to listen the full episode today! To get the latest ERP developments and insights from customers and industry experts, we encourage you to subscribe to the podcast, so you don’t miss out on future episodes.