Alabama-based CoachComm, a leading coaching communications solution and practice systems provider, began as a one-man operation in 1991. Over its thirty-plus years, it grew into a multi-million dollar business serving high schools, colleges, and professional sports leagues, as well as selling to local and national broadcasters.

Like many small and midsized businesses (SMBs) that grew into big operations, CoachComm started out using simple, disjointed technology systems. These included Aptean Southware, Infor CRM (formerly Sales Logix), Agile, and a few other applications, and they also managed their MRP processes manually.

As is often the case, their cobbled-together tech stack worked until it didn’t. Owner Peter Amos recognized the problem, but he had fears about implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution—fears that were fueled by talk of failing, over-budget, and years-long ERP implementations.

“I dreaded changing from Southware,” he says. “Everything about changing systems was abhorrent to me. I’ve heard so many bad stories of companies moving, even if it was from one system to another. It got to the point where our software, as fine as it was, was just not adequate for our type of business and what we do.”

He knew it was time to “take the leap,” so he and his team did—with Acumatica.

The Road to Acumatica

Before implementing Acumatica’s modern, cloud-based ERP solution, CoachComm consistently met customer needs, but its outdated systems made delivering coaching headsets, coach-to-player communication systems, and practice management tools far more difficult and less efficient than it needed to be.

“What we do is relatively complex,” Amos says. “We’re not building rocket ships, but we’re probably close. We build circuit boards in-house with over 3,000 parts per unit. Managing all those parts to make sure we had what we needed at any given moment for all the different circuit boards that we build is quite the task.”

With their aging technology, issues piled up, including:

• • Overstocking inventory (based on MRP spreadsheets, which included data from purchase orders, service orders, inventory levels, and future work orders).
  • Reconciling 30 years-worth of non-uniform data (including customer names, part numbers, and other info) manually.
  • Lacking visibility into service orders by the customer service, technical support, and field service teams.
  • Lacking insights into returns and notifications if an item was out of stock for the shipping department.

They also lacked the deep financial data they needed to make smart decisions. “Without data, you don’t know how you’re performing.”

The need to easily access crucial data along with the need for inventory management capabilities led CoachComm to give the search for an ERP solution the green light. According to Peter, their evaluation of many ERP notables, including SAP and Oracle NetSuite, showed that they were “too big.” That’s when CoachComm turned to an outside consultant for advice, and the consultant pointed them to Acumatica.

For Peter, Acumatica’s pricing, which is based on resources not users along with its ability to unite existing applications as well as third-party applications onto a cohesive system made it a hands-down winner.

“[I] just liked the overall value proposition. [Acumatica] had the pieces we needed, and it seemed to fit what we needed the best, including the value from a financial standpoint, how much it cost, and how it was structured financially.”

Implementing Acumatica, Gaining Benefits

Deciding which ERP solution was best for them meant the next step was to go through the dreaded implementation, including reconciling 30 years of data. Knowing how complex an undertaking it was destined to be, CoachComm decided to circumvent some of the complexity by hiring Copious Solutions (which specializes in ERP solutions for manufacturing, distribution, and field service organizations) and by bringing in Alan Walker, who had the skills required to unite the data, as Executive VP to help with the process.

Together, CoachComm, Copious Solutions, and Alan took about one year to get through the 30 years of data, and all their dedicated work paid off.

“When we did go live, we were able to continue working, and we didn’t miss a day, not even one day of shipments. We were able to just keep moving,” says Peter.

The seamless implementation validated CoachComm’s decision to go with Acumatica. Everyone loved the cloud ERP solution, which Peter describes as well designed, comprehensive, and easy to use, and they reaped incredibly valuable benefits, which included the ability to:

• • Access accurate real-time data in one system, enabling CoachComm to eliminate excess inventory and ensuring they have the parts they need when they need them while providing visibility into orders scheduled, produced, and shipped.
  • Create quotes, track customer shipments, and pull up historical documents in personalized sales dashboards, making sales an efficient process.
  • Forecast with deeper insights into vendor and price histories.
  • Integrate with the StarShip application, giving them shipping confirmation info as well showing where shipments are in transit and streamlining rate shopping.

Peter also praises Acumatica’s multi-tenant functionality, searching functions, personalization options, and more.

“We see more clearly the different pieces of our business. We can plan our manufacturing, carry better inventory levels, and see everything we need to do to run the business better.”

Going All In with Acumatica

Now that CoachComm is fully up and running with Acumatica, the plan is to add more of what Acumatica offers, including limited eCommerce capabilities, mobile expense management, and a customer portal. As for Peter, the dread of using an ERP solution has been replaced with confidence in what that system can do for them.

“Using Acumatica has been pretty eye-opening for us,” he says. “The Acumatica app is very intuitive, easy to use, gives you good information, and is available at your fingertips. The team has access while they’re traveling. We can also look up information by territory, by region, by inside reps, outside reps, and build groups and filters for everything that’s under their customer umbrella.”

CoachComm’s customer success story secures another ERP implementation win for Acumatica. To see if Acumatica is right for your business, contact our experts today.