The Acumatica ERP Podcast Recap: How Acumatica’s Partner Ecosystem Drives Customer Success

On November 20, 2025, Acumatica launched an exciting new resource: The Acumatica ERP Podcast. Each episode features interviews with Acumatica leaders, partners, and customers to learn how they’re tackling their biggest challenges while also becoming a more connected resilient, and data-driven organization using Acumatica’s award-winning, cloud-based ERP solution.

Today, we’re recapping Episode 3: Acumatica’s Partner Ecosystem: Driving Customer Success. I had the honor of sitting down with three Acumatica Value Added Reseller (VAR) partners who share how they’ve found success in Acumatica’s growing partner ecosystem and offer advice to other Acumatica partners on how to take their businesses to the next level.

Acumatica Channel Partners: Friends or Foes?

In Episode 3, Jason Sheaffer, CEO, Crestwood Associates LLC; Paul Tedford, CEO, WM Synergy; and Michael Pearson, President and Owner, CONTAX Inc. shared their thoughts, insights, and perspectives about being an Acumatica VAR and engaging in a highly competitive but community-focused channel.

Acumatica’s passion for encouraging collaboration among its members is well known, and that includes competing partners. Says Lauren, “Partners have a shared understanding, and the same end goal, and there’s much that they can learn from one another.”

To help every partner succeed, Acumatica supplies the tools they need, including a constantly improved ERP product and full-throttled support.

“We had great support all through the process from Acumatica,” says Michael, whose company joined the Acumatica VAR ecosystem less than two years ago. Winning the first customer is always challenging with a new ERP solution, he explains, but Acumatica took the challenge right out of it.

“[Acumatica’s support] really made it feel like it was quite easy compared to what we thought it would be. Through the whole process, it felt like Acumatica was there with us, at our side through every step. And at no point were we doing it on our own.”

Growing a Business With Acumatica

In addition to highlighting Acumatica’s support, the VARs discuss what businesses need in order to grow during the podcast.

For Paul, whose company partnered with Acumatica about three years ago, having a strong team of consultants is imperative. “You have to have really good consultants to make sure your customers are happy. They’re really in demand because of Acumatica’s popularity.”

Treating the consultants well and establishing a good culture as well as having a good pre-sales and sales teams will all contribute to a company’s growth, says Paul, and he’s thankful that Acumatica’s easy, user-friendly product and modern interface make getting new consultants up and running a much simpler task.

Acumatica’s usability is something Jason has also loved as an almost 15-year Acumatica partner. He says it makes Acumatica an ERP solution that’s attractive to potential clients as does Acumatica’s innovative spirit.

“One of the things that I’ve appreciated about Acumatica over the years is that they don’t sit still,” he says, noting Acumatica’s decision to build AI into the solution rather than having it as an add-on feature.

“As a publisher, having that leadership makes our job a lot easier because we have a product that shows well, and it actually does what it says it’s going to do,” he says. “Acumatica is still very, very concerned about the product and improving it.”

Jason has built and maintained a substantial client base as a larger partner within the Acumatica partner ecosystem. With more consultants, project managers, developers, and salespeople comes the need to be more consistent and being consistent is what Jason says has helped them provide a quality delivery as well as add customers for Acumatica’s subscription-based service.

“We have to keep those customers and make sure they’re happy,” he says. “If a customer is growing, so are we.”

Being consistent and making customers happy are not the only things the three VARs say help them grow their businesses. Acumatica’s growth-friendly capabilities are critical to their success—capabilities that include helping businesses add companies to their portfolio quickly and easily,

Says Jason, “What’s great about Acumatica and this tenant company branch structure it offers is that if I’ve had a client say, ‘Hey, how hard is it to add a company?’ It takes 20 minutes. It’s one screen, right? You put in the name, the address, the base currency, and you’re off and running.”

Adding a company is both seamless and quick, he says. Michael concurs, noting that Acumatica can handle multi-company and multi-currency needs and set it up within hours. And Paul says that one of their clients started with one site and grew to six or seven sites within Acumatica, plus the client loves Acumatica’s unlimited user licensing.

“Even if they’re across multiple companies, multiple entities, multiple sites, [they get] unlimited users so everybody can use the software and all the new features we’ve been talking about,” Paul says.

Advice for Other Growing Businesses in the Acumatica Community

Growing their own businesses has given Jason, Paul, and Michael deep insights they’re happy to share with other businesses within the partner ecosystem. Their advice?

• Hire a Customer Success Manager to help ensure customers are happy and are eager to renew their Acumatica subscription.
• Provide quarterly improvement meetings with their customers’ original stakeholders who helped implement Acumatica to keep them up to speed on all new Acumatica features (which Acumatica rolls out twice a year).
• Understand customers’ business objectives (e.g., where they are going, do they plan to acquire new companies, etc.) with a quarterly business review.
• Manage all tasks equally (e.g., finding prospects, engaging with customers, developing relationships, doing presales, performing implementations, and managing customer success) so no balls get dropped. This requires a good team across the board with team members knowing their specific responsibilities.

And they highly recommend businesses take full advantage of Acumatica’s support resources, including Acumatica’s marketing automation platform (MAP), partner account managers (PAMs), badge opportunities, pre-sales partners, and the Acumatica Community.

“Acumatica is investing in the partner channel,” says Jason. “There’s so much that we get from Acumatica, but it only comes to us if we use it. You’ve got to be available to use and consume the resources that Acumatica provides.”

Michael adds: “We love the Acumatica training, the education, and we encourage everybody to sign up for it, get their certifications, and use it as much as possible.”

And Paul points to his PAM as a beneficial resource for all partners. “He’ll jump on, help us close a deal, and help a prospect see the value.”

Looking to the Future With Acumatica

The podcast is filled with valuable business-growing advice along with examples of how Acumatica is ready, willing, and able to help businesses move forward into the future. As Jason points out, AI is changing the way the world works, and Acumatica’s AI-first approach will help businesses procure accurate data and keep it secure. He also says that Acumatica is ahead of the curve when it comes to industry-specific applications.

“We’re seeing other publishers offer industry edition, and some of it is pure marketing. But Acumatica, if you look at their industry editions, like Construction, they work.”

For Paul, helping prospects and customers stay agile as the technology landscape evolves requires one thing. “It sounds like an old piece of advice nowadays because it’s been 30 years, [but] I don’t think the cloud is optional anymore. You have to move from perpetual or on-premise to the cloud.”

And Michael wraps up the conversation offering a strategy for how businesses can foster strong collaboration with team members. “If I had to boil it down to one, I think alignment. From the very first conversations we have with a prospect through the implementation of the ERP and beyond, we need to be focused on everything we do is with the goal of helping our customers become more successful.”

My thanks to Jason, Paul, and Michael for sitting down with me and taking the time to share their words of wisdom!

We hope you’ll take time to listen to the full episode and contact our experts to learn more about becoming an Acumatica VAR.