Dakota Red Corporation

Dakota Red Corporation executives wanted an ERP system that was affordable, that could handle multiple entities, that would improve reporting capabilities, and that would allow them to accommodate more users as they grew and acquired more firms. They considered Sage, NetSuite, Acumatica, and several industry-specific solutions. They chose Acumatica largely because of its unlimited user pricing, ability to handle multiple entities, and ease of integration with third party software. But what sealed the deal was woth Brad Kain of K&R Consulting Group, Inc.

”K&R’s Brad Kain really took the time to understand our business and to help us make procedural changes, not just changes within the software. He went above and beyond just customizing our software and getting our data cleaned up,” adds Sauter.

Acumatica’s option to purchase and host the software itself rather than locking into a SaaS solution was a huge selling point also. “We’re looking at this as a long-term strategic solution and as a partnership with K&R and Acumatica,” Sauter says.

The company implemented Acumatica’s Manufacturing Edition, which includes Financial Management, Manufacturing, and Distribution Management Software, among others, and has plans to add Acumatica’s payroll system and CRM.

With Acumatica, Dakota Red Corporation is poised and positioned for rapid growth, says Stoner. “It’ll be a lot easier to bring new locations into the fold, and we now have visibility across multiple locations and multiple entities.”

The company, which employs 215, went from having 10 people using Sage to more than 70 using Acumatica and can continue to add using without spending thousands of additional dollars.

Reducing Inventory with Better Insight

Dakota Red has visibility into inventory that it lacked previously. “We can now place orders faster and react to sales quicker. As a result, I think we’ll be able to reduce our total inventory by somewhere between $1.5 million and $2 million dollars.”

The company now has timelier financial statements, and Acumatica has automated many intercompany transfers, saving time and reducing errors. “Now we can charge items across branches and automatically track how much one entity owes the other. Before, we had to do multiple entries or cut multiple checks,” Stoner explains.

He adds, “We’re seeing huge reductions in the amount of time we spend on financial statement cleanup each month. This helps us do better business analysis, and it frees our accounting staff to concentrate on other strategic work.”

Freeing Sales to Actually Sell

Dakota Red sells items in different units of measurement, such as by the piece, by the square foot, by the ton, or by the pallet. The sales team spent a lot of time converting pallets to pieces, for example, when creating sales orders. “Having the mathematics conversions in Acumatica and storing it all in one place has been a big time saver for our sales people,” says Sauter.

Better Reporting

Dakota Red had separate financial report writing software and massaged data within Excel, which meant they often had to manually recreate reports each month. They used a Microsoft Access custom program to handle POS transactions with each location having its own standalone databases that included inventory. Since they didn’t connect to Sage, they had to manually move the data.

“Acumatica reporting capabilities give us much better visibility to our data. If we change an entry, a click of a button runs the report again,” says Sauter.

Acumatica also allows them to better manage customer credit lines and customer accounts across the entire company, visibility they didn’t have previously. With Acumatica they can instantly see who owes what and to whom.

“Acumatica is so flexible and efficient, it’s helping us operate the business more intelligently.”