Acumatica Acquires JAAS Systems to Advance ERP Manufacturing Features

There are very few significant announcements in the ERP systems market, but one of them is the recent acquisition of JAAS Systems by Acumatica. 

Acumatica, an ERP provider founded in 2008, and JAAS Systems, an Acumatica value-added reseller (VAR), codeveloped Acumatica Manufacturing Edition in 2017. Acumatica's acquisition makes perfect sense and helps the company provide advanced manufacturing features for ETO ERP and project-based ERP. 

The image below describes the mix of functionality included in Acumatica Manufacturing Edition.

Image courtest of Acumatica

While Acumatica Manufacturing Edition was built on the Acumatica Cloud xRP, the JAAS product can also be used with MYOB and Microsoft Dynamics SL. Also, Acumatica is owned by private equity firm EQT Partners, which also acquired IFS, another ERP vendor. While Acumatica isn’t always competing directly with IFS, Acumatica and JAAS may. 

At the same time, Acumatica also improved its main offering for manufacturing with the release of Acumatica 2020 R1. The most notable enhancements are native shop floor data collection and advanced planning functionality. Since Acumatica doesn’t focus exclusively on manufacturing, the vendor also announced new partnerships and integrations with BigCommerce, Adobe Document Cloud, and Smartsheet. 

These announcements are important for several reasons. First, advanced manufacturing features are essential because many cloud ERP products provide rather generic features, which are insufficient for manufacturers. Cloud ERP reviews reveal that users aren’t always happy with industry-specific features. Also, manufacturing companies are expanding their activities to include services, which require robust project management. Finally, selling online is not optional anymore, and functionality for e-commerce (or integration with e-commerce platforms) is mandatory.