Acumatica Lands $25 Million Round To Fund Cloud ERP Expansion Plans

Acumatica, the Bellevue, Wash.-based company run by former Microsoft channel chief Jon Roskill, on Monday announced a $25 million funding round that Roskill believes will accelerate Acumatica's cloud ERP business.

Leading the Series C preferred round is Accel-KKR, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based technology-focused investment firm with $4.3 billion in capital commitments. AKKR is joined in the round by existing investors.

"For Acumatica, what this means is that we're now bringing a true Grade A, growth equity firm into the Acumatica fold. They're going to take a board seat as part of this," said Roskill, CEO of Acumatica since 2014, in an interview. "One of the things that's exciting for us about this is that AKKR doesn't just bring money to the table, but they've got significant resources that we can leverage, as well, whether it's around strategy and planning; recruiting and HR; and, in particular, expansion-oriented resources."

Acumatica's sweet spot is ERP customers with revenues between about $10 million and $500 million looking to move to the cloud. Roskill said that according to analysts at Gartner and IDC, only 18 to 20 percent of companies in that segment have moved to the cloud, but most of them are ready to go to the cloud very soon.

Given Acumatica's 100 percent channel focus, the investments the company has planned will all affect Acumatica's 350 North American partners, as well as potentially affect Microsoft partners looking for a cloud ERP solution, Roskill said. "It's all going to go into building better products, accelerating product development and accelerating go to market," Roskill said.

Expect to see more focus on verticals, where Acumatica over the last 18 months has rolled out editions focused on field service, commerce, manufacturing and construction. "[With] this money, we're going to accelerate our efforts into some of these verticals, and I think you can expect to see us go after a couple others over the coming years," Roskill said.

A strong Microsoft partner itself, Acumatica runs on a Microsoft infrastructure stack and has integrations and add-ins with Office 365, Power BI and LinkedIn. Yet that relationship doesn't stop Acumatica from going after Microsoft Dynamics partners.

Customers are going to the cloud "with or without you," Roskill said. "You've got to get the skills, and you've got to get the product, and Acumatica is certainly here to help those that are interested," said Roskill after arguing that the Acumatica code base is substantially more modern than what Microsoft has put in the cloud so far on the ERP side for midmarket customers.

Posted by Scott Bekker on June 18, 2018