An engineering firm needed technology to provide a solid substrate to support their rapidly growing manufacturing and distribution operations. When they decided on Acumatica, they needed an expert partner with the right plan to set it up.
Have you ever noticed the plastic mesh laid over newly created interstate embankments? It’s called “geogrid,” and it’s engineered to trap the loose, sliding dirt of the sloping bank within a polymer mesh. As the soil trickles into the geogrid, its load becomes more evenly distributed, allowing the soil to serve as its own structural retaining element.
One rapidly growing geotechnical engineering firm SWK Technologies works with understands this concept very well. In fact, they saw tremendous business success when they expanded from professional engineering services into the distribution and domestic manufacturing of geogrid products.
But at a certain point, they found they needed to apply their engineering strategy to their own operations. They needed to find an ERP “substrate” to hold their operations and financials together because the business was at risk of sliding out of control.
When Every Answer is “I Don’t Know,” Growth Erodes
With revenue scaling toward $24 million and operations spanning three business entities, the firm’s existing financial reporting systems (QuickBooks Enterprise, spreadsheets, and manual processes) had stopped keeping up. Often, the team leaders found themselves running on guesswork.
When leadership had questions about inventory status, the answers were hard to find. For manufacturing progress, it was difficult to say what stage they were at. And when it came to consolidated financials across three entities, those answers required initiating an error-prone, manual process. In each of these cases, whenever a critical question arose about the state of the business, someone had to stop what they were doing, dig, and hope the data available to them could answer their questions quickly enough to support smart decisions.
They knew it was only a matter of time before their lack of insight severely constrained their business growth.
Establishing a Guided Path to Stability
Fixing this lack of visibility was a high-urgency project, and the firm knew it. But their order volume didn’t leave their team with the freedom to learn all the intricacies of ERP setup and configuration.
Instead, they decided they needed a trustworthy, knowledgeable ERP partner who could advise them on the right software and guide them through every step of the implementation. Ideally, their partner would know how to move fast without creating chaos, deliver a clear roadmap that avoided scope creep, and understand exactly where to start, so the firm could stabilize critical processes quickly.
That partner was SWK Technologies, where the software consulting team quickly got to work setting up Acumatica Cloud ERP.
How Acumatica Gave Them a Solid Foundation
The firm selected Acumatica Manufacturing Edition, which delivers in-depth discrete manufacturing capabilities, including accurate Bills of Material (BOMs), routings, and cost structures to support their geogrid production with precision. Acumatica’s robust Materials Requirements Planning (MRP) proactively aligns purchasing with production schedules to reduce stockouts and excess inventory, and the solution’s real-time WIP visibility ensures production progress is always available whenever anyone has a question.
On the warehouse side, Acumatica’s Warehouse Management provides complete visibility over raw materials, intermediate components, and finished goods. Barcode scanning, automated replenishment, and guided pick-pack-ship workflows replace slow, manual tracking, and seamless shipping integrations can keep fulfillment moving without manual intervention.
For the financial picture, Acumatica’s Intercompany Accounting tools can automatically handle transactions between the firm’s three entities, giving leadership a consolidated, real-time view of orders, inventory, and financials, and eliminating the manual reconciliation that would have previously consumed the finance team. The platform also provides the firm with a Project Accounting solution that can expand visibility into the engineering side of the business and give them the power to track detailed profitability across their ongoing professional engineering services engagements.
Two built-in capabilities round out the solution as practical time-savers. Acumatica CRM links manufacturing estimates directly to quotes and opportunities, tightening the connection between sales and production for better forecast accuracy. And Accounts Payable document recognition automates invoice capture and processing, so the finance team can focus on analysis rather than data entry.
A Substrate for Growth
Geogrid works because it gives an unstable, eroding system a strong, purpose-built foundation to build on, resulting in soil that structures itself so that everything around it can do its job.
Similarly, Acumatica Manufacturing Edition, with thoughtful customization by SWK, gives the firm’s team the strong, stable foundation they need to grow their manufacturing, distribution, and engineering service offerings without relying on more manual work.
For them, stability does more than free up bandwidth: it also changes the quality of their decisions. When leadership can see inventory, production, and financials in real time, they can take on more work and move faster – without the nagging uncertainty that something important is sliding through the cracks.
With the right ERP holding everything together, they can get back to the real job of growing the business.
Let’s Find a Solution Together
By partnering with SWK, you’re creating opportunities for your company’s continued success. Contact us today and learn how we commit to enabling success for every one of our clients.