It has been a busy year for Acumatica. The launch of Acumatica 2026 R1 in March, followed by R2 in October, brought a slew of new or enhanced artificial intelligence features:
- AI Studio, a no-code framework that connects specific ERP screens with a large language model (LLM) for streamlined field-level actions.
- Acumatica AI Assistant, which allows users to get fast answers to their most pressing questions within the ERP.
- Expanded AI-powered anomaly detection capabilities.
- Enhanced automation through agentic workflows.
If your commercial bakery or food service provider has not taken advantage of these capabilities yet, now is a great time to get the ball rolling. Your team can use AI Assistant to get fast answers about production questions, AI Studio to generate consistent product descriptions across your menu, anomaly detection to flag unusual ingredient usage, and more.
The challenge is figuring out where to start, and how to manage rollout. SWK Technologies will walk through those decisions in this guide.
1. Assess AI Opportunities and Readiness
First, it is important to understand how Acumatica’s AI features can actually work for your business—and what needs to happen before they are deployed.
Familiarize yourself with the various facets of Acumatica AI and consider how they fit into your bakery’s current workflows. It is not necessary to use every bell and whistle just because they are available; rather, think about the pain points you already have and how Acumatica AI may address them.
For example, maybe your team is struggling to stay on top of fluctuating costs in your supply chain, making it difficult to make accurate revenue predictions. Acumatica’s AI-powered anomaly detection capabilities could act as another set of eyes, flagging supply-chain variations that are worthy of further investigation.
But before you make the jump to using any Acumatica AI features, you will need to understand how they fit into your current data ecosystem and ERP usage. The availability of some features may depend on your specific agreement. Some tools are also industry-specific, so it is worth evaluating those that may be relevant to the commercial bakery business.
Once you have confirmed the tools you want to use are available under your contract, review permissions to understand the extent of data access, determine whether any data needs to be hidden from AI tools (such as customer banking details), and think through the reusable system instructions you will use to ensure accuracy and consistency. You may choose to designate a point person to oversee this process.
2. Start With a Low-Risk Use Case
Trying to automate your entire production process on day one could lead to high-stakes errors, not to mention staff overwhelm. For sustainable rollout, start with relatively low-risk tasks, assess deployment success, and build from there.
Perhaps your product descriptions were written by different people at various points in time, resulting in a collection that is inconsistent in tone or style. AI Studio could be a great solution, drawing on an LLM to create consistent descriptions based on predefined information and standards.
3. Test New Features In a Controlled Way
As your team gets the hang of Acumatica AI, it is important to monitor the performance of newly enabled features.
After using AI Studio to draft new product descriptions, you might choose to assess how often they needed to be corrected (and especially whether your connected LLM introduced any risky errors, such as unsupported allergen claims), whether the LLM achieved a uniform tone and style as desired, and how much time the process saved.
AI Assistant could be another early place to start your trial. This tool allows users to ask plain-language questions about the data in your ERP and receive immediate answers in text, chart, or table form.
For this tool, you could start with a limited pilot. For example, your production manager asking verifiable questions about a particular batch run, then double-checking the answers to ensure accuracy. Once they are satisfied with the results of their review, your team could work toward expanding access to a larger group of users or making workflows more advanced.
4. Gradually Introduce Added Complexity
As your team becomes more comfortable with Acumatica AI features, you can begin to embrace more complex workflows, like partial automations enabled by agentic AI in Acumatica 2026 R2.
For example, if your bakery received an unusual order from a customer, perhaps one with missing information or a quantity far outside workflow norms, Acumatica AI could flag that order and route it to a human employee for manual review. Human oversight is still part of this important process, but the agent can take on initial review.
Acumatica’s anomaly-detection tools can monitor data across multiple supported generic inquiries, including nested inquiries. If something seems strange, like an unexpected jump in an ingredient cost, the system can flag it. Your team can then investigate and decide what to do.
5. Continuously Review and Fine-Tune
Rollout does not end as soon as a feature is enabled. To get the most from Acumatica AI, or really, any part of your tech stack, make sure it is working well in the long-term. Periodically review how (and how often) AI tools are being used, their cost, their permissions and data governance standards, and if they are benefitting your business either financially or operationally.
Consider metrics such as:
- Accuracy rates.
- Usage, costs, and breadth of employee adoption.
- Red flags such as false alarms or missed problems.
- ROI, whether in terms of finances, process efficiency, or employee productivity.
If you notice issues in a particular workflow, consider sunsetting that tool, adding more oversight, or revising system instructions. Rollout is a process, not an item on a checklist.
Learn more about Acumatica AI with SWK Technologies
As a top Acumatica partner, SWK Technologies will help you optimize your ERP system and deploy the ever-growing list of artificial intelligence tools in the Acumatica suite. Our team is ready to help you as it learns to use AI Studio, AI Assistant, and other solutions available through Acumatica AI.
Contact SWK today to start your Acumatica AI rollout.