For many small and midsized businesses (SMBs), growth brings both opportunities and complexities. Increasing customer numbers and expanding revenues are what so many organizations aspire to do. But with success comes hidden and unexpected costs. The secret is to maximize the opportunities presented by business growth while minimizing the costs and complexities of organizational expansion.

Technology—as one of the most important investments a growing business can make—can be an engine for growth and expansion but can also be an area of growing costs. It can be frustrating to deal with tech vendors who make promises of affordability and usability but have terms that actually limit growth. Take ERP licensing for example. Too often, ERP vendors limit how many employees can access the system and penalize SMBs with onerous costs that divert cash away from being reinvested into growth opportunities. In this scenario, companies are stuck with extra fees and can’t collaborate freely.

Acumatica gets it. Since our founding in 2008, we have strived to listen to and understand what businesses want and need. Based on their input and feedback, we have pursued a different approach in some key business and technology areas that set Acumatica apart in the ERP industry. This is the first in a series of articles outlining some of the core ways that Acumatica is different from other software vendors.

One of these core ways is through our unique approach to licensing. From the very beginning, Acumatica has been committed to a licensing approach that was refreshingly different in 2008 and is even more valuable and appropriate today—particularly for growing businesses. It’s based on a simple premise: We believe businesses should never be penalized for adding more users to their ERP systems.

That is why Acumatica offers our customers unlimited-user licensing, also called consumption-based licensing. It means that we charge for the resources you actually consume, not for the number of users you have in the system. You don’t pay per seat or per head; you just pay for the resources you need. It makes licensing clearer and easier to understand, and it provides a structure that is designed to eliminate surprise costs and does not penalize our customers for growing their businesses.

The Top Four Ways Unlimited-User Licensing Helps Growing Businesses

Unlimited-user licensing benefits growing businesses in many ways. In this blog, we’ll highlight the top four.

• Enables flexible business growth

Unlimited-user licensing gives businesses the flexibility to grow on their own terms. As your business takes on more employees and customers, you can easily add users to Acumatica—scaling up quickly, efficiently, and smoothly—with no transitional hiccups and no chance of the system rigidly pushing back against your growth ambitions. You can also scale down if need be. This is especially valuable for companies with a seasonally fluctuating business—like a retailer with more employees around the holidays or an agricultural company with more employees during the growing season. You can remove users in the off-season, again with no trouble. Unlimited-user licensing enables Acumatica to truly flex with you.

• Provides pricing you can rely on with no surprises

With unlimited-user licensing, costs are fixed in your chosen licensing tier based on the number of resources you plan to use, and you can know ahead of time what those projected costs will be. This level of certainty and transparency eliminates the dreaded hidden or surprise fees that, unfortunately, are commonplace with software vendors. You don’t have to worry about unexpected fees or random charges for things that should be built into the cost of the system. If you choose to add on optional modules or Acumatica Marketplace solutions, you’ll know what those costs are going to be, too—so you can budget ahead of time and keep your finances balanced and in order. Acumatica is committed to transparent pricing that you can rely on.

• Unlimited users = empowered employees

In today’s digital marketplace, information is power, and all teams and employees benefit from accessible data. This applies to every employee in your business. They can’t operate and do their jobs effectively without having access to relevant data. With other ERP systems that charge per user, you end up paying for every additional user of the system—forcing you to make difficult choices between information access and budget consequences. If you can’t add an unlimited number of employees to your system, then you have to leave someone out of the loop—without the real-time information that is critical in all tasks. Going without the latest information can spell danger for employee accuracy, communication, and decision-making. But, with Acumatica’s unlimited-user licensing, all of your employees are empowered with the data they need to do their jobs, in real-time. Key staff members are not left out or minimized because of added fees for each user license. And Acumatica gives you full control over your data with advanced security measures, so you can better control and protect sensitive information, while giving each employee access to the data they need.

• Creates greater collaboration with more user access

In addition to employees, Acumatica also gives you the opportunity to bring others into the system—like consultants, shareholders, auditors, and even customers. This gives everyone with a stake in the business the ability to communicate easily with one another, to make strong, data-driven decisions, and to collaborate effectively for the business’s benefit. You can even set up customer self-service portals to improve the customer experience and boost loyalty to your brand.

Conclusion

Acumatica is unique in the ERP industry, as the only vendor with unlimited-user licensing—giving you the flexibility to apply the system however you see fit across your internal and external ecosystems. Many customers are already reaping the benefits of unlimited users—customers like ProPharma Distribution.

Switching to Acumatica saved ProPharma $120,000 a year in staffing and per-user licensing costs. Says Charles Snyder, IT Director at ProPharma, “We can scale up without having to change anything. We can simply add more users.”

Snyder goes on to say: “Would I recommend Acumatica to anybody? Absolutely not in our industry. I wouldn’t want anybody to have a competitive advantage over what we do.”

To explore our unlimited-user licensing and how it can help you grow and gain a competitive advantage, reach out to our experts today.