MODEX 2024—a four-day material handling, logistics, and supply chain show and conference owned and produced by the Material Handling Industry (MHI) association—took place March 11–14, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. I, along with a number of Acumatica representatives, were on hand to share the latest and greatest features and enhancements found in our most recent releases, Acumatica 2023 R2 and, the soon to be released Acumatica 2024 R1.

Today, I’ll share what MODEX is all about, why it’s such an important industry event, and what attendees had to say about Acumatica’s DTC supply chain capabilities.

MODEX: A Brief History 

According to MHI, MODEX was launched in 2012 in response to the “shrinking dimensions of a new, global economy, where sourcing knows no walls or barriers.” Attendees are manufacturing and supply chain professionals from all over the world seeking productivity solutions. This year, they had almost 1,200 solutions—filling up over 405,000 square feet of exhibit space in the Georgia World Congress Center—from which to choose.

Pictured: Georgia World Congress Center (photo credit: Tripadvisor)

The thousands of national and international attendees had plenty of time to visit the diverse exhibits as well as participate in the event’s 5 keynotes. The popular keynote presentations featured a three-person panel on smarter ports along with several featured speakers, including Bill Seward, President, UPS Supply Chain Solutions; Gerd Leonhard, CEO, The Futures Agency and Founder, The Good Future Project; Jeremy Renner, Academy-Award-nominated actor; and John Paxton, CEO, MHI, who presented the 2024 Annual Industry Report.

MODEX 2024 also offered 200 educational sessions available to all attendees broken out into 9 different tracks, from automation & robotics, distribution & warehousing, and eCommerce to emerging supply chain trends & technology, manufacturing planning & sourcing, and more.

Acumatica’s MODEX 2024 Experience

MODEX 2024, was an amazing opportunity for my Acumatica colleagues and me to educate attendees about Acumatica and our innovative, customer-inspired and industry-specific features. Many were delighted to find one comprehensive and innovative system that helps them effectively manage their manufacturing, distribution, and supply chain operations and streamline their DTC processes.

We were able to communicate the value of Acumatica’s manufacturing and distribution software that provides users with  a complete cloud-based control and planning system. Built-in Production Management, Material Requirements Planning (MRP), and Advanced Planning and Scheduling along with Supply Chain, Warehouse, Order Management (and more) seamlessly integrate with Acumatica’s financial and sales applications, making organization-wide data accessible to all approved users in one place. Our best-in-class features appeared to attract attendees we spoke with who are looking for a robust solution that can tackle the supply chain and logistical challenges they’re facing today as well as in the future.

A major component of Acumatica’s award-winning usability and functionality is our championing of customer participation in product development. As Ali Jani, chief product officer at Acumatica, says, “With customer feedback, we can ensure our solution provides organizations with intelligence and agility to meet their unique challenges.”

In addition to customer collaboration, Acumatica is committed to producing twice-yearly product updates, such as Acumatica 2023 R2 and our soon-to-be generally available Acumatica 2024 R1. They deliver new, customer-inspired features that address the real-world needs of manufacturing, distribution, and eCommerce companies. Here are just some of the many update features we shared during our time at MODEX 2024:

• A new Manage Sales Allocations screen, which helps streamline mass stock allocation and deallocation for distributors as well as retailers and commerce merchants.
• Acumatica’s new integrated Payments feature, simplifying consumer payments with credit card and ACH processing that improves reconciliation, mobile portal payments, click-to-pay, and gift cards.
• Integrations with Amazon’s Seller Central marketplace, which supports Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) and Merchant-Fulfilled Network (MFN) delivery models, and Shopify’s B2B commerce capabilities, which helps businesses manage their omnichannel sales with a single tool.
• Access to distribution requirements planning (DRP) functionality for managing inventory supply and demand.

These and other release features are the result of intense R&D effort as well as our commitment to gleaning insights from real users. This powerful combination helps our customers succeed—and do so on their own terms.

Says Anura Warnakulasooriya, Managing Director, Midaya Cermaic Company, “Our competitive edge lies in our readiness to go the extra mile to meet client expectations and needs, as well as deliver goods on time. Acumatica allows us to meet those goals with real-time data that we can use to make better decisions and react quickly.”

After MODEX 2024

MODEX 2024 was a phenomenal experience. We were pleased to have the opportunity to connect with so many distributors and manufacturers, listen to them share their challenges and aspirations and to talk to them about how they can effectively manage, automate, and streamline all of their supply chain and logistics activities with Acumatica’s comprehensive, intuitive, and cloud-based solution. Based on their reactions, we hope to engage more deeply with these prospective customers and soon welcome them to our thriving and supportive Acumatica Community.

For more information about Acumatica’s growth-friendly solution, contact our experts. They’ll be happy to answer any questions and to schedule a personal demonstration.