Episode #1
The Evolving AI ERP Landscape: Practical Approaches to Maximize Your AI Investment
Host David De Rego, VP of Product Marketing at Acumatica, speaks with Acumatica’s Doug Johnson, VP of Solution Architecture, and Omar Ghazi, Director of Product Management for Platform, AI, and Technology, about how growing businesses are using new AI capabilities in their ERP solutions today. Doug and Omar share why the companies getting real value are the ones combining ERP’s pristine data with AI’s handling of unstructured data, how Acumatica’s “responsible, practical, valuable” governance policy shapes product development, and what’s new in the 2026 R2 release — from AI automation agents and the generally available AI Assistant to the use of an MCP server in the business solution environment. They also share a practical crawl-walk-run path for teams still cautious about adopting AI, as well as provide a preview of what’s next in the AI product roadmap. Timestamps: (01:20) Doug and Omar on their roles and how they use AI every day (03:35) How growing businesses are approaching AI adoption right now (05:50) What separates practical value from stuck-in-pilot: structured plus unstructured data (08:20) Lessons from a launch nobody adopted, and the responsible, practical, valuable rule (11:15) Where AI is delivering the clearest business value in ERP today (14:30) Trust and data privacy: what foundational models do and don’t learn from your data (15:35) Real examples: case summaries, AP document recognition, and the AI Assistant (18:35) Inside 2026 R2: AI automation graduates from prompts to agents (20:55) AI Assistant goes GA — cited sources, screen context, and drag-to-dashboard (24:15) The Acumatica MCP server, and what Model Context Protocol actually means (27:20) A day in the life: removing the reporting bottleneck (29:50) From system of record to a system that predicts and recommends (32:05) What businesses misunderstand about AI, and advice for the cautious (36:10) Advise, assist, automate, orchestrate: where Acumatica takes AI next (39:15) One takeaway: why AI value on an open platform compounds (41:20) Lightning round Links: Connect with Doug Connect with Omar Connect with David Learn more about Acumatica Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
