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A Client’s Perspective; Why I Joined the ACUMEN Team


Hi, my name is Chip Lowell.  I am vice president of business development at ACUMEN Corporation.  I’ve been with ACUMEN since 2014.  What did I do prior to then?  I was a client!  I’m sure you’ve heard the advertisement that says “I liked the product so much, I bought the company” – well, to save a few bucks, I joined the company instead.  Why?  Well, let’s start out with the story (a short one) about how I was introduced to ACUMEN and why I became a client.

Back in 2006 I was working as VP of sales for a PC manufacturer in Richmond, Virginia.  I was also the guy that built the web site and internal sales, inventory and manufacturing systems.  We used cobbled together web code, databases, QuickBooks, Microsoft Access and Excel to track everything.  Nothing “spoke” to anything else.  Lots of copy and paste.  Sound familiar to you?  I bet it does!  Like most small business folks, I had no idea that there were products like SAP available to handle all that.  So, we were growing constantly in PC sales and systems were, to say the least, very strained keeping up with all those moving parts.  Then, Best Buy.  Retail.  A big deal – but a huge jump in orders.  We really began to struggle.  Inventory would come up short – where did it go? No one knew.  Numbers wouldn’t match from one area to another.  What was the status of POs?  What about the inventory in progress?  What a mess.

Then, we received a phone call from the CEO of a company called ACUMEN Corporation.  He said he had read about our company in the Richmond paper, congrats on the retail deal – and would we be interested in talking about something called “ERP” – a full end-to-end system for our business.  Well, heck yes!  That’s when I met Phil Perkins and the ACUMEN team.  They came to our office and instead of falling all over themselves talking about why they were so great, they asked us about US.  How we got where we were, where we were going.  HOW we do things and what we’d like to see happen.  We realized ACUMEN were subject matter experts in manufacturing, inventory management and business processes.  They knew and understood EXACTLY what I was talking about.  They took a keen interest in our exact business model.  Then they showed us a demo of SAP Business One.  I, like most folks, had seen the SAP logo at the airport and in business magazines.  I had no idea what it was, though.  From the demo, I got the full picture.  It’s an all-in-one software for business.  Accounting, financials, CRM and Sales, orders, POs and purchasing, Inventory, shipping and receiving, manufacturing and then a full customer service module.  Yes!

From that first meeting, we wanted more.  They next did what they called “full discovery” of our business.  Deep discovery.  Nuts and bolts stuff.  How we do everything.  You know what?  In some areas we actually did not know how to explain what happened!  The discovery process forced us to put in on paper.  From this discovery process, ACUMEN could then put together our proposal for implementation, training and go live.

It was a real process that involved most stakeholders in each department.  But once finished, we now had a full handle on our entire business from leads to sales to product assembly to shipping out the door.  Nice!

Now, why am I with ACUMEN?  Simply said, I was blown away by their professionalism, product and business expertise and people.  They are really a great bunch of people to work with!  After working personally with SAP for many, many years, I made an easy decision to come on board at ACUMEN and simply tell my story to business folks.

I learned a great lesson in selling a long time ago.  It goes like this:  “Selling is simply helping someone make a decision that is good for them.”  Yup.

So that’s my story.  That’s why I’m with ACUMEN corporation.  That’s why I’d like to help you make a decision that is good for you.  Contact us and take a look at SAP Business One.