Connecting Construction: Acumatica at NECA 2026

For 125 years, the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA) has been the “voice of the electrical construction industry,” with a mission of enhancing the success of its industry members, through workforce development, safety excellence, advocacy, education, and innovation Over 4,500 member firms with 119 local chapters across the U.S. (and growing) benefit from the trade association’s continual drive to deliver exceptional value.

Acumatica’s Cindy Whitner, Senior Manager, Product Management, puts it this way: “The NECA community is a vibrant community. Between national and regional programs, they work to develop the next generation of electrical workers in a very active way.”

This is clearly evident at its premier convention and trade show that takes place every year. This year’s event, NECA 2026, happened on October 4-7 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, drawing more than 11,000 attendees and over 475 exhibitors.

Acumatica, along with Gold Certified Value-Added Reseller Crestwood Associates, whose representatives were present on the show floor and in the Acumatica booth, showcased the award-winning and connected construction benefits of Acumatica Construction Edition.

NECA 2026 Recap

NECA 2026 offered attendees workshops and seminars — covering such topics as AI and advanced technology, infrastructure demands, grid modernization, collaboration, and more — along with general sessions, networking events, and its trade show floor.

According to NECA, its show floor is an interactive classroom, with the over 150,000 square feet of show space filled to the brim with booths offering products and services for the electrical construction industry, and we were proud they included multiple Acumatica customers exhibiting at the show as distributors, retailers, and manufacturers. Samuel Nair, Senior Strategic Sales Development Specialist, Acumatica, says Acumatica’s booth garnered a lot of attention.

“We had multiple customers approach us, from field workers to CEOs,” he says.

Their main concern? Efficiency and ease of use.

This is not surprising considering the operational challenges today’s electrical contractors face, including juggling the complexities of job costing, project visibility, and cash flow for multiple projects. But the biggest challenge the Acumatica and Crestwood Associate representatives heard was disconnected field and back office teams and a lack of data management.

“Companies struggle to connect teams, and this field to office connection is crucial to today’s electrical contracting industry,” Samuel says.

Fortunately, Acumatica Construction Edition unites every team member, whether they’re in the office or out in the field. Users have easy, anywhere access to all project-related data, managing their billing, expenses, inventory, and labor management from a centralized solution. The result is full visibility, better planning, and satisfied customers.

Says Samuel, “The executives we spoke to liked Acumatica’s usability and centralized data, giving them peace of mind that everyone is on the same page. The field workers enjoyed the efficiencies and the time it saves from being able to quickly access documents, upload expenses, or grab inventory — even from out in the field.”

Acumatica’s Latest Release Provides Additional Benefits

The benefits of Acumatica’s construction ERP extend even further with the enhancements brought by our latest release, Acumatica 2026 R2. These improvements, which are also discussed in our recent article, One Connected Project, No More Side Jobs: How Acumatica 2026 R2 Delivers for Construction Firms, include the ability to:

• Reliez les projets au sein d'une hiérarchie parent-enfant afin de permettre une facturation et un reporting consolidés, toutes phases et tous sites confondus.
• Offrez aux fournisseurs et sous-traitants un accès en libre-service aux contrats de sous-traitance, aux bons de commande et aux documents de conformité sur le portail Construction Exchange.
• Suivre les quantités réalisées et les montants facturés par rapport aux montants en attente tout au long du processus de facturation échelonnée et des ordres de modification.
• Estimez les coûts du projet par mois civil et copiez automatiquement les détails des lignes budgétaires à partir des documents sources.
• Reclasser les opérations liées aux projets et analyser un éventail plus large de revenus liés aux projets, qu'ils soient facturés ou non.

During NECA 2026, attendees discovered that instead of relying on a solution like QuickBooks, which often requires bolting on multiple applications to efficiently manage accounting, job costing, field service, and inventory, Acumatica’s single, AI-powered solution can handle all their needs — without a big change-management project.

That was Groupe SGM’s experience with Acumatica.

Groupe SGM, an electrical engineering contractor based in Quebec, was operating on siloed systems and manual, paper-based workflows. When the company expanded quickly through acquisitions, their limited visibility and responsiveness as well as lack of transparency and efficiency created fears about their ability to grow in the future.

“As the company grew bigger, we wanted to have better control, better results, and become more efficient. We were really limited in what we could achieve,” says Mathieu Cotton, Chief Financial Officer.

The need to consolidate the business with a cohesive, cloud ERP had them reviewing leading ERP options. The winner? Acumatica Construction Edition with its integrated, cloud-based architecture, ability to support 350 employees (across diverse roles), and its connected manufacturing, field service, project management, and finance modules.

Implementing Acumatica as its single source of truth delivered more than a few meaningful benefits, like 30% time savings due to automating time card management and purchase requests. The team was also able to optimize asset management, tracking 6000 pieces of equipment and tools easily, while enjoying real-time invoicing, rapid, data-driven decision making, elimination of manual errors, reduced wait times, and the ability to surface new opportunities for innovation.

“Every administrator can set up dashboards with whatever data they need,” Mathieu Cotton says. “Instead of being very reactive, we’re ahead of costs and able to see what’s coming.”

Success with Acumatica ERP

Groupe SGM is an electrical contracting business with manufacturing needs that relies on Acumatica to manage its complex requirements, illustrating how Acumatica can do the same for other businesses in the electrical construction and integrated building systems fields.

As Cindy points out, “Being in the construction space, Acumatica’s Construction Edition provides a great tool for electrical contractors with service and inventory needs. But the Acumatica customer base visible at NECA extended to the distributors and manufacturers who were exhibiting at the show. Being able to fulfill the needs of various aspects within the construction world is exciting.”

It is exciting, and we loved sharing the details of what Acumatica success looks like with attendees at NECA 2026. If you’d like to hear those same details, contact our experts today.