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Trust is what determines how far customers are willing to go with automation. In this episode, Michael Praeger is joined by John Case, CEO of Acumatica, to talk about how that plays out across payments, AI, and product strategy. For the mid-sized and family-owned businesses Acumatica serves, confidence in the platform comes first—before efficiency, before speed, before anything else.
Case shares how that trust opens the door for deeper automation, why Acumatica sees itself less as a back-office system and more as a system of intelligence and action, and how payments is one of the clearest expressions of that shift—with hundreds of billions in AR and AP flowing through the platform annually. He also gets into why Acumatica chose to partner rather than build payments capabilities, what they look for in the companies they work with, and how their approach to AI is grounded in one principle: it should work for the individual, not for its own sake.
John Case is the CEO of Acumatica, a cloud-based ERP platform built for small and mid-sized businesses. He joined the company in 2022 and previously spent over 16 years at Microsoft, where he helped lead the growth of the Office and Office 365 suites.
About This Podcast
“The Power of Change” is an AvidXchange podcast hosted by Michael Praeger, CEO and Co-Founder of AvidXchange. On this show business leaders discuss leadership topics, industry trends, and embracing change.
Key Insights from John Case
1. Trust and security drives adoption more than features.
For mid-sized businesses, especially family-owned ones, the decision to automate payments or adopt new tools starts with whether they believe in the platform handling their financial data. Without that foundation, automation doesn’t go very far.
2. Modernizing payments is the natural next step as back-office systems evolve.
Many businesses are still relying on manual or paper-based processes, but as accounting and operations become more digitized, payments are quickly becoming part of that same shift toward automation inside the ERP.
3. Strong partnerships are built on alignment, not volume.
Case emphasizes that it’s less about how many partners you have and more about how well you work together, shared customers, shared values, and the ability to actually deliver a better experience once the partnership is live.
4. Execution is what makes a partnership real.
The announcement is the easy part. How you onboard, deliver, and show up for the customer after the press release is where it either proves itself or doesn’t.
Topics Discussed in This Episode
- The evolution of ERP from system of record to system of intelligence
- Building customer trust as the foundation for digital transformation
- The future of AI in finance operations
- The strategic business case for payment automation
- Modernizing financial operations without disrupting the business
- Build vs. buy vs. partner: Strategic technology decision-making
- What makes a high-value strategic partnership
- Leadership through focus and prioritization
- Maintaining customer proximity as an executive
- Developing executive resilience
Podcast Transcript
Please note: The “Power of Change” podcast is designed for audio consumption. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
00:02
Michael Praeger
Welcome to the Power of Change, the podcast that delves into the intersection of leadership and technology in the finance world. I’m your host, Michael Prager, the CEO and co-founder of AvidXchange. In each episode, I dive into the leadership topics and industry trends with business leaders, partners, and customers who embrace the power of change.
I’m excited. Today, I have a great guest, John Case, the CEO of Acumatica join us for this edition of the Power of Change podcast.
John is the CEO of Acumatica, a cloud based ERP built specifically for small and mid-sized businesses. John joined as CEO in 2022 and has since driven accelerated growth in both their customer base and partner ecosystem. Before Acumatica, he was a president and CEO of Unifi Square, and prior to that he spent 16 years at Microsoft, including a key role as Corporate VP of Office and Office 365, where he led the digital transformation of one of Microsoft’s most successful cloud businesses. He holds an economics and mathematical degree from Williams College and an MBA from the Dartmouth Tuck School. Based in Bellevue, Washington, welcome to the show, John.
What do mid-size businesses value most in a payment platform?
01:13
Michael Praeger
So when you think of Acumatica customers and users and what Acumatica can deliver related to payments and extending your platform for a payment experience, what’s top of mind in terms of what’s important for them? What’s valuable for them related to the payment experience?
01:31
John Case
Sure. I mean, you got to remember our customers tend to be mid-sized businesses. They tend to often be, you know, family businesses or privately held. So they think very differently than the average large enterprise. And you’re obviously very familiar with that at AvidXchange. And you know, so what are they thinking about? They’re thinking about: can I trust this platform, is it secure, am I confident in the delivery? And then they think about like, is it improving my day-to-day work, is it getting there faster?
But it’s all about that confidence, like, okay, this is a platform I believe in and therefore I can trust it to do more things, more functions, more automation and that’s, I think, the path we’re headed on together.
How will AI transform ERP systems over the next few years?
02:05
Michael Praeger
Yeah, well said. So maybe if you put your forward-thinking hat on and you think of three to five years down the road, what’s the impact that, you know, Acumatica can have with your customers in not only automating kind of the payables experience, but maybe even being that leader that brings AI into, you know, the products that they use?
02:29
John Case
Yeah, I think we, if you think of what ERP is, we’re an ERP business, right? You know, it’s thought of as kind of a back office historical view of the world, right, but that’s not what we are anymore. We think of ourselves more and more as a system of intelligence, or even a system of action. And I think that three to five years down the road—and I think even sooner than that, Mike, honestly, I think it’s like next year, if not this year—people will start seeing automation in the tooling. They’ll start seeing the system doing work on behalf in very pragmatic ways. And I think that payments is one example of many, and it’s a very good one. People want to know that they don’t have to do that manual activity anymore.
They can trust their vendors, their systems, their solutions to do work for them on their behalf. And our philosophy here is it’s about AI that’s working for the individual as opposed to AI for its own sake. And I know your philosophy is very similar. So that’s one of the reasons I think we’re very good partners. I think for us, our customers trust us very deeply, innately with their most important sensitive financial information. The more we can do to provide value to them and give them the freedom to do work that’s more strategic or other things in their business, that’s where we’ll be. I think we’re very much on the path to do that together.
Why is payment automation becoming a priority for mid-sized businesses?
03:39
Michael Praeger
Well said. And I think we absolutely agree with that. At Acumatica, you guys have been really thoughtful about partnerships and your roadmap of what you invest in at certain points in time. In terms of the customer journey, what is it that you’ve been hearing from customers or trends in the marketplace on why payments now and launching in 2026? Why is that important now from a customer perspective?
04:05
John Case
Yeah, I would even say we’re probably a year late to this game. So, you’ve been there a lot sooner than me, but you know, when we look at again who that customer is, who’s in our sort of target customer size and what makes them interested, what makes them excited—just like no surprise to you and people that you work with—they’re doing a lot of manual things, a lot of paper things. There’s still a lot of, the vast majority, I think, of payments from even from our customers are going out on paper—but slowly but surely that’s trending the other way. Slowly but surely that automation’s coming in and they’re modernizing things like their back office accounting. A logical next step is to modernize systems and processes that touch that back office accounting.
And we, you know, Acumatica has hundreds of billions of dollars of invoices, accounts receivable, accounts receipt, you know, payable—hundreds of billions every year that goes through our back-office flow. And modernizing and automating how that money gets distributed is a very logical next step. And the customers are asking for it. And we see lots of ways that’s being done. What we’re trying to do together is build a premier way to do that, one that’s really interesting and unique for that customer because it’ll make them a lot more likely to use it in the same system. And that’s what we’re very excited about.
05:17
Michael Praeger
And I think we share that and we see as the more embedded we can make that experience…
05:25
John Case
The better that embedded experience, the less we’ll have to think about leaving an environment, going to another, and the more they can get the benefit of both platforms. Yeah, the better that’s going to be perceived.
What should ERP providers look for in a strategic technology partner?
05:32
Michael Praeger
Bingo. But maybe, John, let’s segue a little bit to, you know, your partnership story. You have multiple partnerships in different parts of your business, and you’ve been doing this a long time—from your Microsoft days and you know, to the days when you think of partners for your business that are kind of strategic. What now is just, like, table stakes, you know, for a partnership? And then maybe, you know, what is it about the AvidXchange partnership that makes you excited?
05:58
John Case
I think that we’re very consistent in this regard. I think first of all, we want to make sure a partner understands our target customer size and shape and what matters to them. Like, are they mid-market oriented? Are they thinking about that customer every day? Because if the features of functionality that you build aren’t doing that, then it doesn’t help us make our customers’ lives better. Then, you got to think about the kinds of things we believe in around accountability and integrity and honesty and openness. The partner has to build trust with the customer in the same way. So, do they feel like you’re secure? Do they feel like you’re someone that’s handling their data with the most care? Do they feel like you’re answering their questions as honestly and openly as possible?
And in every way, I see that with AvidXchange. So, to us that’s a very clean customer fit and sort of culture, and sort of rallying cry fit. We use a thing here called the rallying cry. It’s all about how we view ourselves in the market. And I think you’re a very strong fit with that. And the partners we tend to build premier experiences with, that’s what we look for.
06:56
Michael Praeger
Yeah. I tell our team all the time, it’s like, we don’t have to lead the industry in the number of press releases we put out there in terms of partners. Let’s lead the industry in terms of our effectiveness with the partners that we really…
07:09
John Case
Quality over quantity.
07:10
Michael Praeger
Absolutely, one hundred percent.
07:11
John Case
And we have an open API program, we have hundreds of partners in it, but we build really deep embedded experiences with just a few. It’s the few that we’re most aligned with that we care about.
Why should ERP providers partner instead of build embedded payments in-house?
07:19
Michael Praeger
So, you’re a software company. Your technology, you know, you guys build software every day, right? And so, maybe talk a little bit about the payments business process, about the partner versus build approach and why payments, you know, it’s a different DNA than just building core software in terms of money movement, those type of things. Why was it important to you to partner versus going on a path of build?
07:28
John Case
Yeah, it’s very good. I think we, there’s lots of reasons for that. I think the first one is we are very good at certain things. We understand certain parts of our customers very well. But we’re also very clear on there are other things that we want experts involved in, right? Like, I don’t think we have this vision that we could do a small fraction of what it is that a successful payments company could do: that understands that market, that thinks about it every day, that knows all the, you know, whether it’s regulatory things or, you know, issues with different parts of providers in the ecosystem, banks, you name it. And so we always prefer to partner above our punching weight, right? And that’s really what AvidXchange does.
I think we, you know, we’re probably late to this game because we’ve been tentative about it, but now here we are, and we can come at it, you know, with you in a much more aggressive, direct way that delivers customer value. We would never have been able to do that if we built it ourselves. We’d be kind of trialing things and playing with things and learning from things. Instead, we say, who are the best people in the ecosystem, the ones that we think we have the strongest fit with? Let’s work with them. And that’s the core of this.
08:30
Michael Praeger
We take the exact same approach for our business. So that’s. There’s so much…
08:34
John Case
You’re trying to build an ERP system. We happen to sell, honestly, we happen to sell to the same people, right? We’re selling to a finance organization. In one of these customers, you’re coming at it from the standpoint of we’re going to make, you know, we’re going to automate, make your payments simpler, cheaper and more effective. We’re coming from the standpoint of giving you visibility and better understanding of your math and understanding what’s going on with your prioritization. Like, we’re just coming out on different sides. We’re selling to the same person in many cases and that’s part of what makes this interesting.
How does John Case start his day?
08:58
Michael Praeger
Yeah, well said. All right, so let’s transition to, let’s get to know John Case at a more personal level. So John, I call this the lightning round. And so first of all, I have to ask you, what time do you get up in the morning?
09:10
John Case
I get up usually between 5:30 and 6.
09:14
Michael Praeger
Okay.
09:14
John Case
That’s my typical day. I like having an hour or so in the morning to myself to just kind of, you know, sip a cup of tea and decompress before the rest of my household wakes up.
09:23
Michael Praeger
What’s the first app that you use in the morning?
09:25
John Case
Oh, that’s a good one. I think it changes a lot depending on what’s going on in the world. I like today I looked at the Masters app when I woke up because the Masters started this morning, for example, so that’s not a typical day. I tend to see if I’ve got any communication from my son who’s on a different time zone. So, I look to see if he’s texted me or emailed me. I often read the BBC in the morning because often they’ve had a whole day of things going on before stuff happens. I like to just read things and that can be consumed in different formats. And then I will kind of play around with some fun things too. But again, I kind of like it to be quiet.
What routines help John Case stay connected to customers and avoid burnout?
09:59
Michael Praeger
All right, let’s talk about like rhythms that you do, you know, whether it be personal or in the business that are daily, weekly, monthly, that just are, you know, super important to you, no matter what.
10:10
John Case
Yeah.
10:10
Michael Praeger
No matter how busy you are, you maintain these rhythms.
10:13
John Case
Important thing for me, and I’m sure you would feel the same, like we could be so easily sucked into our day-to-day jobs that we would lose sight of what’s going on in the market with customers. So, I try to do a quarterly customer trip, you know, a quarterly set of partner visits. I try to do, like, I have certain things that I need to do to feel like I’m staying in it. I like going out and seeing the team physically. We have offices around the world. I try to rotate that through about once a year.
And all that’s important to me to kind of, for a business rhythm, we have our big summits in January every year. It kind of kicks off our year. And so, you were there this year, which we greatly appreciated. And like, that kind of for me sets the tone for the next 11 months. And so that’s a big part of our rhythm too. Business wise, personal wise. You know, I’m a big believer in very strong separation. Like when I’m at work and when I’m at home, I’m at home. And I don’t like doing too much to muddy that. And there are things I protect very carefully. Like, like certain trips I take every year, certain things I do with my family, certain places I go. And it’s, I don’t generally jeopardize those unless something really extreme is happening. But that to me is like how you recharge your batteries while you’re totally, you know, draining your batteries or working hard and being, you know, in the land of complexity we live in.
It’s very important to me to maintain where I charge my batteries. And I think that’s something that I learned probably later in life than I should have.
11:35
Michael Praeger
I think we all learned it later in life.
11:38
John Case
Yeah, totally.
How is John Case using AI to make better business decisions?
11:39
Michael Praeger
Let’s move to AI a little bit on a personal side. What’s the last question you’ve asked AI and what platform?
11:47
John Case
This morning I was doing research into mid-market CPA firms and I was using ChatGPT to validate the way I was thinking about it. So I, you know, I see certain data, but I like to take that data and ask specific questions, see if I can pull things out of it. So it’s often what I use AI for is often like giving me another layer of business research or analytics that I might not have gotten, you know, from something I read. And I find it pretty valuable. I find that I often learn things or validate things that I wasn’t completely sure of. It helps. So that was this morning, ironically.
What advice would John Case give his 25-year-old self?
12:20
Michael Praeger
All right, so the last question I have for you here on the lightning round is: what’s one big thing that you’ve learned that you wish you would have known when John Case was 25?
12:31
John Case
We talked a little about kind of work, life, balance, whatnot. But to me, the other one that really resonates with me is when you make a mistake, when you make a bad decision, like how quickly do you let that roll off of you? My sons are athletes, and I watch them, and I sort of see like this secret that they have, which is like when things go wrong, they can forget it in a second and go to the next thing. And like you think about like an NFL player, you know, commits a penalty…
12:56
Michael Praeger
You’re a cornerback in the NFL, you have to have a short memory.
12:59
John Case
If you dwell on those things, yeah, you can learn from them, take your time to learn from them. But if you dwell on them and it sort of deviates your performance the wrong direction, I have learned to let those things sort of wash over me faster. And I think if I could have done that at 25, that would have been pretty powerful. But that’s not the way it was. I worked too hard, I stressed too much, I thought too much. And it’s taken some time for me to feel like I was past that.
Final thoughts on the Acumatica and AvidXchange partnership
13:23
Michael Praeger
No, I think there’s, well said, lots of nuggets there.
John, you’ve been a great guest on today’s episode. I know, on behalf of myself and our 1500 plus Avid team members, we’re super excited about this partnership and can’t wait to get after it.
13:39
John Case
So, the same is true for us and our employees and we’re very happy to be working together.
13:42
Michael Praeger
Awesome. Thanks, John, and I appreciate spending time with us today.
13:46
John Case
You bet. Glad to do it anytime.
13:48
Michael Praeger
Thanks for listening to the Power of Change presented by AvidXchange.
If you like what you’ve heard, subscribe to our channel and leave a five-star review. While you’re waiting for the next episode, head over to AvidXchange.com for our latest research reports and business insights.
And if you’re interested in learning more about accounts pay cable automation from AvidXchange, click the link in our show notes to connect with our experts. Thanks again for listening to the Power of Change. We’ll see you next time.
FAQ
Why is trust so important in a payment platform?
According to John Case, trust is the foundation of a successful payment experience for mid-sized businesses. During the episode, he explains that customers want confidence that their payment platform is secure, reliable, and capable of handling sensitive financial information while improving day-to-day work through greater automation.
What does John Case mean by a "system of intelligence"?
Case explains that ERP systems are evolving beyond traditional systems of record. Rather than simply capturing historical financial data, he believes modern ERP platforms are becoming systems of intelligence that use AI and automation to perform work on behalf of users, helping finance teams spend less time on manual tasks and more time on strategic work.
Why are many mid-sized businesses still modernizing paper-based payment processes?
Case says many mid-sized businesses continue to rely on manual and paper-based payment workflows, even as they modernize other back-office accounting functions. He views payment automation as the natural next step, allowing organizations to simplify how money moves while keeping those processes within their ERP platform.
What makes a successful ERP technology partnership?
According to Case, successful technology partnerships begin with a shared understanding of the customer. He says partners should understand the unique needs of mid-sized businesses, build secure and trustworthy solutions, and share similar values around accountability, transparency, and customer success. He also emphasizes that deeper, more strategic partnerships often create more value than maintaining a large number of loosely connected integrations.
Why is embedded payments a build-versus-buy decision?
Case argues that embedded payments require specialized expertise that extends beyond software development. He explains that payments involve regulatory requirements, banking relationships, and ecosystem knowledge that ERP providers may not possess internally. By partnering with an established payments provider, software companies can deliver customer value more quickly than building those capabilities from scratch.