How Strategies Group Helped Storm Smart Integrate its Construction, Manufacturing, and Service Business

With Acumatica installed, Storm Smart gained the visibility, automation, and confidence to grow fast without breaking.
Acumatica gave Storm Smart a single source of truth that united every department. Sales can now see live inventory before promising an install date. Production tracks materials and costs as work happens on the floor, supported by real-time production management and barcode-enabled shop floor data collection. Finance automates invoicing and approvals instead of wrestling with manual entry, and material requirements planning anticipates shortages before they bite.

“The first time I watched our material requirements planning flag a component before we ran out, I actually laughed out loud,” says Josh Higgins, Business Applications Specialist at Storm Smart. “After years of fire drills, the system was looking around corners for us. It felt like we’d hired the most organized employee in the world who never slept.”

Role-based dashboards show each team exactly what matters, from open production orders to past-due operations to cash on hand. Because the platform is mobile, field crews and office staff work from the same accurate information, whether on a rooftop, in the warehouse, or driving between job sites. “Our installers can pull up everything they need from a tablet,” Pellechio says. “No more calling the office, no more waiting on hold, no more guessing. The information travels with them. That changed the rhythm of our entire day.”

Workflows that once took days now move in hours. When a deal closes in Salesforce, Acumatica automatically creates the project, releases the initial invoice, opens a PO, and receives items, all without anyone clicking anything.

“Storm Smart built its core business into their Acumatica system to the point where they have GIs that show exactly what needs to happen next in their process,” says Daniel Collins, President, Strategies Group. “They’ve built so many automations that save them so much time on the back end of doing things.”

When they enter an opportunity, it can go all the way through to the initial invoice,” he adds. “It automatically sets up a project, creates the appointments needed, which gets employees and subcontractors on site. That’s incredible without needing manpower.”

In finance, automated workflows replaced 20 hours of weekly manual entry, cutting that figure by more than 80%. That automation reshaped the calendar: the monthly close dropped from 10 business days to three, a 70% improvement, and executives now watch the business day to day and project months in advance rather than waiting for month-end and forecasting only a week out.

Automated commission tracking brought similar relief to Storm Smart’s 130-person field service team, replacing manual calculations that had produced duplicate payments and overpayments with a system that aligns commissions to revenue recognition. Sharper, real-time data has also given leadership better visibility into financial performance by region and product line, supporting more informed, proactive decision-making.

On the production floor, real-time visibility and tighter inventory control ended the costly surprises that once derailed schedules. Inventory accuracy climbed from 75% to more than 98%, and stockouts that once struck several times a month during peak season fell to nearly zero, even as storm-season demand spiked. “Inventory used to be our biggest blind spot. Now it’s one of our greatest strengths,” says Higgins. “We carry what we need, we know where it is, and we stopped tying up cash in materials sitting on a shelf for no reason.”  

Field technicians no longer waste time calling the office for information. They use the Acumatica mobile app to manage appointments, track time, access job files, and collect payment, all in one place. Customer service feels the difference too: with a connected view of every order, the team cut response times from days to hours. “When a worried homeowner calls us, we can tell them exactly where their order stands,” says Pellechio. “That confidence in our own answers, that’s what Acumatica gave us. And our customers feel it.”

With automated workflows, real-time dashboards, and leaner operations, Storm Smart expanded its order volume without adding the 20 to 40 administrative employees executives estimate would otherwise have been needed. Since implementing Acumatica, the company has grown by 50%.

Acumatica was a great fit because the platform has end-to-end functionality and allows a customer to configure the software to fit its business, Collins says. “The software provides many modules but your data lives in the same spot, available to each module. Storm Smart is also a customer that wants to grow and wants to continue to make Acumatica fit their business model, and they’ve done an excellent job with that.”

For example, Collins says, Strategies created a task subtotal for Storm Smart that shows executives item subtotals for things like how much revenue relates to windows, doors, and other items, which allows Storm Smart to view a project at a very high level. “The data makes it more like a true financial statement of a project,” says Collins. “They can then look across all of their projects and see how much revenue can be attributed to windows, doors, flood products and others, which provides a different view of the business.”

Acumatica provided Storm Smart with predictability and efficiency, Collins says. “It’s helped them grow without adding a bunch more headcount. They are growing without having to double up on the staff to support that growth. They want the system to take the load and not the people.”