The Crazy Hackathon Idea… Followed by the Panic and Maybe some Imposter Syndrome.
Every year, Acumatica hosts its highly anticipated Hackathon, a fast-paced, high-energy event where developers, entrepreneurs, and tech enthusiasts come together to build innovative solutions using the Acumatica Cloud ERP platform. The challenge? Teams have just 24 hours to brainstorm, prototype, and present a game-changing application that enhances business processes using Acumatica’s powerful ecosystem. It’s an intense marathon of coding, creativity, and collaboration, fueled by caffeine, adrenaline, and the shared passion for pushing technology forward.
The 2025 Acumatica Hackathon took things to the next level with a special focus on AI and automation. With businesses increasingly relying on AI-driven workflows, this year’s competition encouraged participants to integrate machine learning, natural language processing, and automation directly into Acumatica’s ERP system. The stakes were high, with top teams not only vying for bragging rights and prizes but also the opportunity to have their solutions adopted in real-world business environments. My team set out with an ambitious goal—leveraging AI to transform customer emails into structured sales orders, eliminating manual data entry and human errors. What followed was a whirlwind of problem-solving, experimentation, and a little bit of panic. Here’s how it all unfolded.
From Chaos to Clarity: Identifying a Real-World Problem Worth Solving
Before we even set foot in the hackathon venue, our team was already a whirlwind of virtual meetings and brainstorming sessions. Six of them, to be precise. We wrestled with technical approaches and debated the merits of various solutions. One team member brought up a current problem in their company. Customers were emailing their orders and customer service had to manually enter them into Acumatica.
Can you imagine that? They receive emails from customers who, within four hours, arrive at the warehouse, expecting to collect their orders! Talk about pressure. Missing an email, or making a manual input mistake, is inevitable. And with up to 10 minutes spent creating each order in Acumatica – not to mention two-dozen clicks – it becomes obvious we had to evolve past manual processes.
The challenge was clear: Transform incoming customer emails directly into Sales Orders inside of Acumatica, using the power of AI.
Now, I’ve dabbled in AI before, mostly recommendation systems and fine-tuning LLMs for fun (and profit?). The thought of weaving an AI agent directly into a business logic was… a bit daunting. Most companies treat AI as an external knowledge, some assistant, or a smart “overlay”. The user performs tasks in the systems informed by AI. The real innovation is when the AI Agent acts inside the system. Your AIs are actually working for you – not just informing you.
So, when I volunteered my “AI expertise” a wave of panic washed over me! Imposter syndrome, anyone? I was ready to jump on the AI bull, and wrangle it to our advantage. But I had no idea what I was in for….