True innovation starts with collaboration—and a dash of friendly competition.
At The Answer Company, we pride ourselves on tackling problems with collaboration, creativity and inventive ways of putting tech to work. That’s why one of our favourite parts of Acumatica’s annual Summit is the Hackathon. Acumatica Hackathon 2025 saw over 110 participants split into 14 teams, based on a variety of skill sets to innovate on real-world customer use cases.
Featuring our own Director of Software Development, Kulvir Kaila, Team ATS took first place with a future-forward AI solution, showcasing how Acumatica’s platform—and a commitment to collaboration—can drive true transformation. It also showed that AI models can provide user-friendly feature refinements in exciting ways!
Let’s dive into the winning solution, why it matters, and the impressive ideas from all 14 teams.
Team ATS’s Winning Solution
Team ATS focused on automating one of the most repetitive tasks in business operations—converting email inquiries into sales orders. Their solution, the AI-Powered Email to Sales Order Agent, stood out for its real-world applicability and innovative use of technology. Here’s what made it a game-changer:
Automated Parsing
The AI reads incoming emails, identifies relevant details such as product, quantity, and pricing, and automatically creates a sales order in Acumatica.
Real-Time Processing
The solution eliminates delays, enabling businesses to respond to inquiries faster than ever.
Narrow Focus for Deeper Impact
A Language Learning Model (LLM) was trained on 20 customer emails with a keen, narrowed focus. This prevented the Agent from “hallucinating” inaccurate results.
Error Reduction
By automating manual data entry, the solution minimizes errors and ensures data accuracy.
The judges were particularly impressed by the solution’s ability to save businesses time, reduce operational costs, and improve customer response times—all while showcasing the flexibility of Acumatica’s xRP platform.
Meet Team ATS
The winning team members were:
- Kulvir Kaila, The Answer Company’s own Director of Software Development.
- Paul Gilfoy of PriceKubecka PLLC
- Vidhyalakshmi Hariharasubramanian of Acumatica
- Valerii Vydrin of Acumatica
- Josh Wright of Hemasource, LLC
- Brian Wingfield of The Rollout Crew
- Ketan Katariya of My ERP Partner
- Lakshminarasimhan Sundarrajan of Bank Brothers Sustainable Ingredients
Their combined expertise and collaborative approach led to a solution that excelled in every category, earning them the first-place prize of $750 USD per member and their name engraved on the Hackathon Championship trophy.
Why It Matters
Team ATS’s solution highlights the power of automation to tackle common bottlenecks and optimize workflows. Natural Language Processing models have made it easier and more accessible to turn real-world communications into structured data, so the technology works for you. By leveraging AI to streamline the sales order process, businesses can free up valuable time to focus on higher-priority tasks, improve accuracy, and deliver better customer experiences.
This innovation is a reminder of the transformative potential of Acumatica’s platform, which empowers businesses to solve complex challenges with advanced, real-world solutions.
Innovative Ideas from Other Teams
While Team ATS claimed the top spot, the competition was fierce, with 13 other teams presenting remarkable projects. Here’s a quick look at their ideas:
- AI-Powered Gantt Chart (Team 1): Aimed at improving project planning in the construction industry.
- AI-Powered Inventory/Part Identification Tool (Team 2): Simplified inventory management using AI for faster part identification.
- Multi-Level Notes to Documents (Team 3): Enhanced document management by adding tiered notes to sales orders, shipments, and invoices.
- Improved Operational Accuracy (Team 5): Focused on reducing errors and optimizing workflows.
- Live Notifications in Acumatica (Team 6): Delivered real-time document notifications.
- “ChatUmatica” (Team 7): Brought conversations back into Acumatica.
- “AcuUp” Anomaly Detection (Team 8): Detected operational anomalies using custom generic inquiries.
- Acu-Optimizers (Team 9): Identified System Resource Constraints.
- Construction Site Document Linking (Team 10): Linked project-related documents to construction sites in Acumatica.
- “Acumatica Aces” (Team 11): Made Acumatica more accessible by eliminating keyboard reliance.
- “AcuLearn/Ed” (Team 12): Simplified the learning curve to encourage platform adoption.
- “acu.brAIn” (Team 13): Focused on protecting data when using AI in Acumatica.
- “3D&Free” (Team 14): Brought 3D printing capabilities to Acumatica.
These ideas demonstrated the creativity and technical expertise of the participants, showcasing the endless possibilities within the Acumatica ecosystem.