Net at Work, a North American technology advisor serving small and mid-sized businesses, acquired BHE Consulting, extending the firm’s Sage and Acumatica ERP expertise across construction, manufacturing and wholesale distribution verticals. The firm brings client-centric Sage solutions currently available through the channel marketplace, which will continue to be supported and enhanced under Net at Work’s expanded service portfolio including cloud solutions, HCM, CRM, cybersecurity, and strategic AI integration.
BHE co-founders Russ Carey and Greg Archambault will remain with Net at Work following the transaction, ensuring continuity for long-standing clients while providing employees access to expanded professional opportunities.
Strategic Consolidation Reflects Overall Mid-Market ERP Maturation
The acquisition positions Net at Work to support clients throughout the full ERP lifecycle as mid-market buyers increasingly prioritize operational intelligence over cloud credentials alone. At Acumatica Summit 2026 in Seattle, with more than 3,000 attendees, Acumatica emphasized that mid-market ERP competition will be decided by how effectively intelligence is embedded into everyday operational work, reflecting buyer priorities around AI-enabled automation, configurability, and time-to-value over functional breadth.
For technology executives evaluating ERP partners in construction and manufacturing, the consolidation signals the importance of selecting implementation teams with vertical experience beyond generic certifications. Construction ERP systems provide critical labor, equipment, and materials management capabilities, with cloud-based solutions offering scalability, flexibility, reduced IT costs and enhanced security while enabling data access from anywhere. Modern construction ERP implementations deliver ROI within six to 18 months through improved efficiency, cost control, and enhanced project outcomes, with cloud deployment eliminating expensive hardware setup and standardized processes reducing customization needs.
The broader ERP landscape in early 2026 shows vendors pursuing cloud-only innovation strategies as on-premise development becomes economically unsustainable. Epicor’s announcement to sunset all on-premises ERP development and focus exclusively on Epicor Cloud ERP confirms industry consensus that dual development approaches cannot sustain competitive innovation pace against cloud-native competitors. For organizations on legacy systems, capability gaps widen quarterly as vendors concentrate innovation in cloud platforms with AI foundations, creating urgency for proactive migration planning.
What This Means for ERP Insiders
Partner consolidation accelerates vertical specialization over horizontal breadth. Net at Work’s BHE acquisition prioritizes construction, manufacturing, and wholesale distribution depth rather than geographic expansion or technology stack diversification. This signals that mid-market ERP partners must choose between vertical mastery with repeatable implementation methodologies or commoditized general practice, while also indicating that vendors should invest in industry-specific partner enablement programs that reward specialization.
Lifecycle service expansion becomes a competitive differentiator. Net at Work’s value proposition extends BHE clients beyond ERP implementation to cybersecurity, AI integration, and HCM services within unified engagement model. This pattern indicates that implementation-only practices face margin compression as cloud platforms reduce customization revenue, while transformation leaders should evaluate partners on post-go-live service portfolios, reflecting shift from episodic implementations to ongoing digital operations partnerships.
Cloud-only vendor strategies force proactive migration decisions. Epicor’s cloud-exclusive development roadmap exemplifies broader pattern where mid-market vendors cannot sustain dual on-premise and cloud innovation. This creates forced decision point for on-premise customers who must plan migrations or accept widening capability gaps, while also signaling opportunity for cloud-competent partners to capture migration revenue and risk for vendors maintaining hybrid strategies as development resources split between legacy maintenance and competitive feature parity increasingly becomes untenable market position.
