Oracle NetSuite celebrates 25 years of existence with new product announcements

PAC attended the Oracle NetSuite SuiteConnect event in London to uncover company performance and what product innovations UK businesses can expect going forward to run more efficiently and increase the bottom line.

NetSuite, acquired by Oracle in 2016, offers a unified business management suite covering ERP, CRM, HR, Financials, inventory and more catered to small and medium-sized businesses. In EMEA, NetSuite has shown robust growth as more customers see the value it brings to their business in times of inflation, rising costs, regulatory changes, and supply chain challenges. By providing improved visibility, control, agility, flexibility, and adaptability, NetSuite believes it can add significant value to its customers to support their business growth and resilience. But how will it support UK businesses to overcome challenges and run more efficiently?

NetSuite founder and EVP Evan Goldberg and EMEA SVP Nicky Tozer announced a series of new product innovations, including new planning and budgeting tools, new analytics capabilities, new native integrations, and more. Below are a few examples of what to expect:

• NetSuite Analytics Warehouse – new pre-built third-party data integrations and industry-specific content simplifying data management and insights at speed.
• NetSuite Planning and Budgeting – greater automation to produce budgets, forecast models, what-if scenarios, and reporting
• NetSuite Connector for Shopify and ShipStation – centralized and automated real-time data flows between applications, eliminating manual data entry and human error.
• NetSuite SuitePeople – centralized recordkeeping for all employees streamlining HR functions, including onboarding/offboarding, performance management, compensation, reporting, and more.
• NetSuite Smart Count – automating inventory cycle counts for improved efficiency and accuracy while mitigating interruptions in the sales process and the impact on operations.
• NetSuite SuiteCommerce MyAccount – eliminates time-intensive billing by enabling customers to view invoices and make payments while managing their accounts and subscriptions online 24/7.
• NetSuite SuiteBilling – New features aiding revenue growth enable businesses to customize a percentage increase and automatically apply it to a customer’s subscription pricing at the time of renewal.

In PAC’s view, these are valuable tools, features, and capabilities that will significantly unburden UK businesses and departments of repetitive and manual tasks while simultaneously offering greater experiences through centralized data of NetSuite and non-NetSuite data streams. Many of these new or improved capabilities rely on automation technologies featuring artificial intelligence and machine learning. These technologies are key contributors to valuable insights and faster task completion as they can learn task or role-specific patterns supporting users to be more efficient in their job.

NetSuite positions itself as a solution to solving what it calls the “hairball”, an analogy where businesses deal with several third-party tools, multiple vendors, and system integrators, resulting in a  lack of data oversight, higher costs, and process and operational inefficiencies. According to NetSuite, this complexity can be solved with its integrated system built from the ground up, navigating all business value streams, creating greater simplicity, control, resilience, consistent experiences, and cost optimization.

Indeed, NetSuite touches upon various business fronts and offers many features and modules. Some of its customers, e.g., Deliciously Ella, a business focused on well-being and healthy living, showed how valuable NetSuite is for its growth trajectory. However, while it uses NetSuite Planning and Budgeting, some features are not currently being used, leading to potential missed opportunities. This is a common occurrence, not solely seen in NetSuite products and customer success stories. NetSuite aims to maximize customer investment value by working with its partner ecosystem and its Advanced Customer Support (ACS) service offering. ACS provides prescriptive product optimization guidance and hands-on configuration assistance, such as preparing for new release upgrades, performance tuning and implementation of other functionality of the suite.  

Overall, it is an exciting time for NetSuite as the vendor brings new features and tools to market, which PAC expects to spark excitement among its install base and prospective customers.