Business software aims for the NetSuite spot

With economies in key territories in post-Covid transition and also about to be hit by the threat of inflation, meaning disruption is rife, businesses are looking to the certainty of data to find new paths to profitability and growth.

To address the concerns of businesses, especially those in ramp-up mode, NetSuite has used its annual SuiteWorld event in Las Vegas to unveil a series of products to help organisations run more efficiently and increase the bottom line.

The updates span business applications from financial management, to HR, to sales processes, and are said to be designed to help customers run their business in a better way and support their growth journeys. With new automation and analytics, NetSuite believes firms can enhance efficiency and profitability by consolidating data, automating tasks, improving inventory management, streamlining workflows, and simplifying rebate and trade promotion program execution.

The applications include an AP (accounts payable) automation solution that can increase the accuracy and speed of processing bills and making payments, a CPQ (configure, price, quote) solution that is designed to accelerate and simplify the sales process; a workforce management solution that can streamline scheduling, time tracking and wage calculations; and a shipping solution that helps bring added efficiency to warehouse operations.

In addition, the Oracle company has introduced automation and analytics features to give organisations the insights and control they need to increase productivity and profitability by enhancing the financial, inventory management, manufacturing and project management functionality within its software products.

Setting out the agenda for the show, and putting the launch of the products into context, Evan Goldberg, founder and executive vice-president of Oracle NetSuite, said, to help customers, it was continuing to extend the capabilities of the technology set and address increasing burdens and company stress.

“We are in an environment where it’s hard to find skilled people ... so there is even more pressure to automate some [processes]. And that’s across the board,” he said.

Goldberg noted that customers were seeking ways to streamline processes for staff to free up their time for more value-added activities. “That’s such a good dynamic to proceed. Good companies are not thinking [just] about how to make things faster,” he added.

“Customers have more complex supply chains than ever. One of the first things that happened is companies recognised how exposed they were to changes all you know, things usually seem to happen more in sync around the globe, and then suddenly, in Covid, things change radically in one geography versus another geography.

“So earlier in companies’ lifecycles, they say we need alternate sources for their supplies. That’s one of the first things we saw. Supply chain control was something we noticed over the last couple of years [and that] was definitely driven by companies saying they needed better visibility into their supply chain because things were just breaking, and breaking more often than ever than they ever had in the past.

“Now, companies have realised that they have more alternatives and they want to take advantage of it. We hear a lot about nearshoring bringing manufacturing from contract manufacturing closer to your domestic market, and that’s why we’ve had a lot of uptake of some of our more advanced order management and inventory, inventory features,” said Goldberg.

Leading the new slate of products is NetSuite AP Automation, designed to help customers improve efficiency by making it easier and faster to process bills and make payment from within the NetSuite environment. It is said to be the only solution that embeds banking services into a cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, helping organisations better control outgoing cash flows and easily scale end-to-end accounts payable processes.

The NetSuite CPQ solution helps customers enable sales teams to quickly configure, price, and quote complex products with accuracy directly, while NetSuite Ship Central helps customers optimise fulfillment operations, eliminate manual processes and accelerate deliveries by empowering warehouse workers with packing and shipping capabilities on a mobile or kiosk device.

NetSuite SuitePeople Workforce Management is designed to let organisations balance labour costs and profitability. The solution enhances employee engagement by simplifying and automating routine tasks such as shift scheduling, employee time tracking and wage calculations. It can uniquely provide recommendations on optimising staff scheduling to help organisations achieve business goals.

The latest enhancements in NetSuite Analytics Warehouse are intended to enable customers to simplify data management, accelerate time to insights, and provide access to more pre-built third-party data integrations and industry-specific content. It is also now available to customers in Australia and the UK.