With all the hype around Superheroes recently, NetSuite was inspired to use the topic for its annual SuiteWorld Conference this year. The event is a hybrid, and the keynote was broadcast live to an audience in Las Vegas and globally to an international audience of thousands.
At 90 minutes, it was long for a virtual event. It was a mix of announcements and interviews between Goldberg and a succession of customers that have leveraged NetSuite to achieve outstanding growth. It closed with an outstanding talk by Kevin O’Leary, entrepreneur, TV celebrity, money expert and author of the Cold Hard Truth books and more recently Digital Pivot or Bust In a Post COVID-19 World, the theme of his talk.
The theme this year is “Power your growth” and is supported by a marketing campaign that includes five superpowered characters. Each of the five characters is tied to different a set of functionality that NetSuite offers for the modern growing enterprise. The five are:
- Captain Finance – ERP
- Intangible Girl – Finance
- Forecasting Man – Financial Planning
- Inspector Sku – Inventory Management
- Doctor Cogs – Supply Chain Management
These were not highlighted directly within the keynote, although they did make an appearance at the very end in person.
Goldberg focused on the three superpowers NetSuite offers to businesses: Automation, Insight and Agility. Goldberg noted, “You definitely need to do more with less, and automation is a great way to achieve that. With things changing more quickly than ever, you need that insight to be able to see behind the data. Finally, you need agility.”
The announcements
NetSuite also made four announcements. Each aligns to one or more of the Superpowers, enhancing how organisations work in a modern and challenging way, or as Goldberg described in the keynote “The Dynamic Multi-, Omni-, Hybrid normal”.
The fourth announcement wrapped up the above three and covered what NetSuite included in its latest release NetSuite 2021.2, and some upcoming features.
NetSuite Analytics Warehouse
The NetSuite Analytics Warehouse is built on the Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse and leverages Oracle Analytics Cloud. The solution has a sophistication that is only seen in the leading analytics solutions. Goldberg noted. “This addresses a number of needs that our customers have told us that they have. They want to be able to pull that Suitedata into a warehouse to do snapshotting.
“Most importantly, they want to mash it up with other data sources. As they grow, they develop their own systems, they use other systems. NetSuite Analytics Warehouse is a comprehensive business analytics platform.”
The NetSuite Analytics warehouse delivers these capabilities, building on NetSuite SuiteAnalytics, which delivers real-time reporting, insights and dashboards for organisations to understand business performance. There are three components to NetSuite Analytics Warehouse:
- Native Data ingestion: The warehouse has secure, seamless connectors to ingest NetSuite data quickly. NetSuite data is ingested and understood without the need for any additional translations.
- Other data sources: NetSuite has already built more than 25 connectors to platforms such as Dropbox, Salesforce and Google Analytics. According to Goldberg, customers were involved in the decision-making for these connectors and solved several issues as a result.
- Role-based analytics: The platform includes prebuilt metrics and KPIs. Authorised employees can access the data, see trends and surface insights by leveraging the machine learning capabilities of the Oracle Analytics Cloud. They can turn insights into recommendations and then actions to help grow their business.
Early adopters are seeing the benefits. Tom Altman, CTO, Clickstop, commented, “NetSuite is the unifying factor we rely on for all of our business data. We were already getting significant value out of SuiteAnalytics, but the addition of NetSuite Analytics Warehouse has added a lot more horsepower and enhanced our ability to gain data insights at scale.
“With both NetSuite Analytics Warehouse and SuiteAnalytics, we have all of our internal and external data sources in one platform — the go-to source for our most critical data.”
Advanced Customer Support Playbooks
Advanced Customer Support (ACS) was first launched in 2018. It has now been extended with playbooks which take the concept of SuiteSuccess (announced in 2017) implementation accelerators a step further.
The playbooks are based on thousands of experiences, implementations and in-life changes across the customers base. The playbooks aim to help customers during key growth milestones. What SuiteSuccess did for implementation, playbooks will do for an existing customer. Those growth points may be upgrades or key corporate milestones such as preparing for an IPO.
David Rodman, SVP of Customer Success, Oracle NetSuite, commented, “As businesses grow and face additional complexities, the way they operate must also evolve. We’ve taken insights gained from helping thousands of businesses grow and created prescriptive playbooks to share that knowledge with our customers.
“This will help them improve core business functions and get the most out of NetSuite. Whether a business wants to tighten up internal controls in preparation for an IPO or is looking for a better way to forecast and scenario plan, the playbooks support a wide range of business goals.”
Existing playbooks
Initially, there are more than ten playbooks available to customers of ACS. These decrease the time to value and increase the value from using NetSuite.
- Financial Management
- Human Capital
- Customer 360
- Supply Chain Operations
- Project Profitability
- Cross-Functional (i.e. quote to cash)
- Industry-specific playbooks for retail, software, services, manufacturing, wholesale distribution, and others
- International Expansion
- Performance and Risk Management
- Capital Markets
Announced during the keynote, a 20% discount is available on Advanced Customer Support Optimise or Architect subscriptions and the corresponding Extended Service packs until November 24th 2021. The playbooks are supported by a Customer Success Manager who will assist with ensuring that the goals of the Playbook are achieved. More information is available in this blog.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
The First Suiteword 2021 keynote did not disappoint, and while the product keynote will dive into more details, Goldberg couldn’t resist giving a sneak peek of what it will contain for developers. He highlighted the recent introduction of the SuiteCloud IDE extension for Microsoft Visual Studio code. It will allow them to interact with NetSuite directly from within their VS code. This continues the opening up of the Netsuite platform.
All three major announcements are significant in that they deliver a real competitive advantage for NetSuite. There were fewer future roadmap reveals than usual, perhaps, but what was delivered forward-looking. This was a solid keynote with an interesting mix of content that did not disappoint. In summary, NetSuite has unveiled the latest superpowers it will confer on customers to deliver growth in their businesses.
