Full suite ahead was the main theme at SuiteWorld which took place in Las Vegas this week. Speaking in front of 14,000 people, Evan Goldberg, founder, and CEO at Netsuite explained to the audience. “The new ways NetSuite are helping make the day-to-day operations and financial management of your business easier. So you can spend more of your time, energy and resources on your company’s mission.”
Goldberg congratulated NetSuite’s 32,000 customers – an increase from 27,000 from last year’s keynote – before unveiling a number of new product innovations and enhancements. This includes
- An AP (accounts payable) automation solution to increase the accuracy and speed of processing bills and making payments.
- Suite CPQ (configure, price, quote).A solution that helps speed up and simplify the sales process. This was a partner solution, Verenia CPQ, that was acquired earlier this year
- A new workforce management solution that can streamline scheduling, time tracking, and wage calculations.
- A new shipping solution that helps bring added efficiency to warehouse operations.
Goldberg suggested, “Successful business is far from assured in today’s environment. NetSuite is here to stack the deck. We’re trying to make everything work together so your businesses can stay on the fast track.”
New challenges and opportunities
Goldberg noted that over the course of the last year, there have been new challenges and opportunities for enterprises. Like every other year, businesses found a way through with ways to be more efficient, obtain more customers and become more nimble and more profitable.
Goldberg used a composite company to illustrate the many stories, opportunities, and challenges that NetSuite customers face. This fictional company ‘Wired’ grew from a one-woman operation to a flourishing successful enterprise but faces the growing pains of a developing company. As a result, Wired selects NetSuite to resolve several operational issues. Goldberg left the audience wanting more information about the product announcements. “Today, I talked about what’s happening now. Tomorrow, you’ll hear what’s happening next,” says Goldberg, as he brought the opening keynote to a close.
Press briefing
After the keynote address, Goldberg took questions from the press and analysts on a variety of issues. Here are a few of the most interesting comments:
On improving employee effectiveness:
“In an environment in which it’s hard to find skilled people, you want employees to be as productive as possible. Right now, it’s all about minimising the burden of manual processes.”
On implementation:
“Unlike many vendors, we try to show you during the sales process exactly what you’ll be using. Instead of showing a facade, we demo exactly what you’re going to get.”
On acquisition strategy:
“With our acquisitions, we’re trying to help customers do things more easily, to eliminate manual processes. The most important thing is how well we’ll be able to integrate them into NetSuite.”
On potential to be ‘out-flanked’ by smaller specialists:
“We’ve spent a lot of energy on making sure NetSuite can scale, but we’ve got to make sure customers aren’t losing anything when they come to us.”
Enterprise Times: What this means for business.
It was a bit of an unusual keynote address in Las Vegas. Normally, attendees would expect the keynote to layout the company’s strategic vision. Or provide an in-depth knowledge of the trends of issues in the technology marketplace. Or firmly tie the company’s mask to an emerging or critical issue for society and the planet. Or provide a detailed explanation about the brilliance of the new wave of product enhancements. SuiteWorld attendees were already buzzing with expectations, after the company’s wide range of exciting product announcements. However, Goldberg chose only to hint at those announcements. he chose to keep the audience waiting for the following day’s keynote address by the various product managers, who are expected to provide further details of those announcements. Is this the most sensible strategy when you have a captive audience of 14,000 people looking for more information? Only time will tell.
