Oracle NetSuite unveils host of new products, partner wins at SuiteConnect

Cloud-based enterprise software provider Oracle NetSuite has announced more product enhancements, industry-specific features and functionality, a new data center, and more customer and partner wins today.

With the resources of Oracle, NetSuite is able to accelerate growth and product innovation, and strengthen its commitment to customer and partner success.

New product features for services and product companies, the release of SuiteSuccess industry solutions for nonprofits, IT VARs and solution providers, the introduction of SuiteSuccess to NetSuite partners, and the launch of a new data center in the Chicago area, all reflect the importance and support of Oracle's considerable global resources.

"As one of the fastest growing financial management systems before it was acquired by Oracle, NetSuite has since been able to invest even more resources into our company, our product and our infrastructure to promote our customers' success," says Jim McGeever, Oracle NetSuite executive vice president.

"Today's announcements signal our ongoing commitment to maintaining our lead in the industry.

More industry functionality More new functionality for services companies

NetSuite is delivering several new product enhancements for services companies.

New profitability reporting features allow companies to easily define their profitability criteria and reports with a new design experience, ensuring services companies always have real-time intuitive, accurate views of their projects.

New change order management features, as well as Billing Rate Card effectivity dates allow services companies to keep on top of their dynamic business environment, reducing errors and improving both accuracy and service delivery to the customer.

Capturing information in a seamless and easy manner from the field is key to an efficient service organisation.

New streamlined and intuitive UI for Weekly Timesheets, as well as improved time off management, ensure a better, more timely capture of information.

Providing real-time information on projects equips managers with the insights needed to make critical resourcing decisions on projects.

All these new features for services companies are also designed to keep pace with the evolving revenue standards and ASC 606.

More new features and functionality for product companies

NetSuite is delivering several new features and functionality for manufacturers, distributors and retailers that provide customers with advanced capabilities to help sustain their future growth plans.

Modern manufacturers often have their items produced in many different locations, perhaps globally, and in some cases by contract manufacturers.

Our enhanced Global Bill of Materials (BOM) functionality allows users to manage BOMs separately from the items they are associated with, drastically reducing the overhead on engineering teams.

Each item can now support multiple BOMs that can be specific to a location should you have locations that source components locally.

Additionally, each BOM can be attached to multiple end SKU's, enabling manufacturers to sell the same item under different brands without the need to manage multiple redundant BOMs when changes are required.

A new quality management system allows companies to define inspection plans that dictate how an item is to be tested, along with acceptable parameters where dimensions and additional product details might be recorded.

Inspection requests are then triggered automatically and added to a queue to make sure nothing is missed.

Should an item fail one of the tests, a workflow driven disposition process ensures that the necessary corrective actions are taken.

The enhancements also include role-specific dashboards for quality managers, engineers and inspectors along with a tablet-driven UI for front line workers.

The new Inbound Shipment Management module allows customers who order large quantities of product, perhaps from multiple vendors, to consolidate multiple purchase orders into a single container to simplify future tracking and status updates.

Upon receipt, a single scan can receive all of the items in the container.

PRODUCTS General availability of SuitePeople

NetSuite has announced the general availability of SuitePeople, the most flexible and unified cloud core HR offering.

NetSuite's cloud ERP suite gives businesses a single platform to manage mission-critical business processes across ERP, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Professional Services Automation (PSA), omnichannel commerce and now HR.

With the general availability of SuitePeople, prospective and existing NetSuite customers can now use it to enable employees to request time off, access employee directories and organisational charts, monitor upcoming vacation schedules and new hires or publicly recognise good work.

SuitePeople weaves people data throughout the suite, giving businesses complete control over their core HR processes.

SuitePeople also helps empower managers and HR professionals to streamline employee information, new hires, employee onboarding, promotions and compensation changes.

More planning and budgeting functionality

NetSuite announced the release of the Oracle NetSuite Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS).

The new product gives NetSuite customers sophisticated financial planning and budgeting capabilities across lines of businesses with flexible and customisable deployment options.

Oracle NetSuite PBCS facilitates both company-wide and departmental financial planning with modelling capabilities, approval workflows and reporting within one collaborative scalable solution.

With PBCS, customers can reduce planning cycle times, improve forecast accuracy, centralise the budget with forecast and actual information in one place, and drill across the budget and forecast to see the impact on business performance with "what if" analysis and flexible modelling in an intuitive user interface.

MORE CUSTOMER AND PARTNER SUCCESS Delivering more SuiteSuccess editions for more industries

Since the launch of 12 SuiteSuccess editions for 8 industries earlier this year, NetSuite has continued that momentum by delivering three more editions for nonprofit and services organisations.

The key components of the new editions include:

• Tailored roles with built-in workflows specific to the industries including CEO, grants administrator, development director, project manager and more.
• Industry leading best practices built into the system spanning grants management, donor and constituent management, or project management, resource management and billing workflows designed for services organizations.
• Pre-built KPIs and reports, more than 150 including FASB reporting to help organizations comply with new accounting standards.

SuiteSuccess is the culmination of a multi-year transformation effort to combine the NetSuite unified suite, 20 years of industry leading practices, a new customer engagement model, and business optimisation methods into a unified, industry cloud solution.

SuiteSuccess was engineered to solve unique industry challenges that historically have limited a company's ability to grow, scale and adapt to change.

Most ERP vendors have tried to solve the industry solution problem with templates, rapid implementation methodologies, and custom code.

NetSuite took a holistic approach to the problem and productised domain knowledge, leading practices, KPI's, and an agile approach to product adoption.

The benefits of this are faster time to value, increased business efficiency, flexibility, and greater customer success.

NetSuite today introduced SuiteSuccess to the NetSuite partner community.

With SuiteSuccess, NetSuite partners are modelling their products and services around the SuiteSuccess customer engagement methodology to speed time to value, accelerate implementation, and better support long-term customer goals.

The initiative includes in-depth partner training and ongoing SuiteSuccess orientation across the three main partner programmes:

Alliance Partners Alliance Partners, via a co-selling engagement model with NetSuite, are aligning their NetSuite implementation services around the SuiteSuccess solution.

Alliance Partners, which include global systems integrators such as Accenture, Capgemini and Deloitte, and North America-centric firms such as Grant Thornton, 9Gauge Partners and West Monroe Partners are blending SuiteSuccess principles with their own proven methodologies to deliver a rich customer experience.

SuiteSuccess for Alliance Partners is focused on enhancing NetSuite capabilities and capacity to meet growth in demand for NetSuite cloud solutions.

Solution Providers NetSuite Solution Providers are on the SuiteSuccess front lines as partners that sell, implement, augment and optimise NetSuite across industries. SuiteSuccess for Solution Providers gives these partners new training and leading practices to help guide customers to proven solutions that deliver faster time to value, increased business efficiency and transformative agility for innovation and growth.

Already possessing deep NetSuite expertise, Solution Providers are helping to ensure customers take advantage of NetSuite leading practices including KPIs, reports and dashboards and can readily consume additional NetSuite capabilities as the business grows.

SDN Partners As SuiteSuccess for SDN members, ISVs are embedding leading practices into complementary applications, called SuiteApps, that they make available to NetSuite customers.

They are aligning their development, go-to-market, implementation and support strategies around SuiteSuccess. NetSuite has made SuiteSuccess for SDN training available to all SDN members, as well as an SDN SuiteSuccess Playbook and templates for the development of leading practices.

The SuiteSuccess for SDN program parallels "Built for NetSuite," an SDN initiative introduced in 2013 that verifies that SuiteApps meet NetSuite standards for architecture, development and security.

Customers and partners get ready for next with NetSuite ​ Many fast-growing, innovative companies adopt NetSuite to ready themselves for next while partners select NetSuite as their choice of cloud ERP, capitalising on the revenue opportunities of the cloud.

Customers announced today include Shiftgig, the mobile technology platform that connects businesses with high-quality, vetted hourly workers on demand, and Jonathan Adler, a home furnishings designer.

NetSuite also announced a new partner, Moss Adams, one of the largest accounting, consulting and wealth management firms in the US.

MORE INFRASTRUCTURE Unveiling new data center in the Chicago area

NetSuite today unveiled a new data center in the Chicago area, built on the latest, most powerful hardware to help support NetSuite customers around the globe.

The addition of a new data center enables NetSuite to provide better load balance across data centers and improved performance for customers.

The new data center, thanks to the incredible Oracle infrastructure, was up and running with live customers in just 18 weeks.

It is the first of many that are planned to be rolled out in the next twelve months.