David and Goliath - A winning team

Isu Sahai, Vice President, Information Technology, Manduka

For a long period of time, NetSuite has been associated with the SMB market and it has been a darling for all companies in the $25M to $500M segment. The fact that NetSuite commands the ERP space for most of the companies on the IPO bandwagon is not a surprise. Being the first Cloud-based ERP testifies its focus on cutting edge technology trends. Being a pioneer in the Cloud ERP space, it has commanded a good presence in the market cutting across the spectrum of industry vertical. With the latest releases, NetSuite has been driving changes to transcend user experience and client base.

NetSuite has been redefining itself with a refined User Interface which is slicker and aesthetically pleasing. The focus on international clients is evident with their advancements in the SuiteTax to support localizations and multibook accounting. Automatic tax rate updates and supporting in-country/ international/ intra-community transactions have been a long-desired feature.

The latest set of features in SuiteCommerce reflect the deep thought given to functionality as well as usability to improve the eCommerce experience. Catering to the service sector, they have a revamped Professional Services Automation(PSA) where you can prepare projects plans for opportunity/ estimates from an earlier phase as well as track tasks and manage resources/ resource groups. Small businesses who do not want to invest in CRM tool like salesforce and leverage the integrated NetSuite CRM+ to empower their sales teams for a connected ERP – CRM experience of opportunity to the Order process.

The modular and open integration architecture of the Oracle SaaS ERP is a perfect offering which can be co-bundled with NetSuite to provide an integrated system experience and maximum value for implementation dollars to the business users

For companies with basic employee management requirements, there are new features related to the security of employee sensitive information and managing work hours. Further, with the recent upgrades on the SuiteAnalytics the analytical experience has been greatly enhanced by allowing drag & drop features, pivots, combined queries and chart graphic. It marks the giant leap from the Saves searches and Reports of the past.

While these have been some considerable progress, over time there has been a functional gap which has been an increasing trend in the Netsuite domain, as the companies transition out of the “entrepreneurial swamp” of basic processes and try to graduate to the “next level”. Some of the more visible areas where NetSuite ERP has been found wanting has been in the space of – Advanced Warehousing, Demand and Supply Planning, Planning and Budgeting and Product Life Cycle Management.

This is where I see a synergy between Netsuite and Oracle SaaS ERP portfolio. The modular and open integration architecture of the Oracle SaaS ERP is a perfect offering which can be co-bundled with NetSuite to provide an integrated system experience and maximum value for implementation dollars to the business users.

I guess as the SaaS ERP industry converges to a Best of Breed ecosystem with Workday, Concur and Salesforce having established themselves in their respective functional domain, this looks like a logical step. Being a part of the “Oracle family”, there are a lot of synergies that can be driven to ensure seamless support of functional processes leveraging Core NetSuite ERP and a Satellite footprint of Oracle SaaS Modules.