LAS VEGAS — Grow and go global was the key theme of this year’s Suiteworld, Oracle NetSuite’s annual user conference in Las Vegas.
In his opening keynote address at Suiteworld 2018, Jim McGeever, executive vice president at Oracle NetSuite, said that it’s now harder than ever to scale a business because of several factors, such as change, evolution, continuity, discipline, focus, and risk.
“Every growing business has constraints on people, time, and capital. You have to pick the one thing that moves the needle for you,” said Jim McGeever, executive vice president at Oracle NetSuite. PHOTO BY MELBA BERNAD
On change and evolution, McGeever explained that it is not the strongest and the fittest that survive, but those that are adaptable to change.
“Every growing business has constraints on people, time, and capital. You have to pick the one thing that moves the needle for you. What really makes a difference for your customers and for your business,” said McGeever about focus. “Many of our customers have uncontrolled growth. So you have to pay a lot of attention about how you manage that risk.”
McGeever also shared the lessons he learned from NetSuite’s evolution from being a startup to becoming a public company.
Going global
“When we expanded to UK and Japan, we tried to do different things in those countries than we’re doing in North America. Neither of those worked. What you have to do is take the core of what made you successful here and do that, and then localize. Going global is hard but is essential,” he said.
Today, NetSuite has 199 customers around the world. These global customers use NetSuite OneWorld, a real-time, unified global business management platform for enterprises that manage multinational and multi-subsidiary operations. “NetSuite OneWorld users are growing 19% faster [in terms of revenues] than non-OneWorld customers. [This means] our international customers grow faster.”
To support the growth of customers around the globe, the company will do complete language support by the end of this year. Phone support, online support, knowledge base, and all the help documents will be localized across seven different languages, announced McGeever in his keynote.
“It is not just the local language support. We are going local to the core—our goal is to be more German in Germany than SAP. What that really means is [delivering] a local experience, a localized product, and a local team on the ground. We are massively expanding our international presence.”
As part of the localization efforts, NetSuite OneWorld 18.2 will have many localized features such as inter-company framework, 2-stage payments, auto cash, period end journal automation, GL matching, and SuiteTax.
“These are significant advances that will help all of us go global and do business all over the world.”
Stairway to success
“As you get bigger, you will have departments that will be bigger than what your entire company was many years before,” said McGeever. “But your customers don’t care how you are organized internally. They want to know where they can get their questions answered and where they can receive value.”
To help companies crush the barriers to growth, Oracle NetSuite has built a “stairway to success” which involves building core capabilities, empowering employees, adding more customers, increasing reach and efficiencies, scaling warehouse operations, expanding product and service offering, and growing marketshare.
All phases of the “stairway” are now built in SuiteSuccess, a unified industry cloud solution that’s now available in 33 editions across 14 industries. NetSuite will launch additional verticals in SuiteSuccess, such as Food & Beverage, Health & Beauty, and Emerging Retailers.
Build a website in 30 days
To help companies gain more customers, a phase in the “stairway to success,” Oracle NetSuite has launched the latest release of SuiteCommerce, which enables any business to launch a sophisticated online store within 30 days.
McGeever told thousands of delegates that SuiteCommerce enables companies to run an e-commerce business on a single platform.
“With SuiteCommerce, businesses can quickly and easily launch, manage and enhance their e-commerce site. From day one, they get a single, unified solution that supports their entire business and will be the first and last system they will ever need,” said McGeever. “Most importantly, our unique approach puts an end to long, costly implementations and allows customers to get the most they can from their commerce investment.”
The first release of SuiteCommerce, called SuiteCommerce Advanced, was launched four years ago, and is an “off-the-rack” commerce platform, according to McGeever. On the other hand, the latest release, simply called SuiteCommerce, offers seven pre-built themes, site management tools, and plug-ins.
SuiteCommerce has all the rich functionalities of SuiteCommerce Advanced but does not require developers, noted McGeever.
“SuiteCommerce will allow you to get fully functional websites up and running in 30 to 45 days. Every single company should be using it. We think it is so important, so we have a special offer—the first 1,000 companies who sign up for SuiteCommerce will get implementation for free.”
OneWorld customers using SuiteCommerce can experience an average growth rate of 44%, according to McGeever. “You should be thinking of going international and adding SuiteCommerce as a part of your business, your growth rate will be phenomenal,” remarked McGeever.
Focus on the right things
In his keynote, McGeever also shared how Oracle Netsuite is helping customers understand not only what’s happened with their business, but what will happen in the future and how they can stay ahead, with intelligent insights.
“When we think about intelligence in the Suite, we think about insight, interaction, and automation,” said McGeever. McGeever announced Intelligent Cloud Suite that’s powered by new artificial intelligence and machine learning based capabilities that enable businesses to glean better insights, drive efficiencies by further automating processes and determine the next best action with predictive actions.
“A future where AI drives new business models is quickly becoming the present,” said R “Ray” Wang, principal analyst and founder, Constellation Research, in a press statement released at Suiteworld. “Having business applications that can deliver predictive, prescriptive and automated outcomes is going to be an imperative for businesses that want to grow and succeed in the years to come.”
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