Contact

Samuel Jamieson

Oracle NetSuite EMEA Communications
+44 (0) 7468 752231
Email

NetSuite first to bring advanced ERP features to on-demand application

Deep Financial Functionality Brings NetSuite's Easy to Use, On-demand Software to Midsized organisations

NetSuite Adds Additional Features for Wholesalers and Distributors

SAN MATEO, CA., May 27, 2004—NetSuite, Inc., today unveiled a set of groundbreaking Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) features furthering the company's leadership in delivering advanced back-office application software via the Internet. The new features announced today include revenue recognition, allocations, advanced budgeting, advanced billing and substantial multi-currency capabilities. Additionally, new features including lot tracking, advanced inventory commitment, inventory re-ordering, and special orders extend NetSuite's leadership in the wholesaler and distributor markets. NetSuite's products include NetSuite, NetCRM, NetERP and Oracle® Small Business Suite. The Oracle Small Business Suite name is used under license from Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL).

ERP applications have traditionally only been available to large enterprises with correspondingly large IT budgets. Typical ERP implementations require lengthy, expensive consulting projects to perform initial installation and require substantial ongoing maintenance. In addition to automate a business completely, companies often spend more than the cost of software license to integrate ERP applications with CRM systems and Web systems.

Small and midsized companies need to automate similarly complex business processes, but have far fewer resources available to address these issues. They have, therefore, had to live with multiple disparate systems in which data is maintained in separate silos for each department and which is brought together periodically in order to prepare financial statements.

"Our business is growing rapidly worldwide, and NetSuite's real-time access has allowed us to save time and money as we have been opening offices abroad," said Don Suva, Corporate Controller of San Francisco-based BankServ, an electronic payment software company that placed No. 63 on the Inc. 500 ranking of America's fastest-growing private companies in 2003. "In the past we had used both Salesforce.com and Great Plains, but our sales reps and our financial team preferred one product for everything. We have saved about $25,000 in costs from Great Plains alone, not to mention the savings from being able to enter a sales order and generate an invoice from anywhere. That’s something we couldn't do with stand-alone applications such as Salesforce.com or Great Plains."

"With this summer's release of NetSuite, we match and surpass the functionality of traditional, stone-age mid-market ERP applications. There really is no comparison when you take into consideration that NetSuite is much less expensive, requires no software installation or maintenance and is much easier to use than out-dated client server offerings," said Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite, Inc. "The icing on this ERP cake is that with NetSuite you get CRM integration and instant ecommerce for free."

Building on NetSuite's on-demand architecture that uses a single database to bring together separate applications like customer relationship management, financials, inventory management, order management and ecommerce, the new advanced ERP features provide midsized businesses with a system as powerful as large enterprise systems, but with a much lower cost of ownership. The features announced today are “firsts” for an on-demand application and include the following:

  • Revenue recognition - NetSuite is the first hosted application to bring revenue recognition management to midsize companies. NetSuite makes it easier for companies to flexibly recognise revenue according to customer contracts and to maintain accounting control within GAAP and other reporting standards.
  • Allocations - NetSuite now gives users the ability to allocate costs by GL account, class, department or location. Users can choose to weight by dollar or percentage and can even set up a recurring allocation schedule within the system.
  • Multi-currency – In response to the increasing number of its customers that trade overseas, NetSuite now supports multi-currency bank accounts and expense reporting capabilities; both capabilities being key to seamless international commerce and accurate financial management.
  • Budgeting - Business applications sold to midsize businesses rarely provide budgeting tools for the real-world financial planning complexities they face. NetSuite has enhanced its budgeting tools to address those needs with the addition of multiple budgets for tracking different scenarios, the ability to easily create new budgets from existing budgets or even from actual results and more customizable budget reports. And in order to provide maximum flexibility companies can now work on their budgets offline in a spreadsheet and import the results into NetSuite.
  • Advanced billing – NetSuite's Advanced Billing capabilities automate billing schedules and commission payments so they are processed faster, more conveniently, and at a lower cost to the business. In addition, revenue forecasting of these scheduled payments is projected accurately rather than in one lump sum at the time of order placement.
  • Accounts Payable and Sales Tax payments via Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) – Now companies can pay their vendors and taxes via EFT directly from NetSuite through a partnership with Coastal Software, further streamlining business processes and remove the need for manual checks to be printed and signed.

With industry firsts such as matrix items, multi-location inventory, serialised inventory and seamless UPS integration, NetSuite has established a strong position in the wholesaler/distributor market. This release of NetSuite includes more "firsts" for an on-demand application, including

  • Lot tracking - For companies that need to track inventory within the facility as well as in the distribution pipeline, NetSuite adds lot tracking with lot numbers and expiration dates as well as specific costing methods. Those businesses can now track further inventory and sale attributes as well as understand the time value of product with regard to expiration date. They can also tie specific costing methods to particular lots as appropriate.
  • Advanced inventory commitment - Sales representatives need clear, real-time visibility to inventory for accurate, confident order promising. Sales, marketing and operations need sophisticated allocation tools for managing precious inventory quantities—such as in the case of receiving inventory and prioritizing for allocation to backorders logically. NetSuite's new advanced inventory commitment tools fine tune sales order promising and bring new tools for inventory allocation and picking as well as the ability to automatically commit new inventory to back orders—all driving higher customer service levels.
  • Inventory re-ordering - Companies need their inventory management and replenishment tied with purchasing for repeating the cycle of demand and procurement. NetSuite simplifies this process with inventory monitoring automated reordering reminder notifications on user's dashboards. With the planner’s approval, a single click automates P.O. creation.
  • Assembly items - Light manufacturing and assembly management involves more than just direct materials used in the build. NetSuite gives businesses new capabilities to capture total costs by including non-inventory and service costs in assemblies. In addition, businesses can now also adjust the quantity of raw materials utilised in the builds and better understand utilization and impact on inventories.
  • Special orders - Rapid response is key to meeting customers' business needs. Companies can now automatically create just in time (JIT) special order purchase orders triggered by those last minute, non-standard sales orders.

Pricing and Availability
The new ERP features will be available with the Q3 release of NetSuite. Pricing will be announced at that time.

###

Trademark
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates.