Hitting the suite spot: notes from SuiteConnect 2019 - Business IT Sheffield

Please note: This post was written by Highlander prior to their rebrand to FluidOne Business IT - Sheffield.

Last week, I was once again fortunate enough to attend NetSuite’s pinnacle UK event of the year, SuiteConnect, held at London’s Royal Lancaster Hotel.

We were treated to talks from key NetSuite customers such as eve sleep, PetShop.co.uk and Iron Maiden’s very own Bruce Dickenson, who focussed on NetSuite’s ability to aid his companies’ growth, rather than giving us a rendition of Run to the Hills!

I’ve recapped below my main takeaways from the event.

2018 saw the launch of SuiteSuccess, a range of vertically ready tools – essentially providing a brilliant out-of-the-box ERP experience for customers in certain markets, by tightly aligning NetSuite with common processes and goals.  This dramatically improves time-to-value from initial investment for these organisations.

A year on, it was great to hear that NetSuite’s offerings have expanded to include three new industry-specific solutions geared towards UK-based SMEs:

• SuiteSuccess for Wholesale Distribution – designed to automate business processes
• SuiteSuccess for Manufacturing – here to tackle supply chain inefficiencies
• SuiteSuccess for Social Impact – created to streamline business processes for non-profits

SuiteAnalytics has had an overhaul and been launched across the full set of NetSuite products.  Producing real-time, hugely in-depth reports has never been easier.

Using SuiteAnalytics, errors that were once encountered in the data extraction process during report building are eliminated.  Now, you can pull reports using various data sets across your ERP and manipulate live in-application data.  The easy-to-use tool is recognisable and intuitive to all users, as its format has echoes of Microsoft Excel.  The standout feature of this tool is the ease with which you can produce highly complex, live management reports right at the data source.

Across the board, NetSuite is taking great steps to reduce the deployment time of their ERP solutions.  Not only that, the functionality of the solution has been enhanced in key areas, with useful features for:

• Cash management – NetSuite solutions now integrate with all banks to allow better cash flow management
• Subscription billing – for anyone working on contracts or repeat invoicing, such as software providers, this process has now been made significantly easier
• E-commerce – the experience of having an embedded e-commerce platform as an overlay to your ERP has been overhauled.  Transactions, billing, product image storage and quantity supply can all be easily handled via the front-end e-commerce tool that overlays your existing ERP.  The need to integrate third party e-commerce tools has been dramatically reduced.

It’s worth noting that outside of SuiteConnect, NetSuite has recently announced new financing options on licencing deals.  They are now offering 6-month delayed payment, followed by 36 months of leased payments on licencing.  As deployment takes at least 6 months in most cases, this means that you’re not paying for a solution you are not yet able to use.  Payment only starts when your solution goes live.

For those interested in finding out more about NetSuite’s range of ERP products, you can get in touch with a member of the team. If you like what you’ve heard about SuiteConnect 2019, then maybe I’ll see you there next year?