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NetSuite OneWorld enables Bloom & Grow to grow and flourish

Leading Distributor Turns to NetSuite Cloud to Drive Asia Pacific Expansion

Singapore, 30 October 2014—NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N), the industry's leading provider of cloud-based financials / ERP and omnichannel commerce software suites, today announced that Bloom & Grow, a leading Asian wholesale distributor of baby, infant and maternity products, has selected NetSuite OneWorld to power its core business processes and to expedite its expansion across Asia and Australia. The wholesale distributor replaced its own custom-built on-premise ERP software with a single instance of NetSuite OneWorld to manage its financial consolidation, inventory management, order management, tax compliance, and customer relationship management (CRM). The company is also leveraging NetSuite’s superior omnichannel commerce platform to support its B2B ecommerce. NetSuite OneWorld provides multi-subsidiary, multi-language and multi-currency support that enables Bloom & Grow to manage its operations in real-time, with automated reporting and consolidated financials at its head office in Hong Kong and across five subsidiaries (in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia and Mainland China) in four languages (English, Chinese, Malay and Bahasa ) for eight different currencies (GBP, USD, SGD, RM, AUD, EUR, HKD and RMB) across seven countries (Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, China and Australia), with the capacity to support additional languages and currencies for future expansion.

Established 10 years ago, Bloom & Grow (www.bloomandgrowasia.com) represents some of the premium baby, infant and maternity brands from the U.S. and U.K. in the Asia Pacific region. In addition to a head office and five subsidiaries, the company also has six warehouses (four are third-party logistics providers) in Hong Kong, Shenzhen in China, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia (Melbourne and Perth). It also has dedicated sales teams for Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia and Taiwan operating out of Singapore, with an Indonesian office expected to open in the near future. As the company rapidly expanded across Asia Pacific, Bloom & Grow developed its own open source ERP platform to meet the needs of the First-In, First-Out (FIFO) accounting standard. However, the three-tier client server architecture of the platform—which was hosted on servers in Hong Kong with VPN access from Bloom & Grow's other offices—could only be accessed from one terminal and often had technical issues and was not mobile accessible. The company made a swift decision to dismantle its platform and move to cloud-based ERP software. It initially reviewed solutions from MYOB, which was too Australia-focused, as well as SAP, which was too complex and expensive, before identifying NetSuite as an ideal partner that offered the flexibility, scalability, agility and speed of implementation that the company was looking for, as well as offering the cloud-based, ERP and multi-currency capable features that were essential to the organisation.

 "NetSuite's complete and scalable cloud solution allows our business to access all of our core functions, wherever we happen to be in the world and in any currency—we could not run our business without it," said Peter Deacon, director of Bloom & Grow. "Our biggest KPI of the whole deployment is the ease and speed at which we can immediately add a subscription for a new employee and have them using the system within the same day. We can also do the same with new customers via our new B2B website. It is a vast improvement from our previous capabilities and provides the ideal scalable and cost effective solution for a rapidly expanding global business like ours."

NetSuite now provides Bloom & Grow with the following key features and benefits:

• B2B ecommerce. Bloom & Grow recently migrated from a custom-built ecommerce site to NetSuite SuiteCommerce to power its B2B ecommerce website. The company's previous website had limited functionality, lacked ecommerce capabilities and was ill-suited to the multi-country footprint of Bloom & Grow. With the new site, Bloom & Grow's B2B retail customers have access to a superior consumer-like online shopping experience where they can log in to the B2B portal and browse and purchase products online, anytime and from anywhere. The new site has also transformed its content marketing capabilities and is customised per region. As a direct result, stock availability is now available in real-time on the site, which ensures customer satisfaction.
• Real-Time analytics and reporting. To maximise profits and streamline operations, NetSuite's dashboards, reporting and analytical tools enable Bloom & Grow to monitor, report and analyse overall business performance in real-time. The management team can now access detailed insights into its business, wherever they happen to be in Asia Pacific, which has significantly improved the company's confidence and speed at which it is able to make more informed business decisions.
• Inventory management. NetSuite's Advanced Inventory management feature gives real-time, detailed visibility into key inventory control and supply chain management measures, including inventory trends, stock on order and supplier on-time performance. It has given Bloom & Grow the tools to effectively measure its stock turn. This enhanced and real-time insight has enabled the company to reduce its stock turn and positively manage its cash flow.
• Data consistency. NetSuite provides 100 percent consistent and up-to-date information, regardless of the location. Bloom & Grow's previous system produced inconsistent data and the move to NetSuite has transformed data consistency, reporting and budget projections across the organisation.
• Cost savings. NetSuite has eliminated the need for Bloom & Grow to pay software developer expenses, and removed the requirement to buy servers, pay server hosting fees and manage a firewall. The subscription model has enabled it to cost effectively and immediately add users and clients to its core business systems, as the business continues to expand; and is a variable cost on the company's P&L. In addition, the cost of building its new B2B website was a quarter of its previous build costs.
• Time savings. Bloom & Grow's previous financial software took several weeks to close each month. With NetSuite OneWorld's real-time financial management, this can now be done in a matter of days. The company can also process orders, raise sales orders and cut invoices faster with a much more user friendly cloud system.
• Improved staff morale. The deployment of NetSuite has been a morale booster for Bloom & Grow's staff, as the introduction of a world class system has transformed efficiency and effectiveness across the organisation and eliminated frustrating and laborious business processes. For example, an invoice can now be raised within three clicks versus its previous highly customised, complex and lengthy process.

"NetSuite has taken the bumps out of the road for our business. It allows us to trade more efficiently, more effectively and all at a lower cost," added Mr. Deacon. "We have total peace of mind that NetSuite offers us complete data integrity to make informed business decisions and we are very excited about the future possibilities for our business using additional NetSuite functionalities. It is core to our business and a system that we completely rely on."

Going forward, Bloom & Grow expects to use more NetSuite CRM capabilities and mobilise its sales teams across remote regions to process live sales orders onsite at customers' retail stores. NetSuite CRM mobile solution supports a range of mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows phones) to allow everyone in an organisation to get immediate access to the information they need on the go, and because it is cloud-based, employees can log in anytime, anywhere.

According to Mark Troselj, managing director of APAC and Japan for NetSuite: "Wholesale distribution enterprises like Bloom & Grow are beginning to realise just what a transformative effect moving to a cloud-based ERP solution like NetSuite can have on their business. Bloom & Grow is reaping the rewards that real-time and consistent data management brings to its business operations, business decision making and future planning capabilities. It has given the company visibility across its Asia Pacific footprint, regardless of language, currency, location and time zone."

Today, more than 20,000 companies and subsidiaries depend on NetSuite to run complex, mission-critical business processes globally in the cloud. Since its inception in 1998, NetSuite has established itself as the leading provider of enterprise-class cloud ERP suites for divisions of large enterprises and mid-sized organisations seeking to upgrade their antiquated client/server ERP systems. NetSuite excels at streamlining business operations, as demonstrated by a recent Gartner study naming NetSuite as the fastest growing top 10 financial management systems vendor in the world. NetSuite continues its success in delivering the best cloud ERP/financial suites to businesses around the world, enabling them to lower IT costs significantly while increasing productivity, as the global adoption of the cloud accelerates.

 

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