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.
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