Contact:
Mei Li
Senior VP, Corporate Communications
Phone: 650.627.1063
E-mail: meili@netsuite.com
NetSuite, Inc.
NetLedger Launches NetSuite™,
the First Online Suite That Combines ERP and CRM Functionality
Aimed at Mid-Size Companies
For Less Than the Cost of Maintaining Existing Software,
NetSuite Enables Companies to Integrate Front-Office
and Back-Office Operations
SAN MATEO, CA, October 14, 2002 today announced
NetSuite, the first online business software solution
to automate front and back office operations for companies
with fewer than 500 employees. Designed around easy
to use portal views, NetSuite adds the advanced accounting,
warehousing, CRM, and customization functionality of
stand-alone mid-market software applications at a fraction
of the cost.
"NetSuite is an important offering reflecting two trends,"
said Mary Wardley, an analyst at International Data
Corp. (IDC). "First, there are gaps between the low-end
software packages and high-end enterprise applications
in terms of functionality and price. NetSuite is positioned
to bridge that gap. Second, the NetSuite offering reflects
the important need among mid-range organizations to
have certain back-office processes, such as accounting
integrated with CRM functionality in a single offering."
The software infrastructure utilized by most companies
with up to 500 employees does not allow business processes
to run seamlessly across front and back office functions.
These companies run their business on separate, expensive
software packages - one for accounting, one for warehousing,
one for sales force management and one for customer
support. Additionally, the ongoing cost of running the
software and integrating data from such multiple, incompatible
systems has been high. NetSuite eliminates this cost
and complexity.
NetSuite enables companies to manage all key business
operations in a single, integrated system, which includes
customer relationship management; customer support;
accounting and payroll; warehousing and product assembly;
Web store and Web presence; and employee productivity.
In addition, NetSuite is delivered as an online service,
so there is no hardware to procure, no large, up-front
license fee, and no complex set-ups.
NetSuite has also been designed to be easy to use.
It provides graphical portal views to the application
called "dashboards" that are customizable depending
on the user accessing the system. Additionally, users
can access it anywhere and anytime, further increasing
ROI.
"In a business like ours where one hundred plus orders
are drop shipped every day, the need for a powerful
back-office and front-office system working together
is a must," said Marilyn Leslie, CFO of MiniCo, a provider
of self-storage products for retail and facility operations
in Phoenix, Ariz. "NetLedger has provided us that integration
and more. Our salespeople have enjoyed the Internet-based
access, because they can see their daily product sales
in real time. Our accounting department has been able
to generate the same reports we did with our previous
enterprise software system, but at a fraction of the
cost with minimum effort. We feel an integrated system
is a must-have system for a mid-size business like ours
and we're excited about the additional features of NetSuite,
particularly the multiple currency feature."
"A company's employees work together and it is time
that software applications easily and cost-effectively
support their efforts," said Zach Nelson, president
of NetLedger. "For less than what companies are paying
to maintain their outdated, ineffective software systems,
they can use NetSuite and quickly achieve their goal
of business process integration."
NetSuite Feature Details
NetSuite layers a common, but customizable, portal user
interface over three integrated functional areas - advanced
back-office accounting/ERP, advanced CRM, and advanced
Web presence - to enable businesses to streamline their
business processes. In addition, the suite includes
technologies to allow businesses to easily migrate and
integrate existing legacy data into NetSuite. And NetSuite
allows many levels of customization, from simple form
customization to advanced business process customization
using JavaScript.
NetSuite User Interface
And Employee Productivity
- Role-based Centers and Dashboards
Because NetSuite is several applications rolled into
one, it includes customizable "centers," portal views
of the application tailored to meet the needs of every
type of user in a company. NetSuite includes several
preconfigured centers, including Support Center, Sales
Center, Accounting Center, etc. The centers are navigated
via graphical "dashboards" that provide summary data
important to the user and easy navigation and workflow
within a center.
- Employee Productivity
NetSuite's Employee Center provides self-service capabilities
for all the employees of a business including expense
reporting, purchase request management, and time tracking
and billing. Also available from within the Employee
Center are integrated calendar and task management
functions. With NetSuite's audience-based publishing
architecture, businesses can also publish company
information to individuals, teams or to all employees
that they can access from their Employee Center, ensuring
that all the information they need to do their jobs
is at their fingertips anytime and anywhere.
NetSuite Advanced Accounting
/ ERP Capability
NetSuite includes all the capability of the company's
recently announced NetLedger Advanced Accounting Suite.
In detail, features in the Advanced Accounting/ERP capability
include:
- Multi-Currency Transactions and Reporting
This capability allows businesses that sell internationally
to track transactions in non-US based currencies.
The powerful automated currency revaluation feature
simplifies the period-end close process by generating
adjusting journal entries to reflect exchange rate
fluctuations.
- Multi-Location Inventory
This feature gives businesses the ability to categorize
entities, items, and transactions by location so they
can manage, track and report on inventory across multiple
locations.
- Advanced Shipping and Receiving
This set of tools breaks out the order fulfillment
and receiving functions for greater control of order
management and workflow. Separate users can be assigned
shipping, receiving and returns functions with views
on order records and reports tailored to their requirements.
It includes capabilities for pick, pack and ship;
receiving to multiple inventory locations; and UPS
shipping integration.
- Multi-Company Consolidations
The consolidation capabilities now allow financial
results to be rolled up for complicated multi-level
business entity hierarchies, with full drill-down
to the subsidiary company transactional data.
- Assembly and Package Items
This new inventory feature allows items assembled
from other inventory parts to be tracked separately
from their components. Once created, assembly and
package items can be managed just like a single inventory
item with their own quantity counts and costing calculations.
NetSuite Advanced CRM Capability
NetSuite includes the marketing, sales and customer
support functionality of NetLedger's recently introduced
NetCRM front-office application suite. This Web-based
solution provides complete CRM functionality and provides
important features not found in any other online CRM
application including:
- Sales Order Management
NetCRM allows businesses to actually sell and track
product and service sales with its integrated order
processing capabilities.
- Marketing Automation
Because NetCRM integrates purchase history, campaigns
can be created to target specific customer segments.
In addition, NetCRM provides end-to-end marketing
campaign management from system-provided templates
to e-mail campaign creation and distribution to results
measurement and ROI analysis -- all in one application
at no additional charge.
- Customer Support Automation NetCRM includes
knowledge management technology for customer self
service at no additional charge. NetCRM's NetAnswers
enables customers to search an online knowledge base
and find answer to their questions, without calling
customer support.
- Partner Relationship Management NetCRM includes
complete partner relationship management. The NetCRM
Partner Center allows selling partners to view their
leads, track orders, and submit and view support cases.
NetSuite Integrated Web
Presence And Web Store
Web sites can be highly customized to reflect a company's
look and feel. The catalog and shopping cart functionality
allow products and services to be marketed, ordered,
shipped and billed automatically. Finally, NetSuite
includes powerful extranet and intranet publishing capabilities
that enable personalized communication with customers,
partners and employees.
- Catalog and Shopping
Cart
With a click of a button, a business can turn its
Web site into a full-featured Web Store with a product
catalog generated directly from the company's item
list and item images. The company can also track referrals,
and accept promotional 'coupons' defined through the
partner and promotion code capabilities. The checkout
sequence features integrated shipping rate calculation
and online credit card authorization before the order
is completed. Once the order is taken it then feeds
directly into NetSuite's powerful order management
workflow (including drop-shipment). Customers can
return to the store and login to their Customer Center
to view the status of orders, track shipments, browse
the knowledge base for answers to their questions
or submit case forms for person-to-person customer
support.
- Audience-based Publishing
NetSuite's Web Presence capabilities give vendors
the ability to easily enter and publish their company
information to users of their Website, allowing them
to modify its layout and appearance in order to meet
the needs of their business. Additionally, with NetSuite's
unique audience-based publishing architecture, vendors
can also define who can see what type of content and
information. In conjunction with Customer, Vendor
and Partner Center 'Extranet' capabilities, companies
can publish specific information to groups or individual
customers - a contract for one customer for example,
or a price list that is made available to all customers.
The functionality is also powerful for Intranet publishing.
NetSuite Customization NetSuite
breaks down the barriers typically found in immature application
services by allowing a number of options for customization.
From the ability to easily customize user interface and
form capabilities to the ability to enable complex, custom
business processes, companies can manipulate NetSuite
to meet their business-specific and industry-specific
requirements.
- Advanced Customization
Tools
NetSuite's customization tools include enhanced form
customization for transactions and records, the ability
to add custom fields with multiple display options
and sourcing from related records, and custom code
allowing user-created JavaScript to be embedded on
forms to define specific validation and calculation
behavior for custom fields.
- NetBase™
NetSuite's customization capabilities also include
NetLedger's integrated custom record creation and
management tool, NetBase. NetBase makes NetSuite completely
extensible to the specific needs of each business,
allowing them to define their own custom data records
with complex relationships between each other and
existing records / transactions. For example, a property
management company can define a property record and
associate it with tenants, rent invoices, maintenance
records, etc. Being an integral component to the rest
of NetSuite ensures NetBase is easy to use and configure
while simultaneously providing extraordinary power
and flexibility for companies to customize the application
to their specifications.
NetSuite Third-Party Application Integration And
Synchronization Companies can move data from existing
legacy systems to NetSuite. NetSuite also provides real-time,
server-to-server XML data exchange capabilities to allow
the integration of other business applications with
NetSuite. It is also possible to configure single sign-on
authentication to enhance the user experience and allow
users to move seamlessly between NetSuite and other
applications.
In addition, NetSuite includes a number of technologies
to support disconnected use of the application. NetSuite
provides synchronization with Outlook, ACT!, Goldmine
and Palm OS devices to ensure that offline calendars,
tasks and contact lists are up to date.
Pricing and Availability NetSuite is available
late October, with an entry-level price of $4800/year
for three users. Each additional user can be added for
$50 per month. The company also offers NetSuite Enterprise
Edition, a fixed-cost, unlimited user version of the
application for $3750 per month.
For more information about NetSuite please visit our
Web site at www.netsuite.com.
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