Posted by Laurie Wood, Director, Industry Marketing, NetSuite
Since 1970, SEMI has been at the forefront of technological innovation. The not-for-profit global industry association for the microelectronics market, SEMI represents about 1,900 manufacturers delivering innovative electronics—semiconductors, photovoltaics, flat panel displays and more—that have transformed the world.
SEMI, founded as Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International, has now brought innovation to its internal operations with a deployment of the NetSuite OneWorld global business management solution. NetSuite OneWorld is being rolled out across subsidiaries in nearly 10 countries, giving the organization new speed and visibility that improves its effectiveness.
Based in San Jose, Calif., SEMI (www.semi.org) needed more robust capabilities to manage financials than it had with its previous Intacct solution. Difficulties integrating Intacct with a budgeting, planning and forecasting application from Adaptive Insights, as well as ongoing support issues with Intacct, prompted SEMI to turn to NetSuite’s leading cloud business management solution.
“We were invited to the SuiteWorld 2012 user conference and were very impressed with the linkage we saw between NetSuite and Adaptive Insights,” said Jim Jackman, SEMI Corporate Controller. That’s the result of a tight technology partnership between the two companies, with Adaptive Insights software supplying the foundation for the NetSuite Financial Planning Module.
Data exchange between Adaptive Insights and Intacct used to require manual .csv imports, Jackman noted. SEMI’s finance team is saving a full day each month with push-button interoperability between NetSuite and Adaptive Insights.
NetSuite OneWorld went live in early 2013 in the U.S. and Singapore, with deployment to follow across subsidiaries in China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, India, Germany, Belgium, France and Russia. Those offices will upgrade from desktop applications while SEMI gains real-time visibility into subsidiary financials and global financial consolidation.
With its multi-currency conversion capabilities, OneWorld is enabling SEMI to conduct transactions in the Euro and currencies of Japan, China, Korea, Russia and India. Monthly financial close times have been reduced from seven to four days, while the time needed to account for physical property has been cut from several hours to less than an hour with NetSuite Fixed Assets.
With greater efficiency, the SEMI finance team is positioned to add greater value to the organization.
“We’re able to provide more service and value rather than just keeping up with things,” Jackman said. “Our visibility is much better. NetSuite makes it easy to make better decisions, and you can see the outcomes of decisions faster.”