LAS VEGAS — Today NetSuite product leaders highlighted new system capabilities and offered a deeper look at new features during Thursday’s keynote at SuiteWorld 2022. They illustrated use cases and the real-world value of these enhancements through numerous demos.

In line with the “Full Suite Ahead” SuiteWorld theme, SVP of Product Management Gary Wiessinger started by noting that top-performing NetSuite customers run more of their businesses in the suite. Services companies that use add-on modules for financials, expenses, multi-subsidiary business management, fixed assets and planning and budgeting, for example, grow 150% faster than the average customer.

Similarly, products companies that adopt modules for inventory, ecommerce, warehouse management, and multi-subsidiary business management alongside SuiteSuccess best practices grow five times faster than the average customer.

Rather than focus on improvements by product, Wiessinger framed benefits around four outcomes critical to the success of almost any business: optimize cash and profits, hire and empower employees, acquire and grow customers, and create and deliver products and services.

Optimize Cash and Profits

In the face of an economic slowdown and a resulting focus on cost cutting, many executives see automation as the answer. NetSuite has an inherent advantage here, Wiessinger said, as a unified business management platform enables end-to-end automation of workflows in ways point solutions can’t.

Expanding on Wednesday’s announcement of new AP automation capabilities, NetSuite group VP of product management Craig Sullivan showed how AP automation now goes beyond scanning and matching bills. Sullivan walked through how customers can track balances on their HSBC virtual cards and quickly and seamlessly make payments, all from the SuiteBanking dashboard.

Additionally, a new account reconciliation tool can automatically match thousands of transactions across all journals and general ledger accounts, including transactions from a third-party point-of-sales system and corporate credit cards.

Sullivan also demonstrated how managing cross-subsidiary transactions is simpler for NetSuite OneWorld customers. From the netting workbench, finance can view a list of subsidiaries, transactions between them, and what’s available for netting. From there, they can create netting statements with just a few clicks.

“This will save a tremendous amount of time in closing your books and increase your confidence in their completeness and accuracy,” Sullivan said.

It’s also easier than ever for businesses that run on NetSuite to allow their customers to pay invoices online with NetSuite Pay. Clients simply apply for a merchant account within the system; once approved, they can quickly set up a payment link and MyAccount invoice payments with the help of the SuiteSuccess team.

Finally, NetSuite localization will soon be available for Brazil, which Sullivan noted is an impressive achievement given the especially complex tax and regulatory environment in that country. SuiteSuccess editions for Brazil will launch in November.

Hire and Empower Employees

As companies keep a closer eye on their bottom lines, NetSuite’s new workforce management solution provides the information and tools necessary to quickly respond to shifting business demands.

Managers can adjust employee scheduling based on historical sales tracked in NetSuite, and the system highlights where the business may be over- or under-staffed — like cashiers vs. the retail floor — while accounting for absences logged in SuitePeople HR.

SuitePeople workforce management comes with a manager dashboard that monitors KPIs, like wages as a percentage of sales, so managers can add or remove labor hours. Employees are notified via NetSuite app push notifications, email, or text once the schedule is released and can request changes or swap shifts with coworkers.

The solution can automatically approve timesheets that match the schedule, and managers can handle exceptions with a few clicks or taps. This ensures accurate paychecks through SuitePeople Payroll, which processes $3 billion in payroll transactions annually.

Acquire and Grow Customers

Many of the problems that arise when selling custom, configurable products come down to wasted time and effort that not only eat away at profitability but may result in lost sales and frustrated customers.

Allison Auclair, group VP of product management, used the example of a desk to show how a buyer or sales rep could choose the shape, type of wood, and option for a monitor mount with the recently released Configure, Price and Quote (CPQ) tool. A visual of the item updates as the user makes adjustments and, once finished, it takes just one click to request a quote.

“For your customers, it unlocks a new world of collaborative product discovery where they can look at your solutions and see different options and then engage at any point with your sales reps to check it out,” Auclair said.

Preset rules govern customization options to ensure the engineering and operations teams always get buildable configurations.

CPQ can be accessed through NetSuite CRM, ERP, and SuiteCommerce, NetSuite’s ecommerce solution, or integrated with third-party CRM and ecommerce systems.

Additionally, Auclair announced that SuiteCommerce is now available to customers in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Create and Deliver Products and Services

Delivering the right products and services to customers at the right time requires careful choreography, and it’s a near-unattainable goal for businesses that use disconnected solutions to handle various steps in the process.

Auclair demonstrated how several NetSuite supply modules work together to power efficient operations. After a warehouse worker clocks in through SuitePeople Workforce Management, she selects an order to pick in the NetSuite Warehouse Management System (WMS). Upon discovering there’s no inventory to fulfill the order, the system initiates an inventory count, and she completes the count. Because it’s below the reorder point, that automatically generates a new work order.

A manufacturing worker then selects the work order, and once it’s complete, warehouse employees prepare the item for shipment. In some cases, another worker may perform a quality inspection. Once approved, the warehouse team chooses the best shipping option, prints a shipping label, and gets the tracking information through the new Ship Central tool. At the end of the day, everyone punches out through the workforce management system.

All of this helps lower labor costs, boost profitability, and facilitate faster shipments that delight customers.

Managing rebates and trade promotions is also more efficient and helps customers get their money back faster thanks to a new SuiteApp. With the SuiteApp, a controller can set up new agreements with key details like eligible vendors, products, rebate amounts, and other customer criteria. Eligible promotions or rebates are then automatically applied to sales orders and settled based on the predetermined schedule. Sellers get a dashboard that displays the rebates accrued, in process and settled year-to-date.

The NetSuite Platform

More than half of NetSuite customers are now using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) data centers, giving customers access to integrated AI and machine learning, anomaly detection to better protect customers’ data, and other cutting-edge Oracle technologies.

In the last year, NetSuite has moved into 11 new OCI data centers around the globe, including in Japan for the first time.

The move to OCI empowers NetSuite to better understand its customers so it can prioritize new features based on what will make the biggest difference for users, VP of Product Management Elham Ghassemzadeh said.

Ghassemzadeh went on to highlight new ways NetSuite is supporting no-code customization. Users can customize forms and fields right from the form or field itself, then import the appropriate data, and the system will automatically map it. The user can then select what reports the custom field should show up in.

“We are working very hard to take no-code customization to the next level and bringing that experience of customization closer to the business process owners, lowering the skillset that’s required to customize and extend the suite,” Ghassemzadeh said.

For those with more technical knowledge, SuiteScript, the scripting tool within the SuiteCloud Development Platform, will support TypeScript, one of the most popular programming languages today.

Other Updates of Note

  • Customers access SuiteAnswers more than 30,000 times per month, and Wiessinger announced improvements to the site that will help deliver answers faster. SuiteAnswers 2.0 offers better search functionality, more video content, and chat-based support from a virtual assistant.
  • New users can also get up to speed faster with NetSuite Guided Learning, a new tool that trains them on the system within the actual NetSuite user interface. “Smart Tips” point out what newcomers need to do — and why — so they can understand your business processes. Guided Learning is available in the latest version of the SuiteSuccess starter edition and will soon expand to other editions.
  • NetSuite Planning and Budgeting is getting a few updates, including the ability to view and manage data in Google Sheets. A new version builder in the solution displays a wide range of possible forecasts and budgets, and a task manager helps with sequencing your planning.
  • A year after NetSuite Analytics Warehouse (NSAW) was first announced, it’s now available to customers in EMEA and APAC. The analytics solution can also connect to six new third-party tools, supports 29 new transaction types, and comes with five new prebuilt dashboards.
  • Sales reps can now see intelligent recommendations for products their customers may be interested in NetSuite CRM and ERP. This was previously available only through SuiteCommerce.
  • The latest NetSuite Connector links your system to Amazon Vendor Central, useful for businesses that sell wholesale to Amazon.

Get in on the SuiteWorld 2022 action (opens in new tab) by streaming the event live, attending virtual sessions, and more.