NetSuite Founder and Executive Vice President Evan Goldberg unveiled a reimagined user experience and numerous new AI features across the suite during his keynote at SuiteWorld 2024 on September 9.
Goldberg highlighted these and other major updates to NetSuite that are designed to help businesses deliver on their ambitious growth goals even as they juggle increasingly complex operations, rapid competitive changes, and frequent disruption.
“The external factors are never going to be perfect, but for the best-run businesses, growth is always on,” Goldberg said.
Take Vytalize Health, a NetSuite customer recently ranked as America's fastest-growing private company by Inc. magazine. Vytalize Health went from supporting a single physician’s practice three years ago to now helping 2,600 primary care providers strengthen relationships with their patients to provide better care.
As the business took off, Vytalize Health’s accounting team struggled to reconcile 47 bank accounts in spreadsheets. NetSuite helped them automate much of that work, and the team now reconciles accounts daily with far less effort. The healthcare company has also automated payment processing with NetSuite Bill Capture, which uses AI to automatically code bills as they come in and can then route them for approval and payment—all in one system.
“We're just trying to take out the staff-level work and be able to analyze the business,” said Jess Wijesekera, SVP of global accounting at Vytalize Health, who joined Goldberg on the keynote stage.
NetSuite gets a new user experience
Goldberg also announced that the 40,000-plus businesses now running on NetSuite will start to see an entirely new user experience that is designed to be a “more natural extension of your everyday work.” Oracle created the “Redwood” UX framework for Oracle’s cloud applications and is now applying it to NetSuite.
Hillel Cooperman, the mind behind the Redwood design system, explained how professionals’ expectations for the software they use at work increased with the rise of smartphones. They wanted similarly easy-to-use yet sophisticated business applications.
“What we really looked at is how do we make enterprise software feel as good or better than the consumer software that people use every day?” said Cooperman, Oracle’s SVP of user experience design. “And I think up until that point, there was this sort of conceit that, ‘Oh, well, work software is more complicated. You couldn't possibly make it as easy to use as the consumer software I use every day.' And I think we just said, ‘We reject that.’”
The Redwood approach starts with understanding what the user is trying to accomplish and then removing any points of friction at each step, Cooperman said. And generative AI could really help in delivering on that goal.
“The new generative AI technology that we're bringing to customers right out of the gate has led us to beautiful things in terms of understanding how humans actually speak, and then translating that into the functionality they need,” he said.
One way generative AI will surface in NetSuite is through Ask Oracle, a search tool that can help you both find the data you need and execute tasks.
NetSuite Enterprise Performance Management (EPM)(opens in new tab) and NetSuite Analytics Warehouse(opens in new tab) already use the Redwood design, and the award-winning design system is planned for roll out to the entire NetSuite application, starting with the most widely used areas of the suite such as dashboards, lists, and forms.
New AI-fueled features across applications
Goldberg described AI as a “force multiplier” that can supercharge NetSuite’s ability to fuel customer growth. He covered several new upcoming features across the suite that will help make that a reality:
- NetSuite SuiteAnalytics, one of the most popular tools in NetSuite, will be home to NetSuite’s first AI assistant(opens in new tab). The assistant is being designed to turn natural language requests into the reports and visualizations you need for rapid insights. A demo illustrated how an employee could ask the AI assistant a few questions to first identify the campaign that led to a spike in sales of a certain item and then determine whether the business had sufficient inventory to cover the remainder of the promotional period.
- “The best UI is often no UI,” Goldberg said. A new capability called NetSuite Financial Exception Management(opens in new tab) is being developed to offer just that by using an AI algorithm to automatically and continuously spot transactions that don’t match your typical patterns. This could make it easier to spot potential issues in the hundreds or thousands of transactions your company processes every week, with AI acting as an advisor by suggesting potential fixes.
- The Narrative Reporting tool within NetSuite EPM—a family of products introduced last year to assist with financial planning and budgeting, reconciliations, the financial close, and advanced reporting—is expected to use generative AI to draft reports with detailed explanations and visualizations of your financial results for your staff to review and edit. NetSuite Planning and Budgeting(opens in new tab) also is expected to leverage generative AI to turn forecasts into written explanations that highlight what’s behind those numbers.
- NetSuite Analytics Warehouse is expected to add more out-of-the-box AI models so nontechnical professionals across your business can access in-depth insights and analytics. A demo showed how an operations manager could choose a few parameters to determine whether a given location will run out of a specific product in the next week. From there, the manager can turn the data into nearly 50 different visualizations with the Oracle Analytics AI Assistant, which can scour a vast repository of data and use generative AI to create—and adjust—the visualizations you ask for.
Home gym equipment supplier PRx Performance, which experienced massive growth after an appearance on Shark Tank and again during the pandemic, recently invested in NetSuite Analytics Warehouse to compile data from NetSuite, Amazon, Shopify, and its Klaviyo email marketing platform.
“If you can get rid of all the mundane, all the spreadsheets, and you can have everyone have a dashboard that tells them what is right for their department, and everyone throughout the company is looking at the same information, then it saves time and it's just a much more effective business tool,” PRx Performance CEO Brian Brasch said. - NetSuite OpenAir, a comprehensive professional services automation (PSA) system, is now NetSuite SuiteProjects Pro(opens in new tab). NetSuite is developing several enhancements, including an AI Project Health Meter to call out projects that may need your attention by comparing key metrics to those of similar past projects.
Bringing together your entire business ecosystem
In addition to the AI capabilities, Goldberg announced new products that are being developed to build a stronger link between NetSuite and other parts of your business ecosystem. That includes a new indirect procurement application called NetSuite SuiteProcurement(opens in new tab) that will let you punch out of NetSuite to buy from approved vendors’ sites and automatically ties it all back to your ERP system to greatly reduce manual data entry and the time spent getting the goods your business needs. Amazon Business and Staples Business Advantage are the first vendors in the program.
He also announced a new NetSuite Connector for Salesforce(opens in new tab) that will make it easier to tightly integrate the two systems. The connector syncs customer, inventory, sales order, and financial data between NetSuite and Salesforce to prevent discrepancies and manual data entry, speeding up your lead-to-cash process and helping customers “sell more and spend less,” Goldberg said.
Boosting developer productivity with AI
NetSuite customers have discovered the productivity boost that comes with Text Enhance, which can draft product descriptions, purchase orders, job descriptions, and more in seconds. They will be able to tailor the generative AI output throughout the system with NetSuite Prompt Studio, which is being designed to let them adjust the format, tone, and creativity level of responses for specific record or field types in NetSuite, including custom fields.
“Prompt Studio puts you at the controls of making generative AI improve the productivity of your whole team,” Goldberg said
Developers will also get a boost with the Generative AI for SuiteScript API. This API lets them leverage large language models and generative AI in NetSuite extensions and SuiteApps to further automate and improve processes. Celigo Founder and CEO Jan Arendtsz joined Goldberg onstage to explain how his company used this new API to build a tool that can quickly bring a customer service rep up to speed by summarizing messages in support cases and assigning it a sentiment.
In addition, an AI code companion, Oracle Code Assist optimized for SuiteScript, can boost developer productivity by generating NetSuite code. Code Assist can also test, document, and explain the code line-by-line.
Finally, Goldberg announced several special deals for NetSuite customers attending SuiteWorld in-person or On Air, valid through October 31. Those who purchase NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, NetSuite Field Service Management, or any NetSuite EPM modules will get 50% off their implementation. Customers can also get 30% off a 12-month Advanced Customer Support (ACS)(opens in new tab) subscription, or 50% off an ACS subscription if they purchase it along with NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, NetSuite Field Service Management, or any NetSuite EPM modules. Finally, customers can receive 50% off a 12-month subscription to Learning Cloud Support(opens in new tab).
It's not too late to attend SuiteWorld 2024 virtually! Register now(opens in new tab) for SuiteWorld On Air to catch more keynotes, breakout sessions, and hands-on workshops.
Future Product Disclaimer
The preceding is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, timing, and pricing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products may change and remains at the sole discretion of Oracle Corporation.