NetSuite’s award-winning partners have gone above and beyond in helping many of our 43,000-plus global customers capitalize on the software’s many capabilities to improve efficiency, uncover new insights, and power growth. Top partners bring front-line expertise in making the most of NetSuite's out-of-the-box functionality, while customizing and configuring the platform based on proprietary intellectual property and many years of collective experience.

This post is part of a series that showcases our Summer 2024 Alliance Partner Spotlight Award winners in the general business category, including customers in the building materials, fintech, sustainability, and logistics and transportation industries.

Customer: United California Glass & Door

Building Materials Spotlight Award Winner: Folio3

United California Glass & Door provides service and repair, installation, maintenance and inspection for all types of windows, doors, and entrances in commercial and industrial buildings throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Since its founding in 1991, the family-owned company has gradually expanded its services to include areas such as security, access control, and fire protection.

Using QuickBooks Desktop, UCGD faced challenges with financial consolidation and intercompany accounting across its 14 subsidiaries. UCGD was unable to do project-based financial reporting in QuickBooks and struggled with inefficient manual work in areas such as procurement, sales orders, and billing. Looking to increase its operational efficiency, UCGD opted for a foundational makeover, move to NetSuite which Folio3 implemented.

With NetSuite, UCGD has accelerated and simplified multisubsidiary financial consolidations while strengthening controls across key processes, including reporting, procurement, billing, and revenue management. Project-specific reporting enhances visibility into costs, revenue, and profitability. Customizations by Folio3 have eliminated problems in accounting for taxes that UCGD has paid on behalf of vendors, as well as streamlined the creation of invoices and other customer-facing documents. Next, UCGD plans to have Folio3 build out NetSuite Inventory Management and integrate NetSuite with Salesforce CRM to increase efficiency and transparency across sales and finance.

Customer: Tidal Financial Group

Fintech Spotlight Award Winner: Caravel

Tidal Financial Group provides a leading ETF investment and technology platform to launch, manage, and operate exchange-traded funds. Founded in 2012, Tidal manages 178 ETFs in partnership with 64 issuers and is responsible for more than $22 billion in assets under management. The New York City-based fintech firm employs more than 80 people and has additional locations in Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee. Tidal is backed by the private equity firm FTV Capital.

Tidal was operating atop a fragmented tech stack that included QuickBooks, HubSpot, Bill.com, and TriNet and still depended heavily on spreadsheets. The firm faced extensive manual data work with spreadsheets to track fund-level assets under management, resulting in complications in billing clients for fees and issuing payments based on profits. With complexity and workloads bound to rise with continued growth, Tidal invested in the highly scalable NetSuite platform and brought on Caravel | BPM Technology Solutions for the implementation.

With customizations by Caravel, NetSuite sifts through large data sets to calculate and generate invoices and payables automatically, minimizing labor-intensive spreadsheet work. Tidal has improved its efficiency in tracking fund-level information and can readily generate income statements at the fund level. NetSuite AI capabilities with NetSuite Planning and Budgeting Workforce Planning are at work for enhanced strategic planning and analysis, and Tidal has more incisive reporting at fund and product levels thanks to the segmentation NetSuite provides. In a next phase, Tidal is evaluating integration between NetSuite and its proprietary fund platform to automate data flows and ensure real-time AUM visibility.

Customer: Oneka Technologies

Sustainability Spotlight Award Winner: LIDD Consultants

Oneka Technologies develops wave-powered desalination solutions floating atop the ocean to provide freshwater to coastal communities and industries. Founded in 2015 and based in Quebec, Canada, the startup is driven by a mission to provide sustainable, cost-effective fresh water by harnessing ocean energy. As a sustainable alternative to conventional fossil fuel-powered desalination facilities, Oneka significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions and discharges a brine with negligible impact on marine ecosystems while enhancing resilience to climate change.

Using QuickBooks, Oneka had limited ability to standardize key processes, particularly in procurement. Operational and financial processes were disconnected, and many workflows were created on an ad-hoc basis, creating inefficiencies that worsened as the company grew. Oneka faced additional challenges with intercompany accounting and inventory management. Envisioning a robust and integrated ERP that could scale, Oneka selected NetSuite with implementation by LIDD Consultants.

Live in just three months, NetSuite supplies Oneka with a single platform that consolidates finance and operations, elevating efficiency across the business. LIDD’s customizations unified all of Oneka’s operational and accounting activities on a single platform, eliminating inefficient ad-hoc workflows. The project improved financial control, optimized cash management and cost accounting, and streamlined procurement and order management, resulting in better process tracking and greater inventory visibility. Oneka has more time and resources to focus on its core mission with NetSuite, alleviating inefficient manual data work and the visibility challenges of the past.

Customer: United Road

Logistics and Transportation Spotlight Award Winner: Caravel

United Road is a premier automotive transport provider, shipping more than four million vehicles annually throughout the US and Canada for 10,000-plus customers, including major automotive manufacturers, rental car companies, dealers and wholesalers, finance firms, auction houses, and individuals. Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Michigan, United Road has about 1,200 employees and 700 independent contractors.

United Road ran on an outdated Sage MAS 500 system that had been heavily customized with patchwork solutions, along with third-party applications for leasing, Sage FAS for fixed assets, Paycom for payroll, and Excel, SiSense and Tableau for reporting and analytics. Systems, processes, and departments were siloed and disconnected, leading to inefficiencies across finance and operations. With Sage ending support for the legacy ERP, United Road selected NetSuite with implementation by Caravel to upgrade its core systems.

With NetSuite, the company now manages day-to-day accounting with improved efficiency and controls, collecting payables and paying vendors faster. United Road has new capabilities to approve transactions via email thanks to a Caravel customization and has enhanced workflows through integrations between NetSuite and third-party applications for transportation management, fleet maintenance, and risk management. Further enhancements are in the pipeline with planned integrations to expense and tax management systems.

“One of the great things from Caravel was the hands-on training, documentation, sessions, and on-demand videos, so that when new employees come on, they can get up to speed fairly quickly,” said Kevin Kirkpatrick, senior director of operations technology. “In our old reporting system, we had hundreds of legacy reports that were used maybe once. Everyone had their own local copy of it, whereas now, everything is in one place, accessible by everyone."

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