There are exciting opportunities for organisations today to grow and innovate. That could mean going into new markets, launching new products and services, or coming up with new business models. There are always ways to expand your business.
There are also challenges to that growth, however. Data is locked away in siloes in the organisation. It’s not real-time, it’s not accessible, you can’t always analyse it. Compliance and regulation is growing ever more complex, country by country. Systems don’t talk to each other. Attracting and retaining talent is tough and on top of all that there are always new competitors entering the market.
This ‘hairball’ of disconnected systems hinders visibility across the organisation. As operations become ever more complex many companies are forced to resort to spreadsheets and manual processes to paper over the cracks between disparate systems, making it hard to see what’s really going on. With half of start-ups failing within five years, it’s more vital than ever to monitor the health of the business and identify the drivers of growth.
Having a unified cloud business system is absolutely key to tackling these challenges. At our NetSuite Next Ready Business Tour in London this week, NetSuite customers detailed the real-world challenges they’re facing and how NetSuite is helping to overcome them.
London-based home fashion label Buster + Punch (opens in new tab) has grown rapidly over the four years. Founded in a London garage, the company has since grown to include an ecommerce website, showroom in London and retail (opens in new tab) store in Stockholm. It now has more than 71 stockists selling products across 27 countries.
Buster + Punch CEO Martin Preen explained to the audience at the event: “We were growing very fast in lots of different markets, different languages, an omnichannel business and lots of different siloes everywhere – and quite frankly getting one picture of the organisation was impossible.”
That drove Buster + Punch to standardize, streamline and scale its operations on NetSuite OneWorld. With one unified cloud solution, Buster + Punch can extend its global growth, including a move to build a presence in the US.
At the other end of the scale is Sheffield-based OSL Cutting Technologies, a manufacturing (opens in new tab) business that has been around since 1865. OSL Cutting Technologies manufactures and imports magnetic drilling machines and cutting tools. Matthew Grey, managing director at OSL Cutting Technologies, told the Next Ready Business Tour attendees that his business has seen a lot of change and transition in the last few years.
“We have a distribution hub in the US and China and supply chain all over the world. That offers some interesting challenges in terms of building systems to support it. We acquired a business in 2015 and that left us with four systems in one business,” he said.
The company implemented NetSuite OneWorld in May 2017 to manage financials, multi-currency accounting and financial consolidation, CRM, email marketing and advanced manufacturing processes and it has already improved its on-time delivery, reporting and streamlined its financial operations.
These organisations are using NetSuite to regain control of their data and systems and extract clear actionable insights. Since our acquisition by Oracle, and the increased resources that gives us, that’s something we are going to be better placed than ever to help businesses do, as we expand our cloud platform capabilities to cater for any industry, country, language and currency. Ultimately our mission remains same as ever - to help you grow your business.
