Here’s how the Arizona Diamondbacks, CAPE Analytics, Fulgent Genetics, Spartan Group, Leading Hotels of the World, and Lifespace Communities worked with NetSuite Alliance Partners to improve their business processes

At NetSuite, we’re very proud of all our Alliance Partners and the hard work they put into selling, implementing, and supporting our leading cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform. This year’s Alliance Partner Spotlight Awards recognize those partners that have demonstrated commitment and success in implementing NetSuite. We’re shining a well-deserved spotlight on partners that have developed outstanding expertise, customizations, and/or intellectual property in specific microverticals and those that demonstrate commitment to and success in implementing NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, OpenAir, SuiteCommerce, and NetSuite Planning and Budgeting.

In this blog series, we highlight those customer projects that earned the associated Alliance Partner a 2023 Spotlight Award.

Hitting One Out of the Park

The Arizona Diamondbacks are a professional Major League Baseball team that previously used Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains. The National League team was struggling under the weight of too much manual financial reporting and wanted to upgrade its systems.

With Appficiency as its partner, the Arizona Diamondbacks implemented NetSuite’s general accounting, item management, purchase order, accounts payable, sales order, CRM, payment processing, fixed assets, vendor management, and electronic payments modules. Appficiency also provided customizations including a Ticketmaster integration, customized Concur integration of expense payment management, integration with its UKG workforce planning system, and a business intelligence (BI) reporting tool.

Appficiency delivered a successful implementation that went live in January 2023. Since then, the Arizona Diamondbacks have recognized faster, easier, and more effective reporting with NetSuite as its core system. The team has also taken advantage of NetSuite's interface and workflows, which are both vastly more efficient than what the team’s previous system offered.

The Diamondbacks have automated previously manual systems like journal entry and transaction management. The team plans to continue working with Appficiency, with the next charge helping to meet MLB league reporting requirements.

Simplifying and Streamlining Operations

CAPE Analytics, founded in 2014 is a provider of geospatial intelligence for property risk and valuation via the use of machine learning and computer vision. The company enables insurers and other property stakeholders to instantly access property attributes that traditionally required an on-site inspection. The business has experienced rapid growth since its founding, with industry-leading venture capital firms and global insurance carriers as investors. Prior to implementing NetSuite with help from NetSuite Alliance Partner AppWrap, the company had been using QuickBooks Online, Salesforce CRM, Bill.com, Tally, and Brex.

Working with AppWrap, CAPE Analytics successfully implemented NetSuite’s core modules — general ledger, accounts receivable, and accounts payable — as well as SuiteTax and fixed assets. As a result, the company has simplified and streamlined its operations. Now, CAPE Analytics continues to grow its customer base and expand its portfolio of offerings. The company recently ranked as the #1 Best Place to Work in the San Francisco Bay Area, winner of FastCompany’s Next Big Things in Tech award, and named to CB Insights’ FinTech 250.

From Many Applications to a Single, Unified System

Fulgent Genetics specializes in genomic and medical testing. Founded in 2011, the company previously used a combination of SAP, Sage, Salesforce, Paycom, Expense Path, MileIQ, ADP, Bank of America, BlackLine, Solver, Tableau, XIFIN, Cortex, FLIMS, and Fastpath.

To consolidate these disparate processes on a single platform, Fulgent Genetics worked with Caravel Partners, a BPM Technology Solutions company, to implement NetSuite. In addition to implementing NetSuite’s record to report, procure to pay, design to build, and order to cash modules, Caravel Partners created a solution using custom records to store test results sourced from FLIMS into NetSuite to be used for sales orders and invoicing.

For Fulgent Genetics, the Alliance Partner also integrated MerchantE with NetSuite to improve payment processing from customers, including an embedded payment link on invoice PDFs for customers. Fulgent used many different systems for its processes prior to NetSuite, and the long-term transition is to have more of the processes live in NetSuite. Manual processes were automated, and there’s more governance and security over processes and permissions.

The overall implementation was a success. Key benefits include additional automated accounts payable and accounts receivable processes, a unified system that relies on a single source of data, accurate and real-time inventory statuses, and the potential for more integrations in the future. With NetSuite warehouse management, the company also has better receiving control, inventory management, and the ability to manage material consumption.

Up next, Fulgent Genetics will work with Caravel Partners to implement NetSuite for one of its subsidiaries, InformDX.

Real-Time Data Visibility and Inventory Management

Founded in 2017, Spartan Group specializes in construction, fabrication, distribution, and engineering. The company was using QuickBooks and faced intercompany transaction challenges, including around multisubsidiary accounting, before moving to NetSuite.

Spartan Group was also dealing with inventory management issues, lacked project management system support, and needed real-time visibility into its financial data. The company selected Bridgepoint Consulting for its NetSuite implementation because of Bridgepoint’s track record and industry expertise.

To date, Spartan Group has implemented NetSuite’s general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, projects, sales orders, purchase orders, and inventory management modules. Bridgepoint also leveraged its process model to define to-be processes and to build functionality on the NetSuite platform addressing Spartan’s unique user stories.

Since going live on NetSuite in January 2023 — a process that took less than 90 days to complete — Spartan Group has recognized benefits like access to real-time financials and inventory management.

Phase 2 will include a full implementation of project management, customer relationship management (CRM) and approval workflows for purchasing and vendor bills. Additionally, Bridgepoint will significantly enhance project material budgeting and cost tracking, improve financial reporting, improve project profitability reporting, extend Opportunity & Lead Management capabilities, and automate multiple operational tasks which will improve efficiencies across AR, AP, Sales, inventory management and project teams.

Eliminating Rework, Errors, and Spreadsheets

Founded in 1928, Leading Hotels of the World (LHW) is a premium luxury hotels franchise. The company previously used Microsoft Dynamics GP and faced challenges related to a single customer being created multiple times to associate with each subsidiary. Also, LHW couldn’t generate intercompany elimination and consolidation from the system and was instead maintaining that data on Excel spreadsheets.

Consolidation was another major pain point. LHW has since automated the elimination of intercompany transactions and generation of consolidated statements. These tasks were previously managed in Excel, which was both time consuming and error prone.

Leading Hotels of the World considered staying with Dynamics but ultimately chose NetSuite. The company implemented the SuiteSuccess Financials First Premium, multibook and advanced revenue management modules. Protiviti and Folio3 collaborated together to deliver the ERP implementation and provided functional support to integrate Salesforce and Concur. Work is currently underway on custom integration with HSBC.

Salesforce was integrated for some data flows to address the company’s need for synchronization between its various systems, a single source of data flow and a point of entry/exit for customer data. Leading Hotels of the World was also dealing with significant duplicative data entry in Salesforce and Great Plains and the need for manual workflows to facilitate handoffs between the systems.

Boomi was used to create an integration between NetSuite and Salesforce and identify all the data flows and create mappings. Because Concur wasn’t integrated with GP, syncing expenses across the two required a manual process. Integration with Concur and NetSuite was created to automate this process.

The implementation went very well, and even with 21 subsidiaries across 19 countries, the company went live on NetSuite within five months. The implementation included all the company’s subsidiaries and the Salesforce integration.

Today, Leading Hotels of the World can generate consolidated financial statements from NetSuite and use the ERP for intercompany transactions. It can generate deferred revenue calculations, automate revenue entries at month-end using the ERP’s advanced revenue management module, maintain fixed assets in NetSuite and automatically generate depreciation entries with a single click and across all of its 21 subsidiaries. The company is currently in the process of completing its HSBC and BlackLine integrations, the latter of which was put on hold until the company was close to its NetSuite go-live.

Enhancing its Business Processes

Founded in 1976, Lifespace Communities, Inc., is a not-for-profit organization that owns and operates 18 continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs) in seven states. It serves more than 5,700 residents and employs nearly 4,200 associates. To run its growing operations, Lifespace relied on industry-specific, proprietary software designed for senior living and nursing home providers.

Lifespace struggled to maintain the aging, on-premises software, which couldn’t integrate with outside applications. After evaluating Sage Intacct and NetSuite, Lifespan selected NetSuite and worked with GURUS Solutions to implement its new ERP platform.

Lifespace Communities is currently using NetSuite’s SuiteAnalytics, advanced electronic bank payment, fixed asset management, OneWorld, project management, financial management, and CRM modules. For Lifespace, GURUS Solutions created custom vendor approval workflows, a NetSuite-to-Kyriba integration, and centralized payment and fixed asset customizations.

The not-for-profit has since improved its reporting and data analysis and has also integrated various third-party applications with NetSuite — something that wasn’t possible with the organization’s previous system. Looking ahead, Lifespace plans to add more automation and continue enhancing its business processes.

Connect With Outstanding Partners!

Appficiency
AppWrap
Caravel Partners
Bridgepoint Consulting
Folio3
GURUS Solutions