At NetSuite, we’re proud of our Alliance Partner Network and the great work partners do for our 33,000 global customers. Through our Alliance Partner Spotlight Awards, we recognize the organizations that have demonstrated commitment to and success in implementing NetSuite across the business community. This includes partners that have developed outstanding expertise, customizations, and/or intellectual property in a specific microvertical, as well as those that have demonstrated commitment to and success in implementing OpenAir, SuiteCommerce Planning and Budgeting, and NetSuite Analytics Warehouse.
Decreasing Time to Close by 75%
Cohen & Company was founded in 1977 on the belief that there had to be a better way to help businesses achieve success. What began as Ron Cohen’s passion has since evolved into a tax and accounting firm whose clients include privately held companies; public and private funds, advisers, and fund service providers within the investment industry; and multinational Fortune 1000 enterprises.
Wanting to replace its Microsoft Navision software, Cohen & Co. evaluated NetSuite, Intacct, Microsoft Dynamics, and FinancialForce. It selected NetSuite and then worked with Plative to implement the ERP’s SuiteSuccess Services Standard and dunning modules.
Plative also developed integrations between NetSuite and both Salesforce and Star PDM and established finance as the system of record for reporting, budgeting, and forecasting. Cohen & Co. was extremely satisfied with the results of the implementation and gave Plative a 10/10 for its customer satisfaction score. It’s now closing its books in fewer than five business days — versus the previous average of 20 days — and looking forward to implementing NetSuite Planning and Budgeting.
Technology Helps Drive a Unique Social Media Mission
The Oversight Board (the “Board”) became operational in 2020 and has since been tasked with making consequential, precedent-setting content moderation decisions on leading social media platforms. The Board has a distinctive mission to the company “answer some of the most difficult questions around freedom of expression online: what to take down, what to leave up, and why.”
Because of its unique mission, the Oversight Board faces two specific operational challenges: Maintain an extraordinarily high level of operational and financial integrity, and accurately track expenses of both board members and support staff. The Board must achieve these goals with a comparatively lean team.
The Board realized that it needed to build out detailed controls and processes for accounts payable, expense reporting and management, and journal entries. It called on Grant Thornton to implement NetSuite.
The Board relies on a full range of accounting operations software for effective record-keeping and payments, including accounts payable, expense reporting, expense approvals, and electronic bank payments. Grant Thornton’s partnership with the Board focused on enhancing finance processes by documenting and improving transaction flows, developing workflows, and providing tailored end-user training and holistic support.
Grant Thornton was able to simplify and automate key processes, including optimizing accounts payable and vendor onboarding. With a small accounting team, the Board can now process more than 1,000 transactions per month and close its month-end books quickly.
Grant Thornton is now helping develop integrations and streamlining to align with the Board’s future goals, including the enhancement of approval and accounts payable processes.
All-in-One Platform for the Top 20% of Agents
PLACE is an all-in-one real estate platform founded in 2020 that provides technology and services to real estate agents striving to manage their teams and time in a more efficient way. A QuickBooks user, PLACE was grappling with a lack of visibility into each aspect of its business, especially as its entity structure began to grow.
In need of consolidation and advanced reporting capabilities, PLACE worked with Allied Cloud to implement NetSuite. It’s using NetSuite’s software SKU, subsidiary navigator, and revenue management modules, with Allied Cloud providing customizations like a Bill.com integration and enhanced real estate functionality.
PLACE now has the functionality to manage finances on behalf of its partner teams via NetSuite. This allows each team to run various reports on financials and deal information and gives certain users access to see consolidated reports for a region or across the entire company. With NetSuite, the company also has consolidation across entities and insight into all aspects of its business. PLACE is considering a Phase 2 implementation that will include payroll.
Simplifying Online Subscription Management
Scientific graphics software company Golden Software was founded in 1983 and works with customers in mining, oil and gas, engineering, applied science, and university settings, with the mission of providing fast, powerful, and precise solutions for data modeling, mapping, graphing, and analysis.
The company previously used the SiteBuilder website creator but wanted to provide a more user-friendly ecommerce experience for its customers, especially subscription license holders. Golden Software decided on SuiteCommerce as its new platform, but due to the company’s specific use case of online subscription sales and post-purchase subscription management, knew it wouldn’t be using NetSuite and SuiteCommerce in the traditional manner. With this in mind, Eric Schultz, a senior NetSuite administrator at Golden Software, worked diligently on an MVP plan for the SuiteCommerce-hosted website, assembling a complete set of requirements for the UI design and functionality. Schultz even planned out specific changes to the script.
However, Golden Software still needed an implementation partner that could help it accomplish its goals for SuiteCommerce by further contributing to and implementing the website plan. Anchor Group was the right match for the project because of its attention to detail, speed of development, and depth of experience.
“They completed their work on time and within budget,” said Schultz. “Without Anchor Group’s help, I’d still be writing code.” Golden Software is now fully leveraging SuiteCommerce with a custom shopping UI as well as a complex subscription management customization by Anchor Group.
With SuiteCommerce in place, the company has seen success with its custom product pages for selling subscriptions and its post-purchase subscription management portal for subscribers. Golden Software is also benefiting from simpler ecommerce application management and automatic upgrades. The company is currently working with Anchor Group to add both NetSuite and SuiteCommerce features to its technology lineup.
From College Fundraiser to Premier Agency
G&G Outfitters began in 1990 as a fundraising idea by founders Doug Gardner and Rich Gergar, when they were sophomores at the University of Maryland. Today, G&G is a premier merchandise agency specializing in branded promotional products with more than 300 employees and a supply chain network that spans the globe.
G&G was using Numen, which is industry-specific manufacturing software for promotional goods companies, and encountering challenges with inventory visibility and control. With Centrilogic in its corner, G&G implemented NetSuite to gain real-time inventory control and one dashboard for work orders, sales orders, and purchase orders. The company is using Numen less and less as it makes NetSuite its system of record, and as it replaces many of its existing platforms with NetSuite’s functionalities.
Using NetSuite’s advanced billing, advanced financials, advanced inventory, advanced order management, multi-book, and site builder modules, assisted by an integration with HighJump for warehouse management, G&G has improved its overall business operations and efficiency levels. Going forward, the company plans to integrate more applications — including SPS Commerce, Korber supply chain, and various freight and shipping applications — with NetSuite and to work with Centrilogic to customize the ERP to meet the needs of its manufacturing department. The company is currently phasing out Salesforce and replacing it with NetSuite CRM.
A Growing Family of Brands
Vaco is a global talent solutions and business consulting firm serving organizations and skilled professionals across a variety of industries and verticals. Since its inception in 2002, the company has developed and acquired additional lines of businesses to include consulting, managed services, talent solutions and executive and interim search services across functional and operational areas. Each line of business has its own locations and practices.
Prior to NetSuite, the company used an outdated ERP with most processing being completed through spreadsheets, submitted by several entities.
Vaco Holdings’ critical challenges with its previous systems and operations were centered on manual processes and an inability to effectively support the company’s growth. Antiquated processes coupled with a lack of automation resulted in long cycles and inefficient workarounds.
Furthermore, a lack of communication and integration among its systems caused challenges. Data was frequently lost, even as the number of weekly intercompany transactions and manual workarounds continued to grow.
“Our systems were satisfying our operational needs for a number of years, but with our accelerated growth, it was clear that we outgrew our legacy system and needed a robust platform that could accommodate our evolving needs,” says Todd Sweat, CFO of Vaco Holdings.
The company chose MorganFranklin Consulting as its implementation partner due to its depth of experience in finance, accounting ERP, and transformation. MorganFranklin conducted an assessment of challenges and processes and determined the business requirements necessary to scale.
Vaco Holdings considered various industry-leading systems and ultimately chose NetSuite. Now, it is able to streamline its operations under one ERP and improve financial data and visibility, using NetSuite’s core modules. Consolidation of all companies and subsidiaries under one platform means reporting is more efficient and effective, and manual processes are a thing of the past. The system’s ability to integrate with other systems provides automated project creation and account creation processes from different CRMs.
Bringing Five Distinct Organizations Onto a Single ERP Platform
Lumio, a provider of residential solar distribution and installation services, was founded in 2021 when five independent companies merged into one.
Before moving to NetSuite, Lumio relied on a combination of QuickBooks, Salesforce, Pipedrive, JobNimbus, and other supporting applications including computer-aided design (CAD) and field-quoting solutions. And, each of the company’s five entities had its own CRM and ERP. Producing consolidated financial reports required substantial manual work on the accounting department’s part, and data integrity between the disconnected systems created additional reconciliation challenges.
Before selecting NetSuite, Lumio considered Oracle Fusion, Microsoft Dynamics, and Intacct. Working with Bryant Park, it completed a phased NetSuite implementation. During Phase 1, it implemented procure-to-pay and record-to-report along with the financial planning and analysis (FP&A) package.
Phase 2 includes a fully integrated Salesforce Solar project-to-cash cycle plus advanced revenue management (ARM). Customizations that Bryant Park provided include the Celigo Integrator iO-Avalara Avatax, JP Morgan Chase Ignite, and NetAsset Fixed Assets. Bryant Park also developed user event and map/reduce SuiteScripts to support integration of a solution design for integrated solar installation projects.
“In all my years of implementations, Bryant Park is at the top of the list,” said Wade Bitter, former CAO and treasurer at Lumio. “They have been extremely refreshing to work with.”
Lumio now has unified accounting across all legal entities. Bryant Park also helped with an optimization project for Atlantic Key Energy, one of the four child entities already running NetSuite.
With NetSuite, the company also has accurate and reliable revenue recognition compliant with ASC 606 and a fully integrated project-to-cash solution that includes Salesforce Solar Project, finance partners, and Workday. Lumio is now looking forward to continued market expansion supported by its scalable core business applications.
Partners:
Grant Thornton (opens in new tab)
Allied Cloud (opens in new tab)
Anchor Group (opens in new tab)
Centrilogic (opens in new tab)
MorganFranklin Consulting (opens in new tab)
Bryant Park (opens in new tab)