Powering the Hyper Growth Small Business

February 3, 2014

The web enables a small business to go global instantly – reaching millions of customers and hundreds of millions in a year or two where it used to take a decade or more.

But if your accounting(opens in new tab) and sales systems aren’t aligned to get you where you need to do be,  because your running software like QuickBooks(opens in new tab) or Sage(opens in new tab),  then it can slow any small business down - just as your about to hit the inflection point.

The NetSuite Cloud Fuels SMB Growth

Beyond The Rack is a great example of aligning systems for growth. They were officially in the SMB zone when they first started out as a small NetSuite customer in 2009, with just 18 employees. Now they are North America's premier online shopping club, offering their members the most sought-after designer brand apparel, accessories, beauty products and home decor at up to 70% off retail. Beyond the Rack has risen to a preeminent position in the flash-sales space and a top ecommerce destination in Canada, serving nearly 5 million members across North America. They sell their products in the context of two-day, first-come, first-served, limited-quantity events, with 15 new events each day, starting at 11AM ET.

Beyond The Rack knew that starting out, while they were a small business, they needed room for growth. The challenge was that their QuickBooks deployment was creating process delays, and they were seeing tremendous inventory turnover producing hundreds of new SKUs every day. In short, they had SMB oriented systems that weren’t aligned with their trajectory.

But key for every SMB, they wanted to avoid hiring administrative IT and systems administration resources, so the NetSuite cloud was perfect for them.

As Kevin Murphy at Beyond the Rack puts it, "If we had selected a lighter-weight system, we would never have been able to scale, and if we had paid for a conventional on-premise ERP system, a year and a half later, we would still be implementing it."

Fast-forward a year later, and their staffing level is about 8 times the size, sales volumes are about 1,100%, and they’ve added millions of customers since they first launched their SMB success story with NetSuite. By becoming a NetSuite SMB, they’ve, simplified the process of adding hundreds of new products daily, freed up resources for further growth and expansion,  and gained worry-free cloud availability to operate smoothly - even during 100-fold traffic spikes caused by sales demand.

NetSuite Stopped Selling Small Business Accounting in 1998!
(We’ve Since Been Selling Small Business Success)

As Ron Gill, NetSuite CFO pointed out at the recent Pacific Crest conference, 40% of NetSuite customers are small businesses. In face NetSuite has been working with small businesses for over 12 years, gaining a Better Business Bureau A+ rating in the process. Net-net, thousands of small businesses run soup to nuts on NetSuite, and we love to hear the success stories!

Now we are bringing the power of the NetSuite cloud to SMB’s in a whole different way, based on that wealth of experience we’ve learned over the years.

Using our SuiteCloud platform, and partnering with innovators like JCurve, we’re able to make implementing cloud business management easier than ever before for small businesses. NetSuite partner, JCurve enables cost conscious small businesses to self-implement on NetSuite, using pre-built wizards, reports, and workflows. In short, combining the self-deployment of QuickBooks with the same powerful NetSuite cloud that Beyond The Rack is using to fuel their growth.

In addition, we’ve also been busy building a channel of small business solution providers that partner closely for success, providing a wealth of experience that small businesses can quickly and locally tap to get off QuickBooks and onto the growth ramp of the cloud.

As Kevin Murphy at Beyond the Rack puts it, "NetSuite made the technical aspects of our implementation ridiculously easy, and were valuable partners in helping us understand our requirements and processes.”

Taking the Next Step

If you’re curious to find out where NetSuite can take your small business, then download our Success Kit: Moving Beyond QuickBooks(opens in new tab) . You’ll hear the common challenges facing business starting out, and reach customer success stories from businesses like yours that made the move.

NetSuite has packaged the experience gained from tens of thousands of worldwide deployments over two decades into a set of leading practices that pave a clear path to success and are proven to deliver rapid business value. With NetSuite, you go live in a predictable timeframe — smart, stepped implementations begin with sales and span the entire customer lifecycle, so there's continuity from sales to services to support.