SuiteWorld 2014 and NetSuite Product Review: 4 Reasons NetSuite Wins

NetSuite’s product reviews at their SuiteWorld conference in May 2014 with their latest 2014 release reinforces why they hold their #1 position in the ever growing and competitive Cloud ERP market. There were over 6,500 certified NetSuite partners / value added resellers (VARs), 3rd party developers and customers who attended NetSuite’s annual SuiteWorld 2014 conference. As an award winning VAR, our team at Demand Solutions Group (DSG) are happy to share some highlights of another successful NetSuite consference. The most exciting take away was that the product update announcements confirmed why NetSuite holds the leading position in the Cloud ERP market.

1) NetSuite Product Review:  Upcoming 2014.2 Releases 8 Exciting Enhancements

In product terms, the event saw the unvei highlights from the many new features ranging from a new UI to dozens of very useful new or enhanced product features. We will shortly be running a webinar to preview some of these new features that will be rolled in the 2014.2 release. Stayed tuned for dates and details! Here are 8 of the main product enhancements slated for upcoming releases that our DSG team found to be particularly notable:

1. New UI: NetSuite’s new UI is clean, modern and easy to use very much in line with their simplify and de-clutter design goals. They have also done a good job in rethinking some navigation issues for example in creating a top-level menu that allows you create any kind of new object from the top level menu.
2. SuiteGL: There are major enhancements being made to GL functionality that will enable unlimited segmentation of GL data, and custom transactions with admin-defined GL impact, resulting in much more flexible analytics.
3. Shared Entities (Vendors, Customers) across Subsidiaries: This feature may be available as early as 2014.2; this major architectural change
4. Revenue Recognition: Iimproved roll-forward and waterfall reporting is expected in 2014.2 to be followed by a major overhaul of the revenue recognition module in 2016 in advance of the new FASB rules that will come into effect in 2017.
5. Purchasing Contracts: NetSuite will deploy an umbrella record that rides above Purchase Orders and supports the RFQ process, blanket POs, better Vendor Management (e.g. performance against vendor contracts) and improved 3-way matching.
6. Contract Renewals vs. Recurring Billing vs. Unified Billing: Clearly NetSuite is moving toward Unified Billing built natively into NetSuite, which will support all manner of billings in a single, central “workbench”; Contract Renewals and Recurring Billing modules will continue to be supported and modestly enhanced in parallel.
7. OpenAir vs. NetSuite Services Resource Planning: NetSuite has been adding functionality to Advanced Projects and related records to support what NetSuite dubs Services Resource Planning (SRP). It was implied in breakout sessions that the current strategy is to steer non-NetSuite customers towards stand-alone OpenAir but recommend NetSuite Advanced Projects with SRP to existing NetSuite Financials customers seeking a robust Project Accounting and Professional Services Automation solution.
8. Cumulative Translation Adjustment: A CTA audit report is expected in 2014.2 that will allow transparency on how the CTA is being calculated in place of needing to write custom reports to prove the underlying calculation logic.

2) NetSuite’s Strong 3rd Party Ecosystem

One of the other messages that we picked up from the event was the strength and quality of the NetSuite partner ecosphere – this year’s SuiteWorld saw over 150 partners exhibiting added-value products and services. To us, this is clear evidence of both NetSuite’s market strength and the openness of the platform.

3) NetSuite’s Strong Leadership: Keynotes from the NetSuite Executive Team

1. We are a global company with customers and employees on six continents
2. Our growth is propelled by our aggressive movement up market into the traditional ERP mid-market and into the global enterprise
3. We recognize that most companies need hybrid cloud / on premise solution

4) NetSuite’s Award Winning VAR Support Channel:

Finally and as always at SuiteWorld, NetSuite announced their VAR channel awards and we’re pleased to say that our team at DSG was again one of the top performing partners and was awarded a third consecutive 5 Star award, the highest designation. Thank you to all of the customers who have made this success possible!

Our DSG strongly believes in spending the time at the outset of a financial planning project to envision the complete solution before doing any development. Our Financial Planning and Analysis consultants and best practices enable you to get maximum value and insights from your data to enable your forecasting and business planning to be more accurate, timely and agile. For more information, please visit www.dsgcloud.com.

The original version of this blog is posted here: SUITEWORLD 2014 AND NETSUITE PRODUCT REVIEW