Knowledge Universe at SuiteWorld 2013: The Value of CFO-CIO Collaboration

Traditionally, The CFO in a company does not focus on the technology of an organization. Rather, CFOs are dedicated to the bottom line: minimizing spending, reducing IT costs, etc. The CIO on the other hand, utilizes technology to increase access to information. The traditional roles of CFO and CIO often results in less transparency of important business data, which slows decision-making and businesses processes.

In recent years, however, the CFO and CIO have been working together. Technological advances help CFOs identify necessary IT investments to achieve the transparency and efficiency that companies need to grow. With more businesses moving to the cloud, the partnership between the CFO and CIO become even more significant. Cloud-based solutions provide a long list of benefits, technically and financially, and the CFO and CIO should work together in building an operational roadmap to help maximize those benefits.

Our SuiteWorld 2013 conference on May 13-16 in San Jose, California, featured a breakout session that delves into the relationship of the CFO and the CIO in dealing with cloud business software. Titled “The Way Forward: Business Value of CFO-CIO Collaboration,” this session gave attendees the secrets in maintaining top- and bottom-line growth via the cloud, one of which is the meeting of the minds of the top officers from both the technical and finance sides of the organization.

This session featured a panel of finance and IT executives, including Knowledge Universe CFO Reginald Singh and CIO Alvin Yeo, who shared how their roles evolved and their partnership in deciding how enterprise IT investments increase business value. Knowledge Universe, a $2 billion plus global education company with over 40,000 staff worldwide, went through a stage in which its previous systems couldn’t support strong growth. The company lacked flexibility and transparency into ERP, financial management, reporting and analysis in its subsidiaries—a headache for the CFO that the CIO was in a position to solve.

Enter NetSuite OneWorld and its multi-company and multi-currency capabilities that Knowledge Universe leveraged in Asia while preserving its investment in Oracle for its U.S. operations. Since adopting NetSuite’s integrated cloud solution, Knowledge Universe has reduced systems cost by 70% and improved visibility into diverse brands and operations across multiple continents, while empowering subsidiaries with flexible local control and management.

Today, the two Knowledge Universe chief officers continue to deliver strong and consistent results from both the financial and technical aspects of the business and have proven that strong collaboration between an organization’s CFO and CIO is critical to sustain business success.

-Mark Troselj, Managing Director for Asia Pacific 

For further information about NetSuite visit www.netsuite.com.au

To learn more about how Knowledge Universe gains agility and reduces costs with NetSuite OneWorld read the case study here

NetSuite Sees Promise of the Cloud in EMEA Channel

The EMEA region continues to be a growing and thriving part of NetSuite’s channel ecosystem and a recent Partner Day event at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Marlow, Buckinghamshire demonstrated the level of excitement and innovation for Cloud-based solutions in the region.

We invited our EMEA partners to join us at the NetSuite Partner Day for updates on 2012 business results, future product plans, and new marketing campaigns. The event was also a great opportunity for partners to share their experiences and priorities with our management team. Over fifty partners attended and contributed tremendous ideas for increasing NetSuite adoption in their markets. The insights and direction NetSuite gained will guide our channel-building efforts for the rest of the year and beyond.

NetSuite recognises the growth and development of a healthy channel is vital in addressing the strong market demand throughout all regions. Industry analyst studies inform us that almost two-thirds of all channel partners say they offer some form of cloud solution. However, these same studies go on to say many solution providers simply “rebadge existing products as cloud, which is not helpful as many potential customers are suspicious of attempts at cloudwashing.” Our NetSuite solution provider partners understand this distinction and are delivering today the benefits of a Cloud based business management solution and are not handcuffing themselves to "fake cloud" applications – re-hosted versions of dead-end on-premise software.

On the following day, NetSuite hosted a full room of prospective partners for a seminar on "The ROI of Cloud Computing for VARs". These companies were made up of Sage and Microsoft Dynamics VAR/channel partners seeking to add a Cloud ERP practice based on NetSuite given their current vendors’ product roadmaps do not address the client demand across the UK for SaaS/Cloud based business applications.

Coincidentally, or perhaps not, our NetSuite channel seminar was held on the same day Sage announced it was selling off a number of business units, including ACT! and SalesLogix. Our event was abuzz with this news as it reinforced the transformation taking place in the mid-market business applications market. Hearing firsthand how much the European channel is suffering through Sage's stagnation just further helped us convince these prospective partners as to the growth and opportunity with NetSuite.

We are constantly reminded that the global marketplace is more integrated than ever, but local economies are not all the same. Recovery hasn't come to every market in the EMEA region and some countries are still enduring what could legitimately be considered a depression.

But NetSuite has high expectations for the EMEA channel moving forward. These EMEA channel-focused events helped us understand what we can do to adjust our strategies in markets where economic conditions present a challenge and in others where growth is paramount. We are committed to ensuring our business partners and customers all have the tools they need to succeed.

-Amede Hungerford – Vice President of Marketing

NetSuite Joins Leading Retailers, Thought Leaders at IRCE 2013

Staying on top of the latest trends in Ecommerce and learning how to improve your business is what the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition (IRCE) is all about. Billed as the world’s largest Ecommerce event, the conference features hundreds of speakers and sessions as well as an opportunity learn and network with close to 10,000 other Ecommerce professionals.

Among those professionals will be NetSuite’s Andy Lloyd, general manager for commerce products, and Pete Isermann, CFO of Patriot Outfitters, a national retailer of tactical gear and a NetSuite SuiteCommerce customer. They will be presenting "Making the Web the Centerpiece of a Retail Organization” on June 5 from 1:45-2:30PM. During this joint session, both Andy and Pete will share how to deliver a consistent, high-quality customer experience across every customer touchpoint. You won’t want to miss it!

If you are heading to IRCE next month, we also hope you’ll take the time to visit us at our booth, #1210, to learn how our SuiteCommerce cloud-based platform is helping leading retailers, distributors and manufacturers, such as Williams-Sonoma, GoPro, Kitchenware Direct, Patriot Outfitters, and many more, seamlessly connect every step of their omni-channel, multi-location business — from Ecommerce, POS and order management to merchandising, marketing, inventory, financials and customer support.

Click here to schedule a personal SuiteCommerce demo during the event

When you stop by our booth, don’t forget to register to win a LEAP Motion Controller from Leap Motion, a cool NetSuite customer. The LEAP Motion Controller is the much anticipated device that lets you interact with your computer with hand motions (ever see Minority Report?). Instead of mouse clicks and taps, LEAP lets you point, wave, clap, drum, draw, sculpt, grab and slice your way through games and business applications. How cool is that?  

See YOU in Chicago!

Learn More and Connect with Us at IRCE!

• Learn more about NetSuite SuiteCommerce
• Schedule a meeting with us at IRCE
• Are you a reporter or analyst and want to connect with us at the show? Email Christine Major to set up a meeting with one of our executives cmajor@netsuite.com

Retailers Missing Out on Revenue by Overlooking Customer Conversion Rates

There are plenty of reasons customers enter a retail store, only to walk out empty handed – long checkout lines, out of stock items, no sales associate to help them, etc. Yet, saving those lost sales can be addressed by tracking one simple metric, customer conversion rates.

The customer conversion rate is calculated by dividing sales transactions (number of people who made a purchase) by gross traffic counts (number of people who entered your store). Yet, according to Retail Customer Experience, only 35% of retailers currently track customer conversion rates. That’s pretty low for something that can have such a great impact on sales and is so easy to track. Tracking this information hourly will have the biggest impact. 

Tracking traffic counts has to be done at the door and there are numerous third-party applications that can do this.  With an integrated retail store management system and the right point of sale software, this information becomes a powerful tool. Increasing customer conversion rates is a great source of revenue many retailers overlook.

The truth is, there are an increasing number of people who enter a store, but don’t buy. In today’s consumer-driven market, customers are harder than ever to please. They have a ‘Delivery on Demand’ expectation from retailers and may very well leave if they can’t find what they are looking for, when they are looking for it.  Tracking customer conversion rates may be simple, but what to do with that information can be a challenge. With the right retail store management system, this drop in customer conversion rates can be prevented or improved upon for most retailers. 

But how do retailers leverage integrated system data to achieve higher conversion rates and sales? 

The first key is to understand why people don’t buy so you know what to fix.  Every store is unique, and each store within a chain will have a different customer conversion rate. Observing the customers in your stores is going to give you the best insight into why some customers don’t buy. Are they wandering without ever receiving help?  Are they going straight to their target item and finding it out of stock? Are they abandoning their shopping basket at the sight of long check-out lines? Are they showrooming to test out your products and leaving to buy online?

There are many reasons why a customer doesn’t buy. Observing the patterns within your store will help you isolate the reasons that apply to your chain. Additionally, many companies offer professional services and software to aid you in determining the customer conversion patterns within your stores that can integrate into your retail management system.

After identifying the reasons customer conversion is dropping, you’ll want to take a look at aligning your staff with traffic and train/reward them for converting these customers.  Traffic counts and conversion rates tend to be inversely related because many customers can’t find help in a busy store, or the lines are too long.  Boosting staff for peaks in traffic will ensure more customers can get help and avoid long lines, increasing your customer conversion rate.  Also, if you found that customers were leaving due to out-of-stocks, train your staff to assist customers in obtaining items through other channels within your chain.  A retail store management system, integrated with point of sale software, that can look up inventory online and in other stores and warehouses will get the customer the item they want without additional effort on the customer’s part, meeting their ‘Delivery on Demand’ expectation while increasing your sales.

Driving customer conversion rates in your stores is an extremely effective way to boost sales.  You’ve already worked hard to get these customers in the door – don’t lose them.

-Brenden Jenkins, GM of Retail & eTail Products at NetSuite

Piracle brings Automated Check Printing to NetSuite

The NetSuite ecosystem continues to enhance the core product and the user experience with functionality that make the user’s jobs easier and their business run better.

The latest enhancement is a NetSuite integration that’s helping to take the time, hassle and expense out of check writing. For consumers familiar with online banking, automatic payments and deposits, writing checks by hand may seem quaint, but for most businesses it’s the way things are still done.

And business that have advanced past hand-written checks still have to worry about security of check stock, dedicated printers and keeping the check numbers sequential.

Piracle Systems, an SDN partner and a NetSuite user itself since 2007, has created a Piracle Payment System (PPS) integration for NetSuite, that allows a business to issue checks directly from within the NetSuite system to a dedicated check printer.

Currently, NetSuite users send to a pre-printed check form. The Piracle Systems offering spares a business from having to worry about the security of the pre-printed forms, both the fraud risk and the handling requirements, and print personalized checks directly from NetSuite.

“That usually requires two or three people to run the process,” said Dan Parker, Marketing Director at Piracle. “We’re offering a streamlined capability to use blank stock for their process.”

The integration provides an enhancement that a number of NetSuite customers have requested for check printing capabilities.

Instead of pulling the preprinted check forms out of storage, counting out the right number for the bills at hand and ensuring they match the sequential numbers match the NetSuite system, users can simply send the requested checks to a dedicated printer.

Additionally, companies can customize the checks to match company branding, add additional reference or memo fields and adjust the style.

The functionality is currently available with all U.S. and Canadian banks with some Australian and European banks to come.

It’s just another example of how NetSuite is turning to partners to expand the product, one of many more to come.

-Raghu Gnanasekaran, Senior Director Business Development, NetSuite

Cazoomi Brings ‘beautiful harmony’ to Second Mile Water, Integrating NetSuite and Online Donation Software

Donations are the lifeblood of most charity organizations and allowing seamless, hassle-free donations can make a big difference in bringing them in.

NetSuite Solution Partner Cazoomi is helping one of the newest NetSuite.org charity grantees Second Mile Water in its work to end water poverty by integrating its online donation process with its NetSuite system using SyncApps®.

Second Mile Water, a nonprofit organization led by Founder & Executive Director Travis Ramos, is dedicated to not only helping people around the world gain access to clean water and sanitation, but also to making certain they have that access for generations to come.

Givers who support their mission often donate online. On the website, Second Mile Water teases that it “graciously accept gifts in the form of gold doubloons, gold bars and even golden idols,” but ensures that gifts in the form of credit card payments are securely processed by Authorize.Net. In order to integrate this donation process between Authorize.Net and NetSuite, Second Mile Water turned to Cazoomi for help.

Cazoomi, derived from the Japanese word “和美” meaning “beautiful harmony”, is a NetSuite Solution Partner enabling grantees’ software applications to talk to each other using SyncApps®, a real-time integration solution for over 100 different applications. In response to Second Mile Water’s needs, Cazoomi created a NetSuite SyncApp® for Authorize.Net so that donations flow seamlessly through both applications.

Having worked with hundreds of nonprofit organizations including NetSuite.org grantees Fonteva and Food for the Hungry Canada, Cazoomi has created a wide range of SyncApps for several other applications that nonprofits use every day, such as Act-On Software, cleverbridge, Constant Contact, Data.com, Delivra, ExactTarget, MailChimp, OneCallNow, Salesforce.com, Parature and Zendesk.

For those attending SuiteWorld, NetSuite’s customer conference, and the premier event for NetSuite partners and customers to collaborate and learn, Cazoomi will be demoing their solutions on platforms including Twilio, cleverbridge, Parature and Zendesk. Representatives will also be giving away a few free yearly plans to NetSuite customers who participate!

To demonstrate its dedication to helping nonprofit across the globe, Cazoomi provides a 50% discount on SyncApps® for nonprofits—a special value for those who need integration support.

If you’re interested in finding out if Cazoomi can sync up your organization’s disparate systems, visit them at www.cazoomi.com. Or meet them at SuiteWorld, May 13-16 in San Jose.  If you’d like to learn about becoming a NetSuite Solution Partner so that you can work with our grantees to help them achieve their missions, please reach out to us at giving@netsuite.com or chat with us online @NetSuiteOrg.

-Erin Dieterich, Global Employee Engagement Manager, NetSuite.org

A Dozen Reasons for Retailers to Attend SuiteWorld 2013

Retailers today face constant change, with new technologies and customer demands constantly emerging. The advent of mobile commerce, social media, customer behavior tracking and personalization, along with omnichannel shopping present fresh challenges to retailers.

To give NetSuite's retail customers a leg up on the competition, it is presenting an entire track of sessions devoted to retail at SuiteWorld 2013, May 13-16 in San Jose.  Each of these 12 dedicated retail–focused sessions is an excellent reason to attend SuiteWorld alone, nevermind the networking opportunities, keynotes and getting answers to NetSuite questions. They will address key issues such as retail marketing, online customer service, inventory management, sales forecasting, mobile commerce and multichannel selling.  You'll also get to explore the many advanced features of NetSuite’s end-to-end retail management solution. 

A few of the highlights include:

• Omnichannel Shopping — Here retailers learn the secrets to managing and integrating customer channels to create a flexible and seamless omnichannel shopping environment. The session will provide information and strategies for personalizing marketing and enhancing customer service across stores, websites, call centers, mobile, and social platforms while driving growth and revenue.

 

• Business Intelligence Tools for Multi-Channel Retailers —This session teaches retailers how to get real value from their customer data.  It will discuss how to use metrics and real-time analytics for inventory management, supplier evaluations and marketing campaigns.

 

• CRM in an Omnichannel World — Customers come to you over many different channels, including brick and mortar stores, mobile phones, and social media.  Providing them all with consistent high-quality service is a critical challenge.  Retail experts explain how to create a 360-degree profile of your customers and leverage it to provide the best service over every channel. 

 

• Retailing Beyond the Suite — Looking for a specific feature not currently available in your NetSuite retail solution? You may find it among the many third-party tools and applications created by industry vendors and NetSuite partners.  Attend this session and learn about many add-on products, from biometric security devices to retail traffic counters.

Often the best ideas come from your peers. Learn from other successful retailers at the session on Customer Success: Learning from Your Retail Peers. In this open forum, you'll learn the best practices and strategies of other retailers.  And don't forget to attend SuiteWorld's networking events and swap ideas with other conference goers.  

Register now for SuiteWorld and get the inside track on the newest technologies and best practices used by successful retailers. 

-Brenden Jenkins, GM of Retail & eTail Products at NetSuite

Why Multi-tenancy in the Cloud Matters

The hype around cloud computing has been going on long enough that even the derogatory term for it — cloud washing — is several years old.

Yet, with companies left and right fabricating their own cloud supremacy — what we’ve termed the False Dawn of the Fake Cloud  here before — buyers are left to sort through the fog. That’s why explaining the merits of multi-tenancy matter.

Economies of Scale

Running business applications in a single instance, whether it’s on-premise, with a hosting provider or with an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider such as Amazon, does not provide the economies of scale of a multi-tenant solution. A hosted provider, aka the old Application Service Provider (ASP), model may save a company the hassle of managing hardware. Using IaaS for applications may allow companies to tap into shared commodity hardware. But running all customers on one instance of software and shared hardware means big savings. Some vendors might suggest that the advantage is only to the cloud provider, but be sure that savings are passed along to the customer. Just do a little price comparison and you’ll find out for yourself.

No More Version Lock

Cloud customers using a multi-tenant solution don’t have to worry about being stuck four versions behind the way they do with hosted software.  Ask customers whether they want the latest version of software and the answer is almost always yes. Unfortunately, the follow-up questions are how much does it cost and how disruptive will it be? Customers of multi-tenant solutions don’t need to worry about either one. Upgrades come as part of the subscription service and enhancements are iterative and gradual, what many end users have come to expect based on their experiences with consumer applications.

Investing in the future

Furthermore, multi-tenancy means the money being spent on applications isn’t just maintaining the status quo. Now, the money spent on a vendor like NetSuite is no longer being spent simply on what you have. You’re spending on the newest and latest versus just keeping the lights on. It’s benefiting from all the enhancements made by the vendor as opposed to waiting for it.

Ask the question

Multi-tenancy is so important that when software buyers are evaluating cloud software, whether the solution is multi-tenant or not (a true cloud solution or a hosted solution) is one of the top six questions to ask.

They are:

1. What is the vendor’s viability, cloud track record?
2. What are cloud SLA commitments, transparency?
3. Does the cloud vendor have the right certifications?
4. Is it hosted or a true cloud solution?
5. Has the provider achieved scale?
6. Can it be customized, extended, and integrated?

-Vishrut Parikh, Director, Product Marketing at NetSuite

CRN Channel Recognition a Tribute to NetSuite, Partners

Recently, NetSuite and I were recognized by CRN with a pair of honors. The NetSuite Solution Provider Program was awarded a 5-Star Partner designation in the CRN 2013 Partner Program Guide and I was named a CRN Channel Chief. It was the fifth year in a row for me and the third year NetSuite has been so honored.

While I’m both thrilled and grateful for the recognition, I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the hard work of the growing NetSuite partner community. We have a great group of partners taking advantage of the opportunity we’ve created to spread the cloud message and drive customer success. And there are more joining us every day. These businesses realize that cloud computing has changed the way companies think about ERP and running a business. This is validated by the many recent partners who are joining the Solution Provider Program because their customers were coming to them, asking about cloud ERP. These partners needed to get into the cloud to stay competitive, and win the customer of the future. Businesses want freedom from the aging on-premise systems of the past. They don’t want to be tied down to managing servers and data centers and hassling with upgrades when the Cloud enables them to focus those resources on expanding their businesses as they see fit. 

The channel is taking note of the rapid rush to the cloud. Analyst projections point to a $32 billion addressable market for ERP and CRM business applications and we are at a rich inflection point as Y2K-era solutions are reaching end of life and need replacing. With the industry’s first cloud channel program NetSuite has more than 14 years of experience and wisdom to bring to an exploding market. And we’re not worried about cannibalizing our legacy non-cloud business either; that’s why we can offer industry-leading margin and incentive programs, like NetSuite SP 100.

In short, the combination of a world-class product, a dedicated family of partners and a perfect storm of opportunity for the cloud have helped to garner this recognition for our program. So thank you to CRN, thank you to our partners, thank you to my team here at NetSuite. We plan to keep winning.

And stay tuned for more news about our partners and the service they’re providing in the weeks leading up to SuiteWorld 2013.

-Craig West, VP, Channel Sales

NetSuite.org Promotes Greener Offices and Communities on Earth Day

The NetSuite SuiteImpact Teams, part of the NetSuite.org corporate citizenship program, have been giving back to our environment and helping our employees live and work in greener offices and communities. Today, I’m excited to celebrate Earth Day by recognizing our fantastic Austin Office, which has taken on an inspiring project at a local school. Tony Caporal, a solutions consultant in Austin and one of the Ambassador leaders of our SuiteImpact team, described the project in this interview.

Erin Dietrich: Tell us about your recent SuiteImpact Austin Project.

Tony Caporal: This spring, our office decided we wanted to make a difference in the local community by helping children and the environment. We took on a project to create a vegetable garden at a local charter school that was requested by the grade 6-9 Science Teacher and conducted in partnership with the school and a local non-profit organization called Green Corn Project. Green Corn is a local nonprofit committed to educating and assisting central Texans in growing organic food gardens. GCP digs gardens for qualified applicants in Austin, Texas. Eligibility criteria typically include financial eligibility, disability
eligibility and school-based eligibility. The organization started in 1998 and is committed to teaching others to grow healthy and nutritious food leveraging available resources. You can find out more about them at http://www.greencornproject.org/.

Dietrich: Why is it important for schools to have vegetable gardens?

Caporal: There is a volume of research that shows positive correlation between children growing their own food and healthy food and lifestyle habits. With childhood obesity at epidemic levels, schools are trying to understand how to best engage learners to take charge of their bodies and actions with regard to food choices. Additionally, educators can teach a variety of lessons while gardening including math (volume of soil to grow food), science (bugs, seeds, life cycle, soil, water, etc), language arts (blogging about their experiences is a frequent experience, keeping a garden journal is always a great idea) and life skills (teaching kids how to cook their food). First Lady Michelle Obama has been a champion of this by providing small grants that are often matched by local companies (like Lowe’s , Home Depot, etc.) and encouraging children (and their families) to eat more nutritionally dense foods.

In Austin, starting at the elementary level, students are learning to grow food, keep chickens and compost. A few of these schools have incorporated their garden bounties into their school lunch programs and the cafeteria workers are composting nearly 90% of the food waste that then creates the soil the kids use to grow food that ends up on their plates. As students graduate to Middle School, they can participate in the Green Tech program that incorporates these same skills on a much larger scale – teaching students to be ambassadors and junior Master Gardeners in their communities.

Dietrich: That is amazing—what a great program. Why was it important to you/the office to get involved with this?

Caporal: A few colleagues had wanted to participate in digging a garden and learning how to garden at their homes. This was a great opportunity to teach skills, help others and make a positive impact in the Austin community.

Dietrich: What do you think was the biggest benefit of the project?

Caporal: The biggest benefit was seeing all of the children getting excited about growing
food and being engaged in the process. It is also fun for camaraderie—it’s always a good time when we get to hang out with each other in these types of settings.

Dietrich: I heard that recently you introduced some new green elements to the office- can you tell us about that?

Caporal:  We did! We’re proud to report that the Austin Office now has a Bakashi Composter in our kitchen and we are recycling all paper, aluminum, glass and food waste.

Dietrich: Okay, to wrap it up, we wanted to ask the question that’s clearly on all of our
minds…. If you were a superhero who was saving the planet what would your power be?

Caporal: My superhero powers would be to either (1) have the power to supply fresh and
clean water to the entire world or (2) have the power to provide fresh food to everyone in the world. Without food and water – civilization would cease to exist and to date, these two issues remain major obstacles to developing nations and their people.

Dietrich:  Excellent! In the meantime, keep up the amazing work being a superhero to the Austin office, helping them give back to the local community and find ways to live more environmentally friendly lives.