The NetSuite Podcast

Founded in 1998, NetSuite is the world’s first cloud company. Our suite of business software is used globally by more than 41,000 organizations. This podcast features interviews with the people behind the technology and stories from businesses using it ev

The CFO Agenda: Packer Fastener’s Brian Hogeland 01/21/2025

NetSuite SuiteAnalytics: Listen and Learn 12/09/2024

NetSuite SuiteAnalytics: Listen and Learn Find out more about NetSuite LCS and check out a list of upcoming events and available courses: NetSuite Principal Education Consultant Mark Gildea from the Learning Cloud Support (LCS) team goes deep on how NetSuite analytics and reporting work and how customers can get the most out of them for the second episode in our Listen & Learn series. Mark touches on who will benefit from a greater understanding of NetSuite SuiteAnalytics [3:34] before breaking down the different ways to query data in NetSuite [5:12], including saved searches, reports, and workbooks [7:08]. If you’re a beginner, Mark provides a few suggestions on how you can up your skills when it comes to NetSuite reporting [9:59]. He then shares SuiteAnalytics use cases where he’s seen customers find success [15:21] and how these insights can be valuable to employees across the business [18:25]. From there, the NetSuite expert shares more about live classes from LCS [19:29] and additional training sessions that come with the LCS Company Pass [25:38]. Like what you learned? Subscribe Now! Follow Us Here: Mark Gildea: Oracle NetSuite LinkedIn: Facebook: Instagram: Twitter: #NetSuiteAnalytics #SuiteAnalytics #NetSuiteReports #NetSuite #NetSuiteERP -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;04;07 - 00;00;21;17 Hey, SuiteListeners, welcome to The NetSuite Podcast. I'm Ian McCue, a cohost of this podcast, and today I'm excited to continue our Listen and Learn series. We kicked off this podcast series earlier this year with the goal of giving customers useful tips and tricks that will help them get more out of NetSuite, For part two of the series, 00;00;21;18 - 00;00;43;05 we're talking NetSuite Analytics with Mark Gildea, a principal education consultant on NetSuite’s Learning Cloud Support or LCS team. Mark describes the differences between NetSuite reports, saved searches, workbooks, and NetSuite Analytics Warehouse and the role each plays in giving stakeholders across your business the insights they need. He shares useful background information for beginners on how these tools work, 00;00;43;07 - 00;01;03;04 then dives into how you can identify the right tool for the job and specific use cases that have driven eye-opening takeaways for customers he's worked with. Mark also walks through the resources available for NetSuite users to deepen their expertise. That spans self-service training through MyLearn, a number of live events, and personalized training sessions with education consultants such as Mark. 00;01;03;06 - 00;01;26;29 If you're a NetSuite customer looking to take advantage of all the reporting analytics capabilities in NetSuite, this is the episode for you, and it's coming up next. You're listening to the NetSuite Podcast where we discuss what's happening within NetSuite, why we're doing it, and where we're heading in the future. We'll dive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts. 00;01;27;02 - 00;01;40;27 We’ll also feature customer growth stories, discussing the ups and downs of running a company and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale. 00;01;41;00 - 00;02;08;08 So to start out, Mark, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at NetSuite? Absolutely. As you said, my name is Mark Gildea, and I'm based here in Miami, Florida. I've been at NetSuite for three years now, and I'm a senior education consultant. And in addition to that, I lead a team of some analytics experts who deliver live event webinars. 00;02;08;08 - 00;02;31;01 And then I also participate in what we call Learning Labs that we deliver at various cities around the country. And so you're part of NetSuite Education Services and the Learning Cloud Support or LCS team. Could you remind our listeners about what your team does? Absolutely. First, probably want to know what LCS is—it's Learning Cloud Support 00;02;31;03 - 00;03;02;24 and what we do is we support what's called the LCS company Pass. And there are two, there's the standard and the premium. And then we also have what we call LCS live events or webinars. We support event packs, we also create videos, student guides, we do quick reference guides. And then also we have some advising sessions that we deliver that support the online training and what we call MyLearn. 00;03;02;26 - 00;03;40;20 And can you share a bit more about what topic you're going to be covering today on the podcast? Absolutely. Analytics, without question. It's my favorite thing that I deliver and analytics does incorporate different topics. So there are reports, there are saved searches, workbooks, and then this brand new edition called NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, also known as NSAW. And who do you think will kind of benefit the most from today's topic and from this conversation about analytics? 00;03;40;23 - 00;04;10;24 I would say the ultimate goal for our customers is to gain insights into their business. So I'd say, for example, a sales manager, obviously they want to know how well their sales reps are performing, maybe even where they're performing the best. You know, you got your project managers who are interested in how much did we sell the most of, the least of, what are the most profitable items. You can imagine 00;04;10;27 - 00;04;38;14 a warehouse manager needs analytics to understand how they’re processing their incoming, you know, their purchase orders or what's going out, those sales orders. Maybe have a production manager who needs to know how well your processes are running. And obviously the C-suite, because you need to know where you are, right, in order to make a plan of where you want to arrive, sort of that first step. 00;04;38;17 - 00;05;08;19 So I would say anybody in any company that relies on data to make informed decisions, and I don't think it means just managers. There are certainly sales reps that want to know what they're doing best so they can find out what they can exploit to do even better. Yeah, absolutely. It makes a lot of sense as we, you know, talk about data-driven decisions and people, you know, using data to kind of guide these key decisions, 00;05;08;19 - 00;05;32;06 so definitely see how it could be useful for really anyone in the company. How would you describe Mark kind of the differences among the different ways you can query data in NetSuite? And when might someone use one of those options over another? Great question, and absolutely a question that I hear from my clients. So let's kind of break it up into different products. 00;05;32;06 - 00;06;00;14 First, let's talk about so searches and reports. Now, those two modalities--and both of those are they're creating SQL for us, they’re interfaces that create SQL for us--and it's important to understand that they are accessing different datasets. But what they do is they give us real-time data that we can use to create these in-depth financial statements. 00;06;00;14 - 00;06;25;05 Our reports are really good at creating those statements, like income statement and balance sheet. They can also be set up to send alerts, for example, with saved searches. If you get a brand new customer in your sales queue, you can get an email. You can also set up a schedule to send out any of the financial reports quarterly, maybe to the CEO. 00;06;25;12 - 00;06;50;10 However, they can only--there's a little drawback--we can say that they can only join data by one level. So what does that mean? What that means is you can imagine you're doing a query on the customer record and the customer record happens to be attached to the transaction record. So I could query, let's say, the sales orders of the customer. 00;06;50;12 - 00;07;20;24 And then you've got that sales order that has a link to the item record and you can get that data for the item name, let's say, or the purchase price. Now in saved searches and reports, you can't make that double job to go from customer to transaction to item. And that's where SuiteAnalytics Workbooks comes into play. This particular modality has the benefit of what we call an infinite join. 00;07;20;27 - 00;07;56;20 So if you know databases, it's just that there to join datasets, so you can skip and you can combine data from disparate sources. Also with workbooks, you have the option of creating pivot tables and you can put those pivot tables on your dashboard, and that's a visualization that isn't available in either searches or reports. Now, reports can expand by levels, but it doesn't necessarily have that pivot and it also offers you different types of charts. 00;07;56;22 - 00;08;22;23 Now, that's where this new product comes into play. So we've had connectors for a long time, where you can connect from outside data sources to NetSuite. But then we have this NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, this is another separate product. The other three I mentioned come with everybody’s instance, everybody has access to reports, searches, and workbooks. NSAW is separate. 00;08;22;24 - 00;08;47;20 Now this is sort of workbooks on steroids because the visualizations that you can get from this product are things I've never even heard of. So you can imagine, you've got things called scatter plots, maps--of course I know what maps are--and sunburst charts. And not only does it connect it to other data sources, but many more than just a connector. 00;08;47;22 - 00;09;15;05 And it does one additional thing. It can maintain historical data. So you can imagine, you have companies buying other companies and changing the name. Typically, you would lose that continuity, but with NSAW, it will maintain that continuity all in one visualization and one, let's say canvas. Now, that comes to gosh Mark, that's a lot of information and a lot of querying methods. 00;09;15;05 - 00;09;44;00 Well, how do I know which one I should choose? That's one of the things that I get asked quite often. So the way that I would answer that question is to say if it's visualization and you're looking to do a stacked column or a stacked bar or area chart, then a workbook is what you're going to use. You can do with reports, but only those that can be made into snapshots, 00;09;44;07 - 00;10;05;01 and then you're limited to only an area, a line, a bar, a column, and a pie chart. And you can't stack any of that. And saved searches have the fewest visualizations, meaning it just has one--a column chart. So Mark, analytics can seem a little bit intimidating to a lot of people that maybe aren't as well-versed in this stuff. 00;10;05;03 - 00;10;31;12 What do you suggest we kind of start to, as we start to figure out, you know, how can we learn about these topics and how they apply to NetSuite? Great question. So those LCS Company Pass subscribers, they can access a variety of different training from MyLearn. And in MyLearn we have Learning Paths, and those are typically 4 to 11 hours. 00;10;31;12 - 00;11;01;19 Then we have courses, which are in chunks of about maybe an hour, hour and a half. And the same thing goes for a series that we call “How Do I?” So it's easy to access when you're on your home page in MyLearn, there's a big tile there or a big section there that has listing of those “How Do I? Courses, and those start from 5 minutes to I think an hour and 10 minutes. 00;11;01;22 - 00;11;30;18 So little chunks of knowledge. Then you also, right through MyLearn, and there's a tile that says “Live events.” You click on there and you've got access to all of these webinars that we deliver. Every single week, every day of the week, there's some live event webinar going on. Now specifically for saved searches, we do have well saved searches and workbooks, 00;11;30;18 - 00;12;06;00 that's every Wednesday. NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, that's brand new and that is every other Monday. And then reports we have a live webinar every Tuesday and those are delivered by education consultants such as myself. And you also will learn things that you wouldn't even find in SuiteAnswers or Help or not even in Google. We also do these Learning Labs that have workshops and those are all over the country, and then event packs. 00;12;06;02 - 00;12;27;27 Awesome. Well, lots of great options there for people to learn more and kind of build these skills. As we think about analytics, what are some of the challenges beginners face in basically getting the analytics or the information they need from NetSuite? Well, one of them we went over earlier and that's when we were talking about, you know, how do I know which modality to use? 00;12;28;00 - 00;13;08;27 So that brings me to a really important point. And the biggest challenge for new analytics users is understanding their data, their records, and how those records are linked together. Understanding how they can find the label of the field, because that's going to be their biggest challenge. And then, if they know and they go to my live events, as they learn all of those little tips and tricks on how to locate the field and display that information. 00;13;09;00 - 00;13;31;11 And the next thing to consider, we were talking about which modality to use, here's a big one to consider now that we're talking about understanding your data and how it links up. So, for example, you could go to a customer record in NetSuite and you can go to the financials subtab and you could see the AR aging. 00;13;31;11 - 00;14;06;05 It's going to tell you how many times the customer was late 0 to 30 days, 31 to 60, etc. and you'll see that each one has a label, but then when you go to do a saved search, you get this message that says "error, field not found.” So we all know, or maybe you don't know, but there are standard AR aging reports that we have available, and those all pull in using the reports modality, all of that AR information. 00;14;06;05 - 00;14;29;20 If we wanted to do that in a saved search, we would have to create a formula to do it. It could be done, but it's not as easy as just selecting a field. So, what does that mean Mark? It means that if you can't--because we mentioned earlier that reports have a data source that's separate from saved searches, that again is separate for workbooks-- 00;14;29;22 - 00;14;53;27 so just because the record, and in this case the customer record, has the field, doesn't mean that each modality can pull that data in. That is a major consideration is which one can pull in the data. So sometimes it's, “Well I can only pull it in using a report,” so you've got your answer: it would be a report. Yeah 00;14;53;27 - 00;15;18;15 that's great background to kind of know before you or as you maybe kind of dig into some of this stuff. NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud financial system, is everything you need to grow all in one place: financials, inventory, HR and more. Make better decisions faster so you can do more and spend less. See how at NetSuite.com/pod. 00;15;18;17 - 00;15;41;29 What are some of the other reports, searches, and workbooks in that with that you've found clients to find useful? Well, let's break it down. Let's start first with reports. So in reports we have a lot of great out-of-the-box reports, but all of them are customizable. So it's easy to just use those as, let's say, a template. 00;15;42;01 - 00;16;03;22 And one of the cool things that you could do with reports is, we’re all interested in comparing ourselves over time. We want to know not just what we did maybe by week, month, quarter, and year--all of that is preprogramed in reports, by the way. We can customize it, so we can say, you know what, I want to know sales today, 00;16;03;29 - 00;16;28;25 I want to know yesterday, I want to know this week and last week, and I want it relative to today. Well you can do that in reports and you can also do it our fixed, for example, relative to the date that you have the report filtered for. So you have the two options, relative to today or relative to a report date. You can do the same thing with matrix saved searches. 00;16;28;27 - 00;17;00;15 So those are also easily set up to make comparisons relative to today or in specific time periods. So you can imagine, you know, you could do sales. So a list of your, let's say your sales reps and how many sales orders they had last week, how many sales orders they had this week, how many they had 30 days ago, 60 days, 90 days. Or it could be fixed time, it could be quarter one, quarter two, quarter three quarter four. Or months, 00;17;00;15 - 00;17;31;01 right? You can even figure out, what day of the week are they selling the most. So you can even do it by day of the week. So you can get a lot of information using that matrix feature. And the same thing goes with workbooks. Now you got the ability to do a pivot table so, you know, reports you can expand level by level and the saved search, you can have that summary view and a detailed view. For workbooks, you get the pivot table, 00;17;31;05 - 00;18;07;02 so you got those little collapsible fields. So just imagine you got classification for the industry type and sales rep. So you could take all of that, you could pivot on the industry type, and you can expand and collapse that, and then you could put a subtotal and you don't have that ability to do in the matrix saved searches. And you can subdivide your columns, just like I mentioned for reports and matrix searches, but you can't choose relative time. 00;18;07;04 - 00;18;28;07 So it would be this quarter, last quarter, this month, last month, you get the picture. Yeah, that's great. It sounds like you can kind of be as big picture and as broad or as narrow as you want and really just get exactly the information you're looking for depending on what that is. Precisely. So it's easy to imagine, right, how customers could benefit from NetSuite Analytics, 00;18;28;07 - 00;18;56;12 but how have you seen all these customers that you work with benefit from all these awesome capabilities that you've been describing? Well, I mean, as I mentioned earlier, it's incredibly important to anybody who needs data to drive their decision-making. So your C-level is obviously going to benefit from understanding, you know, trends because we just mentioned, you know, comparing sales over time, for example. 00;18;56;12 - 00;19;24;08 So you can see if the trend is your friend. You could see where or what items are selling the most and where they're selling the most. So sales managers, of course, they're interested in knowing how well they're selling, am I making my goal, and certainly their direct reports are looking for that information as well. And then you've got, you know, production, not only the production manager, but those people who are being evaluated, 00;19;24;08 - 00;19;45;04 they want to understand how well they're doing. And I wanted to dig in a little bit to some of the other ways that our customers can learn about the analytics functionality in NetSuite. So you mentioned earlier that during the live events that LCS does, you teach things that aren't available through MyLearn or SuiteAnswers? Could you elaborate on that a little bit? 00;19;45;06 - 00;20;09;27 I'd be happy to. Every year we have we have our regular cadence as I mentioned earlier, for the saved searches every Wednesday and we deliver a different topic. Well, the fourth Wednesday of every month we deliver something new in saved searches. So let me give you two examples of two live events that I delivered earlier this year. 00;20;10;02 - 00;20;34;28 In fact, I delivered one of them just... /episode/index/show/12aef361-1eee-4e8c-b82f-7e9d8ac5e3b9/id/34348355

The CFO Agenda: Vytalize Health's Jess Wijesekera 11/05/2024

The CFO Agenda: Vytalize Health's Jess Wijesekera Learn more about NetSuite Planning and Budgeting: In this special episode of the NetSuite Podcast focusing on the CFO’s agenda for 2025, cohost Megan O'Brien sits down with Jess Wijesekera, SVP of Global Accounting at Vytalize Health, a leading value-based care platform. They start the episode by discussing Jess’ background and what brought her to her current role [1:55]. Jess then delves into Vytalize Health and its exponential growth over the last several years [6:26]. Megan and Jess discuss technology and talent issues [15:49]. They end the podcast episode by covering Vytalize Health’s priorities for 2025 [31:52]. Follow Us Here: Vytalize Health: Jess Wijesekera LinkedIn: Oracle NetSuite LinkedIn: X (Twitter): Instagram: Facebook: #NetSuite #CFOAgenda, #Accounting -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;04;21 - 00;00;28;20 Hello, all you Suite listeners. Thank you so much for tuning in to the NetSuite podcast. I'm Megan O'Brien, a co-host of the podcast. Now you all are in luck because today's episode marks the start of a mini series we are doing called The CFO Agenda. As we approach the end of 2024, we wanted to gauge what's on the docket for finance and accounting leaders. 00;00;28;23 - 00;00;50;23 In the first installment of the series, we have Jess Wijesekera, SVP of Global Accounting for Vytalize Health, a leading value based care platform. If you attended SuiteWorld or if you tuned into NetSuite OnAir to watch the main keynote, you would have seen her make an appearance with NetSuite Founder and EVP Evan Goldberg. 00;00;50;25 - 00;01;19;08 Vytalize Health has grown by a casual 90,778% over the last three years, so this episode is a great pulse check on what high-growth companies are prioritizing this coming year. We talk all about Jess’ background and her current role of Vytalize Health, the company's exponential growth, and her plans for 2025. With that, let's go ahead and dive in. 00;01;19;11 - 00;01;45;23 You're listening to the NetSuite Podcast, where we discuss what's happening within NetSuite, why we're doing it, and where we're heading in the future. We'll dive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts. We'll also feature customer growth stories discussing the ups and downs of running a company and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale. 00;01;45;25 - 00;02;03;26 Hi, Jess. How are you today? Hey, Megan. Good. Really great to be here. Good. We're so happy to have you. Yeah. Thank you. All right, well, we're going to dive right in because we have so much to cover. We want to hear, first of all, about your background. Did you always know that you wanted to get into accounting? 00;02;03;29 - 00;02;26;29 I did not. But I was always very good at organizing people and organizing projects. And I think that organization has always really been a part of who I am. It's going to sound silly, but in kindergarten I used to and tell them where and how to jump rope, and they always just happily listened to what I had to say. 00;02;26;29 - 00;02;57;23 And I felt really like a natural leader and I knew I wanted to do something that captured my personality. So, for me, accounting is just a really nice because it's taking project management and organization and unpacking a puzzle takes a lot of patience, which I'm learning to have a lot of patience, but it takes a lot of kindness for interacting with other departments and some tenacity with dealing with service providers. 00;02;57;23 - 00;03;31;23 So, I didn't know I always wanted to do it, but it is feeling like a really good fit. I couldn't help but stalk you a little bit on LinkedIn. You majored in accounting at Villanova, which is where I went. Yeah, Wildcats, you know, so I know I just had a great experience there and I chose it really because they had a very solid business school and I had this accounting professor who taught financial accounting, and he told me that accounting was the hardest major in the business school. 00;03;31;26 - 00;03;58;08 And if I could do accounting, that I could do anything, I could do finance, I could do management, I could do marketing. And he was really right. And I followed my accounting degree up with a master's in finance at Boston College. And it's really worked well, I think, to have this understanding of everything that’s accounting is past and everything that's finance is future and we meet in the present. 00;03;58;12 - 00;04;28;26 So it's kind of helped shape my career and where it's gone. That is such a cool perspective on it. And, and speaking of your career, could you talk a little bit about your past roles and your path to where you are now? Yeah, so like many accounting majors, I started at the Big Four, so I was at EY and I stayed longer than most. I was there about 15 years and I did a grand tour of about four offices. 00;04;28;29 - 00;04;55;29 So, I started in Palo Alto, and then did Boston, San Francisco, and I also did a three year secondment in the London office. And every time I felt I was going to leave public accounting, I stayed because I got a new opportunity or worked on a new client or with a new team. And it was this feeling that I could really add value, but also learn something completely new, which added to my skill set. 00;04;56;02 - 00;05;20;15 And I can't even tell you the number of times that I've cried in an audit room. I do think about those experiences and really how it shaped me. I got to work on Warner Brothers and Hawaiian Airlines, and towards the end of my career there, I was a national instructor for 606 when that Rev Rec standard was completely new and nobody knew what to do. 00;05;20;15 - 00;05;48;11 So that helped me with my foundation for where I am now. But after 15 years I decided to go into industry, so I started as an assistant controller. I was at a bottling company and my very first day on the job I realized I've never booked a journal entry in my whole life and a few roles since I have taken on kind of new areas of responsibility and kept growing my own skillset. 00;05;48;13 - 00;06;14;09 And I'm actually really lucky now to have brought on a couple of people I've worked with in the past, you know, kind of through EY and other companies because we just really enjoy working together. So that all of that brought me to my life. Well, I mean, I don't think you've really worked for a Big Four unless you've cried somewhere in an office, so you, you sent that experience home. Probably an office without windows. 00;06;14;11 - 00;06;40;07 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did my crying in a phone booth, so. Yeah, yeah, No windows. We're all here now. We're all here. And better for it. So speaking of Vytalize, you ended up joining Vytalize Health about two years ago? Can you tell our listeners a little bit about what Vytalize Health does? Yeah, so Vytalize is a value-based care company. 00;06;40;09 - 00;07;10;11 Value-based care is a collection of doctors and service providers and payers that work collectively to have better outcomes for patients. And coincidentally, that's usually at a reduced cost. So, what we do is sit between the primary care physician and CMS, which is the Center for Medicare Services. So we help our physicians strengthen the relationship that they have with their patients. 00;07;10;13 - 00;07;41;13 And if we succeed in that and meet certain quality metrics and achieve these better health outcomes, then CMS as the payer, they give us a share of that. So, I'll use a fancy terminology, but it's really aligning incentives, right? So, we're all incentivized for providing better, higher quality care, not necessarily more care. And it's really working because we're giving these doctors more time to spend with their patients. 00;07;41;13 - 00;08;18;00 So, we provide services like care coordination and virtual home care, in-home care. And it's particularly important for the Medicare population. You know, if you think about 65 plus and then people that are, you know, often not able to get to the doctor, in-home care is so critical. And really, we see ourselves as an extension of the physician so that we operate as part of their practice and really preventing hospitalizations and improving the quality of life and, you know, for an accounting major, that's certainly something I can get behind. 00;08;18;00 - 00;08;42;02 And, you know, the mission and kind of what we're doing, it feels really good. What does a typical day in your shoes look like? So like many companies in the pandemic, we went remote. So I have a little office that I use in a coworking space and I bring my puppy with me and we have a lot of meetings. 00;08;42;02 - 00;09;07;10 So back-to back-video meetings, I do a lot of meetings direct with one on ones, with my direct reports. We are constantly meeting with our EY tax team, Connor Group accounting specialists, so treasury and tax report through me. And then I just took on the FP&A function as well. So, this week was a lot of meeting with department heads to try and craft our budget. 00;09;07;12 - 00;09;34;04 But I find my typical day is really helping my team make good decisions and collaborative points of view and just making sure that we're prioritizing the right thing at the right time. Because like so many companies growing as quickly as we are, you know, you're this can be really long and kind of helping decide what comes first and what can come when, as you know, is a really big part of my job when I also have the puppy. 00;09;34;04 - 00;09;57;04 So she's as cute as can be. And we try and get out of some walks in between all of the meetings. Yeah. So for our frequent listeners, the puppies she's referring to is actually the guide dog puppy that attended SuiteWorld that we talked about in our SuiteWorld. recap. We are obsessed with Mayberry. I think she might be the new NetSuite mascot she's so sweet. 00;09;57;04 - 00;10;19;10 So she's training to become a guide dog for the blind. And I'll have her through next June. And she's part of the Walnut Creek Club here in the San Francisco Bay Area. And she's just a little delight. So her having her experience SuiteWorld in Vegas, I think opened her eyes. I mean, she's doing really great. 00;10;19;12 - 00;10;53;13 She did so good. She was all scared of the casino. Yeah, we all are. So Vytalize Health has this crazy growth trajectory. So the company ranked number one on the Inc. 5000 across all industries after achieving $1.5 billion in revenue for 2023 and a three-year revenue growth rate of 90,778%. Can you delve into the Vytalize Health's growth story and how that all came about? 00;10;53;15 - 00;11;22;19 Yeah. So Megan, work with me here on some math backwards. So to get to 1.5 billion, that means we started as a single health care practice. So we had one practice. It was in Rockland, Maryland, and it still exists, but we've grown from about one medical practice to over 200, I'm sorry, 2600 primary care physicians. We found that we were very good at these additional services. 00;11;22;19 - 00;11;49;15 Right. The care coordination and helping the physicians make better decisions. And instead of growing our own practices, the business went through kind of the modeling approach that we would instead partner with physicians and they would join our value based care program, which is it's called Accountable Care Organizations. So those practices joined our ACO and we taught them value-based care. 00;11;49;18 - 00;12;18;21 And through that we shared a part of our savings with them. And in that model, we were really able to grow quickly. So we went from, you know, just a few thousand Medicare beneficiaries to now over 260,000 patients. And that's a staggering number because we're probably taking care of someone that, you know, and it's part of Medicare's goal to have every Medicare patient in an ACO by 2030. 00;12;18;24 - 00;12;41;04 So for people who don't know what value-based care is, all of the sudden they must participate in value-based care by 2030, in six years we'll be there. And Vytalize is really helping with that transition. And it's working. It's working really well. We're seeing a lot improved outcomes for patients and decreased hospital hospitalizations. And yeah, it's going really well. 00;12;41;10 - 00;13;06;23 Yeah, clearly, clearly clear. So were there any challenges that came with this rapid growth? And if so, how did Vytalize help tackle them? Do you remember Facebook? They used to have this tagline and slogan and it said, ‘Move fast and break things,’ right? And I was googling it recently and I was like, I think they have abandoned that tagline. 00;13;06;25 - 00;13;35;10 Yeah, maybe with the move to Meta, they're like, Yeah, maybe not and break things. Yes. So that's the hardest part, right? Is because you can move too quickly and break things and sometimes that's an okay thing. But a lot of the times we should really be adding a lot more thought, a lot more time and a lot more considerations to some of the larger decisions that are going on. 00;13;35;10 - 00;14;02;29 So really, to me, the biggest challenge with this rapid growth is taking the time and the thought process to really think through decisions and not move as quickly as you can. So one of the other things that we've done to kind of circumvent that is adding a policy and procedures committee and a policy and procedures role in our organization. 00;14;02;29 - 00;14;37;20 And I'm not going to take any credit for that because it was already in existence and it was already working really well. But we were able to then write some policies pretty early on that helped our controls and helped our vendor contracts who could engage if vendor who could approve a payment. And a lot of those early policies and we're still writing them, but a lot of those early policies helped us, you know, be able to go to the rest of the business and say, ‘Hey, you know, you can't X, Y, Z because of this policy’ or ‘You can, but you must do it in this way.’ 00;14;37;24 - 00;15;07;28 And kind of making that consistent across the organization was really helpful for me. Well, that kind of leads into a good question for our listeners here. Any best practices for companies that might be looking to grow or any pitfalls to avoid? I think growth in general is having good technology to scale, right? So how do we make something a repeatable process and how do we put it in a system to be able to make it repeatable? 00;15;08;01 - 00;15;39;14 My app director, Lisa Kemper, and I joke all the time that life is full of one-offs, right? Like this is all a one off and if you're tackling something over here and over there, you would need 300 people in your accounting department to be able to support all of the one-offs. So, we very much we do use this Policy and Procedures Committee, but we're also standing up a lot of our tech products and using NetSuite to be able to get, you know, some standardization. 00;15;39;14 - 00;16;07;11 But also I'll call it kill the one offs, right? We can't be doing an exception. Everything has to fit into a process and become part of the rule. And how has Vytalize Health been using NetSuite? Oh my gosh. We're big, you know, signing some new statements of work all the time. So, yes, I love it. I know the one we just signed was the budgeting and planning tool right now. 00;16;07;11 - 00;16;33;05 So we started with the financials and budgeting and planning. But I would say we're really starting to use a lot of the subledgers in the way that they were intended to be used, and that has been really helpful for us. So, our biggest NetSuite, and I spoke about this at SuiteWorld, is our bank reconciliations. We have, you know, 47 bank accounts and transactions galore. 00;16;33;11 - 00;16;58;00 Right? And sort of as we talk about standardization and automation and killing, the one offs, what we're doing is making sure that we can put something in a process and make it repeatable. And the bank reconciliation module has started to learn the way that we're matching off our bank recs and the way that we're matching off transactions. And it will start to do that for us. 00;16;58;00 - 00;17;21;05 So every time we make a bill payment debit this account credit that account it learns it and then it'll just do it in the background and then we approve it. So this used to take three people their whole full-time job. Not to mention there are a lot of errors in this process. And now that we actually turned on the bank rec module, it's kind of all working for us in the background. 00;17;21;05 - 00;17;47;26 And I was even talking with my accounting manager, Kelly Allen, and I said yesterday I was like, Kelly, how's the bank matching going? And she's like, ‘You know, I don't even hear about it.’ It's really working for us. And, and it's been helpful to start to automate these things so we don't have to think about it. And it previously it just felt like we were playing catch up, you know, 45 days. 00;17;47;29 - 00;18;06;14 It would take us to close the books. And, you know, 45 days ago was the end of August or August is long gone by now. Right? We're making business decisions all the time. Do we need more? You know, funding from investors? We want to take a loan, whereas, you know, where are these larger payments coming from? We're going to we can't wait 45 days for anything. 00;18;06;14 - 00;18;32;25 So it's helped us, you know, make some real-time decisions. Well, why is having a strong tech stack so important for Vytalize Health specifically and how did it perhaps help facilitate some of the massive growth that you mentioned previously? We had a previous controller at Vytalize and every time we needed financials, he would say, okay, like I need three days. 00;18;32;27 - 00;19;02;08 He would take, you know, we had QuickBooks and, you know, it was the right size and shape for us when we started. So, we're using QuickBooks and he would take three days to prepare a consolidation and then to do the elimination journal entries. And that was a very manual effort. And three days of those financials and, you know, the manual errors that could exist. 00;19;02;08 - 00;19;23;13 And, you know, it was almost like, well, I don't need it anymore that I asked for that three days ago. We've moved on. That wasn't at least, you know, last week. So finally I looked at him and I was like, we have to get this in NetSuite and we have to do like journal entries and post them on the system. 00;19;23;13 - 00;19;43;21 And, you know, we're going to need elimination entries and we're going to need to have this reporting in a moment's notice. And, you know, when we ask for the report, I need it in 20 minutes, not three days. So we moved it all into NetSuite We've also gotten a tool called Workiva and Workiva connects to NetSuite. 00;19;43;21 - 00;20;09;08 And I'll give a shout out to Ryan Mueller, who's our senior manager of tech accounting and NetSuite syncs with Workiva so we can produce financial statements and reports at a moment's notice. And I can say, you know, I want the Q2 report to investors and I want that Q2 report to include these entities and Workiva pulls the information from NetSuite. 00;20;09;08 - 00;20;32;08 And then we can have it ready for an investor immediately. And that has really been a game changer for us. We do a lot of reporting. We have board members and boards of each of our ACOs, so there's about six of those. We need frequent reporting for about six... /episode/index/show/12aef361-1eee-4e8c-b82f-7e9d8ac5e3b9/id/33808002

Tips from Venture Capitalists on Fundraising Right Now 10/07/2024

Tips from Venture Capitalists on Fundraising Right Now Learn more about NetSuite’s Business Grows Here event series: In this episode of the NetSuite Podcast, cohost Megan O’Brien sits down with JD Weinstein, Global Director of Oracle’s Venture Capital Practice. He discusses the findings from a panel he moderated at NetSuite’s Business Grows Here event stop in St. Louis [2:01]. They then play excerpts of the panel featuring Dan Conner, general partner at Ascend Venture Capital, and Craig Herron, managing principal at iSelect [8:50]. They discuss the advice they have for early-stage founders, including tripling the amount of investors they reach out to and tripling the amount of time spent fundraising [15:46]. Dan and Craig cover the status of dry powder since its 2021 highs [27:37]. They conclude by sharing their top takeaways for founders [36:25] Follow Us Here: Business Grows Here: JD Weinstein LinkedIn: Dan Conner LinkedIn: Craig Herron LinkedIn: Oracle NetSuite LinkedIn: X (Twitter): Instagram: Facebook: #NetSuite #VentureCapital #Fundraising --------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;04;04 - 00;00;40;00 Hello everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in to the NetSuite Podcast. I'm Megan O'Brien, a co-host of the podcast. We have quite a unique episode in store for you all today. Recently, NetSuite has been hosting events in various different cities across the US called Business Growth Here. This tour is geared towards helping local entrepreneurs and business leaders discover strategies and tools essential for business expansion, as well as valuable insights on effectively managing all aspects of a growing business from cash flow to overall operations. 00;00;40;02 - 00;01;10;11 The events are tailored to the unique challenges and opportunities of each city and feature local leaders and visionaries. In the Saint Louis tour stop, one of the sessions that really stood out to me was a panel on the current venture capital landscape. It was moderated by JD Weinstein, global director of Oracle's venture capital practice, and featured Dan Conner, general partner at Ascend Venture Capital, and Craig Herron, managing principal at iSelect. 00;01;10;13 - 00;01;35;22 There's a lot of great insight in there around the market build back, what venture capitalists are looking for right now in companies, and how founders can increase their chances of getting funding. After hearing that, I knew I wanted to share the valuable insights with all of you, our wonderful listeners. With that, let's jump in, because you're not going to want to miss out on this episode. 00;01;35;24 - 00;02;02;02 You're listening to the NetSuite Podcast, where we discuss what's happening within NetSuite, why we're doing it, and where we're heading in the future. We'll dive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts. We'll also feature customer growth stories discussing the ups and downs of running a company and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale. 00;02;02;05 - 00;02;22;01 To kick us off, we have JD Weinstein, the global director of Oracle's venture capital practice, who moderated the panel. He joined us for a quick interview just to give an overview of the session and some of his key takeaways. Could you begin by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself and what you do for Oracle? Sure thing. 00;02;22;03 - 00;02;56;26 My name is JD Weinstein. I joined Oracle just over six years ago and now lead our global venture practice. I've previously worked for various early stage accelerator programs and strategic or corporate venture funds to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses with special advantages. At Oracle, we work alongside VCs globally to help early stage portfolio companies scale with our cloud technology solutions, global customer network, and rich enterprise ecosystem. 00;02;56;28 - 00;03;22;25 So that starts with NetSuite and Oracle Cloud infrastructure, but extends to database to Java and our rich application suite. We also make strategic equity investments alongside our M&A function under our corporate development line of business. You were the moderator for a session at the St Louis Business Grows Here event called Raising Capital to Fuel Growth in an AI-Driven Era. 00;03;22;27 - 00;04;00;10 Could you give us an overview of the panel for all our listeners? Sure. We covered a good bit of ground here, starting with the state of the economy and what it means for venture and founders growing their businesses in this era. I had the pleasure to interview Craig Herron, the managing principal of iSelect, a venture fund focused on the agrifood supply chain and health care, and Dan Connor, a general partner at Ascend Venture Capital, who leads an early stage thematic VC specializing in data-centric companies. 00;04;00;12 - 00;04;30;13 We talked about the state of the economy and what it means, from rising interest rates, fewer public listings, valuation correction to other complex macro headwinds, and how it really translates to start up business building. And then how that has changed fundraising in this climate overall too. We spoke to what makes a great business venture backable. So what the general partners on stage look for in exceptional entrepreneurs. 00;04;30;16 - 00;04;57;20 And then we also talked to tactical advice on just a general approach to fundraising and how to run a successful process. Hint: exactly like you would a sophisticated enterprise sales strategy. And then, of course, we concluded with the surge of AI capabilities and how we're going to be more productive with less. How that's impacted our industry. Why do you think this session was so important to include in our St Louis Business 00;04;57;20 - 00;05;23;27 Grows Here event? I mean, what is it about today's landscape that made it especially timely? Yeah, I think it's so important that we highlight the investment in commercial activity that's booming in the Midwest and specifically in Saint Louis and broader Missouri for this Business Grows Here event. Oftentimes we get this false perception of only venture activity buzzing on the coasts. 00;05;24;00 - 00;05;50;24 And while the majority of megarounds do happen there, at the earliest stages, we're seeing more and more data show the spread of entrepreneurial ecosystems emerging across this entire mid-continent. Steve Case and The Rise of the Rest phenomena, right? And so, with connectivity everywhere in the world, everybody has access now to build a great company. What was the highlight of the venture capital panel in Saint Louis for you? 00;05;50;25 - 00;06;24;24 Any particularly interesting thoughts you heard? You know, I can recall, I loved a quote that Dan pointed out in the panel, which was really just a description for founders to go back to the fundamentals that I see so many startups miss. Your customers are the most important stakeholders, period. Full stop. Without them, there is no business. So he describes a funny metaphor for saying they look for mission-critical businesses to invest in. 00;06;24;28 - 00;06;49;03 And so, if a customer, you know, the example he gave was somebody's hair is on fire and you may be selling sandwiches, which could be the best in the world or best in town, but someone's hair is on fire, that they're probably not going to want to sandwich. A much better business would be, you know, leasing fire extinguishers or something else that drives mission criticality. 00;06;49;05 - 00;07;19;13 What are your thoughts on the venture capital landscape as a result of the panel? What did you leave with? I'm really bullish on the venture landscape as I've always been and believe that entrepreneurs have the chance to shape the world for the better while advancing humanity. In this particular time, especially when we look at, you know, other hard times in the economy, an astounding number of companies were created from the last ‘08 Recession. 00;07;19;15 - 00;07;48;29 WhatsApp, Venmo, Pinterest, Slack, Uber, Airbnb, list goes on. Same thing happened after '01. And just less than half of Fortune 500 companies can actually trace back to being created in a crisis. And so why is that? People look for security, behaviors shift immensely, fear plays in. So the world becomes a pretty giant opportunity for entrepreneurs to take advantage of in these times. 00;07;49;02 - 00;08;14;17 That's such a great description. Kind of uplifting, and I love it. So, to end it, are there any best practices that you have for any listeners here that might be seeking funding right now or in the near future? You know, there's one insight that's one insight that's always stuck with me profoundly, which is this: Investors invest in lines, not dots 00;08;14;17 - 00;08;40;25 metaphor. What that means is rarely investors will wire you funds after your very first meeting, which is a dot or a data point. More often than not, they're evaluating your execution, your communication, trust building over time. And so each meeting that you have with an investor is a dot or a potential data point. And what investors are really looking for is to connect those dots. They're investing 00;08;40;25 - 00;09;19;24 in that connection, that's fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us, JD. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Megan. Enjoyed it. NetSuite by Oracle. The number one cloud financial system is everything you need to grow all in one place. Financials, inventory and more. Make better decisions faster so you can do more and spend less. See how at NetSuite.com/pod. With that, let's jump into the panel recording with JD, Dan Connor, general partner at Ascend Venture Capital, and Craig Herron, managing principal at iSelect. 00;09;19;27 - 00;09;47;13 So, you know, today's climate in venture it's been an interesting couple of years to say the least. So investors are dealing with, you know, the uncertainty of rising interest rates, fewer public listings and exits, valuation corrections, and a bunch of other complex macro trends. And so hopefully Dan and Craig will just distill this information, maybe give us some insights as to how to raise money in this climate. 00;09;47;15 - 00;10;15;20 I still strongly believe that there is a ton of upside to growing a business in today's world. And so a brief introduction. Maybe we can start with Craig Herron, who is the managing principal of iSelect and then we'll move on to Dan, who is the general partner at Ascend Venture Capital. I'd love for all just to give us brief introductions of who you are and your fund’s focus and maybe your core thesis. 00;10;15;22 - 00;10;42;13 So iSelect Fund, we've deployed about $200 million over the last several years. We've invested in 78 companies. 65 of those are still active. Others, the others have exited. We invest in three areas: the agrifood supply chain, health and wellness with a focus on cardio, metabolic disease, and then food is health. How do we use nutrition to change the health care system? 00;10;42;15 - 00;11;07;14 Right. First, I'd like to say this is a great event, awesome job to everybody, the production team and all the staff. This is awesome. So I'm Dan Connor. I'm the founder and general partner of Ascend Venture Capital. We're a thematic VC, which means we're focused on a specific theme. Currently, the theme that we're investing under is this data-centric transformation that's happening across every industry. 00;11;07;16 - 00;11;30;00 The expectation that every decision should be made based on data. For instance, 15 years ago, when you used to land on a plane, there's sometimes I would go on the air and say, ‘This plane was just landed on autopilot’ and it used to freak people out. But now if you got on the plane and the pilot said, ‘I'm just gonna do this one by feel,’ people would be terrified. 00;11;30;00 - 00;11;55;08 So that just signifies how much that shift has taken place. We're investing out of our third fund right now, and just making trouble in the venture capital industry. Awesome, we love trouble. So before we go on with a couple of questions, I love just a quick show of hands just to see who we've got in the room, who are entrepreneurs or growing small kind of or early stage startups. 00;11;55;09 - 00;12;22;12 Can I get a show of hands? Traditional SMBs if you identify maybe over there? Great. Investors in the crowd? Okay. And then large enterprises, corporates? Okay. How about Cardinals fans? Okay. You guys aren't sleeping yet. Good. Great. So as you know, as we all know, many businesses hit an inflection point and need capital to fuel their growth. 00;12;22;12 - 00;12;44;14 But raising venture funding isn't always the most strategic decision. And so I'd love to hear from each of you what actually makes a great business venture backable? And then maybe what are some qualities of exceptional entrepreneurs? Dan, if you'd like to kick us off. Yeah. So initially in our search, we're looking for three things. Number one, does it solve mission critical problem? 00;12;44;17 - 00;13;08;22 Is the problem solving a problem? That is, is it a product solving a problem that ranks among the top three strategic priorities for the customer base? The example that the algorithm I give is if your hair is on fire, I could try and make a case that our sandwiches are the best in town. You're probably going to need a sandwich is some point in the future, but it's much better to be in the business of leasing fire extinguisher services at that point. 00;13;08;24 - 00;13;35;23 So mission criticality. Second is the business transformative? If it works, does it change the whole face of an industry? We’re not looking for a slightly better or slightly more socially conscious Uber, we're just we're looking for something that changes the way that things are done in an entire industry. And thirdly, is it a unique value proposition? Are they solving a problem that is completely different from how things are done today? 00;13;35;25 - 00;13;56;24 And are they the only one that's taken that approach? Those three things to me make a venture backable business. So I agree with everything Dan just said. I'd throw in two more in there. So first of all, size of market, right? If you're going after $100 million market, there's really just not enough room to scale there. 00;13;57;01 - 00;14;26;23 We're looking for markets that are, you know, potentially billions of dollars. So if you get a decent market share that there's a big opportunity for the company to scale and grow. And then second is team. You got to have a venture backable team at that point in time. So those are you know, typically we're looking for people that have come out of leading research institutions or, you know, have been entrepreneurs already once or. 00;14;26;25 - 00;14;57;10 You know, if they're in the AG business, they there's been a career of Monsanto in a specific area or have been at Danforth or, you know, some of the other kind of major centers in that given industry. And there's a really great metaphor that we like to share with a number of entrepreneurs that we work with, which is that as you go out to market and raise funding, investors, often they invest in lines, not dots. 00;14;57;12 - 00;15;31;03 And so what this means is that you may meet an investor on day one and you may walk out with a $10 million blank checks. That typically doesn't happen. 99 percent of the time. But what does happen is typically investors are looking to invest in each of these data points. Every time that you meet an investor and you show growth in your company or you communicate what's going on, you are overcoming challenges, it's the progression of how you go through business is often what, you know, we look for in early stage companies. 00;15;31;10 - 00;15;46;03 And so if you think of that strategy, then you can line up, you know, as you go to market, ‘I want to get as many of these lines in as possible.’ And so start these relationships as early as you can and demonstrate growth over time. 00;15;46;05 - 00;16;06;19 So like to that theme I'd love to hear from each of you, maybe more a little bit about like real tactical advice that you have for early stage founders. So often, like we get caught up with, you know, there's a lot of glitz and glamor of venture capital and they raise these $100 million rounds and how did you do it? 00;16;06;19 - 00;16;39;04 And $100 million rounds. Yeah, exclamation point. But what if you're just going for like an early call it seed or series A stage raise and you're kind of early to this practice, what best practices can you recommend? I'll jump in. So there are a lot there tend to be a lot of incubators and accelerators out there that are specifically focused on a given industry or segment. 00;16;39;04 - 00;17;12;03 And, you know, often if you've not been a successful entrepreneur previously, they provide a lot of great education. They have networks to introduce you to early adopter customers. And, you know, and they can also introduce you to VCs and typically have VCs or angels that are interested in investing. I guess secondly, you know, it's great if you're coming with a customer in hand, right? 00;17;12;03 - 00;17;39;18 Because every VC wants to see some sort of traction that you've there's actually been proof point that this actually is going to work in the marketplace. And I guess I'd leave it at those two to start with. Absolutely. Yeah. So three things I would add to that. See, seed and series A have gotten extremely squirrely right now. It's very hard to engage investors. 00;17;39;20 - 00;18;07;05 They're the number of investors who actually have capital to invest, has gone down, since 2021, when actually a lot of folks raised funds and then were immediately unsuccessful at investing them. The best way to lose a small fortune is to start with a big one, and that's what's happened in venture capital recently. So a lot of people have gotten tighter with their funds to invest in new companies at all versus doubling down on existing portfolio companies. 00;18;07;08 - 00;18;31;15 So seed and series A have gotten very squirrely. So the first piece of advice I would say is you got a triple the number of investors on your list that you plan to reach out to. Triple it. And then triple the time that it's going to take you to dedicate to fundraising because it's a slog and it's the number of times that you have to follow up with one investor to get a response has gotten has gotten a lot longer. 00;18;31;17 - 00;18;55;17 So that's what I would say is build the database of three times the number of investors that you're going to reach out to and reach out to every single one, one by one. It takes hard work, but I know I'm not the only troublemaker out here, so I feel like there's something that everybody is dedicated to. Secondly, as you have those calls, as you engage with those investors, you have to also be listening to what they're telling you about. 00;18;55;23 - 00;19;24;12 We invest in seed stage companies or how they define seed stage companies, or we invest in series A companies. And, you know, you're too early for us. As they say that to you, you say two things: One, okay, tell me your criteria so that you can take good notes on that call and then keep that database. And then thirdly, say if they're saying you're too early for them, say, would you mind if I put you on my investor newsletter to keep you updated in a lightweight way? 00;19;24;14 - 00;19;55;01 You'd be surprised the number of folks who do ask permission to put you on... /episode/index/show/12aef361-1eee-4e8c-b82f-7e9d8ac5e3b9/id/33316552

SuiteWorld 2024 Recap: All Systems Grow 09/30/2024

SuiteWorld 2024 Recap: All Systems Grow Register for On Air to access recordings of SuiteWorld keynotes, sessions, product demos, and more: In this episode of the NetSuite Podcast, cohost Megan O'Brien sits down with multiple guests to recap the SuiteWorld 2024 event. She is joined first by Craig Sullivan, group vice president of product management at NetSuite, who covers new UX and AI features announced at SuiteWorld [1:31]. Next, Carly Nesson, a social impact pro bono project manager at NetSuite, discusses the Hackathon 4Good, NetSuite’s annual event at SuiteWorld where teams of “hackers” flex their technological prowess to create solutions for a nonprofit organization [11:25]. Lastly, Ranga Bodla, vice president of field engagement and marketing at NetSuite, closes out the episode by discussing learning opportunities and customer highlights from the event [16:25]. Follow Us Here: SuiteWorld homepage: NetSuite On Air registration: NetSuite Pro Bono email: [email protected] Carly Nesson LinkedIn: Craig Sullivan LinkedIn: Ranga Bodla LinkedIn: Oracle NetSuite LinkedIn: Facebook: Instagram: Twitter: #NetSuite #SuiteWorld #AI -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcription: 00;00;01;23 - 00;00;31;29 Hey all you Suite listeners, you just tuned in to the NetSuite Podcast. I'm your co-host, Megan O'Brien. We're coming off SuiteWorld 2024. NetSuite’s annual user conference in Las Vegas, and it was just packed with exciting updates, fascinating customer stories, and amazing learning opportunities. We wanted to bring all those insights to you, our listeners, in a SuiteWorld recap podcast episode. 00;00;32;02 - 00;00;57;21 We'll have several guests in this episode to cover the major happenings at this year's SuiteWorld, including NetSuite’s vision for the future, new product announcements, freshly launched AI and UX features, results from NetSuite’s annual hackathon event, and other great highlights. So whether you missed SuiteWorld this year or you just want a quick hit summary to supplement your SuiteWorld experience, you're in the right place. 00;00;57;23 - 00;01;31;25 With that, let's jump right in because it's time to get into everything SuiteWorld. You're listening to the NetSuite Podcast where we discuss what's happening within NetSuite, why we're doing it, and where we're heading in the future. We'll dive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts. Will also feature customer growth stories discussing the ups and downs of running a company and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale. 00;01;31;27 - 00;02;00;17 First up, we have Craig Sullivan, group vice president of product management at NetSuite, to cover the latest product updates announced at SuiteWorld, new AI features, and NetSuite’s revamped user experience. Let's start with a fun one. What were some of your favorite moments from this year's SuiteWorld? So many. So many, Megan. I think if I was to really go right to it, participating in the product keynote is always a highlight. 00;02;00;20 - 00;02;20;09 The opportunity to share with the audience all the things that the teams have been working on is, you know, is always a proud moment. A proud moment for me and a proud moment for them. And I think the other thing is, you know, SuiteWorld is, you know, once a year it's an opportunity for catching up with customers, partners, and colleagues from around the world, too. 00;02;20;09 - 00;02;44;21 And that's always great to see folks that I haven't seen for a year or so. Yeah. Back in person again there in Las Vegas. During his keynote, NetSuite founder and executive vice president Evan Goldberg, called AI a force multiplier that can supercharge Net Suite's ability to fuel customer growth. Can you speak to some of the new AI features coming to NetSuite that will help make that a reality? 00;02;44;23 - 00;03;36;16 Absolutely, I completely agree with Evan. And, you know, firstly and we also think that Suiteness plus AI, where AI is operating across the entirety of the business dataset, can generate even deeper insights. And so things like EPM and the narrative reporting capabilities, where it's actually using generative AI to describe, you know, what the company's financials represent is an extremely interesting and time saving new set of capabilities, as well as predictive forecast explanations where, you know, the system itself will describe what it sees and provide explanation as for what's going on in the in the forecast. In NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, we have things like auto insights, the explain capability, the prebuilt 00;03;36;20 - 00;04;10;08 machine learning modules and data interactions assistant for natural language queries. These are great capabilities that allow not just the system to explain to you what's happening and what it sees in the in the data that it's looking at, but also then allowing you as a customer to interact with it, using natural language to ask questions, ask it to provide additional information in the visualizations that really helps get even more value out of the out of the system. 00;04;10;10 - 00;04;50;15 Things like Prompt Studio, which allows you to choose how the generative AI and the Text Enhance capabilities actually operate for you specific to your business. And then lastly, but certainly not least, you know, some examples from the developer side of the house, you know, whether you're an admin extending the system for your own business or you're a NetSuite cloud partner that's building SuiteScript-based add on to the system, you know, things like the generative APIs, SuiteScripts, and the code assist for SuiteScripts are actually, you know, really great tools that allow you to get even more value for your business by actually leveraging 00;04;50;15 - 00;05;26;22 the AI system underneath the Suite, so to speak, as part of the add ons and the extensions that you're making to your implementations. One of the key themes in Evan's keynote was how a strong technology foundation is crucial for organizations to conquer challenges and grow as their environment constantly changes. How do you think NetSuite’s approach to AI can further that vision? The approach that we're taking is that AI is everywhere and it's not just about providing bolt-on tools, but building intelligence into the core of the Suite and then making it available to everybody. 00;05;26;24 - 00;05;44;12 We really don't see that future customers are going to be asking for the unintelligent version of a business system. And so by making sure that it's just part of the way that we build the application and part of the way that we deliver it to them, we think that that's exactly what customers are going to be asking for in the future. 00;05;44;15 - 00;06;07;12 There were so many exciting product updates announced at SuiteWorld. Just covering those here would be pretty much the whole episode. What were some of your favorite innovations announced and how do you envision them helping our customers? Yeah, there were a lot. A couple of the ones that come to mind, and not just because they were in my part of the product keynote, but actual exception management. 00;06;07;15 - 00;06;36;11 This is really the perfect intersection of Suiteness, and AI. It identifies potential issues early so they can be solved, resolved right away, even surfacing potential issues during sales order capture so that the system can potentially flag problematic situations that could cause problems downstream. And you know, in areas like profitability and the examples that we showed in the keynote and also in the expo hall, it really just the beginning of what is possible with this this area. 00;06;36;11 - 00;07;10;06 So I'm excited about that. And, you know, based upon the reaction from our customers, it seems like they are too. The other thing I think stood out for me and which I would encourage our customers to take a look at, actually is SuiteProcurement, which was another one of the big announcements from the event. And it's not just about driving efficiency in what is a complex process for all customers, but also through the partnerships that we forged with Amazon Business and Staples, is delivering really tremendous value and cost savings to the customers also. 00;07;10;08 - 00;07;36;13 Evan also announced that NetSuite is adopting the Oracle Redwood User Experience, which is an award-winning design system used within Oracle's cloud applications. What do you mind giving our listeners an overview of the Redwood approach and how it will benefit them? Absolutely. I think I think, you know, if you look around, you, you know, the world is definitely changed over the last 25 years since NetSuite was founded. 00;07;36;15 - 00;08;02;24 Everyone now has access to applications in their everyday lives via their smartphones or iPads, tablets, whatever. And many of those applications have focused on delivering beautiful and intuitive user experiences. Our perspective is that we don't want those users coming to work and being disappointed in how their business applications look and feel, how long it takes them to learn, how difficult it is for them to do what they need to do. 00;08;02;27 - 00;08;30;03 The Redwood design system addresses decades of the business user of being an afterthought in terms of user experience and delivers a truly delightful experience from the very first interaction. And as a result, this encourages engagement and accelerates adoption so as to drive even more efficiency for the user and hence the business. Speaking of user experience, this year's SuiteWorld had the UX Lab, which allowed customers to preview and provide feedback on new designs and workflows. 00;08;30;06 - 00;08;55;06 Would you mind giving our listeners an overview of the Lab, why it's important, and how you’re planning to use some of that feedback? Yes, absolutely. And thanks for mentioning that. The UX Lab at SuiteWorld is literally our largest opportunity to engage with users directly and get their impressions and feedback both on what the NetSuite application is doing today, as well as how they feel about some of the things we're cooking up for the future of the product. 00;08;55;08 - 00;09;12;17 It's an opportunity to get their firsthand reactions to the things we showed on the big screens of the keynote and hear more from them about how they feel around those capabilities and what else they would like to see. It's a really great opportunity for users to participate in our design process and help make the product better for themselves and 00;09;12;17 - 00;09;44;14 other users like them. Across all the keynotes at SuiteWorld this year, we had the opportunity to hear from numerous NetSuite customers like Vytalize Health, PRx Performance, Packer Fastener, Trace3. The list goes on and on. What are some of the top takeaways from these conversations for you? Any stories or highlights that really stood out? Yeah, the growth of Vytalize Health has been astonishing and it's always a proud moment to hear how customers are using NetSuite as the system to support that kind of success. 00;09;44;16 - 00;10;03;24 It was great to hear how Jess delegates to her team the opportunities to explore and experiment with how ne w capabilities can help them do even more. And there were so many great stories from the other customers also, from the automations that they've been able to achieve in the office to the opportunities that it's created for them in terms of work life balance. 00;10;03;26 - 00;10;30;20 And we heard that from Packer Fastener and we heard that from Trace3 also. And so that that's really what it's all about for us is, you know, making sure that the system that we deliver provides great and tremendous benefits to the business, but also is helping hopefully our customers and our users create you know, create a better work life balance situation for themselves, too. 00;10;30;22 - 00;11;02;25 Last question. So you've been at NetSuite now for nearly 25 years. How have you seen SuiteWorld grow and evolve over the years? How could it possibly have been 25 years? It still is very it still feels very much like the beginning of what is possible. Honestly. SuiteWorld is obviously much, much bigger than the earlier incarnations and where that hits home for me, beyond the size of the keynote room, is the size of the Partner Expo Hall. 00;11;02;28 - 00;11;22;02 Whether large or small, it's not lost on me that the partners that showcase their offerings there have made a bet on NetSuite. And to see them thriving and doing great business and also having a great time at SuiteWorld is especially rewarding. Well, this was so great. Thanks for taking the time to speak with us, Craig. 00;11;22;04 - 00;11;55;08 My pleasure. Thanks very much. Next up, we have Carly Nesson, a social impact pro-bono project manager at NetSuite to discuss NetSuite’s annual hackathon event at SuiteWorld this year. For listeners that might not know, would you mind giving an overview of what the Hackathon4Good is? Absolutely. Hackathon4Good as a team-based competition that we offer every year at SuiteWorld where our partners and customers can come together to solve some complex problem to help out a nonprofit. 00;11;55;10 - 00;12;18;01 But every year the challenge changes. But the fun remains the same, where they're just spending a day or a few days, or this year's case, a few weeks together in this friendly competition to see what they can create. It's amazing. Now, who was the nonprofit customer our teams of hackers were helping out this year? This year we were working for American Bird Conservancy. 00;12;18;02 - 00;12;53;11 They're a nonprofit that focuses on conserving bird populations and their habitats. And they're doing incredible work across the Americas, including Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America. They really span a wide range of services across each of those areas. What issues were the American Bird Conservancy facing that our hackathon participants were looking to solve? The challenge this year focused on making sure we could help American Bird Conservancy prioritize their projects based on things like birds. 00;12;53;11 - 00;13;20;22 Most at risk, grant availability, maybe contractor prices, how many trees they were planting in a given area based on how those trees would survive and what the risk levels for each of those trees were. So there were a lot of complex factors that were going into this year's challenge to make sure that we could help American Bird Conservancy distill all of this complex information and make it actionable data about where they should focus their time and energy. 00;13;20;24 - 00;13;57;28 It's all about data nowadays. Now, who ended up winning? What did their solution look like? We had a team, actually a return hacking team. It was pretty fun to see them again this year. They came all the way from Australia and gave us a machine learning solution. Every team gave us a machine learning solution, but then once they created a machine learning model in OCI, they brought that back into NetSuite and created a customized report so they could rank these projects for American Bird Conservancy and then give them information about why the projects were the priority levels that they were. 00;13;58;01 - 00;14;27;01 So this winning team came up with not only a really strong model that gave them good scores about the complex factors involved, but they also had a really impressive interface for the customer where they could see in NetSuite exactly where they should spend their time and energy and why they should spend it there so that the customer could then re-parameterize if they needed to and give some human insight into these very mathematically informed challenges. 00;14;27;01 - 00;14;52;05 So they had a perfect balance of both of the sides that we were looking for and you could just tell they really understood the priorities of what American Bird Conservancy was trying to do, and they gave appropriate weight to each of the areas that American Bird Conservancy said they would have chosen for themselves. That's amazing. I mean, that was so many different factors that they had to take into account and create a solution for. 00;14;52;07 - 00;15;11;23 Absolutely. It was really impressive. Now, where can people go to learn more about the SuiteWorld hackathon? Well, we do this every year, so once the SuiteWorld website comes out and that SuiteWorld, of course, there's some information about each of the programs and events that participants can take advantage of. And we're always posted on the website. 00;15;11;26 - 00;15;32;17 So once the dates come out, of course they, they release different information at different times. That's always the best place to go check is that SuiteWorld website and figure out how they can sign up, how they can get involved, and learn more about that year's challenge. And for any NetSuite nonprofit customer that wants to be considered for future hackathon events, where can they go to get more information? 00;15;32;20 - 00;15;53;21 We would love to hear from them. We're always looking for creative ideas about what we can do for non-profits. The best place would be to reach out to the pro-bono team. The pro-bono team at NetSuite is the one that serves nonprofits in that skilled volunteering way, and we do have a general inbox we can be reached at pro-bono underscore WW at Oracle dot com. 00;15;53;27 - 00;16;14;10 Perfect. Well I'll be sure to put that in the show notes. Carly, thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for giving us its visibility. We love the hackathon and everyone that's joined us has loved it too. So I love spreading the word about it. NetSuite by Oracle. The number one cloud financial system is everything you need to grow all in one place. 00;16;14;12 - 00;16;42;00 Financials, inventory, HR, and more. Make better decisions faster so you can do more and spend less. See how at NetSuite.com/pod. Last but certainly not least, we have Ranga Bodla, vice president of field engagement and marketing at NetSuite, who joined us to discuss his highlights from the event, especially some of the great learning opportunities as well as how it's evolved over the years. 00;16;42;02 - 00;17;04;22 Let's start with some of your highlights from SuiteWorld 2024. Any key takeaways or favorite moments that you want to share? Such a great SuiteWorld. It was another one for that for the books. I really enjoyed it. It was exhausting, but it was so worth it. You know, I'll give you a couple of things that were amazing about this year’s SuiteWorld. 00;17;04;22 - 00;17;34;19 And you know, it gets better every year. Number one, the customers. Just so many great customer stories to share whether it was the ones that were on stage in the keynotes. And we had customers in every single keynote this year, Evan's keynote and Sam's keynote and Gary's keynote. So many different sessions. There were panels, you know, it just was there were so many great customer stories and so many great, great perspectives. 00;17;34;21 - 00;18;00;07 Even selfishly, I had I had a fun panelist. There was a five month old guide dog in training who was a panelist in one of my sessions. She did not really share amongst many details about finance, but she was definitely very she was right there with us in in moral support. The other big things I'll share is the expo this year. 00;18;00;07 - 00;18;19;11 I mean, we spent a lot of time and effort on really expanding the expo, really... /episode/index/show/12aef361-1eee-4e8c-b82f-7e9d8ac5e3b9/id/33239607

Speedmaster Trades in SAP for NetSuite to Fuel Global Growth 08/19/2024

Speedmaster Trades in SAP for NetSuite to Fuel Global Growth Find out how NetSuite can help your business balance the demands of a global supply chain: Hear the story behind auto parts manufacturer Speedmaster and why they turned to NetSuite to run their growing business in this episode with Speedmaster CEO Jason Kencevski and cohost Ian McCue. Jason starts by sharing how his father came to start the company [2:15] and key moments over the past 40 years that made the company what it is today [7:52]. The CEO explains the influence of his own interest in technology on the business [10:32], which led it to adopt SAP Business One. Jason explains where that system fell short [14:06], then highlights the benefits of a “living, breathing system” such as NetSuite [19:41] and how it supports better decision-making [26:16]. He walks through how NetSuite helps the manufacturer-distributor efficiently manage international operations [28:05], its supply chain [29:21], ecommerce [37:37], and online marketplace sales [41:30]. Jason wraps up by explaining what’s next for Speedmaster [43:52]. Follow Us Here: Jason Kencevski: Speedmaster: Oracle NetSuite LinkedIn: Facebook: Instagram: Twitter: #Speedmaster #autoparts #NetSuite #NetSuiteERP #manufacturingERP -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;14 Hey Suite listeners. Welcome to the NetSuite Podcast. I'm Ian McCue, a co-host of this podcast and senior content marketing manager at NetSuite. We have a great guest on today's show, Jason Kencevski from Speedmaster. Jason is the CEO of Speedmaster, a large manufacturer and seller of aftermarket auto parts for classic cars. To start, Jason shares why his dad started this business and how it turned into an industry leader over the past 45 years. 00;00;30;17 - 00;00;58;09 He explains how his own interest in technology led the company to invest in new systems that included implementing SAP Business One more than a decade ago. Jason dives into where the on-premises SAP application fell short when it came to running a global business and updating product data for 25,000 items. The CEO walks through how those frustrations led Speedmaster to replace SAP with NetSuite after a few years and how a “living, breathing system” made an enormous difference. 00;00;58;12 - 00;01;26;13 He digs into how modules including NetSuite OneWorld, NetSuite WMS, and NetSuite SuiteCommerce Advanced all helped the company run a smoother, more efficient operation. Jason wraps up with a few thoughts on what the future holds for vintage cars and what that means for his company. Stay tuned because all of that and more is coming up next. You're listening to the NetSuite Podcast, where we discuss what's happening with the next week, why we're doing it and where we're heading in the future. 00;01;26;15 - 00;01;45;22 We'll dive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts. We'll also feature customer growth stories discussing the ups and downs of running a company and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale. 00;01;45;24 - 00;02;11;17 So to kick this off, Jason, tell us a little bit about Speedmaster. What do you manufacture and who do you sell to? Yes, So I mean, Speedmaster has been around for over 40 years. We have a slogan, you know, we just make awesome car parts. But drilling into those awesome car parts, we design, test, and manufacture over 25,000 V8 car spare parts, you know, specifically aftermarket automotive, V8 car, spare parts. 00;02;11;20 - 00;02;31;21 And this is a business that your dad started back in 1979. And I saw on your website, you know, a cool video about kind of how it started. But for people who haven't seen that video, don't know that much about Speedmaster, could you kind of share that story about how this business came to be? Sure. Sure. I mean, you know, every great entrepreneurial story always starts with solving a problem. 00;02;31;23 - 00;02;48;21 I think that problem was my dad, you know, wanted to be the coolest kid in the block and have the fastest car so he can impress all the girls. I was doing that. You know, he was racing, legally of course. And, you know, he was racing and he blew up his engine and had to find out what broke. 00;02;48;24 - 00;03;05;22 Some of the components that broke were actually, you know, weren't perfectly designed or could have been designed better. And, you know, he started with the simple, simple entrepreneurial spirit of making something better, and the rest is history, believe it or not. Is this something that was kind of always your dad's passion? And did he did he have a knack for that stuff? 00;03;05;23 - 00;03;24;06 I mean, it seems crazy to just say this broke. Okay, let me now build, you know, a replacement part for it. Yeah, it's funny you say that because, I mean, I don't know, like, cars were his passion at the age, but, you know, becoming one of the most influential brands in the world right now. I don't think he was envisioning to do that. 00;03;24;06 - 00;03;44;01 I think at the time he's like, hey, a broken something. I want to be fast. Let me just fix it and move on. And it's just I guess that's probably the best way to start. You know, you don't always have to have the answer. You don't always have to think. With the Indy mind or not, you know, I appreciate, you know, Seven Habits of Effective Leaders will tell you always think with the end in mind. 00;03;44;01 - 00;04;07;01 But sometimes the start doesn't have to be that that far fetched. So Speedmaster seems to take a lot of pride in the fact that it designs and manufactures over 25,000 car parts. Why is that kind of important to the company and maybe a source of pride for the business as well? So I guess at its core, when you get to a certain point, you know, the top end of town, this, you know, three major players, you know, which is holy, it'll work. 00;04;07;01 - 00;04;41;00 And speedmaster you try to scale, you try to be horizontal. So what happens is you try your best to start looking for companies to buy or just shortcuts in to achieve your goal of widening your, you know, your variety. So for us, we take a lot of pride in that. And that good thing is that we're still privately owned, so we take a lot of pride in making sure that everything we actually design test the manufacturing house is actually done by our specialized team and we're not looking for which is fine, but we're not looking to find growth hacks to, you know, acquire companies to grow quickly. 00;04;41;00 - 00;05;03;04 And then you're not sure the quality of the products. You may have some problems. Also, at the same time, you will you know, you could inherit some of their bad behaviors, too. So, you know, it's always been the founder's ethos, you know, to really be hands on to design tested manufacture most of those components. And it seems like it's kind of become increasingly rare for an automotive components company to design and make its own products. 00;05;03;07 - 00;05;28;21 Why is that? Is it just is it more cost effective to go other places? Typically, it's hard to do in-house. Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, touching on the scale portion, it's hard. The scale, you know, it's really difficult to produce, you know, that amount of SKUs in a short period of time to scale. I guess, you know, if you want to increase 50 or 100,000 SKUs, it's a lot it's a lot quicker and easier to just buy a brand and, you know, have their offering. 00;05;28;24 - 00;05;54;11 You know, we try to keep it in-house and push that ahead. And I guess that means in turn, you're not buying a company, you're investing in other people. They work for you or work, you know, directly for you or indirectly for you. So, you know, the industry becomes intertwined with Speedmaster a lot more as opposed to just, you know, buying and selling someone else's parts to solve to not to solve a problem, but to increase a product offering, if that makes sense. 00;05;54;13 - 00;06;12;20 And part of your mission is kind of to create products that, you know, I'm quoting your mission here, are inspired by the blend of old and new technology. How is that that idea of kind of blending old and new? How is that core to what Speedmaster is and how does that maybe help differentiate you from some of the other companies out there that make automotive parts? 00;06;12;23 - 00;06;31;12 Yeah, So exactly that, you know, the mission statement is a blend of old and new technology. So the probably the best way to explain it is we're an aftermarket automotive car component manufacturer. So we have to solve a problem. Like every good business, we have to solve a problem. Typically the problem is that people want to go faster or, you know, the engine or whatever it may be. 00;06;31;12 - 00;06;52;13 The specific component is, you know, under higher amount of stress. I mean, back in the day, engines, you would only make 25 horsepower. Now they're making 400 horsepower all the way up to a streak, you know, like a current model Mopar or, you know, like a Dodge Chrysler, Mopar Demon has almost a thousand horsepower. So those sorts of engines back in the day were racecar engines. 00;06;52;13 - 00;07;16;26 And now the cars that you buy off the shelf at your local Dodge dealer. So what happens is, you know, to solve a problem, you want to be profitable and you want to do it the quickest way possible. And typically the easiest way is just to solve the problem. And you design something that solves the problem. What we do is we actually try to solve a problem by incorporating the original view, look and feel of the item, which becomes timeless. 00;07;16;26 - 00;07;42;04 So I think Apple does it very well. If you have a look at a lot of the Apple products, if you go back in time, a lot of the look and feel, I think there was a brand, I forget what it's called, but they all you know, it's basically replicating 1960s and 70 year old products today. So they become timeless and Speedmaster’s aim on that front would be to create a timeless looking component, not one that's functional and highly profitable, if that makes sense, which makes it tough. 00;07;42;04 - 00;08;05;20 And that's what makes us different. You know, we're timeless. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. One more question kind of about your history as a as a brand. So this this company started as Peak Performance about 45 years ago, like we said, or almost 45 years ago. And it's now become a big global operation as we kind of think about how, you know, what started as a small storefront, almost 45 years ago turned into what it is today. 00;08;05;21 - 00;08;29;10 What are some kind of key moments you think, in the company's history that got it to where it is now? heaps. Heaps adversity for sure. You know, originally my dad was solving a problem of just making car components to solve small issues that he found. And, you know, he'd become a manufacturer back in the day. But one massive key turning point was, you know, my dad had created a part that just wasn't working. 00;08;29;12 - 00;08;49;27 And the typical thing of, you know, not asking for help, people these days are too scared to ask for help. My dad was completely the opposite. He went to America and was at the SEMA show in Las Vegas in November. Every year it's been around for, I think, 50 or 60 years, and he took one of his distributors, which was problematic at the time, and he couldn't get the phasing right. 00;08;49;29 - 00;09;02;20 So, you know, he took it to the show and he spoke to one of the guys there whose technician is like, Hey, I've got this problem. You know, he gave him the distributor and they later he came back and said, Hey, have solved the problem. This is all it is, the phasing out, you know, this is what it is. 00;09;02;20 - 00;09;15;23 And when the guy brought it back, it was really funny because he brought the item back and he brought this gentleman along. My dad had no idea who it was, and he started asking questions, you know, how many do you make? You know, like, how do you make them? All that stuff was very simple at the time. 00;09;15;24 - 00;09;31;04 Yeah, we make a lot. He's like, What do you mean, a lot? And he's like, we make 500 a year. It's very, very good item. We make him in Australia. We design, test and manufacture them in Australia. Very, very proud. The guy's like, okay, great. You know, would you, would you have a look to export them to America? 00;09;31;04 - 00;09;49;09 My dad was like, Yep, sure, of course, why not? So the next day the man came along and I think at the time, I mean, I forget what the company was called at the time. It was one of the largest distributors of automotive car parts at the time. He came along and said, I'd like to buy your capacity of 500 per year, if that's okay. 00;09;49;09 - 00;10;06;14 And my dad's like, wow, Yeah, of course, no problem. It is like, but I need that per month. So you know what my dad was doing in one year potentially, You know, he just got an order for 12 years or 12 months worth of orders. In one conversation. So on the back of just the most random experience of, Hey, I need help, how do I fix it? 00;10;06;17 - 00;10;24;18 People respect that and respect the fact that you're willing to make things better, willing to ask for help. And that was pretty much the start of what you now know is Speedmaster America. And how long ago was that? When did that happen? So I think it was probably close to 25 years ago. Okay, We've been here for now. 00;10;24;25 - 00;10;51;01 Again, just don't quote me on it. But around 22 years, that was almost close to 25 years ago. Yeah, believe it or not. So, Jason, you obviously have a long history of the business. You grew up around it. You today are CEO and have been for quite a while. But as you just kind of look at your personal time with the company from when you first got involved and maybe when you first kind of started to take a leadership role within the company to where it is today, how did those how do those two things compare? 00;10;51;01 - 00;11;11;17 How does the Speedmaster of today compare to the one that you remember from early adulthood, childhood, anything like that? Yeah, lots of changes. You know, definitely couple of things. Definitely keeping up with the times, as you should. And I think this one has some of my flair attached to it. I'm not saying that all the amazing things that Speedmaster have done are my doing. 00;11;11;17 - 00;11;26;16 I'm saying that a lot of things that, you know, a lot of the direction I'd like for the company of the brand to go towards, you know, heavily influenced by myself, like, for example, you know, I'm a tech geek, I think would touch on that a little bit later. I'm a tech geek. You know, I built computers when I was a kid. 00;11;26;20 - 00;11;48;02 All my life I've been breaking those code in games and trying to hack computer games and whatnot, building computers. So always have had a tech savvy background. So applying that sort of tech savviness to Speedmaster, it was definitely one of the core fundamentals at moving forward for sure. And a key part of kind of keeping up with the times, like you said as well. 00;11;48;02 - 00;12;13;04 So makes sense. Yeah. So is this a company that kind of always saw value in technology and invested in kind of new and better technology as it became available? Or would you say that there was more of a shift when, when you came into to more of a leadership position? So definitely more of a shift. The business was heavily infatuated with building amazing car parts, building awesome car parts and whatever technology was required to do. 00;12;13;04 - 00;12;40;22 So you're talking, you know, whether it be manufacturing automation, whether it be the latest a machine. So, you know, number one priority on a technology front would have always been around the product. So there's at least three pillars to Speedmaster: our people, our products, and our approach. And I think the biggest one that I've impacted is the approach and the influence through technology would have been definitely, you know, heavily influenced bymyself, for sure. 00;12;40;24 - 00;12;58;11 You know, the efficiency and the automation that Speedmaster adheres to today on a global scale is, you know, almost second to none. Back then it was, you know, just business basics. You know, you sell an item, you invoice an item, you get paid for an item. You know, it's just business basics, but it's not like that today. 00;12;58;11 - 00;13;15;22 And definitely, you know, on the back of my heavy influence, also, my brother, who was part of the business for about six years and a lot of drastic, drastic changes happened. You know, on the back of his help as well. You were on SAP Business One, a solution probably a lot of people listening to this are familiar with. 00;13;15;24 - 00;13;31;28 I guess, first off, kind of how long did you use that software for and where did you feel like it really fell short in terms of supporting the business? Yeah. So at the time we were looking at different solutions. We weren't too sure about, you know, the power or the ability of cloud computing at the time was 2012/2013. 00;13;31;28 - 00;13;50;15 I mean, cloud computing wasn't new. It was old just at the time. It all thought weird that, you know, your whole infrastructure could come to a grinding halt if you lost your Internet connection. You know, I mean, Internet is not a new thing. So shouldn't have been to two things. But it was I mean, people were people were people were skeptical of the cloud for a long time. 00;13;50;16 - 00;14;16;06 So. Yeah. And so for that reason, you know, we moved to SAP, which is an on premise solution. It was tough. I mean, that's why I'm so passionate about sharing the NetSuite/Oracle messaging, because we've had such a great, great run with that. SAP, it was daunting. It took, you know, 18 months to understand our needs to roll out the case of the Speedmaster case or project, I guess. 00;14;16;12 - 00;14;37;11 And it was I mean, we'll touch on it probably later, I'm sure, with any of the other questions. But it was a flat system. It was a local server. Every time we would increase every, you know, every year would have to increase the server, increase the hard drive. We went from one server to two servers, two, three, three servers in Sydney, three servers in L.A. It was just becoming a nightmare for sure. 00;14;37;11 - 00;15;04;18 And this was you're talking only two years into the, you know, two years into it. So we're not talking ten years. You're talking together from one server to three. You know, we had to become experts in RAID and other technologies. boy. I think that that paints a good picture. I mean, the fact that it was only a couple of years before you were running into serious problems in terms of its ability to scale with the business you know, maybe says a lot and maybe is that would you say that's part of what convinced you that maybe the cloud is the way to go? 00;15;04;18 - 00;15;22;12 Because we're going to get that that scalability that we clearly need? We move to the cloud solution because Oracle NetSuite was the solution for us and it happened to be on the cloud. If I guess if NetSuite was an on premise solution, yeah, I think we would have run into the same problems. NetSuite, just obviously have got it right. 00;15;22;12 - 00;15;40;03 So potentially that's probably why they're in the cloud. I'm not sure, but I can guarantee you while I can't guarantee that NetSuite Oracle would have got it right, but... /episode/index/show/12aef361-1eee-4e8c-b82f-7e9d8ac5e3b9/id/32390117

NetSuite 2024.2 Brings New Supply Chain, Subscription Billing, HR Features 07/22/2024

NetSuite 2024.2 Brings New Supply Chain, Subscription Billing, HR Features Learn more about NetSuite 2024 Release 2: Cohosts Ian McCue and Megan O’Brien delve into NetSuite 2024 Release 2, with several guests joining to cover the latest and greatest features included. To start off, Lisa Schwarz, senior director of product marketing at NetSuite, gives an overview of the second release of 2024 [1:29]. She covers some of the most exciting updates in 2024.2 and what customers can expect. Tanios Boudames, product marketing manager for NetSuite SuitePeople, joins next to give a breakdown of new capabilities in NetSuite’s human resource management system [11:46]. Peter Bouyonan, an industry solution advisor at NetSuite, delves into the new supply chain and manufacturing features [24:48]. Lastly, Jessica Turnpenny, group manager of product management at NetSuite, goes over new SuiteBilling capabilities and how they will help subscription businesses [37:41]. Follow Us Here: NetSuite 2024 Release 2 Homepage: Oracle NetSuite LinkedIn: Facebook: Instagram: Twitter: #NetSuite #NetSuiteERP #NetSuiteSuitePeople -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;00;00 - 00;00;23;08 Hey NetSuite Podcast listeners. Thanks for tuning into this episode breaking down our newest NetSuite release. I’m Ian McCue, senior content marketing manager at NetSuite and I’m joined by NetSuite’s business and finance editor Megan O'Brien. The summer means it's our second product release of the year and that NetSuite 2024 Release 2 is packed with a bunch of awesome new features. 00;00;23;10 - 00;00;50;19 Absolutely. NetSuite 2024.2 brings new functionality across SuiteBilling, SCM mobile and Manufacturing mobile, and SuitePeople, as well as new suite apps to help businesses run their supply chains more efficiently. We have four different guests breaking down the latest capabilities in detail and explaining how they benefit you. And if you're looking for more, our sneak peek release blogs are now live on NetSuite.com. 00;00;50;22 - 00;01;16;19 See the links in the description of this episode to check this out. Stay tuned because we have a lot of exciting updates that you won't want to miss. You're listening to the NetSuite Podcast where we discuss what's happening within NetSuite, why we're doing it, and where we're heading in the future. We'll dive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts. 00;01;16;21 - 00;01;41;22 Unknown We'll also feature customer growth stories discussing the ups and downs of running a company and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale. Kicking us off is Lisa Schwarz, senior director of product marketing at NetSuite. Lisa will provide a quick preview of what's new in 2024 Release 2, including an updated user interface that customers can now try out for the first time. 00;01;41;25 - 00;02;13;00 She also gives a refresher on how all our customers receive the update and what they can do to prepare for it. So, Lisa, we have a few guests joining us to dive deeper into the latest functionality in NetSuite 2024 Release, 2. But could you give us a quick overview of what's new? Absolutely. So we have a slew of new supply chain and manufacturing features ranging from NetSuite WMS to some of the mobile applications, as well as some hot new suite apps related to supply chain. 00;02;13;03 - 00;02;36;11 Unknown We'll be diving into the new SuiteBilling capabilities, which is our subscription management and billing solution. And finally, you'll hear about some of the new things going on with our HR solution, SuitePeople. So what's one feature in this release that you're kind of especially excited about or maybe see as a big win for our customers? Wow. That's a tough one. 00;02;36;11 - 00;03;02;06 It's like, you know, picking your favorite child or, you know, they're all special in their very own ways. From a practical point of view, it's great to see the evolution of Bill Capture, which we continue to fine tune the ML models that help increase the accuracy for matching the invoices to your NetSuite record. 00;03;02;08 - 00;03;39;13 So that's increasing productivity for our users. There's also Ship Central, our packing and shipping solution. With this release, there's some great new functionality to automatically find the best shipping rates, which is pretty cool so that’s saving users time but also money. So those are great. But I actually wanted to talk about a feature that's included in the release, but it's an early release status, so going into that a little bit. 00;03;39;15 - 00;04;05;05 What we're going to be doing with this release is to start to roll out some of the new Redwood UI elements to NetSuite. Users may have heard about this already from Oracle, which they have all their applications using this or you actually may have seen it in some of the Oracle applications that we make available to NetSuite users like Planning and Budgeting or Analytics Warehouse. 00;04;05;08 - 00;04;37;06 Those two solutions have already the Redwood UI design system applied. So what you're going to see in NetSuite are changes like fonts, icons, and colors applied to various pages. There's no functionality changes, no changes to workflows. It's strictly an aesthetic, you know, user interface change. One thing to note and to understand is that this new UI won't be turned on by default. 00;04;37;09 - 00;05;01;11 You'll need to go in and change the preference settings to do that, but your admin can usually do that. It's a great way just to start to become familiar with this. We're going to see more pages updated over the next few releases with more of the design elements applied and at some point it will become the default UI of NetSuite. 00;05;01;14 - 00;05;27;04 But it's just starting and that's what I think is really exciting. Yeah, very cool stuff. And if someone wants to learn more about Redwood UI and maybe, you know, what might be might be changing a little bit, just an appearance in NetSuite. Where could they go to learn more about that? As usual, with all the stuff in every new release we'll have details in the release notes. 00;05;27;06 - 00;06;07;16 But we're also planning to start rolling out over the next few months some added communications and tools that users can use to become familiar. So you should be seeing some blogs on this. We're actually trying to line up a speaker for the podcast at some point soon down the road. So lots more to come on this. Awesome. And I wanted to quickly touch on kind of the logistics of the NetSuite release for any new listeners, any customers who have maybe not been through this before or those that maybe just need a refresher. 00;06;07;16 - 00;06;35;18 So how does NetSuite deliver all these new features that you covered to users? Yeah, it's actually still to this day, as many times we've been doing it, it's still super cool to watch it from the other side of getting it applied. The process and everything. But to remind everybody, we do two releases a year, all of our customers, which right now we're at 38,000+ customers receive the updates. 00;06;35;21 - 00;07;13;04 Everyone is on the same release using the latest and greatest version of NetSuite. So this is our second update of the year. With the release, accounts will be updated between mid August through July. That's the span of the rolling upgrade window. Each customer is assigned a date and a time that their NetSuite account will be updated. The date and the time of your update will be published in the new release portlet on your NetSuite dashboard and your NetSuite admin will also get an email with this information. 00;07;13;07 - 00;07;48;11 If for some reason this time doesn't work for your company, you can change the date and time of the update via the CSM tool within NetSuite. Again, something pretty fast and easy that your admin can do. So on the day of the update, you do not need to install or do anything. Everything is automated. Accounts will go offline during the update time, which is scheduled for about a four-hour period, but most of the updates happen in 60 minutes or less. 00;07;48;14 - 00;08;09;02 And it sounds like there's not a whole lot for customers to do, which is obviously a good thing. But what can customers do to prepare for this update? Yeah, like I mentioned, this is all automatic, but we definitely encourage users to become familiar with what's in the release and to try it out in a release preview account. 00;08;09;04 - 00;08;43;28 So while accounts are updated automatically and all customizations that you may have done to your account come over with the update, it's great to test things out using your own data, workflows, integrations, and customizations just so there are no surprises. I know I don't like any surprises, so for those of you who are not familiar with the release preview account, this is a special test account test environment that clones your production account with the new release functionality in it. It's free. 00;08;44;05 - 00;09;12;24 Unknown You just need to have your NetSuite admin requested, but definitely encourage to, as we used to say, test drive before you go live. And other than this podcast, how else can customers learn more about 2024.2? Yeah, lots of ways to engage and learn more. So the first thing you can do is read about this sneak peek blogs. 00;09;12;28 - 00;09;37;04 You can read about the enhancements in the sneak peek blogs on NetSuite.com, as well as the release notes. The release notes go into a ton of details on each of the new features and capabilities. There's also training videos that are made available in SuiteAnswers that you can watch on selected new features and enhancements. 00;09;37;06 - 00;10;06;04 Another way, we encourage you to talk with your account manager about what's new, kind of what they're recommending you. You may want to pay a little special attention since they know your environments a little bit more. So engage in some conversations with your account manager. We've got some upcoming webinars that you could also, if you know, kind of seeing is more of your thing rather than reading. 00;10;06;07 - 00;10;37;03 So we have a new release features webinar coming up actually just a few days after this webinar—this podcast goes live so you can sign up to watch that to participate in that webinar July 24th. Or if you can't make that it's available, it will be available to watch on demand. And there's also another follow-up webinar coming up in early August about release readiness. 00;10;37;05 - 00;11;03;10 So this is a little different webinar. It's not going to go into details on the actual features, but more about giving you tips on how to get ready for the release, like using the release preview account, which I just mentioned, creating test plans. And then there's also an opportunity to learn about some of the services that we have available that you may want to look at to help with release readiness. 00;11;03;12 - 00;11;38;08 And then last but not least, you know, we've got SuiteWorld coming up. So that's happening in Las Vegas, September 9th through the 12th. We've got over 200+ sessions, seminars, hands-on learning and training that cover a lot of the new capabilities, not only from this release, 24.2, but also from the previous release, 24.1. So lots of different ways to learn about the release depending upon your, you know, how you like to learn and get up to speed on things. 00;11;38;11 - 00;12;05;13 Well, lots of cool and exciting stuff to look forward to there. So thanks for walking us through it, Lisa. Thanks again. Happy to. SuitePeople, NetSuite’s human resource management solution, saw several new features in NetSuite 2024 Release 2. Joining us to discuss how these updates will help companies better manage their workforce and associated costs is Tanios Boudames. 00;12;05;13 - 00;12;33;22 Product marketing manager for NetSuite SuitePeople. For those who are not aware of NetSuite’s HR solution SuitePeople, could you give them an overview? Yeah, of course. So SuitePeople is part of NetSuite’s DNA, right? It works seamlessly with the rest of the platform. It's NetSuite's comprehensive human resources management system. So it's designed to streamline, automate a lot of the complexities that HR 00;12;33;23 - 00;13;20;16 Teams and processes kind of face. And it offers a robust set of tools for managing core HR business processes. That's like keeping employee records, running payroll, providing benefits, understanding performance of different teams, scheduling and optimizing workforce scheduling and planning, and really by integrating with the NetSuite ecosystem and being a part of it, you can really enable your business to better manage your workforce by having real-time insights, by having real-time analytics that drive better decision making because SuitePeople is with NetSuite on the same platform and it really allows customers to better understand how they can manage their workforce and optimize it. 00;13;20;19 - 00;13;47;24 And all of this is leveraged because again it's connected to NetSuite. So we can connect to SuiteAnalytics, SuiteProjects, into all the different products that NetAuite offers. And in terms of SuitePeople itself, diving deeper in, in terms of what the modules and products are that we sell, we have US payroll, we have HR administration, we have workforce management, then we have performance management. 00;13;47;26 - 00;14;21;06 So these are really covering the key areas that HR folks are going to be looking for in terms of providing HR functionality to their business. And this helps really provide a unified solution for finance and HR. And one solution with NetSuite. Well, why is it important to have a finance and HR system that is unified? Yeah, so there's really three areas that I always think of when it's when it's having a unified solution, especially when it comes to two really key lines of business like finance and HR. 00;14;21;09 - 00;14;43;19 The first is collaboration, right? It's being able to understand when you want to make changes to your workforce, you want to either hire people or you want to maybe readjust learning or reskill employees or understand where you need make shifts in the workforce in terms of scheduling and teams is understanding how you can collaborate as a HR person with finance or vice versa. 00;14;43;25 - 00;15;29;00 Understanding the budget, understanding the costs from the finance side, and then understanding things like the goals of performance. The really HR information location, how you can readjust workforces to be optimized to improve revenue performance of the business. The second is having actionable insights. And this kind of goes on the collaboration is not just being able to talk to each other, but also as a finance person or as a HR person being able to pull up dashboards, things like headcount analysis, things like performance across teams or across individuals or across products, being able to forecast different aspects with workforce management, being able to understand, okay, I need like three people here at this at this 00;15;29;00 - 00;15;54;22 job site for this season, right? Because it's going to be very busy. We need more staff. So being able to have those actionable insights from across the business, whether it's coming from projects or whether it's coming from the HR side as a finance person is really important. And that's what SuitePeople provides with the unification of it being together, And the last having the data integrity—data integrity and data privacy. 00;15;54;22 - 00;16;17;27 So everything is in one solution. You're not having to import data sensitive data like employee data across different solutions. It's all within NetSuite, all protected. So this helps with the privacy, the security aspect, and integrity. You're not having a duplication of data, right? There's one source of truth. You go to NetSuite, you check an employee record, you check the financials, etc. All of it is within one system. 00;16;17;27 - 00;16;49;15 So that's really the power of having a unified in those three, those three elements, really. How has the product grown to support NetSuite Financial customers over the years? Yeah, so SuitePeople really started out with payroll and HR. And we've grown and added performance management and workforce management and really grown alongside with our customers. I mean, now we process 6 billion annually in payroll transactions across thousands of employees. 00;16;49;17 - 00;17;18;23 We're really very much ramping up as we'll see in this update around workforce management and around providing a more complete HR solution for our customers with things like benefits offering and benefits solution. So, it's very much improved with financials as well and NetSuite Financials to offer deeper analytics reporting features that help understand workforce costs, productivity, products for locations. 00;17;18;23 - 00;17;47;01 Right. Being able to understand where the demand is from the business and that comes from things like compensation, planning, performance management, and understanding the whole aspect of your business. And at the same time from an employee side is we've really grown to offer employees more of the self-service capabilities. So this is allowing them to get the information that they need at the time that they need it without having to go to HR. 00;17;47;03 - 00;18;11;00 Unknown Without having to bother or really distract business folks from focusing on more impactful tasks to ask for things like a payslip or to ask for things like time off or schedule around that. Right. So workforce management allows for that. We have the self-service portals in in HR to allow you to access payroll slips, etc. Right. Let's get to the good stuff. 00;18;11;02 - 00;18;43;08 What enhancements are coming to SuitePeople in 2024 Release 2? Yeah. So for workforce management, we have two really key enhancements coming and one of those is around being able to track to multiple time fields, right? So this is going to allow businesses to understand not just by, for example, a location or a team or a product, but to be able to dive even deeper into how employees are spending their time, where are the labor costs coming from? 00;18;43;10 - 00;19;26;03 For example, you are running, let's say, a coffee shop, right? Where are your employees spending the most time? Cleaning, making the coffee, talking with customers, whatever it may be. Being able to log those times across multiple time fields now allows you to understand where maybe you need more support. For example, another is like a contracting business, right? Where you have multiple people working on building a house, people who are doing the platform, the foundation, the concrete, who are building, the paint, the electrical, all the different stuff that you have within a project, being able to map across how many hours are being spent on which item, on which project, on which task is really 00;19;26;09 - 00;19;52;18 impactful for our customers now being able to use that and to map to different fields. And the second is around really enabling compliance for our customers. So being able to ensure that employees take their full break. So this is like a early break prevention enhancement where employees now will take their full break and cannot clock back in until their break is completed. 00;19;52;18 - 00;20;24;24 And this is important for a lot of states that will penalize businesses if employees don't take their full half an hour,... /episode/index/show/12aef361-1eee-4e8c-b82f-7e9d8ac5e3b9/id/32215037