NetSuite eyes world's largest enterprises

MANILA, Philippines - “Use ‘suite’ in the name and put it in the cloud.”

That pretty sums up the advice given by Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corp., to NetSuite founders when they were setting up their company.

It’s clearly a word from the wise as NetSuite closes the first quarter of 2011 with $53.4 million in total revenues, a 21 percent increase over the same period last year, and steadily gaining large enterprise customers on top of its traditional clientele of small and medium sized companies. Research firm Gartner Inc. also tagged NetSuite as the fastest growing financial firm for three years straight.

The financial management systems growth in North America of NetSuite, a provider of cloud-based financials/ERP software suites, has been at 80 percent for the last three years, reported Zach Nelson, CEO of Netsuite, during a recent NetSuite conference in California.

“Our approach is (to go) where the business is going... The idea is not just to have an ERP business in the cloud, but to build applications that run core processes,” said Nelson.

One solution Nelson seems extra gungho about is NetSuite OneWorld, a financial consolidation and global business management solution made for companies that own multiple subsidiaries. A single account gives users access to different currencies, taxation rules and different financial processes that are relevant to their different business locations.

“OneWorld is ideal to mid-size companies that sell in different countries. OneWorld gives them global currency integration, reporting and analytics requirements, and other things they need to operate globally,” Nelson said.

One customer that clearly fits this user profile is Groupon, a fast-rising star in the world of online business as it delivers deal-of-the-day gift certificates to its over 35 million registered users worldwide.

To support its international expansion, Groupon chose NetSuite OneWorld to replace hundreds of different spreadsheets with a single cloud ERP system with real-time global financial consolidation and management.

Nelson said Groupon went live with NetSuite OneWorld in five international markets in just six weeks and will be live in 26 locations in three months. By yearend, Groupon expects to complete deployment of NetSuite OneWorld in 46 countries.

“Modern companies realize that standardizing on pre-Web client/server applications is no way to be successful. Groupon’s decision to turn to NetSuite OneWorld for its needs is another affirmation that NetSuite is where business is going,” Nelson said.

The company is also seeing more companies with existing ERP systems on SAP, Sage and Microsoft that are also now adopting NetSuite for their second or mid-tier applications.

“For the top-tier there could be SAP. But even the big shops are finding it expensive to run and deploy them in many areas,” said Nelson. “That’s where the second-tier ERP comes in. They run NetSuite and have ISVs (independent software vendors) to help them in the integration.”