Official NetSuite Blog - Cloud NetSuite

SuiteImpact Team Manila and Habitat for Humanity Take the Lead in Building Homes for Filipino Families

For most, Saturday has always been the time to get our well-deserved break from work. Whether it’s sleeping in, catching up on chores, or spending time with our family and friends, we consider this day our “me” time. But for our employee volunteers at NetSuite’s Manila Office, one Saturday was the perfect time to give back to the community. 

Through NetSuite.org, the corporate citizenship arm of NetSuite, the SuiteImpact Manila team decided to spend their “me” time in the scorching heat to help build houses for those in need of shelter. The 43 volunteers, donning their NetSuite.org T-shirts and hard hats, hauled hollow blocks, and did sand bagging and excavating during the one-day project.

The initiative, which was in partnership with Habitat for Humanity’s “Juan Builds Project,” was an effort to help cut down the labor expenses incurred in building houses for public school teachers and informal settlers.

Romi Clamor, the site engineer of Bistekville 1, Payatas, Quezon City, said they hope to build 353 houses this year. “The turnout of our volunteers is a huge help for us, that’s why we’re
hoping that people like volunteers at NetSuite will be able to encourage more generous hearts to partake in this initiative,” he said.

NetSuite.org ambassador Ishmael Vargas hopes to continue the partnership with Habitat for Humanity, and is looking for additional volunteer opportunities for the SuiteImpact Philippines team. He said, “This initiative is definitely just one of many opportunities that await NetSuite Philippines employees for 2013.” Judging by the photos below, I should say bring it on.

-James Dantow, VP for Worldwide Support and GM for the Philippines

Top Tweets from #NSW13

NetSuite SuiteWorld 2013 is behind us, and before we start looking ahead to next year’s event, it’s worth taking a look back at the connections, the lessons and the fun that was had at the most recent gathering of customers, partners and press. Some of the keynote addresses have already appeared. Here’s a look back at some of the many tweets that attendees shared.

I really love the community that@netsuite has built around its financial platform @iangertler @malinhuffman#SuiteWorld

— Jon Ferrara #SocBiz (@Jon_Ferrara) May 16, 2013

#nsw13 an unabashed celebration of enterprise apps bit.ly/YXmPHd

— Vinnie Mirchandani (@dealarchitect) May 16, 2013

Duke had an amazing time @ #NSW13! Met some very bright folks and got the chance to network. Time for a doggy nap! twitter.com/XAidica/status…

— Aida Mešinović (@XAidica) May 16, 2013

Evan Goldberg is jumping into the Q&A. Wow! He participates in the NS user group a lot too. My kind of CTO! #NSW13 #NetSuite

— Zach Victor (@zmvictor) May 15, 2013

Tone at #nsw13 is right. It addresses business needs rather than technology. #NetSuite is building the right way & @zachnelson says it well

— Rene Theberge (@rene_theberge) May 15, 2013

Amazing story at #nsw13 on how @netsuite moved 4 of @williamssonoma's largest brands to the cloud in just 3 months! @retailmag

— Bob Johns (@BobOnRetail) May 15, 2013

Real-time stock views online or by postcode search presented by Evan Goldberg @netsuite CTO in SuiteCommerce Advanced StoreFront #nsw13 cool

— Miya Knights (@mazzaknights) May 15, 2013

Nice feature adding "StickEase" to records in @netsuite.#nsw13

— Brent Leary (@BrentLeary) May 15, 2013

Looks like Im gonna be able to recreate my priority script that took 2 wks to write w/a search in NetSuite in 5 mins.Lil gems found @ #NSW13

— Don Ross (@donrosszx) May 15, 2013

Lovving the ideas for technology, automation, and integration at the #NSW13 conference. Great perspectives from @pgreenbe & @john_ragsdale!

— rwhigginson (@rwhigginson) May 14, 2013

Positive Coaching Alliance Gains a Winning Edge with NetSuite.org

Athletic coaches can have a profound influence on a child. A positive coaching experience can build character, good sportsmanship and a healthy sense of competition that can endure throughout a lifetime. Bad coaching can sow seeds of aggression, cheating and low self-esteem that can affect a young athlete into adulthood.

Yet many paid and volunteer coaches lack training on what makes a good coach in any sport—baseball, soccer, track, football, basketball and others. Equipping youth coaches with the knowledge and skills they need to help shape better athletes and better people is the mission of NetSuite.org grantee the Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA), a national non-profit organization founded in 1998 at Stanford University.

Over the years, PCA has impacted more than 5 million youth athletes by training coaches, parents and other leaders with in-person and online workshops, partner programs, books, newsletters and other resources. In partnership with more than 1,700 schools and youth organizations throughout the U.S., PCA has been instrumental in providing young athletes with a character-building sport experience.

But PCA itself lacked the tools it needed to maximize its impact. The organization (www.positivecoach.org) lost efficiency in its use of QuickBooks, Excel and a custom-built website to sell services, capture donations and manage its finances. Searching for an alternative, PCA got in touch with the NetSuite.org corporate citizenship team, which offers free and discounted software to qualified charities and social enterprises along with pro bono services from NetSuite employees.

A Better Focus on the Core Mission

Selected after an evaluation against Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains), Financial Edge and Sage, NetSuite has given PCA a seamless cloud solution to eliminate manual work and channel resources into its valuable programs. For instance, daily transactions that used to take three hours a day to process are fully automated in NetSuite.

And with NetSuite SuiteCommerce replacing the previous homegrown webstore, PCA has an interactive ecommerce storefront to sell services and accept donations, with revenue automatically updated in back-end financials. Since going live on NetSuite in 2009, PCA has realized steady double-digit year-over-year revenue growth. 

“The integration between our SuiteCommerce storefront and NetSuite is great because we can make changes to our webstore very quickly,” said Judy Dillenbeck, PCA Senior Accountant. “NetSuite gives us a lot more transparency into our information. There’s no way we could do as much or be as successful in reaching youth with our previous system.”

NetSuite also supports PCA’s growing footprint across the U.S, providing personnel at PCA headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., and in nine regional offices (with one more to open soon) with real-time visibility and management on a centralized cloud platform that can be accessed from anywhere. PCA is making the most of its partnership with NetSuite.org by taking advantage of the SuiteVolunteers program, with two NetSuite employees doing pro bono work to implement custom scripts for income allocations.

As The New York Times reported, PCA is helping young athletes mature into “major league people.” At NetSuite.org, we’re gratified to be a part of PCA’s success.

For more information on NetSuite.org’s programs, find us @NetSuiteOrg.

-David Geilhufe, NetSuite.org Director

Evan Goldberg’s SuiteWorld 2013 Keynote: Future Technology for Transforming Your Business

At SuiteWorld 2013, NetSuite’s own Dark Knight and CTO, Evan Goldberg, described how NetSuite is helping businesses transform and realize their vision. In the video from the event, Goldberg explains the enhancements NetSuite is making to the product, including new mobile capabilities, NetSuite StickEase, drag-and-drop importing of records to NetSuite files tabs, and what’s coming in the new user experience overhaul. He outlines coming billing, global financials and multi book accounting functionality, plus a new SuiteCloud IDE with debugger. Goldberg also highlights recent partnerships with TribeHR and other HR software vendors, a travel and expense partner tool, and SuiteCommerce Advanced Storefront. He shows how easy it is managing NetSuite Ecommerce sites with LightCMS and outlines NetSuite’s vision for supply chain collaboration and improvements to the OpenAir PSA software. Finally, he shows off a new VinSuite app made with eWinery and gets a special delivery.

 

-Barney Beal, Content Development Writer/Editor at NetSuite

NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson’s SuiteWorld 2013 Address: Operations Transformed, Visions Realized

NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson opened the annual SuiteWorld event, NetSuite’s customer and partner conference, with a keynote explaining how NetSuite is helping businesses transform their operations and realize their business vision. Watch below as he describes NetSuite’s new manufacturing capabilities and its game-changing partnership with AutoDesk; how NetSuite is leaving its competitors behind; and how enterprise customers like Williams Sonoma and Qualcomm are running NetSuite to power their entrepreneurial efforts. Nelson also outlines the growth and power of NetSuite’s partner channel with partners like Accenture, Deloitte, Wipro, Capgemini and others. Learn how companies are transacting business in the world of cloud computing.

 

-Barney Beal, Content Director/Editor at NetSuite

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NetSuite.org Promotes Greener Offices and Communities on Earth Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SuiteImpact Team Singapore Gives Back, One Laugh at a Time

We have all heard the old adage “laughter is the best medicine” and you have to admit, a single funny joke can indeed cheer up the saddest of faces. But for NetSuite.org, the corporate citizenship arm of the company, that adage was exactly what our recent SuiteImpact Team charity event in Singapore was all about – to help heal people with cancer one laugh at a time.

Through the SuiteImpact Team, an initiative connecting NetSuite employees with local causes and volunteer opportunities, the Singapore office came together to embark on its first Annual NetSuite Charity Comedy Night on March 25 at The Basement@SMU. It was not only a night of hysterical comic acts, but the beginning of countless sharing of blessings with the less-fortunate members of the society.

Hosted by NetSuite Singapore’s very own comic Liam McDonald, the comedy night featured a roster of top Asian comics like Joanna Sio, Jing Jinx, Fakkah Fuzz, Fin Carew, Wayne Cheong and many others. Tickets were sold for SG$10, but the team was able to gather a whopping SG$1,500 after receiving generous donations from NetSuite partners and employees.

All the proceeds from the show were given to the Singapore Cancer Society, a voluntary health organization that depends on public donations to fund all its services and programs, such as cancer treatment subsidies, financial welfare and aid, hospice and palliative home care services, community oncology home care services, free transportation to/from cancer treatment, rehabilitative support, cancer screening, cancer research and public education.

If there is one thing this event has proven, it’s that the opportunities to help and give back are endless—even just sharing a few good laughs with the right people can go very far.

And it doesn’t stop there, anyone who would like to join the campaign and donate can still join us by going to http://www.simplygiving.com/NetSuiteComedy.

Check out the photos to see what went on during the show!

For more information about NetSuite, please visit www.netsuite.com.sg

-Mark Troselj, NetSuite Managing Director for APAC

Cloud Software Sparks Award-Winning Innovation at Solio, Not Just Savings

For many, turning to cloud software to run their business applications is an economical, agile way to free up resources and potentially get a better handle on operations.

For Better Energy Systems Inc., it helped save the business while also bringing affordable, sustainable energy to people in rural Kenya.

It recently earned Better Energy Systems and its CEO Andy Howe the Individual Achievement-Turnaround Award as part of the 2013 ML100 Awards. The ML100 Awards are known as the most prestigious awards program honoring manufacturing companies that have transformed themselves through the use of information technology. Past ML100 honorees include 3M, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Eaton, Ford, General Electric, General Motors, IBM, L'Oreal USA, Motorola, Nalco, and Raytheon.

The Oakland, CA-based company manufactures Solio energy products, which range from handheld solar chargers for smartphones and tablets to water purifiers to home power systems for emerging markets. Yet, when Howe took over the company as CEO several years ago, he was immediately confronted with a cash shortfall and an urgent need to catch up with R&D, an area where Solio had fallen behind. Howe’s immediate reaction was to focus at once on innovation.

Howe turned to NetSuite’s cloud software to free staff from having to focus on managing servers and software. In turn, NetSuite runs the company’s order to cash, produce to pay, inventory management, eCommerce and other ERP processes, finding efficiencies over the old system. But NetSuite did more than just find efficiencies, it powered innovation.

Solio analyzed customer support cases in NetSuite and found that most support requests were about which tip or connector they needed to connect their Solio charger to a specific camera, phone or other device. Customers were confused and responding took away from Solio core growth and innovation activities

Engineers at the company designed a universal connector that works with both Apple and CTIA-standards based USB-powered devices, providing an all-in-one product that is easy to use. The new product ultimately lowered manufacturing and operating costs while bringing down costs to consumers, boosting customer satisfaction and improving margins.

NetSuite also allowed Solio to focus on another part of its business, bringing Solio products to rural Kenya. Solio has pioneered an innovative “solar as a service” social enterprise in Kenya that enables people to lease a solar appliance in a business model similar to how US consumers do with cable TV equipment. Through the program, Solio products are providing affordable and sustainable energy to households in rural areas with no access to an electrical grid, which may earn just $10 a week and spend half of that on single-use batteries and kerosene to power their home. Run as a business partnership between Solio and local entrepreneurs in Kenya, the program pursues the goal of bringing clean, renewable energy to populations at the base of the economic pyramid.

It’s an example of a NetSuite customer using the solution in innovative and creative ways and it’s a case of a company using cloud software to do more than save on IT costs, it’s transforming the business and maybe, in a small way, the world.

-Andrew Sevillia, Director, Global Customer Marketing References

Every Day Is World Water Day for NetSuite.org Grantees

The statistics are sobering. More than 780 million people around the world lack access to clean water and 2.5 billion live without adequate sanitation, according to the United Nations. More than 3.4 million die each year from water-related diseases—and the global water crisis is only worsening.

Population growth and migration to urban areas in Africa, Asia and Latin America are further straining water resources, prompting bleak forecasts on water availability in the developing world over the next several decades. The annual U.N.-sponsored World Water Day on Friday, March 22, is designed to focus attention on the importance of fresh water and sustainable management of water resources.

Two non-profit organizations running NetSuite to manage their operations are making a difference in alleviating the water crisis. Both are grantees of the NetSuite.org donation program for charities and social enterprises. Healing Waters International and Water For People have been better able to focus on their core missions since moving from disparate on-premise applications to the NetSuite cloud.

Healing Waters International

Healing Waters International, based in Golden, Colo., supplies water treatment and filtration systems in communities in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Guatemala and Mexico, with expansion planned in the African nations of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Swaziland. Working with local leaders and faith-based organizations, Healing Waters also provides health and hygiene training and instruction on treatment system usage and maintenance to the communities.

“One of the key aspects of our model is we want to empower the community to take ownership of the treatment system,” said John Correa, Healing Waters CFO.

Upgrading from QuickBooks in 2007, Healing Waters has improved its efficiency, productivity and focus on its mission by using NetSuite for financials and reporting, inventory management, time and expense reporting, and payroll. The NetSuite OneWorld global solution enables management of field operations with multi-currency conversions.

“NetSuite has been able to accommodate everything we need on a global basis,” Correa said. “I can report with a high degree of confidence on each project as to how funds are used. The flexibility that NetSuite gives us as a cloud-based system has been incredible.”

Water For People

Water For People, based in Denver, Colo., helps improve quality of life by supporting the development of locally sustainable drinking water resources, sanitation facilities and hygiene education programs in entire districts that hold many communities in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, and India.

“Our goal is clean water for everyone, forever by bringing people together in a collaborative and sustainable structure,” said Crystal Huish, Water For People Controller.

Running NetSuite since 2008, Water For People uses NetSuite to manage donors and donations, tying its financials to individual projects with drill-through to transactional details. The organization uses NetSuite OneWorld’s multi-currency and multi-lingual capabilities to manage its global offices on three continents.

“The ability to have all of our country offices on the single NetSuite system and do global financial consolidations has been extremely valuable,” Huish said. “We have great visibility and reporting with NetSuite to see more clearly how funds are coming in and how they’re spent.”

Water For People is among 22 organizations taking advantage of the new NetSuite.org
SuiteVolunteers pro bono program, through which NetSuite employees volunteer their time and skill to assist grantees. The SuiteVolunteers are helping Water For People manage their international transactions and get a deeper understanding of the way the platform can work with their multi-currency operations.

World Water Day may be observed just once a year, but for NetSuite.org grantees Healing Waters, Water for People, Charity:Water, The Adventure Project and millions of people around the world, every day is water day. We at NetSuite applaud the efforts of these two organizations, and are gratified that our technology helps them to better channel their resources into bringing safe, clean water to communities in need.

We encourage you to visit their websites and learn more about the amazing work they are doing to help bring clean water to everyone, everywhere.

To learn more about NetSuite.org, please visit www.netsuite.org or find us at @NetSuiteOrg.

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