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10 Tips for Getting the Most Out of SuiteWorld 2013

With a new location, a new slate of sessions and a wealth of new NetSuite partners and customers, SuiteWorld 2013 promises to be the best one yet.

The NetSuite conference is moving from San Francisco to the San Jose Convention Center this year to accommodate the roughly 5,000 attendees expected to be at the show May 13-16. And a show with that kind of turnout with more than 180 breakout sessions requires a little preparation. Here are 10 ways SuiteWorld attendees can ensure they get the most out of the conference.

1. Research.  SuiteWorld offers a wealth of information for getting the most out of your NetSuite deployment with sessions that cover every facet of the suite. Factor in some free time, but be sure to spend the time up front figuring out your business needs and the schedule that makes the most sense for you. Then you’ll be better positioned to come home with actionable information.
2. Go Early. SuiteWorld’s preconference in-depth training workshops offer a deep dive into all areas of the solution for intermediate to advanced NetSuite users, spanning reporting, OneWorld, workflows and more.
3. Take Note of the Keynotes. NetSuite leadership (CEO Zach Nelson, CTO and founder Evan Goldberg, and COO Jim McGeever) will open each day with a keynote session providing entertaining, informative insight into NetSuite’s progress, product roadmap and vision for the future of the cloud.
4. Learn at Lunch. SuiteWorld has three ways to make your lunch more than just a break from the show to scarf down some food.  Tuesday offers a chance to sit down with show sponsors to get answers to your questions about the cloud, integration or simply network. Wednesday offers the chance to meet with the user group community and share best practices across multiple roles. Wednesday also presents the chance to have lunch with SuiteWorld bloggers and NetSuite product experts. Just sit down at the table with the topic you’re interested in.
5. Brainstorm. If the excitement of the show and the energy of progressive companies executing on their vision has you inspired, wander over to the SUITEideas area to whiteboard your ideas and get insight from NetSuite product experts on how to execute on your own vision.
6. Network. There’s perhaps no better way to learn and grow at SuiteWorld than by talking and sharing with fellow customers and partners. In the session rooms, the hallways, the coffee area, it’s a chance not only to learn how to get the most out of your NetSuite implementation, but potentially find the right partner or business opportunity. Better yet, chill out in the SuiteLife lounge where you can rest, recharge and network in comfort.
7. Meet the SuiteGuru. Sit down with our technical experts and get your specific questions about CRM, Ecommerce, ERP, OneWorld, OpenAir, the SuiteCloud platform or Web design answered in 30-minute meetings. But be sure to schedule them, pre-registration is required and seating is limited.
8. Tour the Floor. Wander the show floor, pick up some schwag and find the solution your business needs to accomplish its vision. It’s all on display. When you’re done, wander over to the SuiteStore to pick up your official SuiteWorld gift from customers such as Incipio (iPhone 4 or 5 case), Nakajima (Hello Kitty swag), Philz Coffee (lb of coffee), Liberty Water Bottle (official SW water bottle) or School of Rock (t-shirt). 
9. Get Out. You’ve traveled to San Jose, now take some time to get outside. Take a walk, go out to eat at one of the area’s signature restaurants, soak up Silicon Valley.
10. Get Down.  After all the contacts are made, the questions answered and your mission accomplished, be sure to grab a cold drink and have a suite time at Wednesday night’s SuiteCelebration Gala.

We look forward to seeing you. Be sure to follow @NetSuite and #NSW13 on Twitter to keep up to date on the show. If you’re looking for more inspiration, check out the scene
from last year:

 

For more information on SuiteWorld 2013, please visit: http://www.netsuite.com/portal/press/events/nsw2013/main.shtml

Transparency Taxes Traditional ERP

Tax authorities around the world are becoming more sophisticated, aggressive and cooperative in enforcing regulatory compliance within their jurisdictions. In particular, they are taking a long, hard look at businesses that appear to be reporting and paying lower taxes than expected.

Look no further than recent high profile cases like that of Amazon in the United States where the company is now required to charge and report sales tax in many more states. Similarly, the Starbucks UK Financial team had to answer questions from the British Government regarding their corporate structure and tax liabilities when it became public that they weren’t declaring profits in the UK. Amazon was also in hot water in the UK regarding the zero-rated VAT treatment of electronic books delivered to their Kindle Reader based on their regional eBook facilities being in Luxembourg.

With well-known companies such as Amazon and Starbucks attracting such public attention from authorities, finance teams around the world are increasingly looking to avoid compliance risk by providing greater transparency within their financial statements and, critically, their tax reports and submissions to local authorities.

Transparency for indirect taxation requires that a business be able to clearly demonstrate the calculation methods and source of taxable values as reported on its tax returns. For many businesses, running traditional ERP systems, this is much harder than it might seem.

Indirect and transactional taxes such as Sales Tax, VAT/GST and Witholding Tax are typically based on six criteria:

• Who is doing the selling – is the business a for profit, non-profit or other form of organization that has some specific treatment for indirect taxation purposes?
• Who you are selling to – as above, does the customer you are selling to fall into one of the special categories?
• Where you are selling/shipping from – the location from where you are selling your goods or service will drive certain tax behaviors (for example, if you are not in the same State or Country as your customer)?
• Where you are selling/delivering to – similarly, the location of the customer will also determine certain taxable treatments and which tax rates are applicable?
• What type of item/service you are selling – certain types of item attract different rates of taxation over and above any of the other criteria; children’s clothes are exempt from VAT in the UK, for example. Another example is that products deemed to be Luxury Goods are taxed at a higher rate in some US states than others?
• Last but not least, the tax that is being charged may itself have some specific properties; perhaps it is only valid for a certain date range or, it is calculated on a basis other than the actual item price.

Given such complexity, it is no wonder that many businesses find calculating indirect taxes challenging in the first place. Beyond that, being able to clearly justify those calculations and demonstrate the audit trail after the fact can be even more difficult with traditional point solutions.

NetSuite’s integrated business system approach carries over to how we have developed our Tax Reporting capabilities. From the top level tax report for each country of operation (Nexus) the finance team can drill down to successive layers of detail to clearly demonstrate how those tax reports are constructed. So, a quarterly VAT100 Return report – as required for VAT registered businesses in the UK – enables a drill down from the total values for each ‘Box’ to the sub-total by Month. From there further drill-down is provided to the monthly totals by Tax Code and from there to the individual transactions from which those values are derived.

That’s not the end of the story, however, as users with the appropriate permissions can drill-across from the transaction in order to see details of the Customer – their business type, their business address, VAT Registration No., etc. - the Item(s) that they have purchase and even the attributes of the Tax Codes themselves. The ability to drill-down from the summary level all the way down to this level of granularity is something that NetSuite has offered its customers for more than a decade. Yet, to this day it continues to be beyond the capability of most other ERP systems that require manual data entry, separate reporting tools and excel spreadsheets to compile tax reports.

The degree of Transparency that NetSuite provides to finance departments in support of their tax reports has reduced the time and effort required to both submit accurate tax reports in the first instance and further reduces the stress and complexity of justifying those tax reports during audits and tax inspections for thousands of companies around the world.

Beyond transparency, NetSuite also assists businesses in addressing the need for simplicity, automation and control and consistency that are key to strong compliance in your business systems. I will provide further insights into how NetSuite can help you in these areas in my next post.

-CRAIG SULLIVAN | SVP, INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTS

£1.87 Billion Gamble for UK Retailers This Christmas

British retailers may be taking a big risk and could potentially lose significant sales this year to consumers who are waiting to do last minute Christmas shopping.

Christmas shopping got off to a sluggish start in the UK this year, with sales falling by 0.1% in November compared to October, according to the Office of National Statistics and growing less than expected in the first part of December, according to a survey by the Confederation of British Industry. Most retailers (and industry experts) are now banking on the weekend before Christmas and Christmas Eve to boost their sales figures, as shoppers rush to buy gifts and take advantage of last minute sales. In fact, research by Sainsbury’s Bank reveals that consumers may spend a whopping £1.3 billion in these last few days before Christmas. 

If this prediction comes true, retailers may breathe a sigh of relief, but consumers are taking a big gamble by leaving their Christmas shopping so late. Our recent research, which we conducted with Vanson Bourne and the Centre of Economic and Business Research (Cebr) reveals that almost half of consumers said that a gift they had planned to buy over Christmas was out of stock. With so many of us leaving our shopping to the last minute, we really are gambling on getting the gift we want for our friends and loved ones.

But it’s not just consumers who are gambling. The research also found that UK retailers could lose an estimated £147 million of revenue this Christmas due to missed sales opportunities through out-of-stock products, and an additional £1.7 billion to their competitors, as consumers shop elsewhere for their Christmas gifts. More than half of retailers surveyed (66%) experienced stock-outs of particular products last Christmas, with these retailers not being able to fulfil an average of 21% of their Christmas orders due to a lack of product availability.

Getting to grips with demand planning

Perhaps the most shocking fact was that half of the top causes of stock-outs are entirely within the retailers’ control, meaning that retailers don’t need sacrifice this revenue.

More than half (52%) of retailers put their insufficient supply and stock-outs down to inaccurate demand planning. A failure to have the right products in the right place at the right time was also a contributing factor, with 42% of retailers saying products were in the wrong place at the wrong time – either online or in-store.

Manual, disjointed processes, which are prone to human error, are also key contributors to stock-outs. The survey showed that 40% of retailers manually manage demand planning while one in four (25%) admitted they manually calculate average trends based on current and historical data. A third (34%) admitted that they manually process and submit orders.

The figures from the Cebr demonstrate the cost for retailers if they take a gamble this Christmas when it comes to demand planning. Action must be taken. To  remain competitive, retailers must invest in their inventory management systems and processes to ensure that they have full business information transparency, greater customer insight and better demand planning capabilities.

While no retailer can predict exactly how many consumers will come through their doors this weekend and on Christmas Eve, being able to align sales forecasts with inventory replenishment plans and move stock around different channels depending on demand will help eliminate stock-outs, improve customer satisfaction, whilst ultimately ensuring a retailer can remain competitive during such an important shopping period. What would you rather place your money on?

About the research

The research is based on economic models provided by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) and primary research with 100 IT decision makers at UK retail businesses, as well a nationally representative study of 2,000 UK consumers conducted by Vanson Bourne. The findings are available for free download as part of NetSuite’s latest retail report The Christmas Gamble at www.thechristmasgamble.co.uk.

-Andy Lloyd - GM of Commerce Products

NetSuite Employees Give Back For the Holidays

Last week, in the first installment of our SuiteImpact Holiday blog, we told you about the incredible spirit of giving back in our Manila office, and their long-term commitment to the Philippine Christian Foundation. Today, I wanted to share a few more stories of the unique ways that our spirited NetSuite employees have decided to give back this year.

In NetSuite’s Brno, Czech Republic office, employees were able to get some of their Christmas shopping done while supporting an amazing local organization. The office hosted a fair for the V Ruzovem Sadu organization, a therapeutic workshop for people with disabilities. V Ruzovem Sadu provides them with the opportunity to work as craftsmen and earn money by selling their wares.

The team from Brno had the opportunity to listen to a presentation about how the workshop runs, and then invited the crafts people to set-up a holiday fair with the toys and decorations they had created. Employees relished the opportunity to meet these talented individuals and purchase the items they’d created – in fact, the staff broke a record for the organization, purchasing over CZK 36,000 in goods!

The purchase also helps with the overhead of the organization, providing salaries for the assistants and running the workshop programs. Of the 120 employees in Brno, nearly all of them participated in the event!

NetSuite also has two Australia offices, one in Melbourne and one in Sydney, whose employees overwhelmingly voted to support the Barnardos Children’s charity as their SuiteImpact Team holiday event for the second year in a row. This charity is very dear to the hearts of many Australians, and for over 120 years, they have been at the forefront of child welfare services, striving to find permanent solutions for the needy children across Australia.

Employees selected gifts for the children at Barnardos and brought them into the office to put under the tree until the drop-off. The lion’s share of gifts went to the older/adolescent children who are often forgotten during the holidays. The drive was incredibly successful, with nearly all of our employees getting into the holiday spirit. After the drop-off, the office received a note from the charity thanking them for the gifts and sharing that this year they were in especially desperate need, and the donation went a long way. Hearing this need, the employees decided to get competitive between the teams in the office, and aimed to double the number of gifts already raised. From the picture below, you can see that the competition was a success -- our hats are off to NetSuite Australia for having not one, but TWO charity drives for Barnardos this year.

The team at NetSuite’s newest office, in New York City, is just getting back to business after Hurricane Sandy’s devastation impacted many of their towns. Realizing how much help is still needed by those impacted by the storms, the team decided to make their holiday activity about giving back to those still needing help. Five of our team members traveled down to Manasquan, NJ, which was particularly hard hit by Sandy to help out with sand removal and clean-up of a home.  As we can see from the photos, it’s overwhelming to see the power of the storm, and the wreckage it left behind. Joe, Chris, Pratap, Chris and Jeff brought their work gloves, shovels, brute strength and humor to the job, and were able to make a difference for one family this holiday season.

Looking at the photos from all three of these SuiteImpact Team events reminds us how many different ways there are to give back during the holiday season. Whether it’s by supporting an organization like V Ruzovem Sadu, buying gifts for children in need, or helping those impacted by natural disasters, there a thousands of ways to help those less fortunate than we are, and the holiday season is a great time to reach out to your local community and see how you can help.

If you’re looking for a volunteer opportunity near you, reach out to your local community or check online, where there are dozens of great resources online, including our partners at Volunteermatch.

We’ll be sharing additional stories from some of our other NetSuite offices later this week, so stay tuned.

Don’t forget, you can always keep in touch with us on twitter @NetSuiteOrg!

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

Operating a Global Services Enterprise Efficiently

We at NetSuite have the privilege of working with many global professional services clients. Some came to us with global presence, and some have grown from smaller one-country operations into multinational enterprises. There are many complications to running a global business—language, currency, time zone, culture, etc.—but within services businesses, resource management presents unique challenges that other businesses don’t face. 

Services companies are based on people, and people in a global company come from diverse cultures. So the people doing the work are not identical, and this goes beyond just language and skills. Your team will likely have various work schedules depending on local holidays, and this can impact the timing of deliverables. If you have global teams on the same project, these calendar variations can be a big problem. Further complicating global services companies are the reporting requirements that arise when consultants cross borders.

Let me walk through a simple example. You have an office in London and an office in Paris. Nigel from London is on the bench, but he has the skills that match a resource need you have in Paris for a local French client. So you can staff Nigel in Paris, which gives him billable work and saves you from hiring a subcontractor in Paris.

From a staffing perspective, you will have to accommodate the fact that Nigel has bank holidays in the UK that won’t always correspond to the holidays in Paris. So even though you can staff Nigel on the project and avoid hiring a local French subcontractor, you will need to manage through issues with employee and client satisfaction that may arise from holidays. A resource management tool can help you plan and track these different calendars.

The financial issues that arise can be even more complicated. Nigel is paid out of the London office, but he is billing by the hour in Euros in Paris. How much revenue credit should the London office receive for the work done by Nigel? There is no right answer—we have some customers that give London credit for Nigel’s costs, others that give London credit for all of Nigel’s revenue on the French project, and others that split the revenue on various percentages.

Regardless of the revenue split, a resource management tool can give you the correct project profitability reporting and the data you need to do the correct profit & loss reporting for each office. On top of these managerial reporting needs, you need to ensure that you are following the proper accounting requirements for each country. No easy task, but a task made easier with the right tool.

Almost all of our customers face these cross-border issues. Even North American companies run into US/Canada issues quite regularly, and staffing projects with exclusively in-country resources is unlikely to be sustainable.

The best practice is to tackle these cultural and financial challenges head-on, and to learn from other services organizations that regularly deal with cross-border staffing. And of course NetSuite enables you to run your global services organization on a system that embraces these challenges.

-Ed Marshall, General Manager, Professional Vertical

BYOD — What’s the Fuss?

As consumer tech continues to develop, more and more employees are using their own smartphones and tablets in the world of work, while resisting—or simply not making use of—corporate devices that their organisation has supplied.

While employees may find they are more productive, this phenomenon poses a number of questions to a business, the first of which is: “Do we embrace building an environment in which BYOD (bring your own device) is accepted?” This decision will determine whether BYOD becomes the thorn in the side of a business or something that liberates it.

That is not to say that there are no issues to overcome when fully integrating a BYOD culture. For example, many business applications are the legacy of years of development, involving ageing client-server applications that require a Windows terminal to access, and which are more or less unusable on modern mobile devices. Furthermore, when people do find a way to access those applications from their personal devices, the business then has to cope with a range of security and compliance challenges, including data protection regulations and controlling who has access to what data within the company.

This is where NetSuite comes into one of its strengths. Web-based portability and dedicated smartphone and tablet apps means that NetSuite is just as useable on the move on a personal device as it is on a desktop in a corporate IT environment. And because data access and security policies are set in the application, you can implement a framework for security that governs all users, including those accessing the application from personal devices.

Take the Super Yacht Group, a publishing and media company focused on the super yacht industry, as a prime example of a company that is adapting to modern times. Thanks to NetSuite’s iPhone and iPad app, SYG staffers have real-time, secure access to in-depth business analytics anywhere in the world on their own devices as well as corporate devices. They can keep their fingers on the pulse and react quickly to any issues that arise.

Pedro Muller, Strategy Director at SYG, told us that the accessing this data on the move has proven invaluable to the business, as staff can react quickly to any customer demands regardless of their location. This more open and integrated approach has led to increased revenues of 20%, simply because sales reps can now handle an increased volume at any given time and place. Productivity of sales reps has also increased as much as 80% due to increased efficiency.

The example of SYG shows that there is a clear benefit of cloud systems in supporting BYOD strategies. If your systems are open and web-based, you can have productive staff, regardless of your users’ choice of device. This is where cloud-focused resellers have a huge advantage as long as the provider has a universal interface that will work across different devices.

It's now becoming imperative for people to cast off the shackles of Stone Age software and embrace the cloud, because this is what the modern world of work looks like.

For UK Wholesale Distributors, a £16 Billion Opportunity in Direct Sales

High Street footfall continues to decline thanks to the damp squib of an English summer and the Olympics did little to console retailers. It seems that business leaders in the UK wholesale market were right to think conservatively about their sales growth, with recent research by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) showing that over a third of wholesale distribution (WD) companies expect growth to remain static or shrink over the next year.

However, there is light on the horizon as the Cebr research predicts that the wholesale distribution industry can add £16 billion to its turnover over the next year through direct sales—a strong growth opportunity for those willing to think outside of the box.

As WD companies inhabit a very different world from that of retailers, business models and internal operations should be analysed before thinking about adding a direct sales channel. Margins need to be re-evaluated and price points set for direct-to-consumer offerings that compensate for the additional administrative burden of managing direct sales. The business model that allows a company to sell 1,000 units at £1 each doesn’t allow it to profit from selling the same product for £1 each individually.

It’s also important to consider the effects of an additional channel on operational efficiency. Nearly one-third (30%) of WD companies admit they still place orders with suppliers manually or by telephone ordering, and it seems many of these suppliers feel that ordering and information-sharing could be done more efficiently. 

A wholesale distribution company NetSuite worked with, Justoffbase, previously maintained stock, order information and accounting information in multiple systems (an inventory spreadsheet, separate accounting system, paper files) while managing orders from customers and to suppliers via email and phone/fax. By placing all of this into a single system and building dynamic integration into its suppliers, Justoffbase enjoyed five-fold growth in their business without the manual integration pains its staff experienced in the past with legacy systems.

The goal should be to take a holistic, ‘one system’ view of all aspects of your wholesale and ecommerce operations—integrating automated order processing, inventory management, demand planning, shipping, financial management and sales force automation capabilities.

Once you’ve got all of your internal ducks lined up, it’s time to develop a professional online presence. The average WD company spends just over £100,000 on its ecommerce site, whilst the average retailer spends double this amount. Amazingly, over a third (36%) of wholesalers don’t even have a website! If you want to compete in a world dominated by Amazon and eBay, then it’s vital to get this right.

There’s no need to spend a fortune implementing a world-class website. The advent of pre-built ‘Commerce as a Service’ systems make developing an ecommerce site that integrates into your existing systems much more cost effective, preserving your margins for your direct sales channel, while protecting your wholesale revenues as well.

The figures suggest that savvy WD business leaders should be exploring multi-channel sales strategies in pursuit of growth. The challenge will be to do this in a way that evolves their business model, streamlines and automates their workflow and delivers profits alongside that growth.

Whilst their retail counterparts have been leading the way in ecommerce and m-commerce, the WD industry is starting to wake up to the potential of those channels. With the potential boost of direct-to-consumer sales worth up to £16 billion, it’s urgent that the wholesale distribution industry evolves its approach. 

Are London Businesses Ready, Set, Go for the Olympics?

You would need to have been hiding under a rock not to know that the Olympics will shortly be arriving in London. With record levels of tourism and trade expected, you would imagine that this would present numerous opportunities to the capital’s thousands of businesses, yet whether this influx is actually beneficial for London’s typical business is up for debate. In fact, a recent CBI report showed that only a quarter of companies in London expected to benefit from the Olympics.

With London’s infrastructure set to be put under immense strain, failing or over-burdened transport links are prompting some businesses to take certain adaptive measures. For example, employees may need to work from home or outside normal office hours to avoid the expected delays. Remote working may be appropriate for some companies, but without the proper tools in place to access all pillars of the business in real time, some may struggle to operate to the standard that their customers have come to expect.

With just a couple of weeks to go until the games start, many companies throughout the city are still wrestling with these issues and the detrimental effects they may have on their businesses. A recent CBI report, surveying 250 London companies, showed that half of employers (50%) intend to let their employees work from home during the Games and 57% will adapt their working hours, while 46% of firms say they will allow employees to have time off to attend events.

Mark Naysmith, Games readiness director at Deloitte, has commented on this very issue: “On the busiest days of London 2012, there are expected to be an extra three million journeys a day on the public transport system. It is essential that companies across the city, large and small, have thought through how their business and their people will cope with this period. Whilst working from home is the most popular measure being tested, it will not be practical for all businesses that still need to maintain client service levels.”

This logistical nightmare is by no means a necessary evil, however. Businesses that have in place fully integrated cloud systems, such as NetSuite, can have peace of mind—whether they can get into the office or not, they can access their systems.

Take the Super Yacht Group, a publishing and media company focused on the super yacht industry based in Clapham, as a prime example. Despite having its HQ in London, SYG can rest easy that all staff have real-time access to in-depth business analytics anywhere in the world, so they can keep their fingers on the pulse and react quickly to any issues that arise, no matter whether key team players are travelling or can’t get into the office.

Pedro Muller, Strategy Director at SYG, says: “It’s particularly important that our sales team can access their data at all times, including when they are on the road. With NetSuite, the entire team can access sales information on their iPhones, iPads and laptops, which has proven to be invaluable to the business, as it doesn’t matter if an employee is in the office or not.”

Businesses around the world facing similar events or challenges should learn from the experiences of London. Perhaps businesses in Rio de Janeiro would be wise to start preparing now for the 2016 Olympics, so they can be sure to avoid the headaches that businesses may face this time round.

2012 IT Services Survey: Startling Links Between Data and Financial Performance

We surveyed 300 managers at IT services and software companies in the UK, US and Australia to map out where they see opportunities for growth and efficiency in 2012. The results blew us away.

Early this year we released the results of an ambitious survey we commissioned from an independent agency (Loudhouse Research) into the inner workings at IT services and software companies; the report was called "Managing Growth: A review of the global software & IT services industry".

Our goal:

Get neutral feedback from finance managers and resource planners into the links between financial and operational data, management systems and their companies’ performance, at a crucial time for the IT services and software industries.

Findings from the IT Services and Software report
The report highlights an upbeat mood in the IT services and software industries; despite (or perhaps, because of) general economic malaise, these companies’ efficiency-driving products and services are in high demand. But there are clear differences between the most successful companies in these industries and the underachievers. The report states:

"Achieving growth and successfully managing company priorities is currently threatened by an inefficient use of resources, lack of reliable data, and a lack of integration between differing departments and processes."

"The research finds clear links between the presence of real-time analytics and highly integrated back-office functions and the overall profitability of the organisation."

Profitability and use of real-time financial data
In fact, the survey demonstrated a clear link between IT services and software companies’ access to real-time financial data and increased profitability. Seventy percent of those that used and analysed real-time financial data grew more profitable in 2011, while only 47% not using the data grew in profitability.

Integration between operations and finance
Among the survey’s respondents, a heartening 60% cited a high level of integration between financial systems and operations. However, there’s a worrisome discrepancy. From the report:

"70% of finance professionals reported full integration between their department and the operations function, while only 49% of operations professionals reported full integration with finance."

Clearly, views from each side of the finance and operations fence differ.

Other findings from the report
The IT services and software survey included approximately 20 questions, and the results provide a comprehensive snapshot of the management capabilities that differentiate top performers. Some of the kinds of responses analysed in more detail in the report:

• The degree of integration of different business systems relative to each other —financials/ERP, professional services management, ecommerce and CRM
• The link between systems integration (financials and operations, as well as sales and non-sales) and profitability
• The availability of real-time financial data in different data categories
• The level of reporting maturity, in terms of access to real-time data and analytics for different departments (versus manual spreadsheet reporting)
• The rate of adoption of cloud or Software-as-a-Service solutions for core business functions.

The 10-page global software and IT services report is currently available free of charge from the NetSuite site. Particularly if you’re an IT services or software company in the US, UK or Australia, this report is a great way to benchmark your performance.

 

Fine Wine Business Toasts IT Success with NetSuite Cloud

The Guardian recently ran an article on cloud computing that highlighted the considerations companies need to make when selecting cloud services. In the article, LHK Fine Wines, supplier of fine and rare wines, describes how it has replaced numerous back-office systems with a single software-as-a-service (SaaS) package from NetSuite to manage financial accounting, inventory and order management, as well as its ecommerce website to “punch way above their weight.”

In the article, Tom Mann, managing director of LHK Fine Wines, also explained how NetSuite partner First Hosted customised the system to reflect the "peculiarities and foibles" of the fine wine market.

Customers are able to place orders in multi-currencies including UK pounds, US dollars, Euros, Hong Kong dollars or Swiss Francs and, because real-time information on inventory and orders is kept in the same system, there's no danger of them ordering a product that an LHK employee in the company's offices has just sold over the phone to another customer.

Online customers are also able to learn about the origins of a particular wine, read critics' tasting notes, find out whether it's ready for drinking or should be "laid down" first, and view photos to check on the condition of products.

To view the article, please visit http://www.guardian.co.uk/media-network/2012/jun/13/cloud-it-right-choice.