To paraphrase Woody Allen, Oracle NetSuite is all about showing up as a software suite with omni-present consistency.
The continuity was unmistakable at its recent SuiteWorld that marked the 25th anniversary of the ERP software vendor – now part of Oracle – exhibiting relentless innovation, platform expansion, and deal cutting.
Name a company founder who gleefully and constantly peddles products with generous discounts one after another and year after year as part of a keynote presentation and what comes to mind is Evan Goldberg, probably the hardest working software salesman. Goldberg has been at the helm of NetSuite for a quarter of a century running everything from product development to a global business unit with thousands of employees and billions of dollars in recurring revenues from 37,000+ customers.
When asked if he would be sticking around for another 25 years, Goldberg’s response is uncharacteristically simple and direct expressing his willingness to contribute to NetSuite and its customers’ long term success.
The NetSuite division of Oracle has grown to over 37,000 customers, tripling its installed base from 11,000 in 2016 when it was acquired by the database heavyweight. By most measures, NetSuite’s growth over the past few years has been remarkable.
NetSuite’s Uninterrupted Growth
| 2019 | 2023 | |
| Number of Customers | 16,000 | 37,000 |
| Number of Developers | 2,000 | 3,300 |
| Number of Partners | 1,000 | 1,600 |
| Estimated Revenues, $M | $1,300 | $2,817 |
In Oracle’s latest period of 1QFY24 ended August 30, NetSuite posted a 21% growth to reach $0.7 billion in revenue, similar to the 22% growth it achieved in 4QFY23 when it also topped $0.7 billion in revenue. That translates into an annual run-rate of more than $2.8 billion for the calendar year 2023, compared with $691 million for the nine-month period before it was acquired by Oracle in December 2016. In other words, its quarterly revenue has more than tripled over the past seven years at a CAGR of high teens.
During the conference, NetSuite announced a slew of new products including Text Enhance capabilities as part of its next-generation AI assist tools for users across different functional areas from sales to finance. Examples of assisted authoring use cases include writing targeted and personalized collection letters and generating summaries and narratives for financial reports.
Other enhancements include NetSuite Analytics Warehouse for users in 18 countries, and Field Service Management through its recent acquisition of Next Technik. In addition, the company unveiled NetSuite Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), derived from Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM.
NetSuite EPM will be adopted across-the-board by customers to facilitate ease of reporting, account reconciliation, and planning and budgeting, along with NetSuite’s core system for financial management. For example, medical firm Veracyte and Highstreet Insurance Partners have decided to standardize everything on NetSuite after relying on third-party EPM applications that failed to deliver the desirable results.
“Are we putting all our eggs in one basket? Strategically yes, since we have already made the decision to run planning with our ERP. Now we are saving time and money around reporting, planning, and budgeting,’’ said Daniel Ruettiger, Senior Manager of Finance & Accounting of Highstreet Insurance Partners after replacing Planful with NetSuite Planning and Budgeting and ERP.
Similarly, after replacing Anaplan with NetSuite Planning and Budgeting, Cassandra Cardenas, Financial Systems Manager of Veracyte, said,“It is a natural progression since we are already using NetSuite ERP. It makes so much sense to consolidate our meta data and transactional data to do integrated EPM. We are going all in and we are already seeing the benefits of running both from NetSuite.’’
Matt Riddle, Director of Systems and Strategy of Intelligentsia, a coffee supply company in Chicago, also decided to standardize its financial management, manufacturing, procurement, and eCommerce functions on NetSuite in 2018 after running a number of home grown and disparate systems.
Today, Intelligentsia has been able to receive electronic orders and look up inventory, manage traceability and food safety as well as fulfillment all working seamlessly within one system that can be accessed by 80 users currently. With more readily available sales and market demand data available from the common system of record, Riddle expects to expand the usage of NetSuite by adding scores of new users in sales and field operations.
Continuing with its innovation and platform expansion, consistency is hard to miss at NetSuite with the core team of its key executives intact including applications development head Gary Wiessinger, Paul Farrell and Craig Sullivan running product management, Allison Auclair leading customer experience applications, and Hanif Ismail in charge of HCM providing annual updates like clockwork for the past few years. That contrasts with the incessant personnel changes that have upended many vendors since 2020. For customers, NetSuite’s stability in its product development and execution appears to have given them extra confidence in any current and future technology investment that they consider.
List of Oracle NetSuite ERP Customers
Source: Buyer Insight Technographics Database, October 2023
