NetSuite Showcases AI and Customer Success at SuiteConnect New York

The six-city SuiteConnect 2024 tour landed in New York in late March, where new generative AI use cases were unveiled to help finance and accounting, supply chain and operations, sales and marketing, and customer support professionals increase productivity, reduce human error, and improve data consistency.

The new NetSuite Text Enhance features help users leverage company-specific, relevant data to create and refine contextual and personalized content in NetSuite text fields.

Brian Chess, senior vice president of technology and AI at NetSuite, said the sweeping power of artificial intelligence will further streamline the operations of its customers by assisting with mundane but essential tasks like email writing, billing and shipping notes, bill capture, and supply chain simulation.

That’s music to the ears of a legion of entrepreneurs now relying on NetSuite to offload as many business processes as possible so that they can concentrate on what they do best – disrupting the incumbents.

Customers front and center at SuiteConnect New York

DoorDash chief accounting officer Gordon Lee and Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, both took the SuiteConnect stage and attributed their success to NetSuite’s robust ERP and financial reporting capabilities, in addition to automating a whole host of back-office functions from accounts payable to inventory management.

Adaptable, nimble and scalable, the use of NetSuite has enabled them to grow and thrive. Even after transforming DoorDash into a multi-billion-company with half a million merchants and seven million order deliverers, or dashers, the company only needs a team of six to run its NetSuite system, up from two a few years earlier, Lee said. He added that the customization help and Advanced Customer Support team from NetSuite have been the keys to tackle a litany of mission-critical operational, financial and inventory management challenges that come with running a convenience delivery company that banks on time and availability.

Edyta Krynska, vice president of operations of UNTUCKit, echoed the sentiment by pointing out that the effective use of customized workflows that incorporate shipping costs has enabled the apparel manufacturer to have a better handle on its expansion into wholesale distribution. NetSuite helped improve UNTUCKit’s business visibility, optimize inventory, and support growth. In the years that followed implementation, the brand saw double-digit sales increases.

Similarly, Michael Levy, co-owner and chairman of Undercover Snacks, said the use of NetSuite with its intuitive reporting and customizable templates for inventory management, fulfillment and other information portals has laid the foundation for the seven-year-old company to grow exponentially with the addition of high-volume customers including Costco and United Airlines since 2021. After becoming one of United Airlines’ inflight suppliers in 2021, the snack maker now ships millions of units each month to the carrier.

Levy emphasized that NetSuite features like EDI order management, real-time visibility into its production, and warehousing are indispensable, replacing QuickBooks and other manual systems that simply could not keep up with its torrid pace as Undercover started selling through national retailers.

All these boil down to the sea change that has reshaped consumer behavior since the pandemic, allowing disruptors and upstarts to rewrite the rules of the game. Evan Goldberg, founder and executive vice president of NetSuite, said for many of its customers, NetSuite has become the catalyst for growth, innovation and disruption by providing them with advanced capabilities like intelligent product recommendations, integrated payment processing and subscription management configurations, pricing and quotation enhancements. The recent acquisition of Next Technik will also allow its customers to add field service management for improved scheduling and dispatching.

In one of the swankiest shopping areas in New York, NetSuite showcased three retailers including Little Words Project for accessories, Redvanly for golf apparel, and Cuts Clothing for athletic wear, all running its software to boost inventory turns, improve assortments, and achieve accurate demand planning, in addition to financial management and reporting. All three are a stone’s throw from each other on Bleecker Street drawing throngs of shoppers to their omnichannel world from brick-and-mortar stores to digital commerce. Additionally, all three are able to stay lean and laser focus on their brands by outsourcing many of their store operations to Leap Inc. like leasing, staffing, merchandising, marketing and number crunching tasks like foot traffic analytics.

Also a heavy NetSuite user, Leap positions itself as retail as a service platform that has amassed more than 100 brands in multiple states by assuming the onerous jobs of running a storefront while mitigating the risks on their behalf as they race to dislodge the incumbents from chain stores to Amazon.

Bill Carrig, president of Little Words Project, said he is bullish about its prospects by turning over the heavy lifting to partners like NetSuite and Leap, anticipating further productivity gains with the use of AI enhancements to automate different aspects of business management from inventory optimization to social marketing.

Goldberg of NetSuite summarizes that the end game is not just to help these highflyers expand through automation, but also capture sustainable advantages by leveraging AI to do more with less while adding tangible value like recommending cross-selling and upselling opportunities so that they can maximize their profit.

List of Oracle NetSuite Customers

Source: Apps Run The World, April 2024

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