Find out more about NetSuite LCS and check out a list of upcoming events and available courses: https://bit.ly/3Cypwbz   NetSuite Principal Education Consultant Mark Gildea from the Learning Cloud Support (LCS) team goes deep on how NetSuite analytics and reporting work and how customers can get the most out of them for the second episode in our Listen & Learn series. Mark touches on who will benefit from a greater understanding of NetSuite SuiteAnalytics [3:34] before breaking down the different ways to query data in NetSuite [5:12], including saved searches, reports, and workbooks [7:08]. If you’re a beginner, Mark provides a few suggestions on how you can up your skills when it comes to NetSuite reporting [9:59]. He then shares SuiteAnalytics use cases where he’s seen customers find success [15:21] and how these insights can be valuable to employees across the business [18:25]. From there, the NetSuite expert shares more about live classes from LCS [19:29] and additional training sessions that come with the LCS Company Pass [25:38].   Like what you learned? Subscribe Now! http://bit.ly/NetSuiteYouTube   Follow Us Here: Mark Gildea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-v-gildea/   Oracle NetSuite LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLI Facebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFB Instagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIG Twitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW   #NetSuiteAnalytics #SuiteAnalytics #NetSuiteReports #NetSuite #NetSuiteERP   --------------------------------------------------------   Episode Transcript:   00;00;04;07 - 00;00;21;17 Hey, SuiteListeners, welcome to The NetSuite Podcast. I'm Ian McCue, a cohost of this podcast, and today I'm excited to continue our Listen and Learn series. We kicked off this podcast series earlier this year with the goal of giving customers useful tips and tricks that will help them get more out of NetSuite, For part two of the series,   00;00;21;18 - 00;00;43;05 we're talking NetSuite Analytics with Mark Gildea, a principal education consultant on NetSuite’s Learning Cloud Support or LCS team. Mark describes the differences between NetSuite reports, saved searches, workbooks, and NetSuite Analytics Warehouse and the role each plays in giving stakeholders across your business the insights they need. He shares useful background information for beginners on how these tools work,   00;00;43;07 - 00;01;03;04 then dives into how you can identify the right tool for the job and specific use cases that have driven eye-opening takeaways for customers he's worked with. Mark also walks through the resources available for NetSuite users to deepen their expertise. That spans self-service training through MyLearn, a number of live events, and personalized training sessions with education consultants such as Mark.   00;01;03;06 - 00;01;26;29 If you're a NetSuite customer looking to take advantage of all the reporting analytics capabilities in NetSuite, this is the episode for you, and it's coming up next. You're listening to the NetSuite Podcast where we discuss what's happening within NetSuite, why we're doing it, and where we're heading in the future. We'll dive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts.   00;01;27;02 - 00;01;40;27 We’ll also feature customer growth stories, discussing the ups and downs of running a company and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale.   00;01;41;00 - 00;02;08;08 So to start out, Mark, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at NetSuite? Absolutely. As you said, my name is Mark Gildea, and I'm based here in Miami, Florida. I've been at NetSuite for three years now, and I'm a senior education consultant. And in addition to that, I lead a team of some analytics experts who deliver live event webinars.   00;02;08;08 - 00;02;31;01 And then I also participate in what we call Learning Labs that we deliver at various cities around the country. And so you're part of NetSuite Education Services and the Learning Cloud Support or LCS team. Could you remind our listeners about what your team does? Absolutely. First, probably want to know what LCS is—it's Learning Cloud Support   00;02;31;03 - 00;03;02;24 and what we do is we support what's called the LCS company Pass. And there are two, there's the standard and the premium. And then we also have what we call LCS live events or webinars. We support event packs, we also create videos, student guides, we do quick reference guides. And then also we have some advising sessions that we deliver that support the online training and what we call MyLearn.   00;03;02;26 - 00;03;40;20 And can you share a bit more about what topic you're going to be covering today on the podcast? Absolutely. Analytics, without question. It's my favorite thing that I deliver and analytics does incorporate different topics. So there are reports, there are saved searches, workbooks, and then this brand new edition called NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, also known as NSAW. And who do you think will kind of benefit the most from today's topic and from this conversation about analytics?   00;03;40;23 - 00;04;10;24 I would say the ultimate goal for our customers is to gain insights into their business. So I'd say, for example, a sales manager, obviously they want to know how well their sales reps are performing, maybe even where they're performing the best. You know, you got your project managers who are interested in how much did we sell the most of, the least of, what are the most profitable items. You can imagine   00;04;10;27 - 00;04;38;14 a warehouse manager needs analytics to understand how they’re processing their incoming, you know, their purchase orders or what's going out, those sales orders. Maybe have a production manager who needs to know how well your processes are running. And obviously the C-suite, because you need to know where you are, right, in order to make a plan of where you want to arrive, sort of that first step.   00;04;38;17 - 00;05;08;19 So I would say anybody in any company that relies on data to make informed decisions, and I don't think it means just managers. There are certainly sales reps that want to know what they're doing best so they can find out what they can exploit to do even better. Yeah, absolutely. It makes a lot of sense as we, you know, talk about data-driven decisions and people, you know, using data to kind of guide these key decisions,   00;05;08;19 - 00;05;32;06 so definitely see how it could be useful for really anyone in the company. How would you describe Mark kind of the differences among the different ways you can query data in NetSuite? And when might someone use one of those options over another? Great question, and absolutely a question that I hear from my clients. So let's kind of break it up into different products.   00;05;32;06 - 00;06;00;14 First, let's talk about so searches and reports. Now, those two modalities--and both of those are they're creating SQL for us, they’re interfaces that create SQL for us--and it's important to understand that they are accessing different datasets. But what they do is they give us real-time data that we can use to create these in-depth financial statements.   00;06;00;14 - 00;06;25;05 Our reports are really good at creating those statements, like income statement and balance sheet. They can also be set up to send alerts, for example, with saved searches. If you get a brand new customer in your sales queue, you can get an email. You can also set up a schedule to send out any of the financial reports quarterly, maybe to the CEO.   00;06;25;12 - 00;06;50;10 However, they can only--there's a little drawback--we can say that they can only join data by one level. So what does that mean? What that means is you can imagine you're doing a query on the customer record and the customer record happens to be attached to the transaction record. So I could query, let's say, the sales orders of the customer.   00;06;50;12 - 00;07;20;24 And then you've got that sales order that has a link to the item record and you can get that data for the item name, let's say, or the purchase price. Now in saved searches and reports, you can't make that double job to go from customer to transaction to item. And that's where SuiteAnalytics Workbooks comes into play. This particular modality has the benefit of what we call an infinite join.   00;07;20;27 - 00;07;56;20 So if you know databases, it's just that there to join datasets, so you can skip and you can combine data from disparate sources. Also with workbooks, you have the option of creating pivot tables and you can put those pivot tables on your dashboard, and that's a visualization that isn't available in either searches or reports. Now, reports can expand by levels, but it doesn't necessarily have that pivot and it also offers you different types of charts.   00;07;56;22 - 00;08;22;23 Now, that's where this new product comes into play. So we've had connectors for a long time, where you can connect from outside data sources to NetSuite. But then we have this NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, this is another separate product. The other three I mentioned come with everybody’s instance, everybody has access to reports, searches, and workbooks. NSAW is separate.   00;08;22;24 - 00;08;47;20 Now this is sort of workbooks on steroids because the visualizations that you can get from this product are things I've never even heard of. So you can imagine, you've got things called scatter plots, maps--of course I know what maps are--and sunburst charts. And not only does it connect it to other data sources, but many more than just a connector.   00;08;47;22 - 00;09;15;05 And it does one additional thing. It can maintain historical data. So you can imagine, you have companies buying other companies and changing the name. Typically, you would lose that continuity, but with NSAW, it will maintain that continuity all in one visualization and one, let's say canvas. Now, that comes to gosh Mark, that's a lot of information and a lot of querying methods.   00;09;15;05 - 00;09;44;00 Well, how do I know which one I should choose? That's one of the things that I get asked quite often. So the way that I would answer that question is to say if it's visualization and you're looking to do a stacked column or a stacked bar or area chart, then a workbook is what you're going to use. You can do with reports, but only those that can be made into snapshots,   00;09;44;07 - 00;10;05;01 and then you're limited to only an area, a line, a bar, a column, and a pie chart. And you can't stack any of that. And saved searches have the fewest visualizations, meaning it just has one--a column chart. So Mark, analytics can seem a little bit intimidating to a lot of people that maybe aren't as well-versed in this stuff.   00;10;05;03 - 00;10;31;12 What do you suggest we kind of start to, as we start to figure out, you know, how can we learn about these topics and how they apply to NetSuite? Great question. So those LCS Company Pass subscribers, they can access a variety of different training from MyLearn. And in MyLearn we have Learning Paths, and those are typically 4 to 11 hours.   00;10;31;12 - 00;11;01;19 Then we have courses, which are in chunks of about maybe an hour, hour and a half. And the same thing goes for a series that we call “How Do I?” So it's easy to access when you're on your home page in MyLearn, there's a big tile there or a big section there that has listing of those “How Do I? Courses, and those start from 5 minutes to I think an hour and 10 minutes.   00;11;01;22 - 00;11;30;18 So little chunks of knowledge. Then you also, right through MyLearn, and there's a tile that says “Live events.” You click on there and you've got access to all of these webinars that we deliver. Every single week, every day of the week, there's some live event webinar going on. Now specifically for saved searches, we do have well saved searches and workbooks,   00;11;30;18 - 00;12;06;00 that's every Wednesday. NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, that's brand new and that is every other Monday. And then reports we have a live webinar every Tuesday and those are delivered by education consultants such as myself. And you also will learn things that you wouldn't even find in SuiteAnswers or Help or not even in Google. We also do these Learning Labs that have workshops and those are all over the country, and then event packs.   00;12;06;02 - 00;12;27;27 Awesome. Well, lots of great options there for people to learn more and kind of build these skills. As we think about analytics, what are some of the challenges beginners face in basically getting the analytics or the information they need from NetSuite? Well, one of them we went over earlier and that's when we were talking about, you know, how do I know which modality to use?   00;12;28;00 - 00;13;08;27 So that brings me to a really important point. And the biggest challenge for new analytics users is understanding their data, their records, and how those records are linked together. Understanding how they can find the label of the field, because that's going to be their biggest challenge. And then, if they know and they go to my live events, as they learn all of those little tips and tricks on how to locate the field and display that information.   00;13;09;00 - 00;13;31;11 And the next thing to consider, we were talking about which modality to use, here's a big one to consider now that we're talking about understanding your data and how it links up. So, for example, you could go to a customer record in NetSuite and you can go to the financials subtab and you could see the AR aging.   00;13;31;11 - 00;14;06;05 It's going to tell you how many times the customer was late 0 to 30 days, 31 to 60, etc. and you'll see that each one has a label, but then when you go to do a saved search, you get this message that says "error, field not found.” So we all know, or maybe you don't know, but there are standard AR aging reports that we have available, and those all pull in using the reports modality, all of that AR information.   00;14;06;05 - 00;14;29;20 If we wanted to do that in a saved search, we would have to create a formula to do it. It could be done, but it's not as easy as just selecting a field. So, what does that mean Mark? It means that if you can't--because we mentioned earlier that reports have a data source that's separate from saved searches, that again is separate for workbooks--   00;14;29;22 - 00;14;53;27 so just because the record, and in this case the customer record, has the field, doesn't mean that each modality can pull that data in. That is a major consideration is which one can pull in the data. So sometimes it's, “Well I can only pull it in using a report,” so you've got your answer: it would be a report. Yeah   00;14;53;27 - 00;15;18;15 that's great background to kind of know before you or as you maybe kind of dig into some of this stuff. NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud financial system, is everything you need to grow all in one place: financials, inventory, HR and more. Make better decisions faster so you can do more and spend less. See how at NetSuite.com/pod.   00;15;18;17 - 00;15;41;29 What are some of the other reports, searches, and workbooks in that with that you've found clients to find useful? Well, let's break it down. Let's start first with reports. So in reports we have a lot of great out-of-the-box reports, but all of them are customizable. So it's easy to just use those as, let's say, a template.   00;15;42;01 - 00;16;03;22 And one of the cool things that you could do with reports is, we’re all interested in comparing ourselves over time. We want to know not just what we did maybe by week, month, quarter, and year--all of that is preprogramed in reports, by the way. We can customize it, so we can say, you know what, I want to know sales today,   00;16;03;29 - 00;16;28;25 I want to know yesterday, I want to know this week and last week, and I want it relative to today. Well you can do that in reports and you can also do it our fixed, for example, relative to the date that you have the report filtered for. So you have the two options, relative to today or relative to a report date. You can do the same thing with matrix saved searches.   00;16;28;27 - 00;17;00;15 So those are also easily set up to make comparisons relative to today or in specific time periods. So you can imagine, you know, you could do sales. So a list of your, let's say your sales reps and how many sales orders they had last week, how many sales orders they had this week, how many they had 30 days ago, 60 days, 90 days. Or it could be fixed time, it could be quarter one, quarter two, quarter three quarter four. Or months,   00;17;00;15 - 00;17;31;01 right? You can even figure out, what day of the week are they selling the most. So you can even do it by day of the week. So you can get a lot of information using that matrix feature. And the same thing goes with workbooks. Now you got the ability to do a pivot table so, you know, reports you can expand level by level and the saved search, you can have that summary view and a detailed view. For workbooks, you get the pivot table,   00;17;31;05 - 00;18;07;02 so you got those little collapsible fields. So just imagine you got classification for the industry type and sales rep. So you could take all of that, you could pivot on the industry type, and you can expand and collapse that, and then you could put a subtotal and you don't have that ability to do in the matrix saved searches. And you can subdivide your columns, just like I mentioned for reports and matrix searches, but you can't choose relative time.   00;18;07;04 - 00;18;28;07 So it would be this quarter, last quarter, this month, last month, you get the picture. Yeah, that's great. It sounds like you can kind of be as big picture and as broad or as narrow as you want and really just get exactly the information you're looking for depending on what that is. Precisely. So it's easy to imagine, right, how customers could benefit from NetSuite Analytics,    00;18;28;07 - 00;18;56;12 but how have you seen all these customers that you work with benefit from all these awesome capabilities that you've been describing? Well, I mean, as I mentioned earlier, it's incredibly important to anybody who needs data to drive their decision-making. So your C-level is obviously going to benefit from understanding, you know, trends because we just mentioned, you know, comparing sales over time, for example.   00;18;56;12 - 00;19;24;08 So you can see if the trend is your friend. You could see where or what items are selling the most and where they're selling the most. So sales managers, of course, they're interested in knowing how well they're selling, am I making my goal, and certainly their direct reports are looking for that information as well. And then you've got, you know, production, not only the production manager, but those people who are being evaluated,   00;19;24;08 - 00;19;45;04 they want to understand how well they're doing. And I wanted to dig in a little bit to some of the other ways that our customers can learn about the analytics functionality in NetSuite. So you mentioned earlier that during the live events that LCS does, you teach things that aren't available through MyLearn or SuiteAnswers? Could you elaborate on that a little bit?   00;19;45;06 - 00;20;09;27 I'd be happy to. Every year we have we have our regular cadence as I mentioned earlier, for the saved searches every Wednesday and we deliver a different topic. Well, the fourth Wednesday of every month we deliver something new in saved searches. So let me give you two examples of two live events that I delivered earlier this year.   00;20;10;02 - 00;20;34;28 In fact, I delivered one of them just today, so it's fresh in my mind, right. The first one would be running totals. So there's a SQL code that you can use to calculate running totals. So what does that mean, Mark? Who's going to find that important? Well, I would say in terms of accountants, you can look at your GL accounts just like you can in reports and you can see the running totals.   00;20;34;28 - 00;20;55;14 You can create a SQL code to display that in a saved search and then put that on your home dashboard. And the same thing applies with the bank accounts, because that's typically something that you would see if you pulled open your bank statement, it generally has that running total. And then something that you're not going to find in SuiteAnswers,   00;20;55;16 - 00;21;24;01 and I tried Googling it and I couldn't find a NetSuite answer to that. And then that brings me to the next one. And this is taking people's HTML skills to the next level. And it was showing how to create borders, buttons, and hyperlinks. So what it was is we can create a hyperlink that can, with a click, open in a pop-up window.   00;21;24;04 - 00;22;05;09 Now, if you Google, can you create a pop-up window in NetSuite, every place tells you you can’t. However, you can, and I have the code, and I give that to the participants so that they can copy and paste it and create a template. And as I mentioned, well, what are you going to do with borders and buttons? Well we can make that hyperlink look really cool and we can make a little emoji, let's say, to pop open an email template, and we can create it to look like a button, and then we can indicate borders around that button. And we can even put images so that when you click on an image, it'll   00;22;05;09 - 00;22;32;04 create a pop-up. Another thing that we went over, and it's something that people think that you can't do, which is have a saved search reference another saved search. So I show the audience how to create a hyperlink that when you click it, it will open another saved search. So imagine I created an item saved search, and I wanted to see all of the transaction on that item.   00;22;32;06 - 00;22;54;04 Well, if I just do a saved search, it's going to be so busy with every single line item for every single sales order. So, in order to avoid that, I can create a link that when the end user clicks it, it will launch a transaction saved search and filter for the name of the item that I clicked on that line.   00;22;54;06 - 00;23;13;14 And last is imagine I've got the product manager and he's like, oh we're out of this because, you know, I can look at this saved search and it tells me that I only have three available and I know that I need more. Well we can create a link that when you click it, it's going to open up a pop-up window.   00;23;13;17 - 00;23;37;10 , it is going to reference a template, and it's going to pull the primary contact of the primary vendor on that item record. So it's going to do all that work for you. And if you know anything about templates in NetSuite, that's going to prefill the name of the vendor for you and even your email signature. So you get all of that at the click of a button,   00;23;37;17 - 00;24;07;02 you learn that in this live event, and this is something that you're not going to find anywhere. Yeah, that's very cool stuff. Are these classes kind of structured around your experience level or your familiarity with NetSuite so people can kind of figure out what might be right for them? For all of the live events, there's a description that lets you know, for example, for that one, it was an advanced HTML. But it honestly was, I think, beneficial to anybody because once you have the code, it's really a template,   00;24;07;04 - 00;24;33;28 so you don't maybe need to know the, what does that "a” mean? Is that an anchor tag? Is that href? What is that, a hypertext reference? It doesn't matter if you know all that good stuff if you come away with a template. So even though it probably is more advanced than some people might have, I think it's definitely something that people found beneficial and took something away.   00;24;34;00 - 00;24;52;29 And you don't know what you don't know, right? So at least now they know it exists that you can do something, because they've been Googling it and finding out, well, you can’t, but you can--you just got to look me up. So are these live events only offered in English, or can people see them in other languages as well?   00;24;53;02 - 00;25;26;01 Great question. I do speak Spanish and I deliver the analytics in Spanish. We have only three of the 124 that we have in English. We're expanding, so now we have three, but that's planning to be expanded. We're up to 18 in Portuguese. We finally finished our "basic usability” or introduction to NetSuite. We've got in French, German, and simplified Chinese, and they just added, as I'm looking, they just added one more to the German.   00;25;26;01 - 00;25;47;08 So continue looking, because you can filter by language, and you'll see month by month those are going to be increasing because our team is working on that. Great question. You also noted that the LCS Company Pass comes with advising sessions. How can those kind of be used to support these analytics efforts that the companies might have going on?   00;25;47;10 - 00;26;12;14 You just asked the right question at the right time because we were just talking, you know, what happens if, let's say I can't attend those live events because that border button and hyperlink, that's done for the year. So what can I do? Well, we’ve got two types of passes I mentioned, standard and premium. So standard gets four advising sessions and premium gets six per year for the subscription.   00;26;12;17 - 00;26;37;25 So you could say, oh,  my education consultant is Mark. You could say, you know what Mark, I missed that webinar that you gave, can we schedule something? The answer is yes. That takes place from a demo environment, and that supports MyLearn training. So I set it up, and personally I will set it up as a workshop because let's be real,   00;26;37;25 - 00;27;03;19 you didn't learn NetSuite by watching. So obviously my audience isn't going to learn anything by just watching me. So I give them the option because they, as LCS Company passholders, can access the exact same demo account that I'm using, so I have exercises for them to do. So I'll do a demo of, let's say, how to do a case expression, and then I'll have an exercise for them to do.   00;27;03;22 - 00;27;29;00 Now it takes place in a demo account and it can't take place in the customer's environment, we do have event packs for that. So Mark, you mentioned event packs there. Can you tell me a little bit more about the event packs and what they offer? I'm happy to. Event packs are sold in groups of four, each event can be up to 2 hours,   00;27;29;02 - 00;28;04;11 we have an hour and a half of delivery and 20 minutes built in for questions, and you can have up to 15 participants. Now, one thing I do have to mention is they cannot be recorded. But, you can use an event pack to have a professional video created. You can also use an event pack and you can talk to your education consultant to see how many events are consumed and how many that equals to how many reference guides or how many videos.   00;28;04;13 - 00;28;28;04 But yes, they can be used to create videos and quick reference guides, and we also do onsite. So if they purchase at least two, one pack for each day, we'll go onsite and deliver right there in their premises. Something else you mentioned are Learning Labs. Where can customers find out where and when these Learning Labs are going to be held?   00;28;28;06 - 00;28;50;15 Such a great question because they are free to all of the LCS Company passholders and even to people we call prospects, people who are interested in NetSuite and they're attending to see, you know, what's going on. And it's so easy to get there. So when you go to NetSuite.com, on the very top of our web page, there's a search bar,   00;28;50;20 - 00;29;22;28 and if you type the words “Learning Lab,” hit Enter and it's going to take you to a list of the cities and it will give you the times, the venue, and then a breakdown of all of the events. And every single one of those Learning Labs have analytics workshops. Recently, they have been for creating key performance indicators, doing a demonstration on that new product NetSuite Analytics warehouse,   00;29;22;28 - 00;29;43;17 NSAW. And then another one, NSPB, one on reports and then another on workbooks. So those are some of the topics in analytics that you would see, and of course you come see me at some of them. Yeah, lots of options there to learn about a lot of different products. That's great to see.   00;29;43;20 - 00;30;13;22 Any last pieces of advice, Mark, for those that are just kind of looking to up their game when it comes to NetSuite Analytics? Practice makes perfect. Three words. I didn't know what HTML or SQL before I joined NetSuite, and the way that I learned NetSuite was going into MyLearn, taking those 11-hour classes, getting the demo environment and doing the student exercises. And for our customers,   00;30;13;22 - 00;30;36;09 I mean, what better thing to practice that you can't break your system. It's not like a workflow or practicing creating a sales order--that's going to impact something. Practicing with saved searches, I mean, you're not going to break anything about it. Practice makes perfect. All right. I love it. Well, thank you, Mark, for joining us today. I learned a lot and I hope our listeners did too.   00;30;36;09 - 00;30;58;01 So thank you. Alright. Mark offered a bunch of ideas that customers can apply today to realize the full potential of NetSuite reports and analytics. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Be sure to check out all the trainings and events he mentioned to unlock an even deeper understanding of your business. And if you don't have an LCS pass yet, this is all the more reason to get one.   00;30;58;03 - 00;31;17;26 I want to thank Mark for joining us on this episode of the podcast. I also want to thank our editing crew, Oracle, and as always, all of you for tuning in. If you want more episodes just like this one, make sure you subscribe to our channel and give us a rating and review. Thanks so much, and talk soon. You just listened to The NetSuite Podcast.   00;31;17;28 - 00;31;27;02 Be sure to tune in every week with more NetSuite developments, stories, and insights into the benefits of one integrated system to help you run your business.

Learn more about NetSuite Planning and Budgeting: https://tinyurl.com/bdhm7phf   In this special episode of the NetSuite Podcast focusing on the CFO’s agenda for 2025, cohost Megan O'Brien sits down with Jess Wijesekera, SVP of Global Accounting at Vytalize Health, a leading value-based care platform. They start the episode by discussing Jess’ background and what brought her to her current role [1:55]. Jess then delves into Vytalize Health and its exponential growth over the last several years [6:26]. Megan and Jess discuss technology and talent issues [15:49]. They end the podcast episode by covering Vytalize Health’s priorities for 2025 [31:52].   Follow Us Here:   Vytalize Health: https://www.vytalizehealth.com/   Jess Wijesekera LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-wijesekera-7290196/   Oracle NetSuite LinkedIn: https://social.ora.cl/6000wKFhC X (Twitter): https://social.ora.cl/6007wK2zD Instagram: https://social.ora.cl/6003wK2Hv Facebook: https://social.ora.cl/6005wK2Dv   #NetSuite #CFOAgenda, #Accounting   --------------------------------------------------------   Episode Transcript:   00;00;04;21 - 00;00;28;20 Hello, all you Suite listeners. Thank you so much for tuning in to the NetSuite podcast. I'm Megan O'Brien, a co-host of the podcast. Now you all are in luck because today's episode marks the start of a mini series we are doing called The CFO Agenda. As we approach the end of 2024, we wanted to gauge what's on the docket for finance and accounting leaders.   00;00;28;23 - 00;00;50;23 In the first installment of the series, we have Jess Wijesekera, SVP of Global Accounting for Vytalize Health, a leading value based care platform. If you attended SuiteWorld or if you tuned into NetSuite OnAir to watch the main keynote, you would have seen her make an appearance with NetSuite Founder and EVP Evan Goldberg.   00;00;50;25 - 00;01;19;08 Vytalize Health has grown by a casual 90,778% over the last three years, so this episode is a great pulse check on what high-growth companies are prioritizing this coming year. We talk all about Jess’ background and her current role of Vytalize Health, the company's exponential growth, and her plans for 2025. With that, let's go ahead and dive in.   00;01;19;11 - 00;01;45;23 You're listening to the NetSuite Podcast, where we discuss what's happening within NetSuite, why we're doing it, and where we're heading in the future. We'll dive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts. We'll also feature customer growth stories discussing the ups and downs of running a company and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale.   00;01;45;25 - 00;02;03;26 Hi, Jess. How are you today? Hey, Megan. Good. Really great to be here. Good. We're so happy to have you. Yeah. Thank you. All right, well, we're going to dive right in because we have so much to cover. We want to hear, first of all, about your background. Did you always know that you wanted to get into accounting?   00;02;03;29 - 00;02;26;29 I did not. But I was always very good at organizing people and organizing projects. And I think that organization has always really been a part of who I am. It's going to sound silly, but in kindergarten I used to and tell them where and how to jump rope, and they always just happily listened to what I had to say.   00;02;26;29 - 00;02;57;23 And I felt really like a natural leader and I knew I wanted to do something that captured my personality. So, for me, accounting is just a really nice because it's taking project management and organization and unpacking a puzzle takes a lot of patience, which I'm learning to have a lot of patience, but it takes a lot of kindness for interacting with other departments and some tenacity with dealing with service providers.   00;02;57;23 - 00;03;31;23 So, I didn't know I always wanted to do it, but it is feeling like a really good fit. I couldn't help but stalk you a little bit on LinkedIn. You majored in accounting at Villanova, which is where I went. Yeah, Wildcats, you know, so I know I just had a great experience there and I chose it really because they had a very solid business school and I had this accounting professor who taught financial accounting, and he told me that accounting was the hardest major in the business school.   00;03;31;26 - 00;03;58;08 And if I could do accounting, that I could do anything, I could do finance, I could do management, I could do marketing. And he was really right. And I followed my accounting degree up with a master's in finance at Boston College. And it's really worked well, I think, to have this understanding of everything that’s accounting is past and everything that's finance is future and we meet in the present.   00;03;58;12 - 00;04;28;26 So it's kind of helped shape my career and where it's gone. That is such a cool perspective on it. And, and speaking of your career, could you talk a little bit about your past roles and your path to where you are now? Yeah, so like many accounting majors, I started at the Big Four, so I was at EY and I stayed longer than most. I was there about 15 years and I did a grand tour of about four offices.   00;04;28;29 - 00;04;55;29 So, I started in Palo Alto, and then did Boston, San Francisco, and I also did a three year secondment in the London office. And every time I felt I was going to leave public accounting, I stayed because I got a new opportunity or worked on a new client or with a new team. And it was this feeling that I could really add value, but also learn something completely new, which added to my skill set.   00;04;56;02 - 00;05;20;15 And I can't even tell you the number of times that I've cried in an audit room. I do think about those experiences and really how it shaped me. I got to work on Warner Brothers and Hawaiian Airlines, and towards the end of my career there, I was a national instructor for 606 when that Rev Rec standard was completely new and nobody knew what to do.   00;05;20;15 - 00;05;48;11 So that helped me with my foundation for where I am now. But after 15 years I decided to go into industry, so I started as an assistant controller. I was at a bottling company and my very first day on the job I realized I've never booked a journal entry in my whole life and a few roles since I have taken on kind of new areas of responsibility and kept growing my own skillset.   00;05;48;13 - 00;06;14;09 And I'm actually really lucky now to have brought on a couple of people I've worked with in the past, you know, kind of through EY and other companies because we just really enjoy working together. So that all of that brought me to my life. Well, I mean, I don't think you've really worked for a Big Four unless you've cried somewhere in an office, so you, you sent that experience home. Probably an office without windows.   00;06;14;11 - 00;06;40;07 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did my crying in a phone booth, so. Yeah, yeah, No windows. We're all here now. We're all here. And better for it. So speaking of Vytalize, you ended up joining Vytalize Health about two years ago? Can you tell our listeners a little bit about what Vytalize Health does? Yeah, so Vytalize is a value-based care company.   00;06;40;09 - 00;07;10;11 Value-based care is a collection of doctors and service providers and payers that work collectively to have better outcomes for patients. And coincidentally, that's usually at a reduced cost. So, what we do is sit between the primary care physician and CMS, which is the Center for Medicare Services. So we help our physicians strengthen the relationship that they have with their patients.   00;07;10;13 - 00;07;41;13 And if we succeed in that and meet certain quality metrics and achieve these better health outcomes, then CMS as the payer, they give us a share of that. So, I'll use a fancy terminology, but it's really aligning incentives, right? So, we're all incentivized for providing better, higher quality care, not necessarily more care. And it's really working because we're giving these doctors more time to spend with their patients.   00;07;41;13 - 00;08;18;00 So, we provide services like care coordination and virtual home care, in-home care. And it's particularly important for the Medicare population. You know, if you think about 65 plus and then people that are, you know, often not able to get to the doctor, in-home care is so critical. And really, we see ourselves as an extension of the physician so that we operate as part of their practice and really preventing hospitalizations and improving the quality of life and, you know, for an accounting major, that's certainly something I can get behind.   00;08;18;00 - 00;08;42;02 And, you know, the mission and kind of what we're doing, it feels really good. What does a typical day in your shoes look like? So like many companies in the pandemic, we went remote. So I have a little office that I use in a coworking space and I bring my puppy with me and we have a lot of meetings.   00;08;42;02 - 00;09;07;10 So back-to back-video meetings, I do a lot of meetings direct with one on ones, with my direct reports. We are constantly meeting with our EY tax team, Connor Group accounting specialists, so treasury and tax report through me. And then I just took on the FP&A function as well. So, this week was a lot of meeting with department heads to try and craft our budget.   00;09;07;12 - 00;09;34;04 But I find my typical day is really helping my team make good decisions and collaborative points of view and just making sure that we're prioritizing the right thing at the right time. Because like so many companies growing as quickly as we are, you know, you're this can be really long and kind of helping decide what comes first and what can come when, as you know, is a really big part of my job when I also have the puppy.   00;09;34;04 - 00;09;57;04 So she's as cute as can be. And we try and get out of some walks in between all of the meetings. Yeah. So for our frequent listeners, the puppies she's referring to is actually the guide dog puppy that attended SuiteWorld that we talked about in our SuiteWorld. recap. We are obsessed with Mayberry. I think she might be the new NetSuite mascot she's so sweet.   00;09;57;04 - 00;10;19;10 So she's training to become a guide dog for the blind. And I'll have her through next June. And she's part of the Walnut Creek Club here in the San Francisco Bay Area. And she's just a little delight. So her having her experience SuiteWorld in Vegas, I think opened her eyes. I mean, she's doing really great.   00;10;19;12 - 00;10;53;13 She did so good. She was all scared of the casino. Yeah, we all are. So Vytalize Health has this crazy growth trajectory. So the company ranked number one on the Inc. 5000 across all industries after achieving $1.5 billion in revenue for 2023 and a three-year revenue growth rate of 90,778%. Can you delve into the Vytalize Health's growth story and how that all came about?   00;10;53;15 - 00;11;22;19 Yeah. So Megan, work with me here on some math backwards. So to get to 1.5 billion, that means we started as a single health care practice. So we had one practice. It was in Rockland, Maryland, and it still exists, but we've grown from about one medical practice to over 200, I'm sorry, 2600 primary care physicians. We found that we were very good at these additional services.   00;11;22;19 - 00;11;49;15 Right. The care coordination and helping the physicians make better decisions. And instead of growing our own practices, the business went through kind of the modeling approach that we would instead partner with physicians and they would join our value based care program, which is it's called Accountable Care Organizations. So those practices joined our ACO and we taught them value-based care.   00;11;49;18 - 00;12;18;21 And through that we shared a part of our savings with them. And in that model, we were really able to grow quickly. So we went from, you know, just a few thousand Medicare beneficiaries to now over 260,000 patients. And that's a staggering number because we're probably taking care of someone that, you know, and it's part of Medicare's goal to have every Medicare patient in an ACO by 2030.   00;12;18;24 - 00;12;41;04 So for people who don't know what value-based care is, all of the sudden they must participate in value-based care by 2030, in six years we'll be there. And Vytalize is really helping with that transition. And it's working. It's working really well. We're seeing a lot improved outcomes for patients and decreased hospital hospitalizations. And yeah, it's going really well.   00;12;41;10 - 00;13;06;23 Yeah, clearly, clearly clear. So were there any challenges that came with this rapid growth? And if so, how did Vytalize help tackle them? Do you remember Facebook? They used to have this tagline and slogan and it said, ‘Move fast and break things,’ right? And I was googling it recently and I was like, I think they have abandoned that tagline.   00;13;06;25 - 00;13;35;10 Yeah, maybe with the move to Meta, they're like, Yeah, maybe not and break things. Yes. So that's the hardest part, right? Is because you can move too quickly and break things and sometimes that's an okay thing. But a lot of the times we should really be adding a lot more thought, a lot more time and a lot more considerations to some of the larger decisions that are going on.   00;13;35;10 - 00;14;02;29 So really, to me, the biggest challenge with this rapid growth is taking the time and the thought process to really think through decisions and not move as quickly as you can. So one of the other things that we've done to kind of circumvent that is adding a policy and procedures committee and a policy and procedures role in our organization.   00;14;02;29 - 00;14;37;20 And I'm not going to take any credit for that because it was already in existence and it was already working really well. But we were able to then write some policies pretty early on that helped our controls and helped our vendor contracts who could engage if vendor who could approve a payment. And a lot of those early policies and we're still writing them, but a lot of those early policies helped us, you know, be able to go to the rest of the business and say, ‘Hey, you know, you can't X, Y, Z because of this policy’ or ‘You can, but you must do it in this way.’   00;14;37;24 - 00;15;07;28 And kind of making that consistent across the organization was really helpful for me. Well, that kind of leads into a good question for our listeners here. Any best practices for companies that might be looking to grow or any pitfalls to avoid? I think growth in general is having good technology to scale, right? So how do we make something a repeatable process and how do we put it in a system to be able to make it repeatable?   00;15;08;01 - 00;15;39;14 My app director, Lisa Kemper, and I joke all the time that life is full of one-offs, right? Like this is all a one off and if you're tackling something over here and over there, you would need 300 people in your accounting department to be able to support all of the one-offs. So, we very much we do use this Policy and Procedures Committee, but we're also standing up a lot of our tech products and using NetSuite to be able to get, you know, some standardization.   00;15;39;14 - 00;16;07;11 But also I'll call it kill the one offs, right? We can't be doing an exception. Everything has to fit into a process and become part of the rule. And how has Vytalize Health been using NetSuite? Oh my gosh. We're big, you know, signing some new statements of work all the time. So, yes, I love it. I know the one we just signed was the budgeting and planning tool right now.   00;16;07;11 - 00;16;33;05 So we started with the financials and budgeting and planning. But I would say we're really starting to use a lot of the subledgers in the way that they were intended to be used, and that has been really helpful for us. So, our biggest NetSuite, and I spoke about this at SuiteWorld, is our bank reconciliations. We have, you know, 47 bank accounts and transactions galore.   00;16;33;11 - 00;16;58;00 Right? And sort of as we talk about standardization and automation and killing, the one offs, what we're doing is making sure that we can put something in a process and make it repeatable. And the bank reconciliation module has started to learn the way that we're matching off our bank recs and the way that we're matching off transactions. And it will start to do that for us.   00;16;58;00 - 00;17;21;05 So every time we make a bill payment debit this account credit that account it learns it and then it'll just do it in the background and then we approve it. So this used to take three people their whole full-time job. Not to mention there are a lot of errors in this process. And now that we actually turned on the bank rec module, it's kind of all working for us in the background.   00;17;21;05 - 00;17;47;26 And I was even talking with my accounting manager, Kelly Allen, and I said yesterday I was like, Kelly, how's the bank matching going? And she's like, ‘You know, I don't even hear about it.’ It's really working for us. And, and it's been helpful to start to automate these things so we don't have to think about it. And it previously it just felt like we were playing catch up, you know, 45 days.   00;17;47;29 - 00;18;06;14 It would take us to close the books. And, you know, 45 days ago was the end of August or August is long gone by now. Right? We're making business decisions all the time. Do we need more? You know, funding from investors? We want to take a loan, whereas, you know, where are these larger payments coming from? We're going to we can't wait 45 days for anything.   00;18;06;14 - 00;18;32;25 So it's helped us, you know, make some real-time decisions. Well, why is having a strong tech stack so important for Vytalize Health specifically and how did it perhaps help facilitate some of the massive growth that you mentioned previously? We had a previous controller at Vytalize and every time we needed financials, he would say, okay, like I need three days.   00;18;32;27 - 00;19;02;08 He would take, you know, we had QuickBooks and, you know, it was the right size and shape for us when we started. So, we're using QuickBooks and he would take three days to prepare a consolidation and then to do the elimination journal entries. And that was a very manual effort. And three days of those financials and, you know, the manual errors that could exist.   00;19;02;08 - 00;19;23;13 And, you know, it was almost like, well, I don't need it anymore that I asked for that three days ago. We've moved on. That wasn't at least, you know, last week. So finally I looked at him and I was like, we have to get this in NetSuite and we have to do like journal entries and post them on the system.   00;19;23;13 - 00;19;43;21 And, you know, we're going to need elimination entries and we're going to need to have this reporting in a moment's notice. And, you know, when we ask for the report, I need it in 20 minutes, not three days. So we moved it all into NetSuite We've also gotten a tool called Workiva and Workiva connects to NetSuite.   00;19;43;21 - 00;20;09;08 And I'll give a shout out to Ryan Mueller, who's our senior manager of tech accounting and NetSuite syncs with Workiva so we can produce financial statements and reports at a moment's notice. And I can say, you know, I want the Q2 report to investors and I want that Q2 report to include these entities and Workiva pulls the information from NetSuite.   00;20;09;08 - 00;20;32;08 And then we can have it ready for an investor immediately. And that has really been a game changer for us. We do a lot of reporting. We have board members and boards of each of our ACOs, so there's about six of those. We need frequent reporting for about six different entities. And then on top of that, we're supporting an audit from Deloitte right now.   00;20;32;08 - 00;20;58;13 For us to pull all of this reporting very quickly and only, you know, I have a team of five here in the US doing accounting, and that is really essential for us to have these tools so that we can, you know, keep our headcount costs low, keep the work interesting for the people that are here, and be also, you know, be providing that to investors.   00;20;58;15 - 00;21;24;18 NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud financial system is everything you need to grow all in one place. Financials, inventory, HR, and more. Make better decisions faster so you can do more and spend less. See how at netsuite.com/pod. Well, can you imagine the poor controller just getting an email saying, ‘Hey, we want the numbers’ and thinking, ‘Well, there goes three of my days.’   00;21;24;21 - 00;21;47;29 My god, I'd be dreading emails. Yeah. And, you know, sad story about QuickBooks. You have to have separate legal entities. So, we had 16 legal entities that he had. Like, you can't run a report. So we got a bolt on tool. So it's fun. But you know, just to sort of highlight like if you think you can do it, it could probably be done.   00;21;47;29 - 00;22;13;10 So moving to the new technology helped us immensely. Yeah, thank god. Thank god for saving the controller on a click of a button. We've kind of alluded to this, but you participated in a keynote with NetSuite Founder and EVP Evan Goldberg at SuiteWorld this year. What was that experience like? It was so cool. That was really just kind of a highlight for me.   00;22;13;15 - 00;22;35;08 I think the best part was people coming up to me afterwards and saying, you know, they resonate with my message or, you know, they really liked whatever point I had to make. And, you know, yeah, it's cool to be on stage and meet Evan. But really, for me, it kind of came full circle when people, you know, could kind of even tell me back what I said, did I say that?   00;22;35;10 - 00;22;57;26 But yeah, that was that was a really great experience and, you know, fun to kind of share how Vytalize is doing. And, you know, this big award has, has really opened a lot of doors for the company as well. One of the anecdotes really stuck out to me personally in your keynote with Evan was how someone on your team essentially automated himself out of his job doing bank reconcilations.   00;22;57;28 - 00;23;21;26 But he ended up moving to FP&A, which arguably more of a value add for the company. So as more manual task and accounting and finance are automated, what do you think the future of those functions will look like? Yeah, and I have this funny title. My title is global, which you know, often means it's a global company.   00;23;21;28 - 00;23;48;29 But for me, this global title is actually represents to the people on my accounting team and we are all over the world. So the individual who automated himself out of his job, Dether, sits in the Philippines. So it's kind of this added layer, Meggan, that, my goodness, an outsourced role in the Philippines, just automated himself out of a job.   00;23;49;01 - 00;24;21;13 But the people are working to offshore stuff, but like my offshore person is working to automate. And just a quick update on Dether: he has been so helpful with the budgets for us. We are going through our budgeting process right now, as so many companies are, and that budgeting process is really leading to a lot of great conversations with our department heads about what costs we’re needing, what vendors we’re going to be needing for next year, what strategic initiatives do we have to plan more costs for, where is more revenue to compensate for that?   00;24;21;15 - 00;24;45;29 And he has been so incredibly helpful in that role and I think it's very fulfilling for him so often times, you know, what is the future of the function looks like? It just looks like it's at a higher level and we are starting at the baseline is just moving up, right? So your entry-level position is just doing higher quality work.   00;24;46;01 - 00;25;10;07 Hopefully fewer tears in the audit room now. I think the tears will exist, but I do think people will have a more fulfilling job, start for themselves right out of college or right into the workforce. What skills do you think will become must haves and kind of this new normal? Yeah, I think the go-to skill for me is just a willingness to learn.   00;25;10;10 - 00;25;44;25 You know, I think I even told Evan on stage I don't know everything and I really don't, but at least I know where I can look it up. Or I might know who to ask or, you know, in me and in my team is this willingness to learn and the willingness to change. And I think kind of that positive outlook and that positive environment is something that will forever be a must have, especially as we have all these new these new automation ideas and everything that's new and exciting.   00;25;44;27 - 00;26;09;28 We really just have to embrace it. And getting a little more granular here. What are you looking for when hiring talent? Are there any kind of talent gaps that you are trying to fill? Yeah, and I think especially as a scaling company, I think in any organization you often wear many hats, but as I'm scaling, I'll just use my senior manager of accounting projects as my go to example.   00;26;09;28 - 00;26;36;25 But I'd worked with him before and when I hired him I was like, ‘I just I need help.’ And the first thing he says, all the time, Rob Dulgarian, is how can I help? And it's this willingness to learn new skills and the willingness to you know, get in and get your hands dirty, figure something out and, you know, kind of right size, whatever it is that you're working on that.   00;26;36;28 - 00;27;08;13 And that's a skill that the skill that I'm looking for when I hire people, you know, people we have people in Jordan, we have people in the Philippines, and we have people in the US, and kind of across the board. Anytime we're hiring, that's really what we're looking for is, you know, I've never done that before and I don't know how I'm looking for people that say, you know, I've never done that before, but let me explore, you know, how it's just this really positive outlook and where we are.   00;27;08;13 - 00;27;39;27 We especially get that from our global team members. They're just ever so, ever helpful. How do you assuage some of the fears in your team and your leadership, whatever it might be, about being automated out of a job? How do we get people to kind of embrace automation and AI and not really fear it? So I admittedly was unsuccessful at this at my last position, and I have been unsuccessful at this before.   00;27;39;29 - 00;28;24;18 I think it takes the tone from the top and really having, you know, the board, the C-suite, your investors, having those individuals excited and ready to embrace change is where it starts from because not to throw a cliche out there, but it really will all trickle down and having them excited and on board. At my last job, I think the only one that was excited and on board and it was really hard to get change, to get people excited about doing something else because, you know, they often have fear of losing their position and that that fear is very normal and very understandable.   00;28;24;18 - 00;28;51;05 But I think that as long as the, you know, the top of the company is willing to be flexible and encourage that change, I think it'll be a lot more effective. The accounting profession, it's been the news recently due to a shortage of professionals entering the role. So as a leader in accounting, how do you think companies can combat that shortage and attract accounting talent to their teams?   00;28;51;10 - 00;29;17;13 I feel like I'm going to bring this answer back to your previous questions, right? So it feels like automating and, you know, kind of holistically globally, looking at the talent workforce that's there. I mean, I think that's how companies are going to be able to continue to succeed. I kind of saw at the tail end of my career at EY how it was harder to get new accountants in.   00;29;17;13 - 00;29;57;15 And then also combined with COVID, was very difficult to start training people without being without being on site and in the same place together to be able to train. So, you know, from my perspective, I think it'll flex and change over time. Maybe I should teach some more accounting classes and get people excited about being accounting majors. But, you know, I, I do very much think it'll be a combination of roles like global accounting roles throughout the world, combined with this idea of people really embracing and getting change and automation and up and running and tech stack too.   00;29;57;15 - 00;30;31;17 I think one of the other things I wanted to mention is that we've been using Numero and Numero is a tool that we've used through Connor Group. And what Numero does is extract key terms out of documents and summarize technical accounting. So we're using AI to write our technical accounting memos, future state, and we're using a lot of this AI to kind of take and develop things that we would have done manually.   00;30;31;17 - 00;30;56;04 And you don't even think about how manual it is to create a technical accounting memo. But, you know, if I can give this bot a topic and my three lease agreements that can write an ASC 42 memo for me and you know, how cool is that? Because basically what we're doing then is taking the people who used to prepare the work and making them reviewers instead.   00;30;56;06 - 00;31;16;22 And I do think there are some additional challenges of like, how do you review something you've never prepared? But, you know, I think it'll create higher value work earlier in the process for people when they're launching their accounting careers. Yeah, I think taking some of the tedium out of it is going to be huge. So much tedious.   00;31;16;24 - 00;31;38;29 So much teedious staff work. Yeah. And now we have technology. Yeah. I wish I were starting my career now. I think I might consider an accounting career. If we had the. No, I would be terrible at accounting. I'm not organized enough. But then again, I could talk you into it. But maybe someday. But not today. I do come from a family of accountants.   00;31;38;29 - 00;32;06;02 Unknown My family is in medicine. So some helpful lessons for me. Yeah. For a health care company. Yeah. You blended it. Yes. So it was both. Well, we're kind of like coming up on the end of the year, so I wanted to pick your brain kind of around your 2025 agenda. So as SVP of accounting, what are your top priorities going into 2025?   00;32;06;05 - 00;32;32;07 So we are building out all kinds of really great reporting. So we're using the NetSuite Budgeting and Planning tool to also do our financial reporting for us. So what we're doing this year is building our budgets and we're building them at the vendor level. So it'll be able or it'll give us the opportunity to really analyze our budget versus actual at a new level that we've never done before.   00;32;32;07 - 00;32;57;25 So we're pretty excited about that. And then also meeting more regularly with our department heads to be able to have them reflect on how the month went, but then also make any changes in the future, planning for their new hires and any vendor expenses they have. And really, you know, having a well thought out budget and meeting that budget in 2025 is really our biggest priority.   00;32;57;28 - 00;33;22;22 Well, that's huge because, I mean, we keep writing about it, but the role of finance and accounting is becoming so strategy driven, so much about partnering across the rest of the business instead of kind of, you know, reporting after the fact to everyone. It's like working with them and collaborating during the process. Yeah, yeah. And seeing what new contracts are in the pipeline.   00;33;22;22 - 00;34;00;09 How are we going to take those contracts and pull certain levers to be able to maximize them? Yeah, there's a lot to kind of account marrying together, accounting and finance. Are there any challenges that you are worried about or anticipating? Yeah, I think the making sure that as an accounting department we remain inserted into each of the other operating units of the business and that we're working closely with the finance team and kind of ears to the ground with what's going on and when and being able to influence and do that at a much earlier time period.   00;34;00;09 - 00;34;36;21 So I am I am anticipating that to be a new challenge for us. But yeah, we're excited to work on that. And actually, my same bank reconciliation manager who used to do that, this is his new job instead. So we'll hopefully report back on how it goes with his new role. I love it. As advanced technologies such as AI, machine learning, RPA, all that proliferate, do you have any plans to upskill or reskill your existing workforce in the next year and how are you anticipating going about it?   00;34;36;28 - 00;35;07;20 Yeah, so Megan, this answer just makes my heart sing. So we are using our offshore Philippines team to use AI. So our offshore team is going through all of the contracts for us and they're using an AI tool, actually the same AI tool Numero. They're using that tool to go through all of the key contracts that we have and extract the key terms of the contracts.   00;35;07;23 - 00;35;44;07 That is a very typical, you know, staff one accountant role, right? That's what I did as a staff one accountant, and that was my whole job. So now it's been done by a computer. So cool. And it's being reviewed by, by somebody who's offshore and that I mean, it just really makes my heart sing because we're taking this lower-level work and giving more interesting work to the people who are onshore because now they're looking at these contracts and doing things in a way that that they wouldn't have the opportunity to do.   00;35;44;07 - 00;36;05;06 It's often hard to review your own work, right? So now we're getting new skill. We're just going to upskill the people that we have. I think our business right now, we're mainly focused on the current contracts that we have and then expanding our patient population within those contracts. So we're not necessarily taking on new physician practices.   00;36;05;06 - 00;36;28;06 So I think our accounting department will stay steady, but that is the thing we always like to keep on top of our finance folks to see how are we growing the business and how should we grow our accounting department as well. From a broader technology perspective, do you have any goals going into the next year? Yeah, I think just the great financial reporting.   00;36;28;06 - 00;37;01;16 And then we also have Salesforce as a system, and I was super excited to see Evan announce that Salesforce integrations are going to be made a lot easier. So from a tech stack perspective, we are going to start getting the information from Salesforce into NetSuite. And we're yeah, we're pretty excited about that because there's a lot of work that we do with onboarding our customers and that customer onboarding happens in Salesforce, but then it should become part of the customer record that's in NetSuite.   00;37;01;16 - 00;37;30;16 And right now, that's a manual process for us. So having Salesforce integrated would be, would be a really nice to have. Does Vytalize House as a whole company have any overarching objectives going into 2025? Yeah, so very much pure and stable growth. We are really focused on keeping the current physicians that we have and, and as I mentioned, the patients that we're serving or the Medicare patients.   00;37;30;16 - 00;37;56;01 Right. So if you imagine the doctor physician that you go to is your primary, maybe that primary care physician has 2000 patients and 500 of them are Medicare patients. Right. So those 500 lives, that's what's included in our count, right? That 260,000 that I mentioned before. So what we're trying to do next is get access to the other patients.   00;37;56;01 - 00;38;19;19 Right. That would look like contracts with Blue Shield or contracts with Aetna and other payers to be able to influence care over those lives as well. So I'll call that organic growth because we already have those relationships with the PCPs in place. But what we're wanting are contracts and relationships with the other payers, so that that's 2025 for us.   00;38;19;19 - 00;38;39;13 It sounds so exciting. I know. I feel like this business was so hard for me to understand and like the 10th time someone explained it to me, I got it. So I'm sure you guys are getting it in more than more than ten Innovation items. But yeah, it is a really exciting business here. We're thrilled to be a part of it.   00;38;39;17 - 00;39;12;14 Wrapping up here, just you have such a fascinating story coming in, like coming in and working for this high growth company. Is there any final thoughts or takeaways to leave our listeners with? Yeah, and one thing I do on my personal life is that I keep a gratitude journal and it helps me have a really positive mindset and having a positive mindset leaves me open for learning and growth of my personal development.   00;39;12;16 - 00;39;39;26 So I think that's one thing that's just really helped me to stay on top of my game of staying positive and kind of a can-do attitude. You know, I'm certainly not that way all the time. And sometimes my team shakes and says, Just pull back together. But I do really think that, you know, kind of being grateful for where we're at, how well we've done shapes us to have some positivity going into our next chapter for finals.   00;39;40;00 - 00;39;59;02 I love it. What a good note to end on. So being grateful really keeps you open for learning more. Jess, thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me. And again, I really am grateful for the opportunity. All right. Back to my journal today. Thank you so much, Megan.   00;39;59;06 - 00;40;26;21 Yeah, thank you. That brings us to the end of another great episode. It's such a great opportunity to get the perspective directly from a high-growth company and from someone like Jess, who has been there and facilitated so much of it. I think it was especially rewarding to hear how she personally was starting to implement AI in the accounting department to increase efficiency as the company expands.   00;40;26;23 - 00;40;47;10 Huge thanks to Jess for taking time out of her busy schedule to chat with us. And as always, a big thanks to our wonderful editing team over at Oracle and to all of you for tuning in. If you want more episodes just like this one, make sure you subscribe to our channel and give us a rating and review until next time.   00;40;47;13 - 00;40;59;08 You just listen to the NetSuite Podcast. Be sure to tune in every week with more NetSuite developments, stories, and insights into the benefits of one integrated system to help you run your business.

Learn more about NetSuite’s Business Grows Here event series: https://tinyurl.com/bdeabwr7   In this episode of the NetSuite Podcast, cohost Megan O’Brien sits down with JD Weinstein, Global Director of Oracle’s Venture Capital Practice. He discusses the findings from a panel he moderated at NetSuite’s Business Grows Here event stop in St. Louis [2:01]. They then play excerpts of the panel featuring Dan Conner, general partner at Ascend Venture Capital, and Craig Herron, managing principal at iSelect [8:50]. They discuss the advice they have for early-stage founders, including tripling the amount of investors they reach out to and tripling the amount of time spent fundraising [15:46]. Dan and Craig cover the status of dry powder since its 2021 highs [27:37]. They conclude by sharing their top takeaways for founders [36:25]   Follow Us Here:   Business Grows Here: https://tinyurl.com/bdeabwr7   JD Weinstein LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdweinstein/ Dan Conner LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danconner1/ Craig Herron LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-herron-3a2801/   Oracle NetSuite LinkedIn: https://social.ora.cl/6000wKFhC X (Twitter): https://social.ora.cl/6007wK2zD Instagram: https://social.ora.cl/6003wK2Hv Facebook: https://social.ora.cl/6005wK2Dv   #NetSuite #VentureCapital #Fundraising   ---------------------------------------------------------   Episode Transcript:   00;00;04;04 - 00;00;40;00 Hello everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in to the NetSuite Podcast. I'm Megan O'Brien, a co-host of the podcast. We have quite a unique episode in store for you all today. Recently, NetSuite has been hosting events in various different cities across the US called Business Growth Here. This tour is geared towards helping local entrepreneurs and business leaders discover strategies and tools essential for business expansion, as well as valuable insights on effectively managing all aspects of a growing business from cash flow to overall operations.   00;00;40;02 - 00;01;10;11 The events are tailored to the unique challenges and opportunities of each city and feature local leaders and visionaries. In the Saint Louis tour stop, one of the sessions that really stood out to me was a panel on the current venture capital landscape. It was moderated by JD Weinstein, global director of Oracle's venture capital practice, and featured Dan Conner, general partner at Ascend Venture Capital, and Craig Herron, managing principal at iSelect.   00;01;10;13 - 00;01;35;22 There's a lot of great insight in there around the market build back, what venture capitalists are looking for right now in companies, and how founders can increase their chances of getting funding. After hearing that, I knew I wanted to share the valuable insights with all of you, our wonderful listeners. With that, let's jump in, because you're not going to want to miss out on this episode.   00;01;35;24 - 00;02;02;02 You're listening to the NetSuite Podcast, where we discuss what's happening within NetSuite, why we're doing it, and where we're heading in the future. We'll dive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts. We'll also feature customer growth stories discussing the ups and downs of running a company and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale.   00;02;02;05 - 00;02;22;01 To kick us off, we have JD Weinstein, the global director of Oracle's venture capital practice, who moderated the panel. He joined us for a quick interview just to give an overview of the session and some of his key takeaways. Could you begin by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself and what you do for Oracle? Sure thing.   00;02;22;03 - 00;02;56;26 My name is JD Weinstein. I joined Oracle just over six years ago and now lead our global venture practice. I've previously worked for various early stage accelerator programs and strategic or corporate venture funds to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses with special advantages. At Oracle, we work alongside VCs globally to help early stage portfolio companies scale with our cloud technology solutions, global customer network, and rich enterprise ecosystem.   00;02;56;28 - 00;03;22;25 So that starts with NetSuite and Oracle Cloud infrastructure, but extends to database to Java and our rich application suite. We also make strategic equity investments alongside our M&A function under our corporate development line of business. You were the moderator for a session at the St Louis Business Grows Here event called Raising Capital to Fuel Growth in an AI-Driven Era.   00;03;22;27 - 00;04;00;10 Could you give us an overview of the panel for all our listeners? Sure. We covered a good bit of ground here, starting with the state of the economy and what it means for venture and founders growing their businesses in this era. I had the pleasure to interview Craig Herron, the managing principal of iSelect, a venture fund focused on the agrifood supply chain and health care, and Dan Connor, a general partner at Ascend Venture Capital, who leads an early stage thematic VC specializing in data-centric companies.   00;04;00;12 - 00;04;30;13 We talked about the state of the economy and what it means, from rising interest rates, fewer public listings, valuation correction to other complex macro headwinds, and how it really translates to start up business building. And then how that has changed fundraising in this climate overall too. We spoke to what makes a great business venture backable. So what the general partners on stage look for in exceptional entrepreneurs.   00;04;30;16 - 00;04;57;20 And then we also talked to tactical advice on just a general approach to fundraising and how to run a successful process. Hint: exactly like you would a sophisticated enterprise sales strategy. And then, of course, we concluded with the surge of AI capabilities and how we're going to be more productive with less. How that's impacted our industry. Why do you think this session was so important to include in our St Louis Business   00;04;57;20 - 00;05;23;27 Grows Here event? I mean, what is it about today's landscape that made it especially timely? Yeah, I think it's so important that we highlight the investment in commercial activity that's booming in the Midwest and specifically in Saint Louis and broader Missouri for this Business Grows Here event. Oftentimes we get this false perception of only venture activity buzzing on the coasts.   00;05;24;00 - 00;05;50;24 And while the majority of megarounds do happen there, at the earliest stages, we're seeing more and more data show the spread of entrepreneurial ecosystems emerging across this entire mid-continent. Steve Case and The Rise of the Rest phenomena, right? And so, with connectivity everywhere in the world, everybody has access now to build a great company. What was the highlight of the venture capital panel in Saint Louis for you?   00;05;50;25 - 00;06;24;24 Any particularly interesting thoughts you heard? You know, I can recall, I loved a quote that Dan pointed out in the panel, which was really just a description for founders to go back to the fundamentals that I see so many startups miss. Your customers are the most important stakeholders, period. Full stop. Without them, there is no business. So he describes a funny metaphor for saying they look for mission-critical businesses to invest in.   00;06;24;28 - 00;06;49;03 And so, if a customer, you know, the example he gave was somebody's hair is on fire and you may be selling sandwiches, which could be the best in the world or best in town, but someone's hair is on fire, that they're probably not going to want to sandwich. A much better business would be, you know, leasing fire extinguishers or something else that drives mission criticality.   00;06;49;05 - 00;07;19;13 What are your thoughts on the venture capital landscape as a result of the panel? What did you leave with? I'm really bullish on the venture landscape as I've always been and believe that entrepreneurs have the chance to shape the world for the better while advancing humanity. In this particular time, especially when we look at, you know, other hard times in the economy, an astounding number of companies were created from the last ‘08 Recession.   00;07;19;15 - 00;07;48;29 WhatsApp, Venmo, Pinterest, Slack, Uber, Airbnb, list goes on. Same thing happened after '01. And just less than half of Fortune 500 companies can actually trace back to being created in a crisis. And so why is that? People look for security, behaviors shift immensely, fear plays in. So the world becomes a pretty giant opportunity for entrepreneurs to take advantage of in these times.   00;07;49;02 - 00;08;14;17 That's such a great description. Kind of uplifting, and I love it. So, to end it, are there any best practices that you have for any listeners here that might be seeking funding right now or in the near future? You know, there's one insight that's one insight that's always stuck with me profoundly, which is this: Investors invest in lines, not dots   00;08;14;17 - 00;08;40;25 metaphor. What that means is rarely investors will wire you funds after your very first meeting, which is a dot or a data point. More often than not, they're evaluating your execution, your communication, trust building over time. And so each meeting that you have with an investor is a dot or a potential data point. And what investors are really looking for is to connect those dots. They're investing   00;08;40;25 - 00;09;19;24 in that connection, that's fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us, JD. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Megan. Enjoyed it. NetSuite by Oracle. The number one cloud financial system is everything you need to grow all in one place. Financials, inventory and more. Make better decisions faster so you can do more and spend less. See how at NetSuite.com/pod. With that, let's jump into the panel recording with JD, Dan Connor, general partner at Ascend Venture Capital, and Craig Herron, managing principal at iSelect.   00;09;19;27 - 00;09;47;13 So, you know, today's climate in venture it's been an interesting couple of years to say the least. So investors are dealing with, you know, the uncertainty of rising interest rates, fewer public listings and exits, valuation corrections, and a bunch of other complex macro trends. And so hopefully Dan and Craig will just distill this information, maybe give us some insights as to how to raise money in this climate.   00;09;47;15 - 00;10;15;20 I still strongly believe that there is a ton of upside to growing a business in today's world. And so a brief introduction. Maybe we can start with Craig Herron, who is the managing principal of iSelect and then we'll move on to Dan, who is the general partner at Ascend Venture Capital. I'd love for all just to give us brief introductions of who you are and your fund’s focus and maybe your core thesis.   00;10;15;22 - 00;10;42;13 So iSelect Fund, we've deployed about $200 million over the last several years. We've invested in 78 companies. 65 of those are still active. Others, the others have exited. We invest in three areas: the agrifood supply chain, health and wellness with a focus on cardio, metabolic disease, and then food is health. How do we use nutrition to change the health care system?   00;10;42;15 - 00;11;07;14 Right. First, I'd like to say this is a great event, awesome job to everybody, the production team and all the staff. This is awesome. So I'm Dan Connor. I'm the founder and general partner of Ascend Venture Capital. We're a thematic VC, which means we're focused on a specific theme. Currently, the theme that we're investing under is this data-centric transformation that's happening across every industry.   00;11;07;16 - 00;11;30;00 The expectation that every decision should be made based on data. For instance, 15 years ago, when you used to land on a plane, there's sometimes I would go on the air and say, ‘This plane was just landed on autopilot’ and it used to freak people out. But now if you got on the plane and the pilot said, ‘I'm just gonna do this one by feel,’ people would be terrified.   00;11;30;00 - 00;11;55;08 So that just signifies how much that shift has taken place. We're investing out of our third fund right now, and just making trouble in the venture capital industry. Awesome, we love trouble. So before we go on with a couple of questions, I love just a quick show of hands just to see who we've got in the room, who are entrepreneurs or growing small kind of or early stage startups.   00;11;55;09 - 00;12;22;12 Can I get a show of hands? Traditional SMBs if you identify maybe over there? Great. Investors in the crowd? Okay. And then large enterprises, corporates? Okay. How about Cardinals fans? Okay. You guys aren't sleeping yet. Good. Great. So as you know, as we all know, many businesses hit an inflection point and need capital to fuel their growth.   00;12;22;12 - 00;12;44;14 But raising venture funding isn't always the most strategic decision. And so I'd love to hear from each of you what actually makes a great business venture backable? And then maybe what are some qualities of exceptional entrepreneurs? Dan, if you'd like to kick us off. Yeah. So initially in our search, we're looking for three things. Number one, does it solve mission critical problem?   00;12;44;17 - 00;13;08;22 Is the problem solving a problem? That is, is it a product solving a problem that ranks among the top three strategic priorities for the customer base? The example that the algorithm I give is if your hair is on fire, I could try and make a case that our sandwiches are the best in town. You're probably going to need a sandwich is some point in the future, but it's much better to be in the business of leasing fire extinguisher services at that point.   00;13;08;24 - 00;13;35;23 So mission criticality. Second is the business transformative? If it works, does it change the whole face of an industry? We’re not looking for a slightly better or slightly more socially conscious Uber, we're just we're looking for something that changes the way that things are done in an entire industry. And thirdly, is it a unique value proposition? Are they solving a problem that is completely different from how things are done today?   00;13;35;25 - 00;13;56;24 And are they the only one that's taken that approach? Those three things to me make a venture backable business. So I agree with everything Dan just said. I'd throw in two more in there. So first of all, size of market, right? If you're going after $100 million market, there's really just not enough room to scale there.   00;13;57;01 - 00;14;26;23 We're looking for markets that are, you know, potentially billions of dollars. So if you get a decent market share that there's a big opportunity for the company to scale and grow. And then second is team. You got to have a venture backable team at that point in time. So those are you know, typically we're looking for people that have come out of leading research institutions or, you know, have been entrepreneurs already once or.   00;14;26;25 - 00;14;57;10 You know, if they're in the AG business, they there's been a career of Monsanto in a specific area or have been at Danforth or, you know, some of the other kind of major centers in that given industry. And there's a really great metaphor that we like to share with a number of entrepreneurs that we work with, which is that as you go out to market and raise funding, investors, often they invest in lines, not dots.   00;14;57;12 - 00;15;31;03 And so what this means is that you may meet an investor on day one and you may walk out with a $10 million blank checks. That typically doesn't happen. 99 percent of the time. But what does happen is typically investors are looking to invest in each of these data points. Every time that you meet an investor and you show growth in your company or you communicate what's going on, you are overcoming challenges, it's the progression of how you go through business is often what, you know, we look for in early stage companies.   00;15;31;10 - 00;15;46;03 And so if you think of that strategy, then you can line up, you know, as you go to market, ‘I want to get as many of these lines in as possible.’ And so start these relationships as early as you can and demonstrate growth over time.   00;15;46;05 - 00;16;06;19 So like to that theme I'd love to hear from each of you, maybe more a little bit about like real tactical advice that you have for early stage founders. So often, like we get caught up with, you know, there's a lot of glitz and glamor of venture capital and they raise these $100 million rounds and how did you do it?   00;16;06;19 - 00;16;39;04 And $100 million rounds. Yeah, exclamation point. But what if you're just going for like an early call it seed or series A stage raise and you're kind of early to this practice, what best practices can you recommend? I'll jump in. So there are a lot there tend to be a lot of incubators and accelerators out there that are specifically focused on a given industry or segment.   00;16;39;04 - 00;17;12;03 And, you know, often if you've not been a successful entrepreneur previously, they provide a lot of great education. They have networks to introduce you to early adopter customers. And, you know, and they can also introduce you to VCs and typically have VCs or angels that are interested in investing. I guess secondly, you know, it's great if you're coming with a customer in hand, right?   00;17;12;03 - 00;17;39;18 Because every VC wants to see some sort of traction that you've there's actually been proof point that this actually is going to work in the marketplace. And I guess I'd leave it at those two to start with. Absolutely. Yeah. So three things I would add to that. See, seed and series A have gotten extremely squirrely right now. It's very hard to engage investors.   00;17;39;20 - 00;18;07;05 They're the number of investors who actually have capital to invest, has gone down, since 2021, when actually a lot of folks raised funds and then were immediately unsuccessful at investing them. The best way to lose a small fortune is to start with a big one, and that's what's happened in venture capital recently. So a lot of people have gotten tighter with their funds to invest in new companies at all versus doubling down on existing portfolio companies.   00;18;07;08 - 00;18;31;15 So seed and series A have gotten very squirrely. So the first piece of advice I would say is you got a triple the number of investors on your list that you plan to reach out to. Triple it. And then triple the time that it's going to take you to dedicate to fundraising because it's a slog and it's the number of times that you have to follow up with one investor to get a response has gotten has gotten a lot longer.   00;18;31;17 - 00;18;55;17 So that's what I would say is build the database of three times the number of investors that you're going to reach out to and reach out to every single one, one by one. It takes hard work, but I know I'm not the only troublemaker out here, so I feel like there's something that everybody is dedicated to. Secondly, as you have those calls, as you engage with those investors, you have to also be listening to what they're telling you about.   00;18;55;23 - 00;19;24;12 We invest in seed stage companies or how they define seed stage companies, or we invest in series A companies. And, you know, you're too early for us. As they say that to you, you say two things: One, okay, tell me your criteria so that you can take good notes on that call and then keep that database. And then thirdly, say if they're saying you're too early for them, say, would you mind if I put you on my investor newsletter to keep you updated in a lightweight way?   00;19;24;14 - 00;19;55;01 You'd be surprised the number of folks who do ask permission to put you on their online newsletter, or actually follow up with newsletters. It set you aside. It keeps you front of mind. And then when it comes time to raise that next round or series A or series B, you have a list of folks who have told you their criteria and that they will invest later on if you hit these certain milestones so that it's not the first call when you're reaching out to folks and saying, you know, we're actively fund raising, we've got two weeks left to raise this round or else we're out of business.   00;19;55;03 - 00;20;16;17 So those three things. So first off, triple the number of investors you're going to reach out to and the time it takes to actually dedicate to fundraising. Number two, reach out to every single one and keep good notes on everybody. And three, maintain a monthly newsletter that you reach out to and drip campaign to everyone in that in that list you connected with.   00;20;16;19 - 00;20;39;25 To add something to what Dan just said, and agree with those, there are a lot of tools out there that are available to you for free. You know, Crunchbase, you know other things that you can go out and find to do research on the VCs. It's helpful to do the research upfront. Figure out who actually could be investing your space.   00;20;39;27 - 00;21;04;20 The other thing that, from a very tactical standpoint, is that different VCs have different ways in which they will source deal flows. So there are VCs out there where if you don't get into a partner, right, there's no way you're going to get funded. Right? And so sometimes going in you had a lower level through an associate or otherwise isn't going to get you where you need to be.   00;21;04;23 - 00;21;29;02 But there are other VCs like us where we make team decisions and so it's, you know, coming in through any member of our team is perfectly fine, but it's just you should try to figure out that going in so you make sure you're trying to get a connection into the right person that's actually going to be able to take your deal through and, you know, through to an investment committee or otherwise.   00;21;29;05 - 00;21;49;15 Yeah, I'll give you one more hack, which is a really strong, warm introduction. It's often hard to get if you're not already sort of well-versed and connected within the networks. But often people think, hey, this investor can introduce me to other investors. Like a lot of times, right? That that network runs strong and they all know one another.   00;21;49;15 - 00;22;25;25 We all know one another. Actually, I think the most quality warm interaction you can get is from a portfolio company. So from a different founder that they've already put money to work into because there's a reason they've already gotten that check. And I’d venture to guess that you all are going to probably take that call probably 100% of the time if a company that you've invested in is, you know, telling you, Hey, meet xyz company, and then, you know, to Dan's point, like, run this, like you're running an enterprise sales operation. Like it is a numbers game at the end of the day.   00;22;25;25 - 00;22;47;19 And so you do how it can be a slog and but with the right planning and persistence, you know you will break through to get there. Go ahead. One other thing. When you figure out, you know, figure out who your top list of like, ‘this is the perfect VC.   00;22;47;22 - 00;23;11;06 They do exactly what we do.’ Then go pitch to ten other people first, right? Because you don't want to go into that VC the first time if you've never done a pitch before, right? You want your materials refined, you want your presentation refined. You don't want to be reading your presentation. The kiss of death is somebody who gets up there and just read slides.   00;23;11;08 - 00;23;44;07 You know, we, unlike some others, do like to actually be walked through a deck. But I don't want somebody who's just going to read it and, you know, like they are standing in a room giving a presentation. You have to get the reps in. I want to put an emphasis on Dan's point with a question that he kind of skirted by, which is when you are meeting investor, how many folks have met and raised funding or attempted to raise money and you've gotten a, ‘hey, no, this is a little bit too early for us.’   00;23;44;09 - 00;24;10;23 Has anyone ran into that? If you haven’t, you most definitely will. I promise you. And so the way to answer that is just asking the question, you know, in a very polite way, ‘Hey, what would you want to see or need to see to make this an investable business?’ You can curate a lot of that information from investors or other folks that you're meeting and that sets at least a rough guideline right to where you're going.   00;24;10;26 - 00;24;42;16 I’d like to ask a question. So of the folks who have talked to venture investors, how many of you have a story of an investor that's just acted in a thoughtless, like inappropriate or unprofessional manner, like ghosting, not showing up, any stories like that? Well, if you haven't, you will, because there's a lot of really, really subpar human behavior that's rampant in the venture industry, especially in the early stages.   00;24;42;18 - 00;25;10;19 So you need to have a hard shell and let's make all that, just to take it and then move on to the next. And then remember those stories for when you're when you're IPOing and you're having drinks with everybody in your team and telling those stories about those investors later on because it's a big problem. Yeah, so, on the other side of the equation, maybe you'll have like what major pitfalls should entrepreneurs avoid?   00;25;10;23 - 00;25;37;29 Is there some proactive insight you all can share to get ahead of some challenges before for the entrepreneurs run up against them? Yeah so first off, not dedicating time, a set period, where fundraising is your main focus. If you're if you're running an organizational sales campaign, you're not you're not just running an undefined period.   00;25;37;29 - 00;25;59;04 You're setting aside certain hours every day where you're tackling a certain number of investor reach outs, investor prospect reach outs, so that you can handle on a weekly basis going forward just week by week and reaching out to as many as you can, engaging as many as you can. That is, it's hard to do.   00;25;59;04 - 00;26;37;25 It's hard to carve out that amount of time in your schedule because you're doing 50 other things. I get it. I founded this firm in 2015. We've been scrambling ever since so setting aside that dedicated time and actually reaching out to literally hundreds of investors, literally hundreds, is something that it will set you apart. I don't know about Dan's firm but our firm biases against a CEO at an A or seed level, an entrepreneur hiring an investment banker or other representation, right?   00;26;37;25 - 00;27;06;09 We view it as the job of the CEO to go out and raise money, and that is, you know, we want to see that the CEOs putting in that kind of time, that kind of effort, etc., in order to do that, that role at that level, when you get to a C or D level, yeah, there might be more reason for a banker to get involved, but typically not at seed and A level.   00;27;06;12 - 00;27;26;12 Yeah. Otherwise, you need to make sure you're, you're prepared, right? You're going to, you're going to get a lot of questions. To Dan's point earlier, there are a lot of people out there who, you know, are can be not the nicest people in the middle of pitches. But these are not two of them. The only friendly faces on stage.   00;27;26;14 - 00;27;47;17 Yeah I actually I can honestly say that we've gotten into a lot of deals by not being jerks as opposed to kicked out of deals for the other reason but yeah. To that point, people do try all sorts of different mediums to raise funds because it is quite challenging right now. There's a lot less dry powder, it's called out there.   00;27;47;17 - 00;28;11;10 So since the venture investment dollars have gone down in both dollars and deal amounts since 2021 and ‘22 at the highs, you know, we're living in a new world. So just curious what you all have been seeing maybe in Missouri or more broadly with your funds. Is this impacted investment activity or deal flow for each of you?   00;28;11;13 - 00;28;41;25 We're actually still doing a decent amount of seed and A business. We'll do 6 to 10 seed and A rounds this year, which is pretty consistent with par in the past. In the past, we also were doing more B and C and later stage deals. All of that effort is now solely focused on our existing portfolio and, for that matter, a decent amount of the A businesses as well.   00;28;41;27 - 00;29;09;11 And in terms of like us prospecting or doing outreach or even inbound for seed deals where we've cut back on the amount of time we have available for that. Just because I've got issues I've got to deal with my existing portfolio that take precedence over putting new capital to work for new investments.   00;29;09;14 - 00;29;31;07 I mean, I'm sure Dan's going to echo the same thing because that is pretty consistent across the board. You're seeing a lot of firms that used to do early stage stuff retrench and do later stage, change the criteria. They're now growth investors looking for ten plus million in revenue. So, yeah, it's definitely gotten a lot more challenging.   00;29;31;09 - 00;29;54;14 You know? Yeah. So actually, we're a kid in a candy store right now. During the pandemic, there were  60% more companies started every month than any time before in history. So for every three companies started prior to the pandemic, there were five started every month just based on how the averages were working out. And that was sustained for three years.   00;29;54;16 - 00;30;19;04 So there are so many new companies right now that have been around for a couple of years and are now looking for seed series, series A funding, it’s immense. The number of companies that we used to be able to review every month just to keep up was about 300. Now we're scrambling to do 500 a month and we're not keeping up with the number of companies that are entering our search criteria.   00;30;19;07 - 00;30;38;23 We need to be doing more because there are just so many companies, and that's the most exciting time to be investing, because in these times that in these times of turmoil in which people lose their jobs, they leave their company because they want to go live on the beach and are sick of it. They bring the knowledge and the funding that they have to start a new idea.   00;30;38;27 - 00;31;04;06 And the most the most consequential companies get started in these times. Google was founded in the dot com bust. Airbnb was founded in the global financial crisis. These iconic companies get started in times just like this. And we're scrambling to find those gems in that deal flow. So in Missouri, I guess I'll put it to you this way.   00;31;04;10 - 00;31;29;22 So what can you tell me what geography has the monopoly on brilliance on brilliant founders? Can anyone tell me what the what the limitation oof sending an email is geographically? Can anyone tell me how much more difficult it is to send money from one place in the country to another outside of Missouri?   00;31;29;24 - 00;31;54;09 There's no limit on where you have to be to be able to start an iconic company. The talent pool is everywhere. Brilliant entrepreneurs start up everywhere in the country. Sam Altman's from Saint Louis. Taylor Swift's mom lives in Saint Louis. So there's no there's no limit to where you can go with your company.   00;31;54;12 - 00;32;28;02 You can sell into the e-commerce market from anywhere. I think that's one thing that's changed as well, that folks have gotten a little more devious in terms of the revenue, in terms of the dollars they're bringing in. Every dollar of revenue is, by the math, an infinite valuation fundraising dollar. And so getting devious about new product lines, new revenue lines to actually front your growth in the future, SBA loans, bank loans, grants from their CEO.   00;32;28;02 - 00;32;51;12 I mean there is funding outside of venture capital if that has been to drive a well so. That's right that's a really good point. We'll be sure to have an angel panel with Mrs. Swift and Sam Altman next time around here. You know, one more question to you both, which is just given the surge of AI capabilities, it's clear that we're all going to be much more productive with less.   00;32;51;15 - 00;33;16;26 And so founders and investors alike are you know, it seems to be a trend. We're all moving back to the fundamentals of, you know, not grow at all costs, but maybe grow with efficiency or dare I say, profitability, maybe. So I'm curious, how does this how does this affect your thesis or, you know, have your expectations changed when you're meeting early stage companies?   00;33;16;28 - 00;33;35;17 Unknown So we're thesis driven, as I mentioned. So the thing that we've been focused on since fund one was is this data-centric paradigm shift that's been taking place. Every company needs to become a data company to stay competitive. I think that you can make the case in the future that every company is going to have to become an AI company to stay competitive.   00;33;35;19 - 00;33;56;08 But right now, we're in the middle of the hype cycle. So I don't I'm not ready to stake a claim, stake a fund in investing in that theme. But I think that in the future it may be. On the ground. I think that we're seeing a lot more, as you mentioned, efficiency, productivity coming from individuals in an organization.   00;33;56;10 - 00;34;19;02 And that is that has been a trend that's been happening for the last 60 years. Super producers are emerging and finding those other super producers to join your team is a way to grow a company fast. It costs less to start a business. There are fewer people required to start a transformational business. OpenAI   00;34;19;02 - 00;34;48;25 was four people when they were valued at $5 billion. There is a time coming where there will be a single person company who is worth $1B just by the just by the path of that trend. So maybe it's you. So even in our sectors, we are still investing a lot in AI-driven companies.   00;34;48;28 - 00;35;13;07 I'd say the first thing is you really need to make sure you're an AI-driven company and not, you know, just adding it to your name for the sake of it. It's the hype, as Dan said, the hype cycle because it's pretty quick to tell whether or not you're really an AI company or not, right? And the kiss of death is labeling yourself that one when you're really not.   00;35;13;10 - 00;35;38;18 It really hasn't changed our theses or the kind of way we looked at things. You know, to the other side of that, in terms of, you know, shifting back toward fundamentals, I'd say certainly in our later stage portfolio, we are much more driven by, you know, how quickly can we get to cash flow. Early stage portfolio.   00;35;38;18 - 00;36;12;10 There's still a little bit of leeway there, but you'd better, you know, you better have a clear line of sight to customer’s revenue. Everything else, if not preferably already have customers revenue or minimal viable product, etc. You know, in general, bootstrapping or not raising venture funding leads to limited resources, which often leads to better decision making, which then leads to better outcomes.   00;36;12;12 - 00;36;39;21 Right. And so we see it all the time. Too many people get, you know, the $100 million round, you have more cash than you know what to do with. And so actually there is some truth to growing a real sustainable business in this way too. So we're about out of time, but I wanted to give each of you just an opportunity maybe to, you know, for a piece of parting advice you'd like to share with entrepreneurs in the crowd that are going out to raise or maybe in the thick of it right now.   00;36;39;24 - 00;37;11;00 So I'd go again with early adopter customers, right? The more if, you know, every business needs a customer, so the faster you can get them, the quicker you can get them, it shows somebody you're trying to fundraise with that you've got traction, that the product is actually something somebody wants to buy. And it goes just a long, long way towards proving out that whatever it is your invention or idea is actually going to work.   00;37;11;03 - 00;37;53;19 So focus first on customers, you know, and then think, how do you go from there? Yeah, my advice would be bold, go boldly. The thing that binds us is this human element that everybody that we're interacting with should be expecting to be interacting a positive way. And if you can just get in front of that person with the right, think about where they are in their in their day, what they do on a day-to-day basis and get in their shoes, whether it's a customer or an investor or a person who you’re courting to join your team, make sure that you understand that person’s   00;37;53;26 - 00;38;28;29 culture. Their driving theses and figure out how that how you can craft your story to get in front of that person. I talked about out of the playing the entrance road to the to the global economy is this wide open and it's unlimited but the thing that we remain rooted in is our culture, our way that we do things as tribes, the knowledge that we share as individuals in a group that is extremely important.   00;38;28;29 - 00;38;53;17 And remembering that as you go out and try to meet new customers and build relationships is crucial and the only way to do that is to remember that human element. So be bold. It's great. I have the last word on this. So Doug Leone from Sequoia has a great quote where he says, ‘Architect your top table like you would your product,’ meaning   00;38;53;19 - 00;39;15;21 you know, really just stressing the importance of choosing, you know, your early investors and partners. They're going to be going on a very long journey with you if this works out as successful. If it's not successful, you also want to make sure that you chose the right partners alongside that. The one caveat with that is the best deal is, is the check that gets signed.   00;39;15;21 - 00;39;35;17 So at the end of the day, you've got to do what you've got to do to grow your business. And anyway, so with that, thank you so much for being here. I know we're just out of time and thank you for your insights. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks,Oracle. Well, that wraps up another great episode.   00;39;35;20 - 00;40;02;21 One of the pieces of advice that I found most interesting from the panel was being realistic around how much effort it would take to raise money in today's environment and founders needing to triple the amount of investors they reach out to and triple the amount of time fundraising. It might be harder to get an investor on board right now, but, like JD said, some of the biggest companies have been built in times where investors weren't as willing to invest.   00;40;02;23 - 00;40;22;16 Thank you so much to JD Weinstein for not only moderating the panel but also taking the time to join us on the podcast. A big thanks as well to our panelists, Dan and Craig. If you want to learn more about NetSuite's Business Grows Here events, be sure to check out the link in our show notes to see if we're coming to a city near you.   00;40;22;18 - 00;40;43;24 As always, a big thanks to our wonderful editing team over at Oracle and to all of you for tuning in. If you want more episodes just like this one, make sure you subscribe to our channel and give us a rating and review. Until next time! You just listened to the NetSuite Podcast. Be sure to tune in every week with more   00;40;43;24 - 00;40;51;04 NetSuite developments, stories, and insights into the benefits of one integrated system to help you run your business.

Register for On Air to access recordings of SuiteWorld keynotes, sessions, product demos, and more: https://bit.ly/3MOuMK8   In this episode of the NetSuite Podcast, cohost Megan O'Brien sits down with multiple guests to recap the SuiteWorld 2024 event. She is joined first by Craig Sullivan, group vice president of product management at NetSuite, who covers new UX and AI features announced at SuiteWorld [1:31]. Next, Carly Nesson, a social impact pro bono project manager at NetSuite, discusses the Hackathon 4Good, NetSuite’s annual event at SuiteWorld where teams of “hackers” flex their technological prowess to create solutions for a nonprofit organization [11:25]. Lastly, Ranga Bodla, vice president of field engagement and marketing at NetSuite, closes out the episode by discussing learning opportunities and customer highlights from the event [16:25].   Follow Us Here:   SuiteWorld homepage: https://www.netsuitesuiteworld.com/ NetSuite On Air registration: http://reg.rf.oracle.com/flow/oracle/sw24/attendeeportal24?source=PPC_Event_Horiz_SuiteWorld2024_0924 NetSuite Pro Bono email: [email protected]   Carly Nesson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carly-nesson-52809a3a/ Craig Sullivan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigssullivan/ Ranga Bodla LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ranga-bodla-bb45b/   Oracle NetSuite LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLI Facebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFB Instagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIG Twitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW   #NetSuite #SuiteWorld #AI   --------------------------------------------------------   Episode Transcription:   00;00;01;23 - 00;00;31;29 Hey all you Suite listeners, you just tuned in to the NetSuite Podcast. I'm your co-host, Megan O'Brien. We're coming off SuiteWorld 2024. NetSuite’s annual user conference in Las Vegas, and it was just packed with exciting updates, fascinating customer stories, and amazing learning opportunities. We wanted to bring all those insights to you, our listeners, in a SuiteWorld recap podcast episode.   00;00;32;02 - 00;00;57;21 We'll have several guests in this episode to cover the major happenings at this year's SuiteWorld, including NetSuite’s vision for the future, new product announcements, freshly launched AI and UX features, results from NetSuite’s annual hackathon event, and other great highlights. So whether you missed SuiteWorld this year or you just want a quick hit summary to supplement your SuiteWorld experience, you're in the right place.   00;00;57;23 - 00;01;31;25 With that, let's jump right in because it's time to get into everything SuiteWorld. You're listening to the NetSuite Podcast where we discuss what's happening within NetSuite, why we're doing it, and where we're heading in the future. We'll dive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts. Will also feature customer growth stories discussing the ups and downs of running a company and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale.   00;01;31;27 - 00;02;00;17 First up, we have Craig Sullivan, group vice president of product management at NetSuite, to cover the latest product updates announced at SuiteWorld, new AI features, and NetSuite’s revamped user experience. Let's start with a fun one. What were some of your favorite moments from this year's SuiteWorld? So many. So many, Megan. I think if I was to really go right to it, participating in the product keynote is always a highlight.   00;02;00;20 - 00;02;20;09 The opportunity to share with the audience all the things that the teams have been working on is, you know, is always a proud moment. A proud moment for me and a proud moment for them. And I think the other thing is, you know, SuiteWorld is, you know, once a year it's an opportunity for catching up with customers, partners, and colleagues from around the world, too.   00;02;20;09 - 00;02;44;21 And that's always great to see folks that I haven't seen for a year or so. Yeah. Back in person again there in Las Vegas. During his keynote, NetSuite founder and executive vice president Evan Goldberg, called AI a force multiplier that can supercharge Net Suite's ability to fuel customer growth. Can you speak to some of the new AI features coming to NetSuite that will help make that a reality?   00;02;44;23 - 00;03;36;16 Absolutely, I completely agree with Evan. And, you know, firstly and we also think that Suiteness plus AI, where AI is operating across the entirety of the business dataset, can generate even deeper insights. And so things like EPM and the narrative reporting capabilities, where it's actually using generative AI to describe, you know,  what the company's financials represent is an extremely interesting and time saving new set of capabilities, as well as predictive forecast explanations where, you know, the system itself will describe what it sees and provide explanation as for what's going on in the in the forecast. In NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, we have things like auto insights, the explain capability, the prebuilt   00;03;36;20 - 00;04;10;08 machine learning modules and data interactions assistant for natural language queries. These are great capabilities that allow not just the system to explain to you what's happening and what it sees in the in the data that it's looking at, but also then allowing you as a customer to interact with it, using natural language to ask questions, ask it to provide additional information in the visualizations that really helps get even more value out of the out of the system.   00;04;10;10 - 00;04;50;15 Things like Prompt Studio, which allows you to choose how the generative AI and the Text Enhance capabilities actually operate for you specific to your business. And then lastly, but certainly not least, you know, some examples from the developer side of the house, you know, whether you're an admin extending the system for your own business or you're a NetSuite cloud partner that's building SuiteScript-based add on to the system, you know, things like the generative APIs, SuiteScripts, and the code assist for SuiteScripts are actually, you know, really great tools that allow you to get even more value for your business by actually leveraging   00;04;50;15 - 00;05;26;22 the AI system underneath the Suite, so to speak, as part of the add ons and the extensions that you're making to your implementations. One of the key themes in Evan's keynote was how a strong technology foundation is crucial for organizations to conquer challenges and grow as their environment constantly changes. How do you think NetSuite’s approach to AI can further that vision? The approach that we're taking is that AI is everywhere and it's not just about providing bolt-on tools, but building intelligence into the core of the Suite and then making it available to everybody.   00;05;26;24 - 00;05;44;12 We really don't see that future customers are going to be asking for the unintelligent version of a business system. And so by making sure that it's just part of the way that we build the application and part of the way that we deliver it to them, we think that that's exactly what customers are going to be asking for in the future.   00;05;44;15 - 00;06;07;12 There were so many exciting product updates announced at SuiteWorld. Just covering those here would be pretty much the whole episode. What were some of your favorite innovations announced and how do you envision them helping our customers? Yeah, there were a lot. A couple of the ones that come to mind, and not just because they were in my part of the product keynote, but actual exception management.   00;06;07;15 - 00;06;36;11 This is really the perfect intersection of Suiteness, and AI. It identifies potential issues early so they can be solved, resolved right away, even surfacing potential issues during sales order capture so that the system can potentially flag problematic situations that could cause problems downstream. And you know, in areas like profitability and the examples that we showed in the keynote and also in the expo hall, it really just the beginning of what is possible with this this area.   00;06;36;11 - 00;07;10;06 So I'm excited about that. And, you know, based upon the reaction from our customers, it seems like they are too. The other thing I think stood out for me and which I would encourage our customers to take a look at, actually is SuiteProcurement, which was another one of the big announcements from the event. And it's not just about driving efficiency in what is a complex process for all customers, but also through the partnerships that we forged with Amazon Business and Staples, is delivering really tremendous value and cost savings to the customers also.   00;07;10;08 - 00;07;36;13 Evan also announced that NetSuite is adopting the Oracle Redwood User Experience, which is an award-winning design system used within Oracle's cloud applications. What do you mind giving our listeners an overview of the Redwood approach and how it will benefit them? Absolutely. I think I think, you know, if you look around, you, you know, the world is definitely changed over the last 25 years since NetSuite was founded.   00;07;36;15 - 00;08;02;24 Everyone now has access to applications in their everyday lives via their smartphones or iPads, tablets, whatever. And many of those applications have focused on delivering beautiful and intuitive user experiences. Our perspective is that we don't want those users coming to work and being disappointed in how their business applications look and feel, how long it takes them to learn, how difficult it is for them to do what they need to do.   00;08;02;27 - 00;08;30;03 The Redwood design system addresses decades of the business user of being an afterthought in terms of user experience and delivers a truly delightful experience from the very first interaction. And as a result, this encourages engagement and accelerates adoption so as to drive even more efficiency for the user and hence the business. Speaking of user experience, this year's SuiteWorld had the UX Lab, which allowed customers to preview and provide feedback on new designs and workflows.   00;08;30;06 - 00;08;55;06 Would you mind giving our listeners an overview of the Lab, why it's important, and how you’re planning to use some of that feedback? Yes, absolutely. And thanks for mentioning that. The UX Lab at SuiteWorld is literally our largest opportunity to engage with users directly and get their impressions and feedback both on what the NetSuite application is doing today, as well as how they feel about some of the things we're cooking up for the future of the product.   00;08;55;08 - 00;09;12;17 It's an opportunity to get their firsthand reactions to the things we showed on the big screens of the keynote and hear more from them about how they feel around those capabilities and what else they would like to see. It's a really great opportunity for users to participate in our design process and help make the product better for themselves and   00;09;12;17 - 00;09;44;14 other users like them. Across all the keynotes at SuiteWorld this year, we had the opportunity to hear from numerous NetSuite customers like Vytalize Health, PRx Performance, Packer Fastener, Trace3. The list goes on and on. What are some of the top takeaways from these conversations for you? Any stories or highlights that really stood out? Yeah, the growth of Vytalize Health has been astonishing and it's always a proud moment to hear how customers are using NetSuite as the system to support that kind of success.   00;09;44;16 - 00;10;03;24 It was great to hear how Jess delegates to her team the opportunities to explore and experiment with how ne w capabilities can help them do even more. And there were so many great stories from the other customers also, from the automations that they've been able to achieve in the office to the opportunities that it's created for them in terms of work life balance.   00;10;03;26 - 00;10;30;20 And we heard that from Packer Fastener and we heard that from Trace3 also. And so that that's really what it's all about for us is, you know, making sure that the system that we deliver provides great and tremendous benefits to the business, but also is helping hopefully our customers and our users create you know, create a better work life balance situation for themselves, too.   00;10;30;22 - 00;11;02;25 Last question. So you've been at NetSuite now for nearly 25 years. How have you seen SuiteWorld grow and evolve over the years? How could it possibly have been 25 years? It still is very it still feels very much like the beginning of what is possible. Honestly. SuiteWorld is obviously much, much bigger than the earlier incarnations and where that hits home for me, beyond the size of the keynote room, is the size of the Partner Expo Hall.   00;11;02;28 - 00;11;22;02 Whether large or small, it's not lost on me that the partners that showcase their offerings there have made a bet on NetSuite. And to see them thriving and doing great business and also having a great time at SuiteWorld is especially rewarding. Well, this was so great. Thanks for taking the time to speak with us, Craig.   00;11;22;04 - 00;11;55;08 My pleasure. Thanks very much. Next up, we have Carly Nesson, a social impact pro-bono project manager at NetSuite to discuss NetSuite’s annual hackathon event at SuiteWorld this year. For listeners that might not know, would you mind giving an overview of what the Hackathon4Good is? Absolutely. Hackathon4Good as a team-based competition that we offer every year at SuiteWorld where our partners and customers can come together to solve some complex problem to help out a nonprofit.   00;11;55;10 - 00;12;18;01 But every year the challenge changes. But the fun remains the same, where they're just spending a day or a few days, or this year's case, a few weeks together in this friendly competition to see what they can create. It's amazing. Now, who was the nonprofit customer  our teams of hackers were helping out this year? This year we were working for American Bird Conservancy.   00;12;18;02 - 00;12;53;11 They're a nonprofit that focuses on conserving bird populations and their habitats. And they're doing incredible work across the Americas, including Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America. They really span a wide range of services across each of those areas. What issues were the American Bird Conservancy facing that our hackathon participants were looking to solve? The challenge this year focused on making sure we could help American Bird Conservancy prioritize their projects based on things like birds.   00;12;53;11 - 00;13;20;22 Most at risk, grant availability, maybe contractor prices, how many trees they were planting in a given area based on how those trees would survive and what the risk levels for each of those trees were. So there were a lot of complex factors that were going into this year's challenge to make sure that we could help American Bird Conservancy distill all of this complex information and make it actionable data about where they should focus their time and energy.   00;13;20;24 - 00;13;57;28 It's all about data nowadays. Now, who ended up winning? What did their solution look like? We had a team, actually a return hacking team. It was pretty fun to see them again this year. They came all the way from Australia and gave us a machine learning solution. Every team gave us a machine learning solution, but then once they created a machine learning model in OCI, they brought that back into NetSuite and created a customized report so they could rank these projects for American Bird Conservancy and then give them information about why the projects were the priority levels that they were.   00;13;58;01 - 00;14;27;01 So this winning team came up with not only a really strong model that gave them good scores about the complex factors involved, but they also had a really impressive interface for the customer where they could see in NetSuite exactly where they should spend their time and energy and why they should spend it there so that the customer could then re-parameterize if they needed to and give some human insight into these very mathematically informed challenges.   00;14;27;01 - 00;14;52;05 So they had a perfect balance of both of the sides that we were looking for and you could just tell they really understood the priorities of what American Bird Conservancy was trying to do, and they gave appropriate weight to each of the areas that American Bird Conservancy said they would have chosen for themselves. That's amazing. I mean, that was so many different factors that they had to take into account and create a solution for.   00;14;52;07 - 00;15;11;23 Absolutely. It was really impressive. Now, where can people go to learn more about the SuiteWorld hackathon? Well, we do this every year, so once the SuiteWorld website comes out and that SuiteWorld, of course, there's some information about each of the programs and events that participants can take advantage of. And we're always posted on the website.   00;15;11;26 - 00;15;32;17 So once the dates come out, of course they, they release different information at different times. That's always the best place to go check is that SuiteWorld website and figure out how they can sign up, how they can get involved, and learn more about that year's challenge. And for any NetSuite nonprofit customer that wants to be considered for future hackathon events, where can they go to get more information?   00;15;32;20 - 00;15;53;21 We would love to hear from them. We're always looking for creative ideas about what we can do for non-profits. The best place would be to reach out to the pro-bono team. The pro-bono team at NetSuite is the one that serves nonprofits in that skilled volunteering way, and we do have a general inbox we can be reached at pro-bono underscore WW at Oracle dot com.   00;15;53;27 - 00;16;14;10 Perfect. Well I'll be sure to put that in the show notes. Carly, thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for giving us its visibility. We love the hackathon and everyone that's joined us has loved it too. So I love spreading the word about it. NetSuite by Oracle. The number one cloud financial system is everything you need to grow all in one place.   00;16;14;12 - 00;16;42;00 Financials, inventory, HR, and more. Make better decisions faster so you can do more and spend less. See how at NetSuite.com/pod. Last but certainly not least, we have Ranga Bodla, vice president of field engagement and marketing at NetSuite, who joined us to discuss his highlights from the event, especially some of the great learning opportunities as well as how it's evolved over the years.   00;16;42;02 - 00;17;04;22 Let's start with some of your highlights from SuiteWorld 2024. Any key takeaways or favorite moments that you want to share? Such a great SuiteWorld. It was another one for that for the books. I really enjoyed it. It was exhausting, but it was so worth it. You know, I'll give you a couple of things that were amazing about this year’s SuiteWorld.   00;17;04;22 - 00;17;34;19 And you know, it gets better every year. Number one, the customers. Just so many great customer stories to share whether it was the ones that were on stage in the keynotes. And we had customers in every single keynote this year, Evan's keynote and Sam's keynote and Gary's keynote. So many different sessions. There were panels, you know, it just was there were so many great customer stories and so many great, great perspectives.   00;17;34;21 - 00;18;00;07 Even selfishly, I had I had a fun panelist. There was a five month old guide dog in training who was a panelist in one of my sessions. She did not really share amongst many details about finance, but she was definitely very she was right there with us in in moral support. The other big things I'll share is the expo this year.   00;18;00;07 - 00;18;19;11 I mean, we spent a lot of time and effort on really expanding the expo, really putting in not just sections that made it easier so that if you listen to something at the keynote, you wanted to go onto the show floor, kind of learn more about that, you had that opportunity. So that was one thing that we were able to do.   00;18;19;14 - 00;18;41;14 We expanded the executive summit this year. We had done the executive summit last year. We had done way, way, way back a number of years ago, but we brought it back last year. You know, it's kind of a more of a of a of a pilot, a test. We expanded it this year, expanded the content, expanded the whole track.   00;18;41;16 - 00;19;15;20 And it was a it was a great success. And then the last piece I'll just bring up is everything around associations. We had an associations hub. We had the franchise associations, a buying group do a number of different sessions, and then how they coordinated with their user groups. Just so much networking, which was such an aspect of that SuiteWorld that people really enjoy and appreciate even more so than sometimes not maybe more so, but sometimes an equal benefit of SuiteWorld than the content itself.   00;19;15;22 - 00;19;42;29 I also met Mayberry, the guide dog in training. Huge highlight for me. She was just the cutest thing was overwhelming for her. But you know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's overwhelming for all of us. I can't imagine. Can't imagine that. But a highlight of my SuiteWorld right there. Well, speaking of that, I mean, you're a longtime NetSuite employee and you've been to 12 out of the 13 SuiteWorlds we've had over the years.   00;19;43;02 - 00;20;13;04 How have you seen the event grow and evolve? You know, every year it's gotten bigger. We've expanded what we've been doing, We've expanded what's there. You know, I feel like every year we learn something new and we learn something different about what our customers need, what our customers want. Obviously, our customer ecosystem has gotten larger, our partner ecosystem has gotten larger.   00;20;13;06 - 00;20;35;23 But one of the big things that we've learned over the years, you know, the majority of people that come to SuiteWorld, they come for two primary reasons. They want they want to learn. They want to learn more about NetSuite. They want to learn more about the product. They want to learn more how they can take back information that they can put in place in their own organizations.   00;20;35;26 - 00;21;23;20 And then the second thing is people want to come and network. They want to learn. They want to meet other NetSuite customers that are doing similar things. They want to meet other NetSuite partners and then they also want to meet NetSuite leaders themselves. Like they, you know, it's an opportunity to meet product managers, to meet executives, to meet so many of these things and each year we've gotten better about really accommodating those desires and you know I mentioned just a second ago about the executive summit I mean that was one of the elements, the average user of SuiteWorld, they really love and want like very detailed feedback, kind of almost   00;21;23;20 - 00;21;53;10 tactical sessions, like they want to walk into a session about dashboards. They want to walk away with the specific safe search that they can implement on their dashboard, that they can go back, you know, on the following week and put in place. But that's different than, say, the executive, a CFO or a CEO or even a CTO that's looking for how does NetSuite fit into their overall landscape, their IT landscape, and how do they make sure that they can continue to benefit?   00;21;53;10 - 00;22;22;08 So what we've done is, you know, tried to put in place things like the executive summit that accommodates those executives, but also really partnering with our educational services team. So we had a lot more, I think I want to say 50% of our sessions this year were done by the training department, and that was really, you know, what are our customers have asked for, what they really wanted for us to do with the event.   00;22;22;08 - 00;22;47;02 So that's one of the reasons that we really evolved the conference in that way. And it's, you know, it just gets better. We learn more and more every year. We learn, we get great feedback at the event and then we get great feedback after the event and we take that we really put it into place. And I've seen really the team just really accommodate that feedback and really think about, okay, what can we do better so that the next year is even better.   00;22;47;07 - 00;23;14;26 And so one of the new keynotes at SuiteWorld this year was called The Insider's Guide to Scaling Your Business, hosted by Sam Levy, SVP of growth and operations at NetSuite. So he interviewed just an all-star panel of NetSuite customers, including Raw Sugar, Diligent, and SymphonyAI, to walk through how they've overcome challenges to scaling their business, funding growth, and expanding internationally.   00;23;14;29 - 00;23;43;23 What lessons do you think listeners can take away from these customers stories? You know, this this is a new session, as you mentioned. And as I mentioned, this was another part of the evolution of what we've done with the event, which is really getting people more information that's relevant to them. How can they, are there lessons that that we can provide to them that are direct from our customers about what they're doing to grow their business?   00;23;43;26 - 00;24;10;20 I think one of the biggest lessons that was there was there are lots of paths to growth and we talked about those different paths to growth across our value streams and whether you're talking about acquiring growing customers or hiring and empowering employees or optimizing your cash and profits, we kind of looked at each of those different customers and how they were thinking about those elements because you had products company, services company, you had a software company.   00;24;10;22 - 00;24;39;27 The common denominator across all those is technology can be an enabler. NetSuite was an enabler for all of these organizations, but not by itself. You really have to couple that with a good product, a good strategy for expansion, and really thinking about those things thoughtfully to really be able to leverage it. You know, as I always say, you know, just putting in technology isn't going to by itself doesn't solve the issue.   00;24;40;03 - 00;24;57;05 You really have to think thoughtfully, How is that technology going to facilitate growth or facilitate other things? And that really was one of the big lessons that I think people were able to take. And, you know, it's what we were seeing from our customers just across even the content that NetSuite has been producing even prior to SuiteWorld.   00;24;57;05 - 00;25;17;10 Just generally what we put out there in the marketplace, our customers are asking for give us advice not just to run NetSuite, but how do we think about how do we become more efficient, how do we drive profitable growth? How do we drive efficiencies? You know, all of those elements, how do we go in and IPO?   00;25;17;13 - 00;25;35;29 You know, these are all things that our customers want to hear from us and hear what we're learning from our customers and be able to put that back to them. SuiteWorld is a lot of things, but more than anything, like you, you've kind of mentioned it's a learning event. What were some of the standout learning opportunities at SuiteWorld this year?   00;25;36;01 - 00;25;58;10 Unknown So one of the things that I mentioned that we were really trying to we were really trying to increase the amount of training and learning that we could provide to our customers. And this was an increase from last year as well. It's something we've been building on. We, I want to say, and now it all started to run together.   00;25;58;10 - 00;26;17;26 But I want to say a couple of years ago we introduced the concept of a learning lab on the show floor. And this is something that we did with our educational services team and customer success. And it really was the notion of how do we provide additional content training, learning on the show floor. After that SuiteWorld.   00;26;17;26 - 00;26;45;05 We took the learning lab on the road and you know, we've been conducting these learning labs across the country and driving this approach of, you know, a half a day workshop where people can come and they can get additional learning. And this year we took that learning lab and we expanded it even more. It was, I mean, I want to say it was at least double what we did last year, maybe even greater than that in terms of the sheer size of it.   00;26;45;07 - 00;27;06;10 And it was it was a really great opportunity of giving people additional workshops where and I say workshops, they're hands on, you get a demo account, you get in there, you get to try exercises, you know, almost as close to training as it could be, but you could still, you know, a still within the context of the main conference.   00;27;06;10 - 00;27;23;03 It wasn't pre-conference training. It was, you know, within the main context. But you could then go and do one of these workshops or you could go and do a seminar and learn a little bit more. Yeah. And, and that was definitely, I think, one of the standout learning opportunities. People were asking like, how can I get more workshops?   00;27;23;03 - 00;27;43;26 How can they get more access to this? Because I think what people want to do is they want to really focus and maximize when they're there on the floor for the three days that they have for three or four days for SuiteWorld, they really want to maximize what they could do. And, you know, even though it's exhausting, they want to walk away and be like, Yep, you know what?   00;27;43;26 - 00;28;06;07 I didn't let a minute go by or waste a minute as part of my visit. This is why we always tell people to wear comfortable shoes to SuiteWorld, because you're just kind of running from sessions to workshops trying to get everything out of it. It's the best thing you can do is get comfortable shoes or insoles or one of those things because, man, you are doing a lot of walking.   00;28;06;14 - 00;28;25;27 Now, what kind of feedback did you hear from attendees in terms of the value that they got out of these workshops and sessions? I mean, this is like I said, every year they the feedback is I want more. I mean, the feedback is, you know, it'd be great if we could do three of these, four of these. They want to do more.   00;28;25;27 - 00;28;43;18 And, you know, they're really looking into teams of people that are coming. And we're seeing more of this where people are sending three or four. You know, they have multiple people in the organization that are working on NetSuite. They want to send those people in divide and conquer. They want to, you know, one of them go to this workshop, one of them go to that workshop.   00;28;43;18 - 00;29;03;20 They really want to drive more of that interaction. And that's really the big part that we see. Well, you're a SuiteWorld pro. I mean, 12 SuiteWorlds. So for listeners looking to attend SuiteWorld next year, what would be your advice on how they can get the most out of the event? I would I would say the biggest is you got to figure out your game plan before you go.   00;29;03;26 - 00;29;22;01 You know, it's really worth spending time mapping out your entire week. And I say even your social schedule. So, you know, working with your account manager, you know, even now, like I think people you know, there are some people that are like, yeah, I didn't get to go to SuiteWorld this year. Talk to your account manager.   00;29;22;01 - 00;29;39;09 We've already published the dates for next year. We generally know when it's going to be. Start talking now about like what are you what are you going to do and how does it fit into your longer term roadmap of what you want to do with NetSuite. You know, figure out like, hey, I want to meet with these executives, I want to meet with these.   00;29;39;09 - 00;30;03;12 I want to meet with my account rep. I want to visit these partners. You know, all of those elements I think are really, really important. And I think the more you're telegraphing to your account manager and to the people that you work with, these are the things you want to do, the better off you you'll be know. Obviously it doesn't work for everybody, but as soon as you are able to figure out the details, I think the better off you'll be.   00;30;03;12 - 00;30;26;10 Because, you know, unfortunately, if you just show up, you know, and say, you know what, I'm going to wing it. It can be really hard in the moment to figure out and get to the right sessions because things fill up. And, you know, it's hard to make sure that you get to the right sessions or the sessions that you really want if you really haven't spent that time mapping it out beforehand.   00;30;26;11 - 00;30;44;02 But I think I really stress that spending, you know, mapping out the entire week, even the social how much you want to do, whether it's I'm going to do dinner over here or I'm going to do breakfast here. And really thinking through that, I think all of those are really important. Yeah. Get your restaurant reservations done. Big event.   00;30;44;04 - 00;31;13;03 Exactly. Well, perfect. I mean, I'm already excited for SuiteWorld next year. Thanks so much for joining us, Ranga. Thank you. Appreciate the time. That brings us the end of another great episode. SuiteWorld is such a wonderful event to connect with others, learn more about NetSuite, and hear from remarkable businesses thriving in today's environment. I'm personally very excited about the direction that NetSuite is going, and I'm already looking forward to next year's SuiteWorld event.   00;31;13;03 - 00;31;34;24 Dates have already been announced. SuiteWorld will be from October 6th to October 9th, 2025, in Las Vegas, so be sure to put that on your calendars. And if you want to learn more about the event, check out the links in our show notes. Huge thanks to our guests, Craig, Carly, and Ranga for making the time to join us on the podcast.   00;31;34;26 - 00;31;54;12 And as always, a big thank you to our wonderful editing team over at Oracle and to all of you for tuning in. If you want more episodes just like this one, make sure you subscribe to our channel and give us a rating and review. Until next time! You just listen to the NetSuite Podcast. Be sure to tune in every week with more.   00;31;54;12 - 00;32;01;25 NetSuite developments, stories, and insights into the benefits of one integrated system to help you run your business.

Find out how NetSuite can help your business balance the demands of a global supply chain: https://tinyurl.com/3b253s98   Hear the story behind auto parts manufacturer Speedmaster and why they turned to NetSuite to run their growing business in this episode with Speedmaster CEO Jason Kencevski and cohost Ian McCue. Jason starts by sharing how his father came to start the company [2:15] and key moments over the past 40 years that made the company what it is today [7:52]. The CEO explains the influence of his own interest in technology on the business [10:32], which led it to adopt SAP Business One. Jason explains where that system fell short [14:06], then highlights the benefits of a “living, breathing system” such as NetSuite [19:41] and how it supports better decision-making [26:16]. He walks through how NetSuite helps the manufacturer-distributor efficiently manage international operations [28:05], its supply chain [29:21], ecommerce [37:37], and online marketplace sales [41:30]. Jason wraps up by explaining what’s next for Speedmaster [43:52].   Follow Us Here: Jason Kencevski: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonkencevski/ Speedmaster: https://www.speedmaster79.com/   Oracle NetSuite LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLI Facebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFB Instagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIG Twitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW   #Speedmaster #autoparts #NetSuite #NetSuiteERP #manufacturingERP   --------------------------------------------------------   Episode Transcript:  

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;14

Hey Suite listeners. Welcome to the NetSuite Podcast. I'm Ian McCue, a co-host of this podcast and senior content marketing manager at NetSuite. We have a great guest on today's show, Jason Kencevski from Speedmaster. Jason is the CEO of Speedmaster, a large manufacturer and seller of aftermarket auto parts for classic cars. To start, Jason shares why his dad started this business and how it turned into an industry leader over the past 45 years.

 

00;00;30;17 - 00;00;58;09

He explains how his own interest in technology led the company to invest in new systems that included implementing SAP Business One more than a decade ago. Jason dives into where the on-premises SAP application fell short when it came to running a global business and updating product data for 25,000 items. The CEO walks through how those frustrations led Speedmaster to replace SAP with NetSuite after a few years and how a “living, breathing system” made an enormous difference.

 

00;00;58;12 - 00;01;26;13

He digs into how modules including NetSuite OneWorld, NetSuite WMS,  and NetSuite SuiteCommerce Advanced all helped the company run a smoother, more efficient operation. Jason wraps up with a few thoughts on what the future holds for vintage cars and what that means for his company. Stay tuned because all of that and more is coming up next. You're listening to the NetSuite Podcast, where we discuss what's happening with the next week, why we're doing it and where we're heading in the future.

 

00;01;26;15 - 00;01;45;22

We'll dive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts. We'll also feature customer growth stories discussing the ups and downs of running a company and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale.

 

00;01;45;24 - 00;02;11;17

So to kick this off, Jason, tell us a little bit about Speedmaster. What do you manufacture and who do you sell to? Yes, So I mean, Speedmaster has been around for over 40 years. We have a slogan, you know, we just make awesome car parts. But drilling into those awesome car parts, we design, test, and manufacture over 25,000 V8 car spare parts, you know, specifically aftermarket automotive, V8 car, spare parts.

 

00;02;11;20 - 00;02;31;21

And this is a business that your dad started back in 1979. And I saw on your website, you know, a cool video about kind of how it started. But for people who haven't seen that video, don't know that much about Speedmaster, could you kind of share that story about how this business came to be? Sure. Sure. I mean, you know, every great entrepreneurial story always starts with solving a problem.

 

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I think that problem was my dad, you know, wanted to be the coolest kid in the block and have the fastest car so he can impress all the girls. I was doing that. You know, he was racing, legally of course. And, you know, he was racing and he blew up his engine and had to find out what broke.

 

00;02;48;24 - 00;03;05;22

Some of the components that broke were actually, you know, weren't perfectly designed or could have been designed better. And, you know, he started with the simple, simple entrepreneurial spirit of making something better, and the rest is history, believe it or not. Is this something that was kind of always your dad's passion? And did he did he have a knack for that stuff?

 

00;03;05;23 - 00;03;24;06

I mean, it seems crazy to just say this broke. Okay, let me now build, you know, a replacement part for it. Yeah, it's funny you say that because, I mean, I don't know, like, cars were his passion at the age, but, you know, becoming one of the most influential brands in the world right now. I don't think he was envisioning to do that.

 

00;03;24;06 - 00;03;44;01

I think at the time he's like, hey, a broken something. I want to be fast. Let me just fix it and move on. And it's just I guess that's probably the best way to start. You know, you don't always have to have the answer. You don't always have to think. With the Indy mind or not, you know, I appreciate, you know, Seven Habits of Effective Leaders will tell you always think with the end in mind.

 

00;03;44;01 - 00;04;07;01

But sometimes the start doesn't have to be that that far fetched. So Speedmaster seems to take a lot of pride in the fact that it designs and manufactures over 25,000 car parts. Why is that kind of important to the company and maybe a source of pride for the business as well? So I guess at its core, when you get to a certain point, you know, the top end of town, this, you know, three major players, you know, which is holy, it'll work.

 

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And speedmaster you try to scale, you try to be horizontal. So what happens is you try your best to start looking for companies to buy or just shortcuts in to achieve your goal of widening your, you know, your variety. So for us, we take a lot of pride in that. And that good thing is that we're still privately owned, so we take a lot of pride in making sure that everything we actually design test the manufacturing house is actually done by our specialized team and we're not looking for which is fine, but we're not looking to find growth hacks to, you know, acquire companies to grow quickly.

 

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And then you're not sure the quality of the products. You may have some problems. Also, at the same time, you will you know, you could inherit some of their bad behaviors, too. So, you know, it's always been the founder's ethos, you know, to really be hands on to design tested manufacture most of those components. And it seems like it's kind of become increasingly rare for an automotive components company to design and make its own products.

 

00;05;03;07 - 00;05;28;21

Why is that? Is it just is it more cost effective to go other places? Typically, it's hard to do in-house. Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, touching on the scale portion, it's hard. The scale, you know, it's really difficult to produce, you know, that amount of SKUs in a short period of time to scale. I guess, you know, if you want to increase 50 or 100,000 SKUs, it's a lot it's a lot quicker and easier to just buy a brand and, you know, have their offering.

 

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You know, we try to keep it in-house and push that ahead. And I guess that means in turn, you're not buying a company, you're investing in other people. They work for you or work, you know, directly for you or indirectly for you. So, you know, the industry becomes intertwined with Speedmaster a lot more as opposed to just, you know, buying and selling someone else's parts to solve to not to solve a problem, but to increase a product offering, if that makes sense.

 

00;05;54;13 - 00;06;12;20

And part of your mission is kind of to create products that, you know, I'm quoting your mission here, are inspired by the blend of old and new technology. How is that that idea of kind of blending old and new? How is that core to what Speedmaster is and how does that maybe help differentiate you from some of the other companies out there that make automotive parts?

 

00;06;12;23 - 00;06;31;12

Yeah, So exactly that, you know, the mission statement is a blend of old and new technology. So the probably the best way to explain it is we're an aftermarket automotive car component manufacturer. So we have to solve a problem. Like every good business, we have to solve a problem. Typically the problem is that people want to go faster or, you know, the engine or whatever it may be.

 

00;06;31;12 - 00;06;52;13

The specific component is, you know, under higher amount of stress. I mean, back in the day, engines, you would only make 25 horsepower. Now they're making 400 horsepower all the way up to a streak, you know, like a current model Mopar or, you know, like a Dodge Chrysler, Mopar Demon has almost a thousand horsepower. So those sorts of engines back in the day were racecar engines.

 

00;06;52;13 - 00;07;16;26

And now the cars that you buy off the shelf at your local Dodge dealer. So what happens is, you know, to solve a problem, you want to be profitable and you want to do it the quickest way possible. And typically the easiest way is just to solve the problem. And you design something that solves the problem. What we do is we actually try to solve a problem by incorporating the original view, look and feel of the item, which becomes timeless.

 

00;07;16;26 - 00;07;42;04

So I think Apple does it very well. If you have a look at a lot of the Apple products, if you go back in time, a lot of the look and feel, I think there was a brand, I forget what it's called, but they all you know, it's basically replicating 1960s and 70 year old products today. So they become timeless and Speedmaster’s aim on that front would be to create a timeless looking component, not one that's functional and highly profitable, if that makes sense, which makes it tough.

 

00;07;42;04 - 00;08;05;20

And that's what makes us different. You know, we're timeless. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. One more question kind of about your history as a as a brand. So this this company started as Peak Performance about 45 years ago, like we said, or almost 45 years ago. And it's now become a big global operation as we kind of think about how, you know, what started as a small storefront, almost 45 years ago turned into what it is today.

 

00;08;05;21 - 00;08;29;10

What are some kind of key moments you think, in the company's history that got it to where it is now? heaps. Heaps adversity for sure. You know, originally my dad was solving a problem of just making car components to solve small issues that he found. And, you know, he'd become a manufacturer back in the day. But one massive key turning point was, you know, my dad had created a part that just wasn't working.

 

00;08;29;12 - 00;08;49;27

And the typical thing of, you know, not asking for help, people these days are too scared to ask for help. My dad was completely the opposite. He went to America and was at the SEMA show in Las Vegas in November. Every year it's been around for, I think, 50 or 60 years, and he took one of his distributors, which was problematic at the time, and he couldn't get the phasing right.

 

00;08;49;29 - 00;09;02;20

So, you know, he took it to the show and he spoke to one of the guys there whose technician is like, Hey, I've got this problem. You know, he gave him the distributor and they later he came back and said, Hey, have solved the problem. This is all it is, the phasing out, you know, this is what it is.

 

00;09;02;20 - 00;09;15;23

And when the guy brought it back, it was really funny because he brought the item back and he brought this gentleman along. My dad had no idea who it was, and he started asking questions, you know, how many do you make? You know, like, how do you make them? All that stuff was very simple at the time.

 

00;09;15;24 - 00;09;31;04

Yeah, we make a lot. He's like, What do you mean, a lot? And he's like, we make 500 a year. It's very, very good item. We make him in Australia. We design, test and manufacture them in Australia. Very, very proud. The guy's like, okay, great. You know, would you, would you have a look to export them to America?

 

00;09;31;04 - 00;09;49;09

My dad was like, Yep, sure, of course, why not? So the next day the man came along and I think at the time, I mean, I forget what the company was called at the time. It was one of the largest distributors of automotive car parts at the time. He came along and said, I'd like to buy your capacity of 500 per year, if that's okay.

 

00;09;49;09 - 00;10;06;14

And my dad's like, wow, Yeah, of course, no problem. It is like, but I need that per month. So you know what my dad was doing in one year potentially, You know, he just got an order for 12 years or 12 months worth of orders. In one conversation. So on the back of just the most random experience of, Hey, I need help, how do I fix it?

 

00;10;06;17 - 00;10;24;18

People respect that and respect the fact that you're willing to make things better, willing to ask for help. And that was pretty much the start of what you now know is Speedmaster America. And how long ago was that? When did that happen? So I think it was probably close to 25 years ago. Okay, We've been here for now.

 

00;10;24;25 - 00;10;51;01

Again, just don't quote me on it. But around 22 years, that was almost close to 25 years ago. Yeah, believe it or not. So, Jason, you obviously have a long history of the business. You grew up around it. You today are CEO and have been for quite a while. But as you just kind of look at your personal time with the company from when you first got involved and maybe when you first kind of started to take a leadership role within the company to where it is today, how did those how do those two things compare?

 

00;10;51;01 - 00;11;11;17

How does the Speedmaster of today compare to the one that you remember from early adulthood, childhood, anything like that? Yeah, lots of changes. You know, definitely couple of things. Definitely keeping up with the times, as you should. And I think this one has some of my flair attached to it. I'm not saying that all the amazing things that Speedmaster have done are my doing.

 

00;11;11;17 - 00;11;26;16

I'm saying that a lot of things that, you know, a lot of the direction I'd like for the company of the brand to go towards, you know, heavily influenced by myself, like, for example, you know, I'm a tech geek, I think would touch on that a little bit later. I'm a tech geek. You know, I built computers when I was a kid.

 

00;11;26;20 - 00;11;48;02

All my life I've been breaking those code in games and trying to hack computer games and whatnot, building computers. So always have had a tech savvy background. So applying that sort of tech savviness to Speedmaster, it was definitely one of the core fundamentals at moving forward for sure. And a key part of kind of keeping up with the times, like you said as well.

 

00;11;48;02 - 00;12;13;04

So makes sense. Yeah. So is this a company that kind of always saw value in technology and invested in kind of new and better technology as it became available? Or would you say that there was more of a shift when, when you came into to more of a leadership position? So definitely more of a shift. The business was heavily infatuated with building amazing car parts, building awesome car parts and whatever technology was required to do.

 

00;12;13;04 - 00;12;40;22

So you're talking, you know, whether it be manufacturing automation, whether it be the latest a machine. So, you know, number one priority on a technology front would have always been around the product. So there's at least three pillars to Speedmaster: our people, our products, and our approach. And I think the biggest one that I've impacted is the approach and the influence through technology would have been definitely, you know, heavily influenced bymyself, for sure.

 

00;12;40;24 - 00;12;58;11

You know, the efficiency and the automation that Speedmaster adheres to today on a global scale is, you know, almost second to none. Back then it was, you know, just business basics. You know, you sell an item, you invoice an item, you get paid for an item. You know, it's just business basics, but it's not like that today.

 

00;12;58;11 - 00;13;15;22

And definitely, you know, on the back of my heavy influence, also, my brother, who was part of the business for about six years and a lot of drastic, drastic changes happened. You know, on the back of his help as well. You were on SAP Business One, a solution probably a lot of people listening to this are familiar with.

 

00;13;15;24 - 00;13;31;28

I guess, first off, kind of how long did you use that software for and where did you feel like it really fell short in terms of supporting the business? Yeah. So at the time we were looking at different solutions. We weren't too sure about, you know, the power or the ability of cloud computing at the time was 2012/2013.

 

00;13;31;28 - 00;13;50;15

I mean, cloud computing wasn't new. It was old just at the time. It all thought weird that, you know, your whole infrastructure could come to a grinding halt if you lost your Internet connection. You know, I mean, Internet is not a new thing. So shouldn't have been to two things. But it was I mean, people were people were people were skeptical of the cloud for a long time.

 

00;13;50;16 - 00;14;16;06

So. Yeah. And so for that reason, you know, we moved to SAP, which is an on premise solution. It was tough. I mean, that's why I'm so passionate about sharing the NetSuite/Oracle messaging, because we've had such a great, great run with that. SAP, it was daunting. It took, you know, 18 months to understand our needs to roll out the case of the Speedmaster case or project, I guess.

 

00;14;16;12 - 00;14;37;11

And it was I mean, we'll touch on it probably later, I'm sure, with any of the other questions. But it was a flat system. It was a local server. Every time we would increase every, you know, every year would have to increase the server, increase the hard drive. We went from one server to two servers, two, three, three servers in Sydney, three servers in L.A. It was just becoming a nightmare for sure.

 

00;14;37;11 - 00;15;04;18

And this was you're talking only two years into the, you know, two years into it. So we're not talking ten years. You're talking together from one server to three. You know, we had to become experts in RAID and other technologies. boy. I think that that paints a good picture. I mean, the fact that it was only a couple of years before you were running into serious problems in terms of its ability to scale with the business you know, maybe says a lot and maybe is that would you say that's part of what convinced you that maybe the cloud is the way to go?

 

00;15;04;18 - 00;15;22;12

Because we're going to get that that scalability that we clearly need? We move to the cloud solution because Oracle NetSuite was the solution for us and it happened to be on the cloud. If I guess if NetSuite was an on premise solution, yeah, I think we would have run into the same problems. NetSuite, just obviously have got it right.

 

00;15;22;12 - 00;15;40;03

So potentially that's probably why they're in the cloud. I'm not sure, but I can guarantee you while I can't guarantee that NetSuite Oracle would have got it right, but they have and we only move to the cloud because of that fact. Was it a struggle in particular to manage international operations on Business One, because I think at that point you were already becoming or were a global company, right?

 

00;15;40;03 - 00;16;02;24

Was that a particular pain point? For sure, for sure. You know, the original solution that was rolled out was definitely a pain point. It was a local solution for Australia, a local solution for America. And then like potentially running like a pseudo hierarchy over the twowe didn't even get to touch on, you know, on the Asian manufacturing portion of it and was just better understanding that.

 

00;16;02;24 - 00;16;17;18

And even within two years or 2 to 3 years, we still hadn't had that pseudo global connection. So yeah, it was impossible because there was still lot to localize solutions. And so you start your search for a new ERP system, you realized it's time for a change. How did NetSuite kind of get on your radar, first of all?

 

00;16;17;23 - 00;16;53;12

Yes. So we sat down and we had a meeting and we're coming up to a three year period for SAP. It was me, our CMTO, chief marketing technology officer, and one of our auditors. Three of us sat down, had lunch one day, and we discussed, you know, the way that SAP was working and, you know, remote desktop being into a local L.A. connection to talk, to work on a local solution, you know, things like just adding a product in both locations meant you had to update all the item information on one location locally and then remote desktop to another location and then update all the same data.

 

00;16;53;12 - 00;17;12;13

And obviously had the lag and all the delay of the from stop. So it was impossible even just to create products, you know, take half an hour, an hour to create one product. And so you know, these are some of the things that we're discussing. And we were three years into SAP or verging on, you know, renewal or, you know, taking on another three years.

 

00;17;12;13 - 00;17;28;15

Still, I think that's typically, you know, how people go along with their and well, like, what do we do? Do we stick to this, you know? And at the time it was either we cut our losses and move on or we apply another three years. And I got to be honest with it was touch and go. We've had just finished investing a lot of money.

 

00;17;28;15 - 00;17;51;00

We hadn't seen any return, any return at all from this implementation. So to kind of ask for more budget from the company, imagine like we've just raised, God knows how much money to roll out this solution and then to go ahead and say that we are moving to a different solution after three years and then asking to raise, I don't know, the same amount more or less would have been scary, but that was a decision we made.

 

00;17;51;00 - 00;18;09;29

So when you to answer your question specifically how we came across it, well, our CMTO started doing his homework. He's like, Let me find an alternative solution. Let me see what I can find. And he did. And how did you decide that NetSuite was the right system for you? I'll jump on the back of our founder and instill, you know, some faith and trust in the people who made those decision.

 

00;18;09;29 - 00;18;29;05

So Eric and Dave at the time did some homework searching around. You know, we were looking at different solutions. SAP, SAP Hana, I think it was at the time of Demandware, which is I'm not sure if that's still around. Magento was also an option who were trying to play with the solution of, hey, we're a integrated ERP, not ERP.

 

00;18;29;05 - 00;18;45;11

But you know, they were trying to be a PIM and a few other different things. Sure. And so they had basically done their homework and said, hey, I think this is the one that we need to we need to go for at a closer look. And yeah, we made the right choice. So you went live with NetSuite back in 2017, six years ago now.

 

00;18;45;11 - 00;19;05;24

As the CEO, what were some of the biggest immediate benefits that you noticed? so I'm going to put it out there for you today. And I want to patent the word for all future Oracle NetSuite conversations. NetSuite is a living, breathing system. And I'm going to obvi you've heard it here today. We're going to we're going to we're going to trademark that term because it is true.

 

00;19;05;24 - 00;19;25;22

It's a living, breathing system. So we say benefits. Let's just go back to that terminology. So back in the day, you know, you would update an item whether it be a price or a weightor dimension or something. It would be flat, it would update the price or say, for example, even just like an item at its basics, an item, you know, today arrives and used to cost $5.

 

00;19;25;23 - 00;19;39;07

Now it costs $6. NetSuite has the ability to be living and breathing. And you can create, you know, systems and infrastructure or, you know, to actually, you know, have a minimum markup. You know, like if it cost $5, it has to go to ten. If it cost 6, it has to go to 11 and so on and so forth.

 

00;19;39;13 - 00;20;05;02

It's a living, breathing system. SAP was, I mean, I'm not I'm not sure if I'm allowed to compare the two, but I will. Now, you are. You know, SAP at the time was you know, it was just a dead system update of data point and it would be dead, dead in the water. And you'd have to go along and try and find out which jails it was connected to, which accounts, which and just go through and really just update that accordingly across the entire platform.

 

00;20;05;02 - 00;20;27;13

And it was, it was disaster. You know, now, I mean, you update an item, for example, if you update an item, whether it be a title or description or a weight, let's just talk about price update a price right now and it'll go live, not only in Australia, it would go live globally within the moment I save, the price of that item will be saved and will be live globally.

 

00;20;27;15 - 00;20;44;14

It'll then be live on our website. It'll be live on all our marketplaces. It will be live on all our resellers in a heartbeat. It goes live worldwide. I mean, is that mad? And what kind of business impact does that make? Does it mean less staff? Does it just mean you're spending less time on the stuff and your colleagues are spending less time on stuff?

 

00;20;44;14 - 00;21;03;19

What's the business impact of, you know, you update something in one place and it's good to go. It's updated everywhere. The impact is so monumental and it can only be explained in micro increments. It's like saying, you know, you look at a beach and you've got, you know, a kilometer of sand. But I'm going to explain to you what makes that beach.

 

00;21;03;19 - 00;21;28;02

And it's a grain by grain. Yeah. And that's what that's what it does. So what do I start? Well, okay, I go ahead and change a price on an item today from 50 to $100. That thing goes live across the world in a heartbeat. Then that means that as a brand, we have total transparency in ownership of our pricing, of our brand, of our item.

 

00;21;28;02 - 00;21;50;17

So then you're removing poor customer service, poor brand perception. Can you imagine if Apple for tomorrow decides to increase the cost of their iPhone from $1,000 to 1100 dollars and it's only increased on their website, but yet Best Buy and all the other people don't update their price. And then there's all these discrepancies and then all of a sudden you've got, you know, your brand credibility goes down.

 

00;21;50;22 - 00;22;27;17

It's just a monumental wave of issues that it causes. How did six out of the top seven best performing tech stocks gain visibility and control over financials, inventory planning and budgeting with NetSuite by Oracle? Answer: At NetSuite.com/code. NetSuite.com/code. Jason What types of insights and kind of reports did you get with NetSuite that you just didn't have before you couldn't get before? Back to the one liner of it being a living, breathing system.

 

00;22;27;20 - 00;22;43;26

Just everything, you know, like just, just well, first things first. As you know, you know, SAP and other solutions have reporting. So there's you know, reports are reports. I guess the difference is, is that these reports, you have a level of trust, right? You can actually trust them. And I'm not saying you can't trust the ones on SAP, but you're just not sure if a jail is updated.

 

00;22;43;26 - 00;23;20;14

You're not sure like, you know, when you run a P&L report today, it will be with whatever changes happened today, you know, you don't have to run anything in the background to confirm or check. It's all living, breathing, It's right there. And that kind of builds trust across all of the or the entire solution. But with the reporting, it being living and breathing, you know, you know, again, I think I've I think I've explained it in the past where, you know what, you watched a keynote speaker about somebody and they'll just talking about the impact of having data at your fingertips and that transparency, you know, back in the day, businesses would report on a

 

00;23;20;14 - 00;23;40;19

12 month period, you know, and then reporting on a 12 month period was too long because, you know, you can't steer the ship in the right direction. It's too long. Then it became quarterly because that's, you know, the best that we could crunch data quarterly, then turn into monthly, monthly, turn into weekly and weekly, then daily, daily, then hourly and now real time.

 

00;23;40;19 - 00;24;04;22

And NetSuite is at real time. So the reporting is real time. And I think another analogy that's pretty cool was, you know, if someone if they knew, I think it was like something like if an airplane leaves from L.A. So imagine this. You get in a flight again, don't quote me on it, but I'm pretty sure it's right if you get on a plane in L.A. and it's heading to New York, which is just right across the country, you know, straight across country.

 

00;24;04;22 - 00;24;28;11

And I think they'll saying if it's one degree out or two degrees out, it'll end up in Hawaii. It was something ridiculous. So an airplane, for example, at that point is not going to wait to get to Hawaii and say, wait something's wrong, It'll realize it's two degrees or one degree out after, I don't know, half an hour, 15 minutes, depending on, you know, depending on the flight plan and adjust and move to, you know, move forward towards New York.

 

00;24;28;11 - 00;24;48;22

And I think when we talk about reporting, it's a similar situation. Everyone can report. The question is, can you report on a real time basis to make those course corrections, you know, in real time. And that's the secret. You know, often people get up there and talk about those course corrections in real time, and that's one of the biggest but not one of the biggest is many, many factors that make Oracle an excellent and amazing solution.

 

00;24;48;22 - 00;25;07;08

But there’s reporting and there’s reporting, I guess so. Yeah. And can you paint the picture at all about how that reporting helps you make better business decisions or any examples or kind of use cases come to mind where you can take that information and apply it to help the business be more profitable, make the right decision for the future, whatever it might be.

 

00;25;07;11 - 00;25;27;05

Yeah, sure. So multiple, multiple, multiple ways. I mean, one of them would be every almost every company wants to minimize stock on the shelf, you know, So the better the data is, the more, you know, effective decision making you can make. So, for example, as a company that we hope customers will always try to ask for Speedmaster first.

 

00;25;27;05 - 00;25;42;19

But sometimes if you don't have a Speedmaster product, they may need it. They go and buy it somewhere else. Part of that philosophy is for us to make sure that we have the item on the shelf whenever the customer needs it. But it's also not a not a very healthy position to be in too. If you're overstocking too much on the shelf too, because that's not healthy for cash flow.

 

00;25;42;19 - 00;26;03;11

So you could have stock tied up on the shelf for 12 months. That 12 months slows down growth in a different department or a different product or a different, you know, R&D, That money is effectively taking away from somewhere else. So to be better at what we do, you know, with real time data, we're able to have an inventory turns of say, two or three times a year, which is an industry standard, you know, very, very high industry standard.

 

00;26;03;11 - 00;26;26;04

So that allows you to then have a faster turnover, which means, you know, you're not investing in unnecessary stock, which means you've got access to higher amount of cash flow and that gives you the ability to grow without having to borrow or slow down, you know, So just on that alone, just the ability to have and the super effective cash flow is second to none for especially private businesses.

 

00;26;26;04 - 00;26;50;09

And, you know, absolutely. Well, you know, we can only spend what we earn. It's like a dollar. I spend a dollar. I don't have the luxury of being a public company work and make one and spend 20. Yeah. Or just someone else's money, right? Yeah. You don't have a venture capitalist breathing down your neck. Yes, yes, yes. So digging a little bit into some specific NetSuite modules, I'll start with NetSuite OneWorld, which Speedmaster actually used from from day one.

 

00;26;50;11 - 00;27;15;27

How did that just simplify everything that goes into running a business that goes across Australia, the U.S. as well as China? Sure. So, I mean, OneWorld centralizes everything, adds transparency. Again, we just use that simple analogy of if an item gets changed or updated or modified in one location, it's instantly modified across the world. We have our research and development team in Australia who make a lot of changes every day.

 

00;27;16;03 - 00;27;30;28

They're making changes to items. So for example, just a simple bill of material where they go ahead and say, You know what, we're going to change this bill of material to a different component or a different part. We don't have to then go along and do a traditional method of, you know, printing bill materials, putting it on the wall, educating people of what's in them.

 

00;27;31;01 - 00;27;47;27

You know, the R&D team have made a decision of what's going to what that below material is going to look like moving forward to make a change to the system. The moment that's live, the next day that item gets pulled, it will have the new components in and it really doesn't. You know, we don't have to bridge the gap of communication.

 

00;27;47;27 - 00;28;10;27

It's done. It's what it's need needs to be. So it even just removes all those legacy, you know, versions of communication that aren't really unnecessary. You talked a little bit there about, you know, how NetSuite plays a role in one part of your manufacturing with the bill of materials. But could you just kind of explain how Speedmaster uses NetSuite to help manage its manufacturing and supply chain?

 

00;28;10;29 - 00;28;29;04

Sure, sure. So, I mean, again, it's a living, breathing system. So, you know, we set what we thought was minimum maximums at the time and then the system continues to, you know, get smarter and smarter and, you know, understand the forecasting of what's coming in, what's going out, when it's going to arrive, when it's not. And it continues to adjust in real time.

 

00;28;29;04 - 00;28;50;17

That airplane that could go to Hawaii, we could be that a component, that could be coming, you know, two weeks late or a month later or two months too early. It's adjusting that in real time. So those decisions again, made in real time. And it helps ensure that we either have the item on the shelf or not too much of it.

 

00;28;50;20 - 00;29;11;00

You know, we use WMS straight out of the out of the box and we've won best in class many awards for the way we use that solution in our facility because it can be that way. And to give an example, you know, if you were to come and see it firsthand, you're more than welcome to. But the human, the maximum human handling time of any parcel is 10 seconds.

 

00;29;11;00 - 00;29;32;03

That's human handling time. And for clicks of a button. So literally, you know, someone goes to a shelf, clicks for buttons. I think they're scanning the location twice the item twice, and it goes on a conveyor and it's done. And literally after four clicks of a button and a maximum handling time of 10 seconds, that item is on its way to you or me or wherever may be.

 

00;29;32;03 - 00;29;58;27

You know, I mean, obviously you should go and buy some parts of this conversation just to test it. But yeah, yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. And did you have any system in place before the WMS or is it really something that that helped you drive that efficiency to the level where it is now? Yeah. No, nothing. You know we, it was all paper based, you know, and again so SAP didn't have a native WMS, you know, it was probably a plug in, it was probably a third party.

 

00;29;58;29 - 00;30;30;12

There is amazing WNS solutions out there. I mean yeah there is amazing WMS solutions out there. But then to become a again a professional in connecting that solution, finding a solution, you know, engaging in a third party, adding another layer of connectivity, you know, and more silos. So, you know, some people use this solution, some people use that, different logins. And then NetSuite Inventory Management, obviously another piece of the equation, use your how does it help you track and manage the inventory for 150,000 plus SKUs that you sell?

 

00;30;30;15 - 00;31;01;16

It's nonexistent. I don't yeah, it's nonexistent. What used to happen in a month to two months of crunching data with Excel spreadsheets we're anti-Excel, we're Mac users and NetSuite only users. So we try to avoid Excel as much as we can. I mean, it's a you know, obviously it's a very powerful tool, but we want to centralize everything in NetSuite so yeah, it's basically dropped what used to take again, another external silo, another external team of two who would crunch the data, double check, triple check, you know, make sure that the forecasting was right all that.

 

00;31;01;16 - 00;31;21;13

Now is now done real time. And via the suggestion of the system, we still run reports just to double check to make sure that something is not missing or humans always know better. So we go back and double check something. But, you know, I don't think I don't think we've ever found a discrepancy to date. So what used to happen in days and months now happens in real time, actually.

 

00;31;21;13 - 00;31;39;00

So seconds I'll even put a time on it happens in seconds, because just to get your head around a time number, because it's happening real time. It seems like you're a big believer in continuing to add to the Suite versus going and trying to find external solutions. You know, an external WMS, external manufacturing system, whatever. Why is that?

 

00;31;39;00 - 00;32;03;09

Like what value do you see and continuing to add to NetSuite rather than going in looking for other solutions that might be great but aren't part of the Suite? I mean, you only know until you try. Silos are tough to manage. You know, you have any external software by default overnight, you're going to need a in-house or consultant to manage those two connections.

 

00;32;03;13 - 00;32;19;22

And just simple answers like, you know, like, like, for example, I guess let me give you a prime example. If you have a external WMS, who who's who in the company creates the logins, the usernames and passwords? How does all that work? You know, where does it come from? What does it go? Who who assigns the licenses?

 

00;32;20;00 - 00;32;38;12

Are those licenses paid? I mean, just simple things like which you don't even think about. Like, is that license that's in NetSuite because obviously that's which ERP. It's also important HR module. So you're hiring this person. You put that information in there. Have they got the right license for the WMS? No, that's a different license.

 

00;32;38;12 - 00;32;57;16

Someone else has to log in. So is that a HR job? Is it? Is it? Should human resources align that log in? Does the IT team, you know, connect that log in or, you know, sign on the right rules and responsibilities in a WMS? Yes. So we don't have that problem in NetSuite. We have all the rules responsibilities.

 

00;32;57;18 - 00;33;15;09

You know the moment you onboard a new staff member you onboard them, you assign them their role, whether it be a warehouse manager, whether it be a picker or a packer or a specialist. You know, we've got a number of different roles that we've created. And the moment that the HR team put an ad out for that position, it's assigned to a role.

 

00;33;15;11 - 00;33;37;18

That person starts, they get onboarded and by default they know the role and the responsibility and they all live all in one go, you know. So just imagine that just even the simplest, the little stuff, it adds up. Yeah, yeah. Let alone the big stuff. If something goes severely wrong. Then NetSuite SuiteCommerce Advanced. I also wanted to touch on I think you've touched a little bit about e-commerce and how NetSuite

 

00;33;37;18 - 00;34;02;17

helps there. But how important is e-commerce to the business, to Speedmaster? You know, I used to sell computers in back in 1999, I mean, of 16 years old, selling computers online. So e-commerce is at my core. One of the things, you know, I loved and when you say how important is it to Speedmaster? I guess the only way I can answer that is it's been important to me, you know, since I was a kid.

 

00;34;02;19 - 00;34;27;01

And while e-commerce was a competitive advantage, which it was for a long time, it was very important. Today, I daresay, you know, e-commerce is co-exist with the rest of the company. Like e-commerce has become like everyone needs an accountant, everyone needs HR, everyone needs 401k. So e-commerce has been is now a core fundamental or core fundamental of a business.

 

00;34;27;01 - 00;34;48;08

So it's not a competitive advantage anymore. But to you, to your point, how important it is in Speedmaster, it's been a core fundamental to me forever. Would it be, you know, over 25 years at least? So that being said, we were early adopters. Being an early adopter, we, you know, we had had a lot of success in e-commerce and for that reason we want to continue that success.

 

00;34;48;08 - 00;35;10;20

So we want to continue to showcase that we're at the forefront of technology because we always have been. It'd be pretty lame or crap to be this front runner, early adopter, and then all of a sudden just get chewed up by everyone else. And then just go, yeah, yeah, they, they just, they just do e-commerce. Yeah. So is it a channel where you still generate a lot of sales and, and also that you feel like drives a lot of awareness for the brand?

 

00;35;10;22 - 00;35;36;29

100%. So much so that we actually take pride in the way we have been able to amalgamate bricks and mortar into the e-commerce environment. You know we have an amazing loyalty program which we shared on stage with the founder at SuiteWorld in Australia, in which we still push traditional offline customers who normally would pick up the phone to go on our website and actually make that purchase.

 

00;35;36;29 - 00;36;11;23

So, you know, we completely digitize that offering. So it's a huge part of what we do. And second to that, why it's so important is because, you know, with a massive consumer base that we have, we can't have those 1 to 1 interactions. It's impossible to have, you know, say, for example, we've got, you know, 500,000 clients. I can't have 500,000 conversations that every time we bring out a new product, it's very important to the fundamentals of Speedmaster because the only way to continue to share our messaging, it's the only way to continue to share who we are, what we're doing, where we're going.

 

00;36;11;25 - 00;36;33;17

And it shortcuts all that ability. And looking at the product specifically, you had Magento before, which is now called Adobe Commerce after they were acquired a couple of years back. But why did you decide to move from Magento to SuiteCommerce? Advanced? So step one is to invest in our partnerships. The first step is always to offer or to see if there's an offer with, you know, the native solution.

 

00;36;33;19 - 00;36;59;27

In this situation being Oracle NetSuite SuiteCommerce Advanced. So we did go on that path that was that would always be our preferred choice. So you might argue it's not the best choice because we have a bias, you know in in something that's native. But ironically it, it ends up being when we discuss it and we can talk about what makes it good and bad actually becomes a no brainer. It’s less of a bias opinion and actually more of a no brainer.

 

00;36;59;29 - 00;37;21;06

And we did have yes, you're right. We did move from Magento to SuiteCommerce Advanced. The images, data and everything is coming from the ERP. So if I update an image on NetSuite, the up side of it, if I put in an image, the title description it because it's that center of truth within the click of the save button, it's now live on our website.

 

00;37;21;06 - 00;37;39;22

It's live worldwide. It's one center of truth. Last thing I'll ask you about terms of NetSuite products is the NetSuite Connector, which I think is a more recent addition for you guys. And you use it for eBay and Amazon, where you also sell your products. How does it kind of help you manage, you know, sales through those channels?

 

00;37;39;24 - 00;37;58;12

How does it work? Again, it just does it just gets the job done right? So it's there. It's there, but it's not and it's there, it's not. So we say, you know, we just make we opt to sell on eBay and. The item that you nurture in maintaining NetSuite is now on eBay. What does that tell you?

 

00;37;58;19 - 00;38;21;01

You know, the item that you want, the item you can maintain and nurture and you want it on Amazon goes to Amazon, you select it, you go through and tell it in NetSuite, which categories and so on. And so if you wanted to go into and it gets there, there's none of this sending data to a third party cloud solution, which is also another PIM because technically it has to be a PIM, it stores all that data.

 

00;38;21;03 - 00;38;54;24

Then this by the way, then there's some boy, don't even get me into this conversation. By the way, then you've got inventory issues. The other thing is, is that you have got real time inventory issues now. Now I'm gonna I'm going a tangent on that Magento situation. You fired up. Yeah. Got me fired up. I mean, you know, there's also the inventory change and so, you know, if you sell something on your website, on NetSuite, it's gone you know with silos you're then having to send FTP feeds or, you know, trying your best to have the data.

 

00;38;54;27 - 00;39;17;20

And a lot of these companies who create these connectors don't want data flowing in real time because it's a massive, you know, undertaking. So they want a five minute window or a two minute window or a ten minute window. I mean, you know, I think we you know, we saw five or 6 million items last year. We sell an item one item in less than a minute, every minute.

 

00;39;17;21 - 00;39;35;07

Right. So, you know, if that data is flowing less, you know, not real time, you're now selling items that aren't in stock. And can you imagine the customer service and complaints and all the rest? So back to the connector on the on the other side, the Ssme thing. You don't have a silo, you don't have a third party cloud solution.

 

00;39;35;10 - 00;39;55;10

It you literally say, hey, this is what's selling. And it's live, it's connected, it's instant. You don't maintain the silo and it's amazing. And then as we start to wrap up here, first, kind of want to ask what does the future look like for Speedmasters’ business? Do you have any key goals? And what's kind of your strategy for maybe reaching some of those goals?

 

00;39;55;12 - 00;40;22;10

Two things. You know, we continue to be retail ready, so we signed AutoZone a little while back. We’re now live you're talking 7000 stores across three countries or three continents, actually, I think as well. So 7000 stores. And what that means is the scale of that. They currently offer 3000 of our items which are related to more related to their demographic, which has over 2 million data points of fitment data.

 

00;40;22;10 - 00;40;42;21

So it fits me, make and model. So the aim would be to continue to grow that portion of the business, you know, going into Reilly’s and so on and so forth and all the other major manufacturers, along with everything else that we've got going on. So continuing that growth and those relationships which are, you know, one to many are based upon data, it's all data driven.

 

00;40;42;21 - 00;41;03;18

It's got nothing to do with automotive anymore at that point. It's just juvenile data. So as we continue to grow at that retail scale, you know, we have to have tons and tons of fitment data. So having the ability to be able to have all that data in NetSuite and not worry about buying another server and adding a rate three, four I don't know what they're up to now is important.

 

00;41;03;18 - 00;41;30;03

So that's definitely step one, you know, continually adding and growing the data set in the system and also potentially looking at, you know, opening up a second, third and fourth facility closer to the East Coast, you know, where 70% of our stuff is shipped. And I've used this in one of my videos as well, which is awesome, because if we did decide to open up a, you know, a third or fourth facility in a different location, we can do it with an Internet connection and a laptop because that's all.

 

00;41;30;03 - 00;41;48;12

Yeah, Yeah, it's pretty mental. Yeah, it is wild. Something I just thought about as we were sitting here. You sell a lot of parts for vintage cars. But what's vintage is always changing, right as time goes on. Is that a challenge in the sense of you're constantly trying to source make design parts for, for new cars each year?

 

00;41;48;12 - 00;42;09;20

Or maybe even more frequently than that. Sure. So, yeah, every year that goes by and another one, it becomes vintage. The good thing about that is, is that the manufacturers, GM, Ford, Chrysler, Dodge, they create a window of an engine that, you know, span sometimes ten years, sometimes 20, 30, 40. Ironically, you know, one engine almost went for 30 or 40 years.

 

00;42;09;20 - 00;42;27;01

And then within a ten year period, they build three or four of them. So as that continues to grow and they become vintage, we'll continue to build those components and car parts to solve those problems. You know, But for us, I think, you know, we've carved out the niche portion of what we want. You know, most of these cars will be weekend cars.

 

00;42;27;01 - 00;42;51;16

You know, they'll be weekend cars, ones that they drive on a Saturday and Sunday. As beautiful as nitrogen and electric technology continues to come along, which is it's beautiful. You know, it's really nice. It's great. You know on multiple factors. So as that continues, you know, I think there'll be a phase of like a window where you probably get like a ten year window where the engines will kind of won't become vintage and people will just continue to grow through that period.

 

00;42;51;16 - 00;43;10;03

So, you know, up to like a 99 years or so. So. All right, Jason, and let's wrap up with this. So you're a CEO if you're talking to another CEO of a kind of similar company in the sense that similar size, you guys sell products, how would you make the case for why they should consider investing in NetSuite?

 

00;43;10;05 - 00;43;29;03

Yeah, a tough one. First is first, you know, you'd have to buy me a coffee, you know, if you know, so we can chat about it for sure. Hope it was done over coffee. I’m not a big beer drinker, but one thing I can definitely tell you is that the heart to heart that I would have is all businesses require human and technology capital.

 

00;43;29;05 - 00;43;53;08

One thing's for sure is I can help them find the human capital as that's tough. Even I can't solve that problem for myself. But one thing I'm sure of, NetSuite is the answer to their technology needs. And I can be pretty blunt when I say that you'd be very hard pressed to find something compares. So again, every business needs two things human capital, technology capital.

 

00;43;53;08 - 00;44;14;21

And you'd be hard pressed to find something that beats the technology portion that NetSuite has to offer for sure. Awesome was great having you on, Jason and I appreciate the time. Anytime, thank you. In that was quite the endorsement for NetSuite Jason offered at the end there but I think it speaks to the system's flexibility and how it can make a real difference for a number of different businesses.

 

00;44;14;24 - 00;44;32;17

Speedmaster is such an impressive company when you look at the volume of business they're doing and the efficiency of their operations. And it's awesome to hear more about the role NetSuite has played in that journey. I want to thank Jason for joining us on this episode of the podcast. I also want to thank our editing crew at Oracle and, as always, all of you, for tuning in.

 

00;44;32;20 - 00;44;52;24

If you want more episodes like this one, make sure you subscribe to our channel and give us a rating interview. Thanks so much and talk soon. You just listen to the NetSuite Podcast. Be sure to tune in every week with more NetSuite developments, stories, and insights into the benefits of one integrated system to help you run your business.

Learn more about NetSuite 2024 Release 2: https://bit.ly/3W7y8vS   Cohosts Ian McCue and Megan O’Brien delve into NetSuite 2024 Release 2, with several guests joining to cover the latest and greatest features included. To start off, Lisa Schwarz, senior director of product marketing at NetSuite, gives an overview of the second release of 2024 [1:29]. She covers some of the most exciting updates in 2024.2 and what customers can expect. Tanios Boudames, product marketing manager for NetSuite SuitePeople, joins next to give a breakdown of new capabilities in NetSuite’s human resource management system [11:46]. Peter Bouyonan, an industry solution advisor at NetSuite, delves into the new supply chain and manufacturing features [24:48]. Lastly, Jessica Turnpenny, group manager of product management at NetSuite, goes over new SuiteBilling capabilities and how they will help subscription businesses [37:41].   Follow Us Here:   NetSuite 2024 Release 2 Homepage: https://www.netsuite.com/portal/products/newrelease.shtml   Oracle NetSuite LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLI Facebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFB Instagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIG Twitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW   #NetSuite #NetSuiteERP #NetSuiteSuitePeople   --------------------------------------------------------   Episode Transcript:  

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;23;08 Hey NetSuite Podcast listeners. Thanks for tuning into this episode breaking down our newest NetSuite release. I’m Ian McCue, senior content marketing manager at NetSuite and I’m joined by NetSuite’s business and finance editor Megan O'Brien. The summer means it's our second product release of the year and that NetSuite 2024 Release 2 is packed with a bunch of awesome new features.   00;00;23;10 - 00;00;50;19 Absolutely. NetSuite 2024.2 brings new functionality across SuiteBilling, SCM mobile and Manufacturing mobile, and SuitePeople, as well as new suite apps to help businesses run their supply chains more efficiently. We have four different guests breaking down the latest capabilities in detail and explaining how they benefit you. And if you're looking for more, our sneak peek release blogs are now live on NetSuite.com.   00;00;50;22 - 00;01;16;19 See the links in the description of this episode to check this out. Stay tuned because we have a lot of exciting updates that you won't want to miss. You're listening to the NetSuite Podcast where we discuss what's happening within NetSuite, why we're doing it, and where we're heading in the future. We'll dive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts.   00;01;16;21 - 00;01;41;22 Unknown We'll also feature customer growth stories discussing the ups and downs of running a company and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale. Kicking us off is Lisa Schwarz, senior director of product marketing at NetSuite. Lisa will provide a quick preview of what's new in 2024 Release 2, including an updated user interface that customers can now try out for the first time.   00;01;41;25 - 00;02;13;00 She also gives a refresher on how all our customers receive the update and what they can do to prepare for it. So, Lisa, we have a few guests joining us to dive deeper into the latest functionality in NetSuite 2024 Release, 2. But could you give us a quick overview of what's new? Absolutely. So we have a slew of new supply chain and manufacturing features ranging from NetSuite WMS to some of the mobile applications, as well as some hot new suite apps related to supply chain.   00;02;13;03 - 00;02;36;11 Unknown We'll be diving into the new SuiteBilling capabilities, which is our subscription management and billing solution. And finally, you'll hear about some of the new things going on with our HR solution, SuitePeople. So what's one feature in this release that you're kind of especially excited about or maybe see as a big win for our customers? Wow. That's a tough one.   00;02;36;11 - 00;03;02;06 It's like, you know, picking your favorite child or, you know, they're all special in their very own ways. From a practical point of view, it's great to see the evolution of Bill Capture, which we continue to fine tune the ML models that help increase the accuracy for matching the invoices to your NetSuite record.   00;03;02;08 - 00;03;39;13 So that's increasing productivity for our users. There's also Ship Central, our packing and shipping solution. With this release, there's some great new functionality to automatically find the best shipping rates, which is pretty cool so that’s saving users time but also money. So those are great. But I actually wanted to talk about a feature that's included in the release, but it's an early release status, so going into that a little bit.   00;03;39;15 - 00;04;05;05 What we're going to be doing with this release is to start to roll out some of the new Redwood UI elements to NetSuite. Users may have heard about this already from Oracle, which they have all their applications using this or you actually may have seen it in some of the Oracle applications that we make available to NetSuite users like Planning and Budgeting or Analytics Warehouse.   00;04;05;08 - 00;04;37;06 Those two solutions have already the Redwood UI design system applied. So what you're going to see in NetSuite are changes like fonts, icons, and colors applied to various pages. There's no functionality changes, no changes to workflows. It's strictly an aesthetic, you know, user interface change. One thing to note and to understand is that this new UI won't be turned on by default.   00;04;37;09 - 00;05;01;11 You'll need to go in and change the preference settings to do that, but your admin can usually do that. It's a great way just to start to become familiar with this. We're going to see more pages updated over the next few releases with more of the design elements applied and at some point it will become the default UI of NetSuite.   00;05;01;14 - 00;05;27;04 But it's just starting and that's what I think is really exciting. Yeah, very cool stuff. And if someone wants to learn more about Redwood UI and maybe, you know, what might be might be changing a little bit, just an appearance in NetSuite. Where could they go to learn more about that? As usual, with all the stuff in every new release we'll have details in the release notes.   00;05;27;06 - 00;06;07;16 But we're also planning to start rolling out over the next few months some added communications and tools that users can use to become familiar. So you should be seeing some blogs on this. We're actually trying to line up a speaker for the podcast at some point soon down the road. So lots more to come on this. Awesome. And I wanted to quickly touch on kind of the logistics of the NetSuite release for any new listeners, any customers who have maybe not been through this before or those that maybe just need a refresher.   00;06;07;16 - 00;06;35;18 So how does NetSuite deliver all these new features that you covered to users? Yeah, it's actually still to this day, as many times we've been doing it, it's still super cool to watch it from the other side of getting it applied. The process and everything. But to remind everybody, we do two releases a year, all of our customers, which right now we're at 38,000+ customers receive the updates.   00;06;35;21 - 00;07;13;04 Everyone is on the same release using the latest and greatest version of NetSuite. So this is our second update of the year. With the release, accounts will be updated between mid August through July. That's the span of the rolling upgrade window. Each customer is assigned a date and a time that their NetSuite account will be updated. The date and the time of your update will be published in the new release portlet on your NetSuite dashboard and your NetSuite admin will also get an email with this information.   00;07;13;07 - 00;07;48;11 If for some reason this time doesn't work for your company, you can change the date and time of the update via the CSM tool within NetSuite. Again, something pretty fast and easy that your admin can do. So on the day of the update, you do not need to install or do anything. Everything is automated. Accounts will go offline during the update time, which is scheduled for about a four-hour period, but most of the updates happen in 60 minutes or less.   00;07;48;14 - 00;08;09;02 And it sounds like there's not a whole lot for customers to do, which is obviously a good thing. But what can customers do to prepare for this update? Yeah, like I mentioned, this is all automatic, but we definitely encourage users to become familiar with what's in the release and to try it out in a release preview account.   00;08;09;04 - 00;08;43;28 So while accounts are updated automatically and all customizations that you may have done to your account come over with the update, it's great to test things out using your own data, workflows, integrations, and customizations just so there are no surprises. I know I don't like any surprises, so for those of you who are not familiar with the release preview account, this is a special test account test environment that clones your production account with the new release functionality in it. It's free.   00;08;44;05 - 00;09;12;24 Unknown You just need to have your NetSuite admin requested, but definitely encourage to, as we used to say, test drive before you go live. And other than this podcast, how else can customers learn more about 2024.2? Yeah, lots of ways to engage and learn more. So the first thing you can do is read about this sneak peek blogs.   00;09;12;28 - 00;09;37;04 You can read about the enhancements in the sneak peek blogs on NetSuite.com, as well as the release notes. The release notes go into a ton of details on each of the new features and capabilities. There's also training videos that are made available in SuiteAnswers that you can watch on selected new features and enhancements.   00;09;37;06 - 00;10;06;04 Another way, we encourage you to talk with your account manager about what's new, kind of what they're recommending you. You may want to pay a little special attention since they know your environments a little bit more. So engage in some conversations with your account manager. We've got some upcoming webinars that you could also, if you know, kind of seeing is more of your thing rather than reading.   00;10;06;07 - 00;10;37;03 So we have a new release features webinar coming up actually just a few days after this webinar—this podcast goes live so you can sign up to watch that to participate in that webinar July 24th. Or if you can't make that it's available, it will be available to watch on demand. And there's also another follow-up webinar coming up in early August about release readiness.   00;10;37;05 - 00;11;03;10 So this is a little different webinar. It's not going to go into details on the actual features, but more about giving you tips on how to get ready for the release, like using the release preview account, which I just mentioned, creating test plans. And then there's also an opportunity to learn about some of the services that we have available that you may want to look at to help with release readiness.   00;11;03;12 - 00;11;38;08

And then last but not least, you know, we've got SuiteWorld coming up. So that's happening in Las Vegas, September 9th through the 12th. We've got over 200+ sessions, seminars, hands-on learning and training that cover a lot of the new capabilities, not only from this release, 24.2, but also from the previous release, 24.1. So lots of different ways to learn about the release depending upon your, you know, how you like to learn and get up to speed on things.   00;11;38;11 - 00;12;05;13 Well, lots of cool and exciting stuff to look forward to there. So thanks for walking us through it, Lisa. Thanks again. Happy to. SuitePeople, NetSuite’s human resource management solution, saw several new features in NetSuite 2024 Release 2. Joining us to discuss how these updates will help companies better manage their workforce and associated costs is Tanios Boudames.    00;12;05;13 - 00;12;33;22 Product marketing manager for NetSuite SuitePeople. For those who are not aware of NetSuite’s HR solution SuitePeople, could you give them an overview? Yeah, of course. So SuitePeople is part of NetSuite’s DNA, right? It works seamlessly with the rest of the platform. It's NetSuite's comprehensive human resources management system. So it's designed to streamline, automate a lot of the complexities that HR   00;12;33;23 - 00;13;20;16 Teams and processes kind of face. And it offers a robust set of tools for managing core HR business processes. That's like keeping employee records, running payroll, providing benefits, understanding performance of different teams, scheduling and optimizing workforce scheduling and planning, and really by integrating with the NetSuite ecosystem and being a part of it, you can really enable your business to better manage your workforce by having real-time insights, by having real-time analytics that drive better decision making because SuitePeople is with NetSuite on the same platform and it really allows customers to better understand how they can manage their workforce and optimize it.   00;13;20;19 - 00;13;47;24 And all of this is leveraged because again it's connected to NetSuite. So we can connect to SuiteAnalytics, SuiteProjects, into all the different products that NetAuite offers. And in terms of SuitePeople itself, diving deeper in, in terms of what the modules and products are that we sell, we have US payroll, we have HR administration, we have workforce management, then we have performance management.   00;13;47;26 - 00;14;21;06 So these are really covering the key areas that HR folks are going to be looking for in terms of providing HR functionality to their business. And this helps really provide a unified solution for finance and HR. And one solution with NetSuite. Well, why is it important to have a finance and HR system that is unified? Yeah, so there's really three areas that I always think of when it's when it's having a unified solution, especially when it comes to two really key lines of business like finance and HR.   00;14;21;09 - 00;14;43;19 The first is collaboration, right? It's being able to understand when you want to make changes to your workforce, you want to either hire people or you want to maybe readjust learning or reskill employees or understand where you need make shifts in the workforce in terms of scheduling and teams is understanding how you can collaborate as a HR person with finance or vice versa.   00;14;43;25 - 00;15;29;00 Understanding the budget, understanding the costs from the finance side, and then understanding things like the goals of performance. The really HR information location, how you can readjust workforces to be optimized to improve revenue performance of the business. The second is having actionable insights. And this kind of goes on the collaboration is not just being able to talk to each other, but also as a finance person or as a HR person being able to pull up dashboards, things like headcount analysis, things like performance across teams or across individuals or across products, being able to forecast different aspects with workforce management, being able to understand, okay, I need like three people here at this at this   00;15;29;00 - 00;15;54;22 job site for this season, right? Because it's going to be very busy. We need more staff. So being able to have those actionable insights from across the business, whether it's coming from projects or whether it's coming from the HR side as a finance person is really important. And that's what SuitePeople provides with the unification of it being together, And the last having the data integrity—data integrity and data privacy.   00;15;54;22 - 00;16;17;27 So everything is in one solution. You're not having to import data sensitive data like employee data across different solutions. It's all within NetSuite, all protected. So this helps with the privacy, the security aspect, and integrity. You're not having a duplication of data, right? There's one source of truth. You go to NetSuite, you check an employee record, you check the financials, etc. All of it is within one system.   00;16;17;27 - 00;16;49;15 So that's really the power of having a unified in those three, those three elements, really. How has the product grown to support NetSuite Financial customers over the years? Yeah, so SuitePeople really started out with payroll and HR. And we've grown and added performance management and workforce management and really grown alongside with our customers. I mean, now we process 6 billion annually in payroll transactions across thousands of employees.   00;16;49;17 - 00;17;18;23 We're really very much ramping up as we'll see in this update around workforce management and around providing a more complete HR solution for our customers with things like benefits offering and benefits solution. So, it's very much improved with financials as well and NetSuite Financials to offer deeper analytics reporting features that help understand workforce costs, productivity, products for locations.   00;17;18;23 - 00;17;47;01 Right. Being able to understand where the demand is from the business and that comes from things like compensation, planning, performance management, and understanding the whole aspect of your business. And at the same time from an employee side is we've really grown to offer employees more of the self-service capabilities. So this is allowing them to get the information that they need at the time that they need it without having to go to HR.   00;17;47;03 - 00;18;11;00 Unknown Without having to bother or really distract business folks from focusing on more impactful tasks to ask for things like a payslip or to ask for things like time off or schedule around that. Right. So workforce management allows for that. We have the self-service portals in in HR to allow you to access payroll slips, etc. Right. Let's get to the good stuff.   00;18;11;02 - 00;18;43;08 What enhancements are coming to SuitePeople in 2024 Release 2? Yeah. So for workforce management, we have two really key enhancements coming and one of those is around being able to track to multiple time fields, right? So this is going to allow businesses to understand not just by, for example, a location or a team or a product, but to be able to dive even deeper into how employees are spending their time, where are the labor costs coming from?   00;18;43;10 - 00;19;26;03 For example, you are running, let's say, a coffee shop, right? Where are your employees spending the most time? Cleaning, making the coffee, talking with customers, whatever it may be. Being able to log those times across multiple time fields now allows you to understand where maybe you need more support. For example, another is like a contracting business, right? Where you have multiple people working on building a house, people who are doing the platform, the foundation, the concrete, who are building, the paint, the electrical, all the different stuff that you have within a project, being able to map across how many hours are being spent on which item, on which project, on which task is really   00;19;26;09 - 00;19;52;18 impactful for our customers now being able to use that and to map to different fields. And the second is around really enabling compliance for our customers. So being able to ensure that employees take their full break. So this is like a early break prevention enhancement where employees now will take their full break and cannot clock back in until their break is completed.   00;19;52;18 - 00;20;24;24 And this is important for a lot of states that will penalize businesses if employees don't take their full half an hour, hour, whatever the regulation is. So this is a this is really powerful enhancements for the workforce management product we offer customers. And then from an HR administrator viewpoint, we now have a benefits partner so we now can offer customers benefits, enrollment, and brokerage services through our benefits partner, Simply Insured.   00;20;24;24 - 00;20;49;06 Unknown And all of this is within NetSuite. So it's all within the NetSuite interface. Employees don't have to go outside of NetSuite to sign up and to enroll in and benefits. And, at the backend, the payroll is deducted. So any costs that come from an employee signing up for a benefits plan, they can see that reflected automatically in their in their payroll as a deduction.   00;20;49;06 - 00;21;09;06 Unknown And then from a financial standpoint, you can see as a finance person, the GL showing the costs of how much benefits costs, how much each plan even is costing the business, and being able to optimize. Are a lot of employees using this plan? No, but it's also costing a lot. Okay. Maybe we should look at offering other plans for employees.   00;21;09;06 - 00;21;43;12 So that's the two big enhancements or three I guess two for workforce management and one for as a new partnership with benefits that we have in 24.2. How does this help businesses monitor and track rising labor costs? Because that's a that's a huge issue for our customers. Yeah. So for SuitePeople, especially with the workforce management, I'll talk on that because this is really where, as I was saying earlier, it's going to provide visibility into so many different components of the workforce—when they clock in, where they're clocking in to, where they tracking their time to.   00;21;43;12 - 00;22;06;03 So being able to understand the different components of expenses, wages, overtime, anything that they're spending extra time on. So being able to identify cost trends and being able to budget and forecast ahead. So saying, okay, these projects are taking our employees way longer. Or these tasks or this assembly line or this product is taking double the time that it should.   00;22;06;03 - 00;22;42;16 And now we're accruing overtime, let's put more employees on that or maybe let's adjust how we're moving forward as a business and a business strategy for that product or project or offerings and services. Right? So it's going to help businesses really dig down deeper into what labor costs are affecting their growth. And this can happen from so many different fields that are that are within NetSuite of time fields and being able to map to those as an employee when you clock in and being able to say what you're doing at certain hour and time is going to really help businesses monitor and track where their labor costs are.   00;22;42;18 - 00;23;04;20 Now, how do these enhancements help employees and perhaps also help businesses? Anything that you might have not have mentioned so far? Yeah, so I've talked a lot about businesses and the organizational side of it with finance and HR. For employees, there's a lot of great enhancements with this. I mean, it's going to provide a lot greater transparency and access to their HR.   00;23;04;21 - 00;23;45;09 Information. So, for benefits, for example, being able to have that that solution as a business to offer to your employees so that they can access health benefits through their employer is really empowering to them. They're going to be able to enroll and access and view different plans all within NetSuite. Right. So that's really impactful. And again, all the self-service that comes with SuitePeople, right, being able to have the self-service to understand what your pay is, understand where maybe you need to update some personal information to reflect accurately, and being able to request time off, understand your scheduling and schedule within workforce management.   00;23;45;09 - 00;24;10;02 All great, really empowering aspects and enhancements for employees. From the business standpoint, a lot of this, again is streamlining the processes across HR and finance. So what you're doing from the workforce management standpoint with the time fields is understanding, okay, people are clocking in, they're aligning their time to certain tasks and projects. From a finance standpoint, where do we want to adjust the budget?   00;24;10;02 - 00;24;35;17 Where do we want to move forward in terms of adjusting how our workforce is operating from teams to products to focus? Right. And all of this is just really helping HR become more strategic in terms of how they operate and allowing finance to get to gain greater visibility in terms of the costs and how the workforce is operating so they can better optimize budgets and really grow revenue.   00;24;35;19 - 00;25;06;20 NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud financial system, is everything you need to grow all in one place. Financials, inventory, HR, and more. Make better decisions faster so you can do more and spend less. See how at NetSuite.com/pod. Next, we have Peter Bouyounan, an industry solution advisor at NetSuite. Peter will walk through the biggest new supply chain and manufacturing features in NetSuite 2024.2, explaining how they can help businesses reduce costs and increase productivity.   00;25;06;22 - 00;25;32;19 So, Peter, to start, could you just share what are some of the key goals for manufacturers when it comes to production? Sure. One of the key goals in the manufacturing process is really to optimize the inventory levels. What I mean by that is to produce enough to meet your demand without having a lot of excess. So, at the end of the day, you're maximizing output with minimal waste. 

00;25;32;21 - 00;26;00;29 And for a lot of manufacturers, what they're trying to do is ensure steady flow of raw material and components. You know, they're trying to streamline their process and just make sure their production time is reduced. They just need the flexibility to be able to adapt to any changes from the demand, like what their customers are demanding or even from production requirements.   00;26;01;01 - 00;26;38;24 And I know in this Release 2024.2, there's some new functionality around aligning supply and demand in NetSuite. Could you could you tell us a little bit more about what we what we've added to support that? Yeah, a couple things actually. Supply planning updates, we've done and there's three new SuiteApps to support that as well. With the supply planning, that's going to give customers the ability to increase their accuracy and control of the supply planning quantities, their minimum order quantities, and their lot sizing.   00;26;38;25 - 00;27;09;12 It's combined now to ensure proper quantities are ordered. So it’s really merging the two together. So there's options there that they have at the end of the day that supports the right number of products and raw materials that are available. So that update is done to the supply planning. And then we have a few new SuiteApps that's going to support them as well.   00;27;09;14 - 00;27;47;22 There's NetSuite Supply 360. That's essentially just viewing the manufacturing component requirements when you get the work order, you get you get a visibility of the ability to review the levels of component inventory for upcoming work orders. So that's going to give you a better way to plan as well. It's, you know, Supply 360, so you're getting to see the whole 360-degree view of your manufacturing and the components that are required.   00;27;47;24 - 00;28;09;13 In addition to that, that really complements it as well, is Available to Build. So that's going to give you a view and it gives customers answers to see how many more of an assembly can be produced. It's based on the current inventory, so they're able to see that inventory and then they can see how many we produce.   00;28;09;13 - 00;28;35;00 A lot of times you see those requirements from customers as they have a work order and have certain raw material quantity and they can produce more than what's required since visually, if you can see the machinery is working right. Once you have a set up and you start working, you don't want to stop just because you supported the work order, right?   00;28;35;01 - 00;28;57;01 You have enough to do a work order, but you can go ahead and continue having available to build. You can see that perhaps you can run a little bit more and have that in stock if necessary, as opposed to just shutting down. And then now you have this raw material sitting. So that helps most customers in that regard.   00;28;57;01 - 00;29;24;27 And then very important aspect of everything is the cost, right? So we have a cost variance analysis that's going to take actual cost versus what you planned. So if you have a work order and you know what your planned cost is, now you can run a report to see what that variance and see the actual cost. And that's going to help customers identify, you know, where the actual cost landed.   00;29;25;00 - 00;29;52;20 Are they up or are they down? Great. Yeah, lots of exciting stuff there. And how can our customers access these new SuiteApps? So in general, the SuiteApps are either on the tab or, what I do typically, is search on the global bar for SuiteApps and you can see, view, browse, search for these apps and install them or they can go to SuiteApp.com in the marketplace.   00;29;52;20 - 00;30;19;03 You know, they can visit that in a lot of times if they're already, you know, NetSuite customers, those users can have access directly from the NetSuite instance. And these are at no cost to customers. Right. And are there any modules they need to have in place to access these SuiteApps? So the SuiteApps that we just discussed, those three: Supply 360, Available to Build, and the Cost Variance Analysis are actually free to download.   00;30;19;05 - 00;30;36;21 There is a prerequisite for them. It’s Work Orders & Assemblies. And just keep in mind that you can you can check with your account manager and they can they'll help you navigate through it as well. So let's shift gears a little bit and talk about the production process itself and how NetSuite plays into that.   00;30;36;22 - 00;31;04;19 So NetSuite has done a lot of work to make production and warehouse processes executable directly from a mobile device. Could you tell us about new enhancements in this release when it comes to mobile functionality? Just want to go back a little bit about mobile. Mobile apps, they support multiple efforts our customers have been asking for. For one, it's paperless and it's physically flexible, hence the mobile aspect of it.   00;31;04;21 - 00;31;47;02 But you're not tied down to having a desk station for every workstation. And that's why we're putting so much effort into our mobile applications. The SCM mobile, what we've done is put printers that can be grouped into print groups that's going to allow the user to select a printer based on a print group preference so that the user will see a list of printers based on the group they selected. That's going to help them, you know, quite a bit to not be tied down to a specific printer, but then they can select which printer they want to print to.   00;31;47;04 - 00;32;18;10 Hence since it's mobile. In addition to that with the SCM Mobile, you have condition based coloring so you can color data tables and rows. That's going to give the user a quick way to distinguish rows of data. Right. So if you got order released, that may look, you know, could be in green. If the work order is in process, it could be yellow. If it's planned, it’s in red.   00;32;18;17 - 00;32;47;19 Just to kind of give you a little bit of visual of what it would look like. And then the Manufacturing Mobile. So the enhancement there is that employees now can clock in and clock out with their badge. So that will provide actual machine and labor time on a specific operation on a step. And then Manufacturing Mobile as well has a GS-1 barcode.   00;32;47;21 - 00;33;19;23 So that's an enhancement to allow you to scan a lot or a serial number. And a big one that our customers have always been asking for is to have like an auto-generate lot or serial number and that's a SuiteApp and it's integrated with the Manufacturing Mobile as well. The third one I mentioned was the quality management and so the capabilities for that.   00;33;19;25 - 00;33;50;20 Unknown Inspection has been enhanced. It's going to give the user more control with like a parent transaction on inventory inspection so they can perform on-demand inspections. This includes like inventory quantities and decimals. And then that's very helpful for a lot of our customers in the food and beverage industry as well. And then there's compliance control, visibility of inspection results.   00;33;50;22 - 00;34;22;21 So that's all going to be it's more of visual information on hand. And then lastly with that is the ability to navigate between inventory transaction and inspection queues. So you're you have now both as well. Great. And could you remind everyone where they can where they can access these mobile apps and if they if they cost anything and what NetSuite modules customers may need to have to use them.   00;34;22;24 - 00;34;47;07 Yeah. So mobile apps in general are available on any iOS or Apple products or Android devices. You know, you can search for NetSuite and download the app. So it's, in general, high level to get the mobile app. But the manufacturing mobile is actually a free bundle. It does require Work Orders & Assemblies. So there is a prerequisite for that.   00;34;47;09 - 00;35;19;18 Unknown The SCM mobile, it's really is a framework which Manufacturing Mobile is built on. But to use the functionality within, you need a manufacturing module license. And then the quality management is also a licensed bundle. And that will require inventory management. So the mobile application is available through the SCM Mobile as well. And then one other area I want to touch on is Ship Central.   00;35;19;18 - 00;35;49;14 So Ship Central helps businesses fulfill orders with packing and shipping functionality. What's new with Ship Central in this release to make those packing and shipping processes even easier? Yeah. So again, I want to go back just a little bit from the last fiscal year. Ship Central in general adds real-time integration to partial shipping carriers. These features, like they give you real time rate shopping.   00;35;49;17 - 00;36;18;27 It's integrated shipping labels. You could do address validation to make sure that you were capturing the right address with, of course, the ability to void labels as well. So that was an enhancement that we've done in the past. And now what we've done, we've got usability improvements. So we added more to this functionality we had with Ship Central, and now you can automatically select the cheapest shipping method.   00;36;19;00 - 00;36;47;20 Instead of having a list and trying to figure out yourself, it will provide you that information. Print return labels. So if you have anything that came through, as we talked about just a minute ago in regards to the quality management and if you see something that needs to be returned, that can be done with the same carrier that came in, or you can choose a different carrier as well.   00;36;47;23 - 00;37;13;22 It depends on the cost factor for you. You can create, print, you can create and print hazmat labels. So those are great, especially for the United States Postal Service or DHL. You know, they have their own standards. So being able to do that, you can comply with their standards and operators can pack items by searching and grouping orders with the wave number.   00;37;13;25 - 00;37;41;01 So that makes it really convenient. Awesome. And how can our customers access Ship Central? What do they need? Or how can they take advantage of some of these new capabilities? Ship Central is great because actually if you have WMS, it would be included with it. Okay. But it's not reliant on NetSuite WMS. So it can be used with or without WMIS and it can be a standalone.   00;37;41;04 - 00;38;10;13 Well, lots of exciting stuff here, Peter, and I appreciate you walking me through it. Thanks to you. Thanks for your time. Now let's take a deeper dive into the enhancements around NetSuite SuitteBilling in 2024 Release 2. We have Jessica Turnpenny, group manager of product management at NetSuite, joining us next to cover how several new pieces of functionality and in NetSuite SuiteBilling will help ease subscription management.   00;38;10;16 - 00;38;52;18 We hear that subscription based business models are becoming increasingly popular. Many businesses benefit from the recurring revenue and increased growth and profitability. But what are some of the challenges that businesses face when they're trying to manage subscription revenue and billing models? Subscriptions have tons of advantages, but when you start having high volumes of recurring billing, it becomes unmanageable unless you're able to automate it, and especially if you have complexities around contract modifications and it becomes really hard and cumbersome for teams to manage all of those changes and make sure that it's accurate and as well.   00;38;52;18 - 00;39;23;12 Revenue recognition for subscription billing is very specific and so it can also be really hard for revenue teams to make sure that the way that they're recognizing their subscription revenue is accurate. And all of those things become more complicated with subscription billing because you're billing in a recurring way, not just a single one-off invoice. So yeah, it can be hard, especially at high volumes. For those who are new to NetSuite or could use maybe a little bit of a refresher.   00;39;23;14 - 00;40;02;16 Can you share some information about SuiteBilling? What is it and what does it do? So SuiteBilling is NetSuite’s subscription billing module. And what SuiteBilling does is it really simplifies and automates the management of subscription billing for our customers. The module supports one-time, recurring, and consumption or usage based billing. So we support flat, tiered volume based pricing, you know, time based discounts, free trials, you know, all of the complex sort of ways that you can price in a subscription model.   00;40;02;16 - 00;40;27;13 And we try and simplify that for you to be able to configure it using subscription plans. You can make that really easy to get up and running in a repeatable and accurate way. We automate all of those recurring type subscription invoice bulk runs for you so that can all be automated. It doesn't have to be triggered in any way.   00;40;27;16 - 00;40;55;12 We also have a really powerful rating engine that supports the proration associated with contract modifications as it has a really deep integration into our Advanced Revenue Management module. So it also seamlessly integrates with that module and automates all of your revenue recognition for your subscriptions. So it's a really powerful subscription billing product. We hear a new feature is coming.   00;40;55;12 - 00;41;41;09 To Suite Billing in release 2024.2. What can you tell us about it? So in 2042.2, we are releasing our prepay with drawdown feature, and that feature will allow our customers to receive a pre-payment for whatever specified amount and then be able to draw down or consume that prepayment across multiple subscription lines within that subscription. So you could take a prepayment for a set amount and then as your customer consumes whatever subscription products you've sold them, as they consume those, it burns down the prepayment.   00;41;41;11 - 00;42;10;19 Now, how would customers be invoiced in cases like this? So they're invoiced for the prepayment upfront. And then subsequent invoices, they see how that prepayment is consumed or burned down, and they also see what's left of that prepayment. So that initial invoices is that upfront payment and then subsequent invoices are more communications on how that's being consumed.   00;42;10;22 - 00;42;39;02 Unknown What's exactly the added benefit of being able to record prepayment within SuiteBilling? So being able to record those prepayments allows our customers to speed up cash flow. You have an upfront prepayment and but you get the advantage of consumption billing. So traditional usage based or consumption billing is billed in arrears as it's used. And customers really love that model.   00;42;39;02 - 00;43;07;18 So you get the advantage of that consumption based model, but you reduce the risk by having the upfront cash flow. So you have that prepayment in hand and then it can be reupped or you can recharge that prepayment at any time. So it does give customers that reduced risk with the great, you know, consumption-based model. And perhaps the most important question, how soon will customers be able to use this feature?   00;43;07;20 - 00;43;35;03 It is being released in our 2024.2 NetSuite release. It's all very exciting. Plenty of new capabilities for our customers to look forward to in 2024 4.2. And the best part is they can access this new functionality and start reaping the benefits right now. For sure. I really appreciate how the new features cut across so many areas.   00;43;35;06 - 00;43;55;09 Financials and accounting, supply chain manufacturing, HR, There's something here for so many different roles across a variety of companies. And a quick reminder, if you want to dive deeper into any of the new functionalities we cover today, we have links to our release blogs in the description of this episode. Thank you so much to all our guests for joining us today.   00;43;55;11 - 00;44;16;27 Thank you to all you listeners tuning in. I want to shout out our editing team over at Oracle, who does such a great job, and we are incredibly grateful for them. Don't forget to rate for view and subscribe for more episodes just like this one.    00;44;16;27 - 00;44;30;24 Tune in for developments, stories, and insights into the benefits of one integrated system to help you run your business.

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In this episode of the NetSuite Podcast, Oracle NetSuite’s Brian Chess, Senior Vice President of Technology and AI at Oracle NetSuite, joins co-host Megan O’Brien. The episode starts with Brian giving an overview of his role at NetSuite [1:09]. They then discuss the business challenges NetSuite is looking to solve with AI [2:53]. Brian describes NetSuite’s unique approach to AI, including its use of Oracle technologies and NetSuite’s inclusion of AI in its suite of applications for no additional cost [6:06]. They delve into how NetSuite is keeping the human in the loop of AI applications [10:01]. They end the podcast by talking about the future of AI at NetSuite and where people can go to learn more [13:54].

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In this episode of the NetSuite Podcast, Guidecraft’s Dana Schultz, NetSuite Data Content and IT Support, and Kristin McCue, Director of IT and Distribution, joins co-host Megan O’Brien. The episode starts with an overview of Guidecraft [1:59]. They then discuss Guidecraft’s previous system, where it fell short, and its adoption of NetSuite [5:14]. They dive into Guidecraft’s use of NetSuite OneWorld to run its global business [8:50]. The Guidecraft team illustrates their use of NetSuite Analytics Warehouse to pull in data from multiple sources to run quick, on-demand reports [12:21]. They conclude the podcast by discussing the benefits of having needed capabilities in a single suite [16:15]. 

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What’s new in NetSuite OpenAir 2024 Release 1? Joining us to answer that question is Adam Mayo, Vertical Product Manager, Services at NetSuite. Adam shares some of the big-picture changes and trends affecting services companies [1:37] before giving more background on what OpenAir does and who it helps [3:17]. He then dives into key new features in the latest release of OpenAir [7:28], breaking down new features including the Project Center [10:09], usability improvements [12:48], and additional OpenAir Mobile capabilities [16:10]. To close, Adam reveals his favorite new feature in OpenAir [20:32] and shares resources where customers can learn more about the release [22:42].

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In this episode of the NetSuite Podcast, I.B. Stottlemyer, senior principal instructor at Oracle NetSuite, joins co-host Megan O’Brien to discuss NetSuite dashboards. The episode starts with a discussion of I.B’s role at NetSuite and then dives into the Learning Cloud Support or LCS program [1:41]. I.B. introduces the topic of dashboards and why they are so important to cover [4:38]. He then delves into why NetSuite users should have multiple dashboards [17:33]. I.B. and Megan discuss what the future of dashboards look like in NetSuite, as well as some best practices and things to avoid [26:26]. They conclude the podcast episode with a discussion of how NetSuite users can learn more about setting up their dashboards [39:32]. 

 

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