The NetSuite Podcast

Learn more about NetSuite for software companies: https://tinyurl.com/47pfsx78 In this episode of the NetSuite Podcast, cohost Ian McCue sits down with Pate Henderson, executive director of finance and administration at OPIE Software, a practice management software provider for prosthetics and orthotics clinics. They start the episode by discussing OPIE Software and its mission [1:55]. Pate then dives into the company's adoption of NetSuite and why it was the "Goldilocks" system for them [14:14]. Ian and Pate conclude the podcast episode by discussing what's next for OPIE Software [31:31]. Follow Us Here: Pate Henderson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricia-henderson-mba-894603108/ OPIE Software: https://www.opiesoftware.com/ Contact NetSuite Sales - https://social.ora.cl/6009wKalv Learn More about NetSuite ERP - https://social.ora.cl/6003wKaxv Learn More about NetSuite HCM - https://social.ora.cl/6007c4Kih Learn More about NetSuite Analytics & Reporting - https://social.ora.cl/6007c4znL NetSuite Customer Success Stories - https://social.ora.cl/6005c4zt9 Follow us here: 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 #OPIESoftware #FinancialExecutives #NetSuiteERP #NetSuiteSuiteBilling #NetSuiteACS #NetSuiteCRM #MedicalSoftware #ERPforSoftwareCompanies -------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript:

How NetSuite Helps OPIE Software Improve Patient Care

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:42:02

Unknown

Welcome to Perspectives on Health and Tech podcast. Brought to you by Oracle Health. In this series, we have conversations on creating a seamless and connected health care world where everyone thrives. Let's get started. Welcome to perspective Oracle Health and Life Science podcast. I'm your host today Danny Gladden. I'm a licensed clinical social worker and general manager of behavioral health and social care here at Oracle Health.

00:00:42:04 - 00:01:13:15

Unknown

As we step into the month of May, we recognize Mental Health Awareness Month, a time to raise awareness, reduce stigma, and highlight progress in mental health care. I'd also like to give a special shout out to our nurses across Canada and the U.S. as we celebrate National Nursing Week. Thank you for your unwavering dedication and compassion. Social workers and nurses make great teams.

00:01:13:17 - 00:01:45:04

Unknown

Today, we're honored to be joined by a leader in mental health care innovation. Please welcome Doctor Gillian Strudwick from Kim H. The center for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada's largest mental health and addiction teaching hospital and one of the world's leading research centers in its field. So, Jillian, welcome. Before we dive into big topics here, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about the great workhappening at Kim?

00:01:45:06 - 00:02:12:14

Unknown

Thank you, Danny, and thank you for the opportunity to be a part of this great podcast. So I might break this into two sections. First, I'll introduce myself, and then I'll tell you a little bit about the organization that I'mfortunate to work for. So I'm Doctor Jillian Strudwick, I'm a registered nurse, and I've worked primarily in mental health clinical settings here in Toronto, Canada, and also in other parts of Canada and internationally.

00:02:12:16 - 00:02:41:21

Unknown

Currently, I am the inaugural Chief Clinical Informatics Officer at Kam H, representing our nurses and all of our non physician health disciplines like social work. And I have a couple of other hats as well. So one is that I'mthe head scientist of the Digital Mental Health Lab. And I'm also the scientific director of our Digital Innovation Hub, which is about really accelerating our work in this digital sphere and research practice, education and beyond.

00:02:41:22 - 00:03:10:04

Unknown

So that's about me. But I'll move on to talking about Kim H. So Kim H is CAMH, the center for Addiction and Mental Health, and it's Canada's largest mental health and addictions teaching hospital. We think Kim and I think there's lots to suggest that we're we're true in saying this, that we're world leading research and education center in mental health, and we're located right in the heart of downtown Toronto.

00:03:10:05 - 00:03:35:20

Unknown

But we serve people across our province, Ontario and across the country as well. So in terms of a few numbers that I'll share with you. We've had, just over 16,000 emergency department visits in the last year. Over 40,000 patients that were treated. Over 80,000 virtual care appointments. And I'll, I'll provide a few more numbers here as well.

00:03:35:21 - 00:03:59:20

Unknown

Almost 8000 rtms visits, 60 million and new research funds and more than a thousand articles published. I think you get the point that there's a lot going on at camp, and it's a great place to be. You know, I have been on your campus a number of times and always appreciate that your campus is right in the heart of of Toronto.

00:03:59:22 - 00:04:31:11

Unknown

In, in, in a bustling area. And I think there's there's no greater way to reduce stigma than, you know, placing, such a well-respected, mental health and addiction treatment organization right in the heart of the city. Whereas if you go to many other communities, you'll kind of see the mental health hospitals and treatment providers kind of on the outskirts of town, really appreciate, campus role right there in the heart of, Toronto.

00:04:31:13 - 00:04:55:13

Unknown

And I think this goes into something, Jillian, you speak about passionately, which is the idea that mental health treatment is social justice for our audience. Tell us what you mean by that. Why is it an important lens? Social justice. Which you view your work? Yeah. I think it's a quite an important point that you bring up, Danny.

00:04:55:15 - 00:05:24:18

Unknown

And it's something we're really proud of. Talking about that mental health work is social justice work. And so, part of doing social justice work is to be informed in this space. And part of being informed is understanding that mental illness disproportionately affects marginalized communities, who are also often facing barriers to things like accessing care. And this could be due to racism, poverty, stigma, geography.

00:05:24:18 - 00:05:59:06

Unknown

And I could continue. So on and so forth. So and Kim H. We see mental health is deeply rooted in social justice because access to care, dignity and treatment and prevention are, are not, equitably distributed. Kim advocates for policies and systems change that ensure mental health care is not a privilege, but but a right. And so that's really our social justice lens, framing and shaping the last few statements that I made.

00:05:59:08 - 00:06:31:01

Unknown

So, we have done some work more recently, in the last couple of years on dismantling anti-Black racism, which has become a more formalized organizational commitment. And so I'll just read a section from one of our documents around dismantling anti-Black racism. And, excuse me for it sounds like I'm reading here because I'm reading from a document, but, system, systemic anti-Black racism is a barrier to high quality health care for black patients at Kim H.

00:06:31:01 - 00:06:57:09

Unknown

And across the health care system, the data lay bare with those in black communities have signaled for decades discrimination and oppression based on race delays, care and harms individuals on their way to recovery. Racism also has a negative impact on the quality of work life for black staff. Beyond the damaging emotional and psychological consequences. It limits their career trajectory and it goes on from there.

00:06:57:11 - 00:07:30:21

Unknown

And so I bring this out as one of the many initiatives that the organization is committed to. And as a result ofthis commitment, this public commitment. You can read what I just read on on our website, Kamchatka, that there's a number of activities that the organization is doing everywhere, from doing offering more culturally appropriate therapies to education for staff, staff, support groups, creations of processes that support equity, lots of advocacy work with the government.

00:07:30:23 - 00:07:58:14

Unknown

And so a lot of this work is ongoing. But this gives you sort of a more grounded, more concrete example of some of the the ways in which we look at social justice as being so related to mental health. My goodness, you know, the, the, the social work, the social worker in me is just grinning from ear to ear, as you describe, you know, the foundation in which camp is, is caring for folks.

00:07:58:14 - 00:08:34:14

Unknown

You know, I'm, still like, licensed, clinician. And I'm licensed in Missouri and Alaska. And, you know, particularly I think about, state like Alaska, with a disproportional number of folks who are part of, who are Alaska Native. And we see, you know, those communities so much generational trauma and the impact, you know, and the impact that oppression, you know, has on, sort of repeating traumatic occurrences across the generations.

00:08:34:14 - 00:09:04:15

Unknown

And so, so very important, I think, an important perspective to look at the, the experience of mental health and the treatment of mental health through, social justice lens. Jillian, I just appreciate that that, that that is a focus of, Kim H. And I'm, I'm sure the indigenous populations, your organization works with, you see a similar, you know, similar experience in the those in the, in Alaska here.

00:09:04:17 - 00:09:32:18

Unknown

Now, as we pivot here thinking about, you know, you're you're I think the work you're describing from a social justice perspective is innovative. It seems like Kim is always at the cutting edge of innovation. We're a technology company. And so, you know, from a technology innovation perspective, what do you seeing? What's Kim H doing? Great question, Danny.

00:09:32:18 - 00:10:14:05

Unknown

And because of my various roles at the organization, I get excited about this kind of a question. And it also describes the work that I'm doing every day with my colleagues, with our patients, their family members, and others across the organization. So yes, we're always interested in how we can use technology and to innovate with technology, but we do that so we can achieve various things, and the things that we want to achieve are being able to improve access to care so we can see more patients because, probably unlike or not unlike various organizations in the rest of Canada and in the US, we have long waiting lists for care.

00:10:14:07 - 00:10:39:21

Unknown

The second is to be able to improve the quality of care. And not to say that care isn't good already, but more that as we learn and develop evidence and get feedback from our clinicians, from our patients, we can then integrate that into care. So that's the second piece. The third is to improve the patient experience. And the fourth is to really personalize care.

00:10:39:22 - 00:11:03:06

Unknown

So when we think about how we innovate with technology, we're really looking to see if we can do those four things. And yes, there's other I'll, you know, other reasons. You invest in technologies for various efficiencies and cost savings. But I'm going to talk about more work, on that. The earlier four points that I described. So maybe I'll provide a couple of concrete examples.

00:11:03:06 - 00:11:31:05

Unknown

The first one is thinking about and the opportunity that we have by embedding wearables into to, care processes. So these are things like aura rings or Fitbits. You know, it doesn't matter which company it is. There's lots of wearables out there, but embedding them into care processes so we can look at, sleep and activity, which are often impacted when people have symptoms of depression or anxiety.

00:11:31:07 - 00:11:55:17

Unknown

And so we hope I can use this information to better understand someone's individual patterns, which could really help us tailor their treatments, as you can imagine. But also be able to identify early when a treatment may be starting to take some effect, or an early warning sign, or an indicator of someone potentially falling ill or relapsing. Lots of potential in that space.

00:11:55:17 - 00:12:26:15

Unknown

And where we're getting going, primarily in the research domain in the wearable space. So that's sort of one concrete example. Another concrete example is rtms. So Kim H has been a leader in the space and doing brain stimulation research for a number of years. Our TMS and case, listeners aren't familiar with it. It's a noninvasive treatment. It uses magnetic fields to stimulate very specific regions of the brain.

00:12:26:17 - 00:12:52:15

Unknown

And it's been shown to be particularly effective for people with treatment resistant depression. So these are individuals who have not responded well to medication or therapy alone. And so to date, we've had about 8000 individuals last year who have received our TMS. So we're thinking about it from advancing the science, treating individuals, of course, and doing lots of advocacy work.

00:12:52:17 - 00:13:19:15

Unknown

The third example I'll provide is around the app space. So there's a lot if you were to type in depression or anxiety into any app library, you're going to see lots and lots of apps, most of which don't have a scientific backing to them. Some of which may actually be a waste of time to engage in. And so it's also really hard to make sense of that app landscape.

00:13:19:17 - 00:13:51:14

Unknown

And so we've been working to develop and integrate into clinical care processes, apps that have that evidence based behind them and have some sort of a portal or interface with clinicians. So that the data can be used for care purposes. So we've got one called my change plan, for smoking, cessation of behavioral modifications. We've got one called app for independence, which is a platform for supporting people with complex behavioral and mental health conditions.

00:13:51:14 - 00:14:25:15

Unknown

And it's currently used for recovery process with individuals with psychosis and schizophrenia and now opioid use disorders. And then we also have another app called Hope by Kim Age, which is a safety planning intervention for people at risk for suicide. So there's you know, that doesn't, cover all the ads, but gives you a sort of a flavor of the various apps that we've been working on so that there's the credibility, the science, and the engagement and feedback loop, for those particular areas.

00:14:25:17 - 00:14:49:06

Unknown

And then finally, that last one I want to talk about is our electronic health record. So we use, Oracle Health platform. And we're really thinking about how we can optimize our use of it for the best experience for clinicians and patients alike, including this concept of open notes through our patient portal. So where patients can see their notes and so.

00:14:49:10 - 00:15:30:09

Unknown

Well, if you're in the US and thinking, well, this is the normal form for us, it's not quite the norm for folks in other countries. It's optional in Canada to share mental health notes. And so we're showing some real leadership by identifying how best we can do that and opening up our notes. So I'll just close on this topic, Danny, by just saying that importantly, we're taking a human centered approach and we're doing this work, whether it be an apps, wearables with our EHR or that we're co-designing with patients and clinicians to ensure that they're usable and they meet the needs that are the most pressing needs, but also that we deliver and implement

00:15:30:09 - 00:16:00:06

Unknown

technology that allows us to provide compassionate care. Because I think when we think about technology, it'soften this sort of antithetical approach to compassion and really wish we are showing that to be able to deliver compassionate care in this day and age, we have to be innovative in our use of technology. Well, what a what, just what a robust list of, of innovation.

00:16:00:06 - 00:16:27:05

Unknown

You know, the committee is, is sponsoring. I'm not not at all surprised, Gillian, knowing you're knowing your history. You know, Gillian, maybe a part two to this conversation. Separate a separate podcast can be sort of on the intersection of social justice and technology. You know, we, we regularly describe some justphenomenal innovation, consumer facing innovation.

00:16:27:07 - 00:16:55:00

Unknown

And, and yet we know that there's, there's consumers of care, that don't always get to take advantage of the latest and greatest innovation, the, the wearables or access to a device to allow, you know, portal or, or ortelehealth, you know, lack of hardware, lack of bandwidth, lack of sort of knowledge or trust in the available tools.

00:16:55:00 - 00:17:26:18

Unknown

So, you know, maybe we can well, bookmark that, I think for another day. But in the area of innovation, you know, so cam was part of our clinical AI work group for behavioral health. This was a year long process. You know, Oracle's been an AI space for, for for many, many, many years. You know, I'm sitting in a marriott right now where, you know, I used Oracle tools to check in and to engage with, the Marriott staff.

00:17:26:18 - 00:17:50:19

Unknown

And so Oracle knows a thing or two about AI. And it's taken what they know about AI and applied it to health care. And we Oracle Health and Cam and others have taken that and and morphed it for behavioral health. Soour clinical AI agent today is available in the US in behavioral health used across a number of behavioral providers.

00:17:50:19 - 00:18:18:23

Unknown

I think to date we've had nearly 20,000, medication management notes, that were documenting documented using Oracle Health's clinical AI agent. So what's MH thinking about, from an AI perspective? Oh, we'rethinking about lots from an AI perspective. And I will just note that while you're sitting at a marriott, I'm sitting at the hospital right now and on the overhead speaker is a code being called the.

00:18:18:23 - 00:18:49:04

Unknown

Apologies if you can hear that. We are really quite excited about the potential for AI and what it could bring for things like research, education, of course clinical care and how we operate and potentially achieve some efficiencies. So I think there's a whole bunch of areas where we see the potential for AI. We're fairly early on, early on in our journey, but we're setting up all the right infrastructure so that we can accelerate more quickly.

00:18:49:06 - 00:19:18:04

Unknown

The first is that we recently launched just this month, a BMO chair in artificial intelligence and mental health. So that's a research chair role specifically for AI in mental health. And I believe it's the first and only in Canada at this time. So Doctor Tristan glittered as the, inaugural chair. He's an AI computer scientist, researcher and engineer, highly collaborated with, clinicians.

00:19:18:04 - 00:19:45:03

Unknown

I think we have high expectations for what, this role will achieve. We're also hiring for an AI scientist. So from a research perspective, I think we expect big things. And I'll have more to report back on Danny, in the not too distant future around that one. In terms of education, we currently have a digital mental health, and I certificate program, which is free and currently available on our website.

00:19:45:03 - 00:20:10:07

Unknown

So, folks here who are listening are welcome to go to Kamchatka and hook and can navigate to finding the digital Mental health and AI certificate program. And that's really thinking about mostly for clinicians who are working in this space where there's more AI tools available for them to develop their competencies and thinking about how to use them within their clinical practice.

00:20:10:07 - 00:20:52:06

Unknown

And so and we're getting sort of our baseline of folks ready so that, we're able to really, accelerate in this space. And then, I'll just mention one thing. Lastly, and while we don't have anything concrete yet to share the the potential of AI scribes and ambient scribes and using this sort of technology to free up our documentation, time for essentially all clinician types is of big interest, not just the documentation, but also other tools like being able to do note summarization, querying the electronic health record of the patient record.

00:20:52:08 - 00:21:13:09

Unknown

So I think all of these sorts of things are interesting for us. And our clinicians would jump on at scale. These sorts of things can have a big impact. And I'll give you an example. Not too long ago, we did a fairly small change in our EHR and IT result, and that was about nurses reducing their documentation time.

00:21:13:10 - 00:21:44:08

Unknown

We took out some particular areas of a power form. It resulted in a couple of seconds per power form that nurses were not documenting anymore. But when we calculated the total time savings over the course of the year for nurses, it was the equivalent of a full time nurse by just doing that small change. And so if we think about that's just a really small example, that we saved a full 1.0 full time equivalent of nursing time.

00:21:44:10 - 00:22:14:00

Unknown

If we did that at scale by using ambient scribes, by doing things like note summarization and querying, we could really take that to the next level and save large amounts of time, which we hope, could really support clinicians in being even more engaged, less burnout, you know, the list goes on. So, of course, in doing any of this work in AI, we need to be mindful of risk and bias ethics.

00:22:14:02 - 00:22:38:09

Unknown

So there's a lot to be mindful of there. And sharing. We keep mental health care human. And so we're really making sure we're getting this right. We're starting our journey to ensure that we have all these various safeguards in place. But I will say it's a really exciting place to be. There's some very cool tools coming out, and I can't wait to get my hands on them.

00:22:38:11 - 00:23:10:05

Unknown

Yeah. Jillian, we are so excited. You know, our psychiatrists, psychiatric nurse, practitioners, nurses, social workers, case managers, therapist all benefiting today from use of Oracle Health's clinical AI agent. So thank you for sharing those insights. Now, before we close, we want to remind our listeners that if you or someone you know is struggling, help is available in the US, you can call or text 988 20 473 65 988.

00:23:10:05 - 00:23:40:12

Unknown

The Suicide and Crisis lifeline in Canada. Also 988 20 473 65. It is, interestingly enough, 988 in Canada is provided and managed by Kam H. To ensure that no one has to face a crisis alone, trained responders are there for support. Doctor Gillian Strobel, thank you for sharing your insights and for the work you and chemistry doing every day to make mental health care better, smarter, and more just.

00:23:40:14 - 00:24:09:23

Unknown

And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. Take care of yourselves and each other. That's all for this episode of Perspectives on Health and Tech Podcast. Be sure to subscribe to catch all our future episodes! For more information from industry experts, visit oracle.com, forward Slash Health and oracle.com/life Hyphen Sciences, or follow Oracle Health and Oracle Life Sciences on social media.

00:24:10:00 - 00:24:21:19

Unknown

Thank you for listening and join us again for the next insightful episode of Perspectives on Health and Tech.

Learn more about NetSuite Planning and Budgeting: https://tinyurl.com/ra6wa79k In this episode of the NetSuite Podcast, cohost Megan O'Brien sits down with Jonny Holmes, director of finance at Bomb Party, a direct-to-consumer jewelry company that offers surprise jewelry reveals through live online parties. Megan and Jonny start by discussing Bomb Party, its growth and how Jonny ended up the company [1:43]. They then cover the impact of tariffs on Bomb Party and how the company is using NetSuite Planning and Budgeting to help navigate them [4:08]. Jonny concludes the podcast episode by giving some advice to business leaders trying to navigate global trade variability [17:29]. Follow Us Here: Bomb Party: https://www.bombparty.com/ Contact NetSuite Sales - https://social.ora.cl/6009wKalv Learn More about NetSuite ERP - https://social.ora.cl/6003wKaxv Learn More about NetSuite HCM - https://social.ora.cl/6007c4Kih Learn More about NetSuite Analytics & Reporting - https://social.ora.cl/6007c4znL NetSuite Customer Success Stories - https://social.ora.cl/6005c4zt9 Follow us here: 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 --------------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript:

How Social Selling Company Bomb Party Uses NetSuite to Navigate Tariffs

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:36:20

Unknown

Hello, NetSuite listeners. Thank you so much for tuning in to the NetSuite Podcast. I'm Megan O'Brien, co-host of the podcast. We have an extra special episode in store for you all today. We know tariffs are top of mind for many businesses right now, and companies are figuring out the best way to handle them. So we invited Jonny Holmes, director of finance at Bomb Party, which is a direct-to-consumer jewelry company that offers surprise jewelry reveals through live online parties.

00:00:36:22 - 00:01:10:04

Unknown

If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend checking them out. Customers purchase mystery items such as rings, necklaces or earrings, which are unveiled during these events, adding an element of excitement to the shopping experience. We discuss how Bomb Party has been using that sweet specifically, and that's what planning and budgeting and that sweet analytics warehouse to address tariffs, plan for addressing possible future trade policy changes, and the advice he has for business leaders trying to navigate global trade variability.

00:01:10:05 - 00:01:43:12

Unknown

So stay tuned. You're not going to want to miss this episode. 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'lldive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts. We'llalso 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.

00:01:43:14 - 00:02:09:19

Unknown

Let's just jump right in. So to kick us off, could you tell our audience a bit about Bomb Party and what you do at the company? Yeah. Bomb Party is a network marketing company. We started about eight years ago. I've been here for the last two years. So what we do is we the company, it really thrives on this surprise and delight type of marketing.

00:02:09:21 - 00:02:36:15

Unknown

And so what that means is it is kind of like, well, you're just ordering products or jewelry in our case, and you don't really know what you're getting. So it could be one of maybe 30 different rings or earrings or necklaces or something, whichever one you order. And so that is like the driving force around. Everything that we sell, and especially from our owners, is that they want to surprise and delight customers.

00:02:36:15 - 00:03:00:08

Unknown

And so everything that we sell drives that. So we sell rings, earrings, necklaces, bracelets, all sorts of things. And they all are sold in that type of thing where we sell to our wholesale reps that buy in bulk from us, and then they turn around and sell it to the end consumer. Most of it, they do it online.

00:03:00:10 - 00:03:20:14

Unknown

A lot of it's through TikTok, you know, so maybe use other social media platforms. But for the most part, they'reusing TikTok and they sell these pieces of jewelry, on what we call a party. And it's just a live party. So they get on and customers join their party on TikTok. They place an order for whatever it is and then, live on TikTok,

00:03:20:14 - 00:03:43:19

Unknown

The rep reveals what they have. And so it could be one of many different styles that we have for that collection. And then there is a chance that you could win, like a genuine diamond. So it's just it could you could get anything. And so that really is like that business model of surprise and delight has really driven the growthin my opinion.

00:03:43:20 - 00:04:14:19

Unknown

I mean, there's other factors too, but I think that that business model has really driven bond party to, to grow significantly over the past few years. I mean, we're seeing lots and lots of growth, which is awesome. And then, you know, I've been here, like I said, for two years, and I lead the finance group. So I came on to help implement NetSuite ERP, a topic that is top of mind for many of our listeners right now is tariffs as of right now.

00:04:14:19 - 00:04:38:02

Unknown

What's the impact of tariffs on Bomb Party. Oh man. It's crazy because we source literally everything we source from China. And so in the tariff world, as many of you probably know, if you don't I don't know where you hit then. But, I mean, China has been hit the hardest, and we have no idea where that's going to lead.

00:04:38:04 - 00:04:59:15

Unknown

You know, like it was a few weeks ago when they announced all the tariffs, and then they escalated. And then the next week they escalated again. And, you know, we are, we had a few, maybe panicked, leadership type meetings at our company about what to do. And can the company withstand some of this and what are all our options.

00:04:59:15 - 00:05:20:14

Unknown

And, you know, so, like, I don't think I can understand the impact of how it's going to, you know, we don't know exactly how it's going to change or impact the business. But I can't overstate how much it will be part of what we do moving forward. You know, it's something that we just didn't consider at all six months ago.

00:05:20:14 - 00:05:48:12

Unknown

And now it's something that's at the forefront of almost all of our sourcing decisions and all of that sort of thing. One thing that's really interesting that I wanted to touch on is your use of NetSuite. So how have you used NetSuite Planning and Budgeting to model the impact of tariff changes? Yeah I mean that tool honestly it'sbeen instrumental in in all of the analysis that we're doing from a from a financial perspective on tariffs.

00:05:48:13 - 00:06:17:00

Unknown

You know, it just allows you to build forecasts in a relatively short amount of time. So like if you go through and if you do all the legwork to set up your items and your systems and your sales forecasts and your everything, you know, if you put all the data in and if you go through a little bit of pain of doing the work to get the info into NSPB like it allows you to really quickly throw together a forecast.

00:06:17:00 - 00:06:40:22

Unknown

And so, you know, we really recently just finished our go live with NSPB. And so there was when the tariffs hit us, right when we were like going through our user training and that sort of thing. And so a lot of my job was I had to get the system up and going. So there was a lot of, you know, prep work and groundwork of getting all of the inputs correct.

00:06:40:22 - 00:06:59:00

Unknown

But then as soon as all those tariffs started to hit, it was so easy for us to just plug in different scenarios. You know, on the tariff side, it mostly just impacts your product costs. And so we could input all of the different product costs for each of our collections that we're planning on selling throughout the year.

00:06:59:02 - 00:07:22:10

Unknown

We can change what we think is going to happen to the demand. So the number of units that we sell, and it'sjust so high because such a high-powered system that you can plug in those numbers, refresh, and in a matter of minutes, you have, like, different versions of a forecast. You know, it's something that I think, like as a finance professional, I'm very Excel heavy a lot of times.

00:07:22:12 - 00:07:45:13

Unknown

And it's something that I could totally build in Excel, but it would have taken me so long and so many, different Excel crashes. And because it's just it's a lot of data and it's just crushing through and trying to crunch everything and Excel just can't handle it. And NSPB just takes an amazing format that you could build in Excel, and it just makes it seamless.

00:07:45:13 - 00:08:06:13

Unknown

Why it was so fast and easy honestly, like it's been it's been a game changer for me. Like if I ever go to if I were to ever go to another company to implement NetSuite, like I would probably just bring in NSPB to start. Like to me it's, it's that it's been that great for me. I mean, it's just saved me so much time in so many different areas.

00:08:06:14 - 00:08:32:10

Unknown

And not just on the forecasting side, like on the report building side. I mean, I love NetSuite. It's the best system that I've used by far. And in NSPB, you can set it up where honestly all you do is you just refresh, in your Excel smart view, and it populates all of your reports that you have that you put in whatever your, you know, like your, board decks and all that sort of thing.

00:08:32:12 - 00:08:53:12

Unknown

And it's taken my prep time for those sorts of things and just cut it in half, if not more, you know, like it's just been a huge time saver for me. And really, like I would say, even for the company, it's probably allowed us to keep running lean. I don't think we'll I think it will prevent us from having to hire more people too quickly.

00:08:53:14 - 00:09:25:04

Unknown

You know, like we have we do have a small team and we are all working hard and just having the right tools in my mind is way better than over hiring to have people just do manual processes, you know? So it's to me, it'sjust been a great investment and way cheaper than hiring more people. And it allows me as like the person who knows what's going on financially in every aspect of the business, like it just allows me to pivot really quickly and provide reporting and data that people need and want.

00:09:25:06 - 00:09:50:01

Unknown

That's a great testimonial. Well, my job is done here. It's actually, I mean, yeah, I'm not good at these kinds of things, honestly. But it was it is true. Like, I just, it's been awesome for me. So I could be, I'm definitely, an advocate, I guess you could say, of NSPB. NetSuite by Oracle.

00:09:50:01 - 00:10:16:06

Unknown

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 atNetSuite.com/pod. Well what are Bomb Party's plans for navigating potential future changes in trade policies? And how are you using NetSuite to prepare for those scenarios?

00:10:16:08 - 00:10:40:04

Unknown

Yeah, I mean, it's all moving. We don't know exactly. We're looking at everything that we can. And you know, our teams that are over that sort of thing. Like they're working really hard and talking with as many people as they can to try to figure out the best solution. There are a lot of options on the table, but it just depends.

00:10:40:05 - 00:11:01:22

Unknown

You know some things that are out of our control. If tariffs were to go away we would probably just keep all ofour production in China and then try to slowly diversify in case of, you know, further tariffs or anything like that. But there are things on the table like we're that we're exploring should we manufacture in the US, should we move countries in Southeast Asia?

00:11:01:22 - 00:11:24:18

Unknown

Should we or should we try to source some raw materials in the United States, ship them to China and then have them ship us the finished goods like there's, you know, there's so many options that we're trying to work through and with, with industry experts, customs industry experts, I should say that that are advising us and we're just trying to work through those things.

00:11:24:18 - 00:11:46:10

Unknown

But from a financial standpoint and putting our forecast together of how that impacts the company, impactsthem financially and like, can we handle it? Do we have enough cash? Do we can we do all of these things? I mean, NetSuite is core to that and specifically NSPB, I mean, like I said, we have there is the data.

00:11:46:12 - 00:12:16:00

Unknown

The data lives in NeSuite ERP, of course. But to do what NSPB does, it would take so much longer to do it manually like in Excel and that sort of thing. So I mean, it is definitely core to our discussions and in any sort of forecasting. Well, you kind of touched on this but have NetSuite's reporting capabilities provided insights that maybe will help influence decisions like possible supplier selection or product pricing?

00:12:16:00 - 00:12:37:11

Unknown

How are you using those reports to kind of inform that view, if you will? Yeah, I would say, I like on the supplier selection, not so much. That, you know, it's kind of specialized industry and jewelry and that sort of thing. Solike, I don't know if any reporting is ever going to tell us what supplier to use.

00:12:37:13 - 00:13:04:23

Unknown

But as far as pricing decisions and forecasting decisions, it's been great. You know, our product development people have a target margin that they've been trying to shoot for, for the entire life of the company. And they really have never had any data to back it up on if that was, if they were actually hitting that target and, you know, you just if you don't have the data, you can't see.

00:13:04:23 - 00:13:36:20

Unknown

And so when we first implemented NetSuite back at the beginning of 2024, that was one of our first initiatives,was to see if we're actually profitable and if are we hitting these target margins. And so the reporting in NetSuite that allows us to see what our margins are, both as like a product category or group, you know, we'reusing classes to categorize those or on a single item level, like we can see the margins and it's made.

00:13:36:22 - 00:14:02:11

Unknown

Just having that view has helped the company make several different decisions around pricing. Yeah. So it'sbeen I mean, I can't overstate it. It's been instrumental in all of that. What do you think is a key benefit of having a tool like NetSuite Planning and Budgeting in a rapidly changing trade landscape for people out there that might be looking for something to help them handle it?

00:14:02:13 - 00:14:33:15

Unknown

Yeah, I would say it's the speed. You know, for a finance professional most people know how to look at it, you know, but it just takes them a long time. It's hard to, to crunch data and to format it in Excel and to get it when you're dealing with large volumes of data. It's hard. And the fact that NSPB has all of that and it can calculateand it can run all of those scenarios for you, you know, you could run however many different scenarios you want and then compare them against each other.

00:14:33:15 - 00:14:54:08

Unknown

I mean, it's just it really is the speed and the reliability of it. You don't have to worry about broken Excel formulas. You don't have to worry. You know, it's all just in a platform that you can trust works, and it doesn'treally break down or stop working. And it can just crunch a massive amount of data in a short amount of time.

00:14:54:08 - 00:15:19:03

Unknown

And so that's what that would be my major selling point honestly, is that you can do it just allows you to be more nimble and quick with analyses and forecasting. Now, what about people who like working and broken down Excel, but do it now? I'm just kidding. But you're never going to get to those people. You know their stuff well.

00:15:19:05 - 00:15:44:15

Unknown

Do you anticipate? It's hard to tell right now as we have. So we talked about because things are changing. Do you anticipate future changes around Bomb Party's sourcing, manufacturing, or decisions to expand into new markets because of tariffs? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I touched on a little bit earlier, but that's exactly what our product development group is doing right now.

00:15:44:15 - 00:16:06:10

Unknown

We have a dedicated person that is working to try to find the best solution. So is it going to change for us? Yeah, it's absolutely going to change. And having the data to be able to see that is going to help drive those decisions on what we think will be best for Bomb Party and, you know, for our future success and growth and that sort of thing.

00:16:06:12 - 00:16:31:07

Unknown

But yeah, I mean, something will change. No, no question. Getting a little more granular. What data or reporting do you rely on in NetSuite to understand global trade-related costs and risks? Yeah, for us it's, you know, maybe we're taking maybe it's too simplified. But for us, at least right now, we're really just looking at the cost side.

00:16:31:09 - 00:16:51:09

Unknown

So in NetSuite ERP, like we are, we're constantly looking at COGS and the reporting that there is around that to look at margins and that sort of thing. But then, you know, we do use the landed cost function to make sure that we're actually including all of our costs. So, you know, everything is a landed loaded cost.

00:16:51:09 - 00:17:13:08

Unknown

Instead of trying to piece everything together outside the system in Excel or something like that. And so we rely really heavily on that. You know, I would also say that NSPB is probably a better place to analyze and see what those margins are. Now, I would also put a plug in for is probably a good place to see that, but that'swhere most of our analysis is coming in.

00:17:13:08 - 00:17:34:09

Unknown

And that's the data that we're looking at around tariffs is it's all right now. It's all on the COGS side. And duties of course which are the tariffs and then freight you know. So all of those landed costs were allocating or they're all considered in this. What advice would you give to other business leaders that are trying to navigate global trade variability?

00:17:34:11 - 00:17:57:14

Unknown

It's a great question. And I don't know if I have the best answer, but I would say you know like through this process and I'm not the one that's as involved in it at our company. But from what I've heard and what we'vetalked about, there are professionals out there that know this stuff, that our customs professionals that are customs law, experts.

00:17:57:16 - 00:18:36:18

Unknown

I would say that our best progress that we've made on the tariff front, outside of like, financial forecasting and that sort of thing has been when we've engaged with experts in the in the subject areas that we're looking at, you know, we engaged with a customs lawyer out in New York. I don't know his name. But I know we did, and he's been he's been great, you know, like, he's given us the best different, like, plans that we can work through and try to plan for, like, the largest list of options of things that we can consider while still being compliant with customs.

00:18:36:18 - 00:18:57:17

Unknown

And, you know, we're not looking to break any rules by any stretch, but it's like, okay, what options are out there, which then allows us to run and try to figure out what is going to work best for one party. I mean, this is their time to shine. Yeah, they've been on the sidelines for so long, they're all warmed up, ready to go now it'stime.

00:18:57:18 - 00:19:19:21

Unknown

That's right. Are there any NetSuite features or tools that Bomb Party is looking forward to implementing to enhance global trade management? You know, for global trade management, I don't know if there's any tools outside of the ones that we have already specific to like global trade and tariffs. I don't know if there's any systems that can really help us more.

00:19:19:23 - 00:19:48:01

Unknown

I would say the ones that we have are awesome, like NSPB. I mean, I've explained and given my sales pitch for it, but we also use NSAW and it's a great, powerful tool. It just gives us so many insights into what is happening in our in our business. And so my recommendation to anyone considering it would be like, as aNetSuite user of the past ten years or so, those two tools are awesome and worth it.

00:19:48:03 - 00:20:12:10

Unknown

Yeah, I love that you guys are using NetSuite Analytics Warehouse as well because, you know, I think every company, regardless of tariffs or trade policies, they're looking to get a little more data driven. And that's one of the offerings that we have to do that now. It's been it's been great. We've been really happy with both of those additions to our suite.

00:20:12:12 - 00:20:35:03

Unknown

Are there any final thoughts or takeaways to leave our listeners with? Oh man. I don't know. I would just say like my advice to listeners is engage with experts to navigate this whole thing, and data is going to be key. And if you can get the tools like for finance professionals, if you can get the tools to help you do it faster, it's worth it.

00:20:35:03 - 00:20:57:01

Unknown

I mean, I said it before, but I'll say it again like I have. Just say it's allowed me to spend far less time working things out in Excel and actually get to the meat of the conversations that we need to have as a company. And so, like, you know, I think it's something that finance people, we talk about all the time of having the right tools and the right data can help you guide your business.

00:20:57:03 - 00:21:15:02

Unknown

And, you know, and I'm guilty of it as well as we get comfortable in our in our little Excel Frankenstein Excel sheets that we all make. And it just is a time suck. And so if you can get a tool that actually you trust and you know how it works and you can use it, it's just the best.

00:21:15:04 - 00:21:46:04

Unknown

So that's that would be my final takeaway or advice to any listeners. Well I think that's a perfect note to end on. Thank you so much for joining us. This was really helpful. Thanks, Megan. Yeah, it's been great. Thanks. That brings us to the end of another great episode. Right now, there's a lot of debate on how to best proceed with global trade, so it's refreshing to hear from a company that is taking action and using NetSuite to do so, which is an extra added perk.

00:21:46:06 - 00:22:05:01

Unknown

A huge thanks to Johnny for taking time out of his 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.

00:22:05:02 - 00:22:23:13

Unknown

Until next time. 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 Customer Success: https://tinyurl.com/kyuapfmn In this episode of the NetSuite Podcast, cohost Megan O'Brien is joined by NetSuite's own Alexandra Wright, senior education and user adoption consultant, and Jessica Jennings, senior program manager, to discuss change management. They start by giving an overview of the change management topic [5:37] and how those implementing or expanding their NetSuite instance can incorporate it. Jessica and Alexandra then delve into NetSuite's specific methodology for change management [11:35]. They discuss the role of learning in change management [29:04] and conclude the episode with advice on where listeners can learn more [33:03]. NetSuite Change Management Vlogs: https://tinyurl.com/296ah7r7 Free Learning and Change Management Content: https://tinyurl.com/bdcdsn7n Follow Us Here: Alexandra Wright: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrawright4/ Jessica Jennings: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicahannusch/ Contact NetSuite Sales - https://social.ora.cl/6009wKalv Learn More about NetSuite ERP - https://social.ora.cl/6003wKaxv Learn More about NetSuite HCM - https://social.ora.cl/6007c4Kih Learn More about NetSuite Analytics & Reporting - https://social.ora.cl/6007c4znL NetSuite Customer Success Stories - https://social.ora.cl/6005c4zt9 Follow us here: 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 #NetSuiteLCS #ChangeManagement #NetSuiteERP #ErpImplementation #SoftwareImplementation --------------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript:

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:36:14

Unknown

Hey Suite listeners. Welcome to the NetSuite podcast. I'm Megan O'Brien, a co-host of the podcast, and today I'm excited to continue our Listen and Learn series. We started this podcast series with the goal of giving customers useful tips and tricks that will help them get more out of NetSuite. For part three of this series, we'retalking change management and how you can use it as a strategic lever to maximize your ERP software and create a more agile, responsive organization.

00:00:36:16 - 00:01:00:17

Unknown

So today we have two guests joining us, Alexandra Wright, who is a senior education and user adoption consultant, and Jessica Jennings, a senior education program manager, both from NetSuite. You actually might remember Jessica from a network podcast episode about a year and a half ago. We're so excited that she came back on the show in this episode.

00:01:00:18 - 00:01:34:10

Unknown

These two change gurus highlight the critical role of change management and aligning people and processes with new systems, ensuring sustained user adoption. They cover key factors like communication strategies, leadership engagement, and structured methodologies to drive success. So stay tuned. We're jumping into all this and more next. You are 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.

00:01:34:12 - 00:02:02:06

Unknown

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. And welcome Alexandra and Jessica. We're so excited to have you on today to talk about something we hear a lot about in the software world, change management.

00:02:02:08 - 00:02:25:16

Unknown

We're excited to be here. So where are the two of you joining us from today? So I am joining you again from Austin, Texas. I had been on the podcast once before and loved it, so I'm glad to be back. But I'm still here in good old Austin, Texas. Yeah, and I'm joining from San Diego, California. Wow, look at you both in sunny, warm places.

00:02:25:17 - 00:02:54:12

Unknown

That sounds great. It really is. It is. I can't complain. Well, to start out, can you tell us a little bit about yourselves and your role in that suite? Yeah, I'd be happy to jump in here. My name is Alexandra. As mentioned, I have been with NetSuite for going on four years. And my background is actually in organization psychology, which is a super niche area of psychology.

00:02:54:13 - 00:03:25:10

Unknown

That's actually one of the fastest growing spaces in business, which is imaginable as we're in a point in time where it feels like everything is changing as rapidly as possible. So my job here at NetSuite is an education and user adoption consultant. And like I mentioned, I started here going on four years ago. And the business has evolved a lot and so has my role.

00:03:25:10 - 00:03:54:07

Unknown

And so a lot of the work that I do now is really focused on change management, helping our customers succeed with their not suite implementations, as well as working on some internal work. And, I'll follow up with that. And, that's great. I didn't I don't even think I have, as many fun things to share, but, I did have to pull up my calculator because I was like, shoot, I don't know how many years I've been with NetSuite at this point, but it's almost eight.

00:03:54:07 - 00:04:14:05

Unknown

I started at Oracle Customer Success and then moved into working at NetSuite. I actually supported a lot of our customers directly as a consultant and change management for quite a long time. But now I serve the team more in developing our change management content services, the program all around that.

00:04:14:07 - 00:04:34:15

Unknown

And it's such a passion area for me. So it's just a super fun area of work for me to come in and do every day. And I guess it keeps me loving my job, because now it's been almost eight years. So you're a part of NetSuite Education Services and Learning Cloud Support or LCS. Could you remind our listeners what your team does?

00:04:34:17 - 00:05:06:00

Unknown

Yes. So we're in LCS or Learning Cloud Support is a lot of times what you'll hear. So we are a part of the NetSuite Customer Success ecosystem. And our role is really serving NetSuite customers throughout their journey with learning and change management services, tools, content, you name it. To really just help them unlock more value out of their software and using NetSuite in their extended kind of, expansions and add ons, and also foster long-term adoption for their users long term.

00:05:06:02 - 00:05:33:23

Unknown

Now, for those who don't know, this marks another episode in our series of Listen and Learn with LCS. This is actually our third episode. I believe the other topics were NetSuite dashboards with IB, which I'm sure was a super fun session and reporting capabilities with Mark. So two phenomenal knowledge sources. Your listeners should definitely add that to your listening queue if they haven't already.

00:05:34:04 - 00:06:01:17

Unknown

Well, I can't wait to dive in a bit more. Can you tell us more about our topic of change management today? Yeah, absolutely. You know, I always like to start with when we're going through a digital transformation. It's so easy and, good to have a strong focus on the technology side of things. But in reality, we also, when going through a digital transformation, have this people side that's impacted too.

00:06:01:22 - 00:06:28:07

Unknown

And that's just as, if not more important than focusing on the technology change. If we don't have balance between managing the tech side and managing the people side through a change, having successful user adoption is honestly likely impossible. And it is just easy because your eyes just kind of turn to it to focus on the tech side. When you're maybe implementing something new or adding on additional modules to a software.

00:06:28:12 - 00:06:47:21

Unknown

But since that's what we are actively making decisions for, we want to remind, the listeners of this podcast that there are so many things that you could do to support the people side of your business during this time to and when you're including change management in your software initiatives, a big impact that we can make is risk mitigation.

00:06:47:23 - 00:07:13:20

Unknown

And because so much of the risk with digital transformations is really not actually the software working technically or not working in its technical state, but more that the software is not being adopted by the people.And I think, there is a crazy stat that I read the other day that said something like around 80 something percent of individual users are reluctant to buy in and accept a new software system, and that's a lot.

00:07:13:21 - 00:07:34:17

Unknown

So by taking the time to actually focus on that as well, and put as much energy and effort into setting our people up for success alongside our technology, up for success, that's really why, we want to be here to talk about that today. Who do you think we'll find the most benefit from today's topic? I mean, I would say everyone.

00:07:34:17 - 00:08:03:06

Unknown

Right? But specifically, our project leaders are managers and change drivers. The people who are really supporting the folks who are going to make or break the success of the change initiative. That makes a lot of sense. So if I am a customer considering NetSuite, implementing the system, or adding on to my existing NetSuite solution, what can I do now to consider change management?

00:08:03:11 - 00:08:37:04

Unknown

So that's a great question. And what I really want to start off by thinking about, especially if you are in those intro moments of implementing NetSuite, maybe you're in your initial conversations, or maybe you're adding on a new module with NetSuite where you're really great at the beginning. I think that a really important place to start off and to think about is that this is going to be a challenge, right?

00:08:37:04 - 00:09:10:05

Unknown

We're asking or our folks or our team members to not only do their day-to day-work, but also add on this other component of bringing in a new add on or even, you know, completely implementing NetSuite. And so having that moment of understanding that this is going to be a challenge is our first moment where we can really sit with the idea that we are managing change, not just managing a system transformation or a digital transformation.

00:09:10:09 - 00:09:35:00

Unknown

One of the things that I love to talk about when I'm talking to people about change management really is this concept of the valley of despair. And so it is, to make a title Valley. Yeah, I know it sounds it sounds scary and it is. No, but it's it is a really good, concept to think about.

00:09:35:00 - 00:09:52:20

Unknown

And so, like to try and create the visual in your head of what this valley of despair is. It's like a bell curve, but upside down. And so it starts off with your NetSuite implementation like at that mid level. And then it drops down. It's like this really really harsh curve down. And then it's our upward trajectory up.

00:09:52:20 - 00:10:15:20

Unknown

I'm literally drawing it with my fingers in front of me right now. And so this concept is that as you are going through a change specifically like let's talk about implementing NetSuite or a new module. There's this period of time where you're very excited. Everybody is like riding a high of like, okay, we're going to have this new thing, and then that curve drops down, right?

00:10:15:20 - 00:10:41:21

Unknown

And that is that valley of despair where you're not yet seeing the the results and the benefits of this change, where really it just feels hard. And and this is where and scary. Yes. And like this is where we take that moment of having empathy for everyone involved, but also being able to find the ways to continue to support the people to the upward trajectory.

00:10:41:21 - 00:11:08:23

Unknown

Right. So going from like we are in the pit of misery, we're like, our worst stage possible, but there is the upward trajectory where we're reaching success, where we're seeing those benefits. But we have to get through this period of time where it is a struggle and we are, you know, we're we're being challenged in new ways and we're seeing new ways of of doing our job and showing up to work every day.

00:11:08:23 - 00:11:29:18

Unknown

But also, like there is that upward trajectory and where we're going to see the benefits. And so this is the first thing I love to talk to people about because I'm like, you're not alone. Especially if you're in the midst of the valley of despair. I'm like, you're not alone. Like every every single customer feels this at some point or another.

00:11:29:20 - 00:11:53:20

Unknown

But it's that upward trajectory that we're working towards. Oh man, I feel like so many people can relate to this on a lot of different levels, actually. So can you tell us more about. NetSuite's methodology that can help address this? Yeah. So the Valley of Despair don't be despaired. Well, we can help get you out of it.

00:11:53:21 - 00:12:18:08

Unknown

But. Okay, so thinking back to Alexandria, drawing that upside down ball with with her finger, that upward trajectory we have a methodology that we use here at Night Suite for Change Management that follows five key focus areas that really help drive or define the actions and activities that you can take over that course of the change to really get to that place and that sweet spot.

00:12:18:08 - 00:12:40:18

Unknown

And then just kind of, I don't know, after the after the curve, just kind of keep going forward. And have that long term adoption and success. So I mentioned there were five key focus areas. So we'll talk more about those today. The first one that we're going to focus on is awareness. So when we are approaching a new change, the first thing we want to focus on is driving awareness about the coming change.

00:12:40:20 - 00:13:02:23

Unknown

What do we know now and what can we expect during this time or this project? This is the important time to have introductory information or introductory content that we can really drive to focus on awareness for any impacted, parties or people in regards to the change. The second one, so that's one. There's five. The second one is focusing on desire.

00:13:03:00 - 00:13:21:06

Unknown

We really want to answer the question at this point of and this is in kind of quotations. What's in it for me for both the target audience and our business as a whole. And this gives us the opportunity to tap into what'smeaningful to users, but also instill a sense of desire for the change overall across people individually.

00:13:21:11 - 00:13:55:02

Unknown

And third, we focus on understanding. So first we're focusing on awareness, then we're focusing on desire. And now we can focus on understanding. So how can we grant the impacted stakeholders not just the whybehind the transition, but start talking about the how. So we've given them what we know now, what they can expect, what's coming. We've answered the question of what's in it for them as an individual tool, by caring about the change and being attentive to helping during this project.

00:13:55:04 - 00:14:24:06

Unknown

Then when we get to understanding, this is where we can find more things like enablement or training or tool, or begin developing tools to give people what they need for success. And that brings me to empower, which is our fourth one. So awareness, desire, understanding and empower or empowerment. And this is the point where we want to equip our people with the tools and materials knowledge, SMEs or subject matter experts and support to be set up for success.

00:14:24:06 - 00:14:48:14

Unknown

And this really comes from analyzing what's our current state today. So before not tweet or before we're adding on, NSA to our system, what is our state today? And then also identifying what that future state is going to be like. So once we've started doing a lot of our design and we have more of a picture of what we are developing, then let's compare the two.

00:14:48:14 - 00:15:14:08

Unknown

So current versus future state that helps us identify key impacts. It also helps us identify, things that we can start communicating to whoever the impacted audience is. A lot of times those things can be benefits, but also it can be kind of going back to our awareness, thoughts of letting people know, like, hey, this is what you'reused to doing today in Nazi reporting capabilities with NSA.

00:15:14:09 - 00:15:35:18

Unknown

We're going to have X, Y, Z available in the reports, or the time to receive your information is X many times faster. Whatever it would be, and begin to communicate that out. Also doing this during the empower phase, it gives us a chance to just ensure that we're not missing any gaps before we get to our final step, which is ownership.

00:15:35:20 - 00:15:59:00

Unknown

So we've talked about awareness, desire, understanding, empowerment and then ownership. So we want to foster a sense of ownership among our team. And when individuals feel that they are ready to make it their own and best for themselves, we this is where we've really achieve strong adoption. And really, I mean, our businesses and our teams and our NetSuite system can really only look to grow and expand from here.

00:15:59:02 - 00:16:25:07

Unknown

The only final thing I'll say, I know that was five, but, everything that I talked about before, it's also encompassed by plugging in reward and recognition, throughout. So that just is really important to make sure we are proactively generating a positive culture around the change. And, I think a key word is kind of reinforcing, we're reinforcing the behaviors and the attitudes that we want to see for the change.

00:16:25:12 - 00:16:55:02

Unknown

So one last time we've got awareness, desire, understanding, empowerment and ownership. 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. What is one of the biggest mistakes you see when it comes to change management for a technology transition?

00:16:55:04 - 00:17:18:06

Unknown

Oh, this one's easy. I don't have to consider this one too much at all. It is. The biggest mistake I see is just completely looking past focusing on the people side of change, and just being reactive to our change impacts versus proactively. Now, what are ways listeners can begin to apply those proactive change management strategies to their business?

00:17:18:08 - 00:17:44:08

Unknown

So to be proactive with applying change management, I would really say that the key is to starting early. Even just thinking about the people and the way they are being impacted by the change. If you're looking at your project plan on day one, let's start looking at our change management and plan on day one. How can we, you know, communicate?

00:17:44:08 - 00:18:23:12

Unknown

How can we analyze what's changing and looking to align the methodology that just just shared around awareness and desire and understanding and empowerment and ownership? Because what we're doing here the entire time, from start to finish, is we're driving adoption through ownership through each of these different buckets. And so even though our end goal is ownership, right where we're also working to really reinforce this behavior that we want to see for the long term, we need to start it from the get go with the way that we consider the folks that are going to be impacted by this transition.

00:18:23:14 - 00:18:51:00

Unknown

But with that being said, it's also never too late to start. You really cannot go wrong investing energy into supporting the people when there is a change happening in your organization. So even if it's not at the very beginning of your project, as soon as that notion comes into play, start moving with it and start driving with your team around how you can support your team members through these changes and these transitions.

00:18:51:00 - 00:19:22:13

Unknown

And actually, funnily enough, just when you mentioned earlier that you had read a statistic that I think it was like an 80% statistic, I recently read a statistic as well that mentioned that around 80% of businesses are going through some sort of change every 2 to 5 years, which means that every 2 to 5 years, we're having an opportunity to really align with our team members, to make them feel supported.

00:19:22:15 - 00:19:46:01

Unknown

And whether this be, software transformation or this is new process, use that you're putting in play as you have become comfortable on the system and you have greater insights into what works and what doesn't, regardless of what that changes, we can always consider the folks from our organization that are being impacted by that change. That's so true.

00:19:46:01 - 00:20:09:00

Unknown

I feel like and I don't know, maybe it's just my age or something, but I feel like the world is just changing faster and faster. Like especially obviously in the technology space. I think that's a no brainer, but it really is. And, you know, us as businesses with our processes and our people, like we have to keep up somehow 100%.

00:20:09:00 - 00:20:38:03

Unknown

I feel like this is the hill that I that I will die on. I'm like, we are changing at the most rapid pace that we ever have in, in like our history. And it's not just it's not just, you know, digital change. It's just like rapid change in the world. And so being in consideration of these ideas and this whole science behind the people side of change is just so important because, you know, we are the people who are driving the change.

00:20:38:03 - 00:20:59:18

Unknown

It's you can have a system, but the system's not going anywhere if you don't have users that are using it. So yeah, I'm with you on that one. Josh. Yeah, and honestly, it stresses me out when I hear you say that like every 2 to 3 or. But what our listeners can hear today, I think, is that it's all about having a strategy in place to address it.

00:20:59:18 - 00:21:28:17

Unknown

And so that's where it kind of takes us back to those five focus areas, is that is a strategy that we can proactively plan for to to help address this. So thinking about awareness, why is this the first important focus here. So awareness is really a key component in driving change just across the board. And when we'refocusing on this phase or an awareness phase, there's two main things that we need to think about.

00:21:28:17 - 00:21:50:22

Unknown

One why are we changing. And then two what's the risk of not changing. So one why are we changing. What'sthe business need for this? Why does this need to happen? What are some of those benefits? Right. But then second, what's the risk of not changing? So what is kind of at stake for the business or for our individual stakeholders?

00:21:51:00 - 00:22:37:13

Unknown

For if they're if they're not changing? Next, you said to focus on driving desire for the end users or the impacted stakeholders. What kind of things would fall into this? Yeah. Good question. So we've all said this statement or in one way or another, what's in it for me. And in order to have a buy in from our team or change drivers and our leaders, we need to ensure they know how this will benefit their role, especially for people managers actually, when they're supporting their team through these changes, being able to reiterate what's in it for them around the changes, it's not just going to be beneficial for the organization to have a platform

00:22:37:13 - 00:23:15:03

Unknown

to expand on, but also how is this going to streamline the day to day work and make our folks jobs easier in one way or another? And so really honing in on what is going to excite people to want to change. Also, this is really where when you have visible and active sponsorship, that's really, really key. So if you have leadership or strong influencers within your organization out there navigating the change positively, actively caring for the individuals impacts, it can really create influence and a positive culture on the change.

00:23:15:03 - 00:23:46:04

Unknown

So for you leaders and sponsors out there listening, be present. Be vocal. It may not always feel like it, but you really are leading by example through change and not just the words that you say through communication planning, but your actions speak loudly. And the critical goal of really overall the desire phase is getting stakeholder buy it and making sure that people are buying into the change or else they won't really invest their time, effort, or care.

00:23:46:06 - 00:24:11:07

Unknown

Additionally, it's also a critical time to think about all of the negative feelings or the concerns that people are having about the change that's coming. So we kind of start tapping into that during awareness by maybe mitigating those risks from a broad perspective. But then once we get into desire, that's where we can start focusing on individual stakeholder groups or people, as individuals.

00:24:11:07 - 00:24:42:12

Unknown

And, you know, what are your concerns? What are your areas of of risk? Or, you know, change instills fear in all of us, and it's just a way for us to address it. And, you know, one of the things I always like to add when we think about this, too, is that when somebody is resistant or reluctant to change, it's not necessarily always a bad thing because what we can do is take those concerns and those fears that they're having and actually turn them into outcomes or actions that we take to improve the system.

00:24:42:12 - 00:25:12:10

Unknown

So, you know, maybe they love the way that something was done in their prior ERP system, or maybe something was horrible and they're just afraid this isn't even going to fix that. Let's address it now. Let'sactively start looking at that specific process area and how we can improve it for the better. Once we're goingthrough our, kind of development or installation of our different NetSuite pieces after desire, the next focus was understanding what happens there.

00:25:12:12 - 00:25:45:06

Unknown

So understanding combines those two key components. It's that knowledge of what's changing and the training on how to change. I feel like and I'll add Alexander to that. Like that's rarely where our LCS team steps in for NetSuite changes in particular to really weave learning and change management together for one outcome adoption. And and yes, we can kind of see that specifically in the understanding phase.

00:25:45:06 - 00:26:07:21

Unknown

We can really see it across all of these activities that we do. But a lot of that learning step comes here. And and I just want to say, you know, working in LCS for so many years, we've got learning labs. We've got these awesome podcasts. We have live webinars, all these different things happening across the board. There's a lot of tools that we have that can, help this understanding.

00:26:07:21 - 00:26:36:02

Unknown

Phase two. And honestly, it's why I love our user adoption toolbox so much, because it really lays out this plan in a way that feels consumable and gets you on the right track at the right time, with the different pieces that are not just going to drive the understanding and desire piece, but are also going to really dive in to, how people will change.

00:26:36:02 - 00:26:56:04

Unknown

Because that's the biggest question that everybody has when they go through a change initiative or any sort of change that's happening is like, how will I change? Like, what is that going to look like? And having that guidance and those resources available is just key to, really supporting our team and our folks through any sort of transformation.

00:26:56:06 - 00:27:26:19

Unknown

Totally. It's so overwhelming. And it's like, but we're here to help with that. So let us know. We have so many things that can help with that. Well, next we have empowerment, which we love that word at NetSuite. How is that different than understanding? So empowerment is a little bit different because it's giving this concentrated time and space to provide people the time to feel comfortable with the change, and that's what helps them transition to the next focus, which not to jump ahead is ownership.

00:27:27:00 - 00:27:52:00

Unknown

So from understanding to ownership, we want them to begin to feel empowered. And when we give them the opportunity to practice what they've learned in training, apply their knowledge in practice or mentoring others, this is also a good time to when coaching comes in so we can, work with individuals to to improve their proficiencies, give feedback where needed, or provide feedback where it's needed.

00:27:52:02 - 00:28:14:23

Unknown

And then also I mentioned this before, but it's the time that we have materials. Job aids, all those types of things that really can give people the tools to be successful on their own. That's what happens during empower. And the last focus area you mentioned was ownership. What does this mean? So I did mention it before I got ahead of myself.

00:28:14:23 - 00:28:38:08

Unknown

But ownership is that keeps we're working towards throughout the entire process. So the key aspect in sustained adoption is when our users feel a sense of ownership in the success of the change. And so this is where each level is holding themselves accountable for maintaining the change. And this is important to us that ownership doesn't end at go live.

00:28:38:10 - 00:29:05:23

Unknown

It does require that ongoing monitoring, those feedback loops and those continuous iterations to optimizeadoption. And so when we say that ownership is the last piece in our methodology, it doesn't mean that it stops at go live. This is actually where ownership starts and where it continues for the long term to sustain the change. Is learning or training a key part of change management?

00:29:06:00 - 00:29:25:04

Unknown

How does that play a role? 100%? I mean, any time something new comes up, learning's a key part of it, right? You know, let's say you get a new cell phone and you're used to the version or I don't know, when our phones get an update and we're used to the last version or versions like three ago.

00:29:25:06 - 00:29:53:23

Unknown

Without learning, it's hard to feel that sense of ownership or comfortability with what's new. And so learning is such a vital part of change management. But it's not the only piece communicating, planning, proactively analyzing impacts and understanding where the gaps might be and preparing for that. That's also a part of change management. But without learning, we're not really empowering our users with the knowledge that they need to be successful on their own.

00:29:54:00 - 00:30:18:07

Unknown

So it's totally, totally a part of it. Do you have any change management strategies for rolling out training to end users? Yeah, I that's a big question, but I'm going to answer it more short for this podcast. But it there is totally a strategy for the way to roll out training to end users. And I feel like Alexandra and I could both talk about this all day.

00:30:18:09 - 00:30:38:23

Unknown

We really and we kind of do. But don't. So in short, I think a way to think of it as is begin with communicating enough that they know what they're going to be seeing. So starting at the beginning, here's a visual of the system. Maybe, there could be an online video about what, the interface looks like.

00:30:39:04 - 00:31:01:14

Unknown

Or maybe you could share screenshots, right. If you were, like, learning that something's going to change. Oh, you're moving to this new apartment, but you weren't even given a look of the floor plan, or you weren't given a look of, what the wall colors are inside. You'd be dying to know. So that's how people feel when we don'tempower them from a project perspective with the information up front.

00:31:01:16 - 00:31:27:19

Unknown

And that's learning in itself. But then you actually want to go into introductory learning, understanding best practices of the system, core ways that you can make it your own. But then it gets a little more advanced. You have to understand how to do your business processes in the system. So if you work in finance or accounting and you need to deeply dive into these reports, that's vital for your job and something that you care about and do all the time, every day.

00:31:28:00 - 00:31:56:14

Unknown

And so having proper learning around that not only gives you the knowledge you need, but it also gives you the comfortable, comfortable to take it to the next step from there. And so that strategy is is gradual. And I think that's kind of straightforward if you think of it that way. But it starts early. And I think that's what I want to say here so much, is that we have to start communicating things early on, for the learning and training to be effective at a later time.

00:31:56:16 - 00:32:41:18

Unknown

Now, what about testing the system? Is user acceptance testing a part of change management? Oh, definitely. It's a really important time, for ownership and risk mitigation. So this is really where we're kind of passing the ownership to the end users to validate the system and to provide that feedback. That's critical for the system to be successful. And one thing I'll add to that, Alexandra, that I love is I feel like user acceptance testing gives individuals the opportunity to kind of make it their own, so they can make sure that the system works, you know, for their own day to day tasks.

00:32:41:18 - 00:33:05:04

Unknown

Every day they can address the issues that arise. And, and they really get the chance to have a voice and confirm that the setup is either sufficient or insufficient for their line of work that they do every day. So, like I said, this is the time for their voice and their influence to make a direct impact on the change, which can reallyultimately drive more change champions and end user satisfaction across the board.

00:33:05:06 - 00:33:33:23

Unknown

Well, from everything you shared, learning and change management seem like a critical step for your success with technology. For our listeners out there who don't feel like they have the time or the tools to drive this, can NetSuite LCS help with everything we talked about today? Absolutely, Megan, our LCS advisors are here to provide those consumable tools as well as content and learning strategies.

00:33:34:01 - 00:34:03:01

Unknown

Our adoption toolbox to help support organizations. From a learning and a change management perspective, I'm assuming we're just scratching the surface of this topic today. How or where can those listening in go to learn more? Sort of a learning platform? Learn the change management, e-learning and vlogs are linked in the podcast description. Perfect. Well, Alexandra and Jessica, thank you so much for joining us today.

00:34:03:02 - 00:34:12:05

Unknown

I learned a lot and I hope our listeners did too. Thanks. Megan is so fun to be here. Bye for now.

00:34:12:07 - 00:34:38:08

Unknown

That brings us to the end of another great episode. So often when we think of implementing or ramping up a software system, we're so focused on the technological side of things and not really focused enough on the people component. You can have the best system in the world, but it doesn't matter if no one's using it. Big thanks to Alexandra and Jessica for joining us on today's episode of the podcast.

00:34:38:10 - 00:35:08:15

Unknown

I also want to thank our editing crew at Oracle and as always, all of you for tuning. Then 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 listen to the NetSuite Podcast. Be sure to tune in every week with more NetSuitedevelopments, stories and insights into the benefits of one integrated system to help you run your business.

Learn more about NetSuite for health and beauty companies: https://tinyurl.com/2uesmbsr Tune in for the next installment of The CFO Agenda series featuring Jonathan Weiss, CFO of Raw Sugar Living, a health and beauty brand selling hair and body products with natural ingredients. Jonathan and cohost Megan O'Brien kick off the podcast episode by discussing Jonathan's background and what brought him to the CFO role at Raw Sugar [1:39]. They then delve into Raw Sugar's use of NetSuite and why having a strong tech stack is so important for the company [21:21]. Jonathan and Megan conclude the episode by discussing CFO priorities for 2025 [42:00]. Like what you learned? Subscribe Now! http://bit.ly/NetSuiteYouTube Follow Us Here: Jonathan Weiss: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-m-weiss/ Raw Sugar: https://rawsugarliving.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------ Episode Transcript:

The CFO Agenda: Raw Sugar Living's Jonathan Weiss

00;00;05;07 - 00;00;37;18

Unknown

Hello NetSuite listeners. Thank you so much for tuning in to the network podcast. I'm Megan O'Brien, a co-host of the podcast. Today we're continuing our CFO agenda series with Jonathan Weiss, CFO of Raw Sugar, a health and beauty brand selling premium hair and body products made of natural ingredients. You've probably seen their shampoos, conditioners and other products in their signature white bottles with bamboo tops around Target, Walmart, CVS, etc.

00;00;37;21 - 00;00;58;26

Unknown

We discuss Jonathan's path to the role of the CFO. Hint as not necessarily what you would expect. His perspective on the future of the finance function, the company's tech stack, and some of Raw Sugar's goals over the next year. So stay tuned. You're not going to want to miss this episode.

00;00;58;28 - 00;01;25;15

Unknown

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;25;18 - 00;01;59;04

Unknown

Hi, how are you doing today? Afternoon. This is such a treat. Thanks a lot. Yeah. Well, thanks for coming on. I mean, let's go ahead and just jump right into the questions. So could you talk a bit about your past roles and your path to where you are now? Sure. Well, it's been a long road, but it started with UCLA, undergrad and had this awesome liberal arts education and yet was also able to take about 8 to 10 accounting classes.

00;01;59;04 - 00;02;25;08

Unknown

And from that, I started out at KPMG in New York, working in the audit side, luckily got assigned into the manufacturing retail space, liked it, but didn't love it to be honest, and started kind of my journey to where I am now because, I jumped over to the consulting side and started kind of hoping different partners answer different problems for large corporations.

00;02;25;11 - 00;02;54;28

Unknown

Went off to business school back at UCLA because I wanted to be back in the LA market and then had a great, lucky opportunity when I was about 30, where two founders who had created a fashionable scrubs business long before that was the thing. And I came on kind of as a consultant and would eventually became their partner, and for seven years grew this into a business that really I loved and enjoyed.

00;02;55;01 - 00;03;21;03

Unknown

And for the last 20 years, I've pretty much been doing the same role of CFO CEOs. Sometimes it's been for founders, sometimes it's been for public companies like LVMH. And then for the last eight years it's been with different private equity firms, a liberal arts degree taking accounting classes. You don't hear that very often now, but, it's something I advise all the people I work with because, you know, we'll talk about this.

00;03;21;03 - 00;03;43;27

Unknown

What is the role of finance and accounting now, and especially with outsourcing and big data? You know, at the end of the day, it's a value add. Understand what the information is telling you. And I don't think that's much different than reading a great novel or seeing a movie and trying to understand what it's trying to tell you who communication is.

00;03;43;28 - 00;04;06;20

Unknown

Major me likes that. Okay, so you ended up joining Ross Sugar close to five years ago. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about what Ross Sugar does? Yeah, sure. Ross Sugar has been around for about ten years. It's usually a white bottle with a bamboo top, but it was created ten years ago by two founders, Ronnie and Donna.

00;04;06;23 - 00;04;31;08

Unknown

And they had a really unique idea, which was they thought there should be clean products in the main aisle.Now, that doesn't sound like a big idea, but back in 2014, it was, and then they wanted it to look good on your shelf and your counter and your bathroom and your kitchen. And they wanted also to be something that you were proud of and a brand that you were proud of and uniquely.

00;04;31;08 - 00;05;03;01

Unknown

And we could talk about this a little later. They created a business model, not out of digitally native, but out of brick and mortar, and that made them really unique. And I think was really instrumental to their success. What is RawSugar's mission? I think it's evolved basically at scale. When I think about it. But the mission has always been the same, which is it's a kind of a belief that everyone deserves clean products, that there's a range just like the food we eat and the clothes we buy and the emissions we put out.

00;05;03;01 - 00;05;29;01

Unknown

We want to put better products into the market with better ingredients, but that people can afford. And our competitors are not the high-priced prestige brands. They're really Dove and Dial. And now native and love, Beauty Planet and all these other mass players that have come into the market that believe customers, consumers deserve a choice with better ingredients.

00;05;29;04 - 00;05;53;22

Unknown

Yeah, I feel like you guys were such trendsetters in that because it has become a huge movement. But I remember seeing your products around before, kind of all those other players came into it. Yeah, no. And you know, I think what's very great, what I love about our story is that's what drove the founders. And so they started out in liquid hand soap and some lotions and scrubs.

00;05;53;24 - 00;06;21;00

Unknown

Then they saw an opportunity in body wash. Then they saw an opportunity in hair. Then they saw an opportunity in kids. Then they saw an opportunity in Doe. And even this summer we launched a pet care because if we had a kids line, we thought, animals deserve, good ingredients too. So it's that's kind of where the ethos of the company comes from is this idea that there are these categories that need changing.

00;06;21;03 - 00;06;45;06

Unknown

Well, it's funny because now that I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking close to five years ago. So you kind of started at a very Covid time or start of a Covid you time. How did that how did that go? Yeah. You know, exactly. Covid. So made 2020. And sometimes I talk about RawSugar 1.00. Sugar 2.0.

00;06;45;06 - 00;07;18;04

Unknown

And today we're in the third, I think version of it, 1.0 is the Ronnie and Don, the story of creating and founding the brand and making an impact, especially at target. So 2.0, I like to think it was when I came in, I was the 11th employee and the business was doubling because of Covid. One reason because people needed soap too, is we had a very domestic based manufacturing model and we were sourcing some components from Asia, mainly Topps and Ronnie and Don.

00;07;18;04 - 00;07;42;09

Unknown

They realized that Covid was going to be something massive, and they invested in componentry. And so we were on shelf and got a lot of trial by a lot of people when our competitors were out of stock. And I came along because of that dramatic increase in the first 45 days of Covid, and I've been in the LA area for a long time, and this is kind of what I, I don't want to say specialize in.

00;07;42;09 - 00;08;10;27

Unknown

But really this journey of professionalizing a business, of allowing founders to do what they do and to create structure around that. But financial structure but also supply chain structure and channel structure and strategy. And so I kind of came in to help them scale this business. And so I was employee number 11. And today we're 40. So just to give you a sense of the scale of how much the business has changed since I'vecome along, that's amazing.

00;08;10;27 - 00;08;34;23

Unknown

Yeah, they probably were like, we need help ready to scale because everyone wants soap nowadays. Yeah. And just from a finance and accounting perspective, you know, I look back, the first thing I feel like I learned in business school. I love analogies. And our teams will laugh because I use them all the time. But like I think about backpacking and to be successful you need a great dashboard.

00;08;34;23 - 00;08;57;20

Unknown

You need to know where you're pointed and orient yourself. You need to know how fast you're moving. You know, you need to know the resources you require to get to where you want to go. And so I've always looked at this role that I play with the partner in the founders is to help them understand that because success creates a lot of challenges on a cash level.

00;08;57;20 - 00;09;17;05

Unknown

Surprisingly on an inventory level, on a channel, conflict level on a supply chain, capacity level. So there's a lot of things you have to manage through success. And a lot of actual constraints. And so that's kind of how I'vealways looked at the finance and accounting role. But I've also always looked at how I look at my relationship with the founders.

00;09;17;05 - 00;09;38;25

Unknown

I've gotten to work with. Yeah. And I think we kind of like we talk about this sometimes, but probably not enough sometimes. I think, you know, you think of success and growth and everything as, oh, we get there and it's smooth sailing and it's like, well, no, it brings its own set of challenges. Oh, no. Look, at the end of the day, people make things happen for brands.

00;09;38;25 - 00;10;05;01

Unknown

The technology platforms that you use realize, that talent and give us the information that we are and where to go. But when you hit a certain scale as the business hit in that spring of 2020, tying it into exactly what you're saying is, I remember the first thing Ronnie said to me is like, I have no idea how much money, we need, to communicate to the bank.

00;10;05;03 - 00;10;37;00

Unknown

I don't know how much more componentry we need, how many more ingredients and componentry we requireto meet the demand we're seeing. And so all of those things, and we were working at that time off of QuickBooks and getting our head around that and trying to create that narrative of what it was going to take us to continue to be successful is kind of what the role accounting and finances play then, and kind of place today.

00;10;37;03 - 00;11;01;12

Unknown

And this is probably a tough one to answer. I'm sure it changes, but if you had to kind of summarize it, what does a typical day in your shoes look like? You know, so it's changed a lot. You know, the bigger the organization gets, the more competency and capacities you have. So when I started out, it was Ronnie and Donna's humility to understand they need someone like myself.

00;11;01;15 - 00;11;29;16

Unknown

And then almost immediately, my I started hiring people in the areas that weren't my strength, supply chain and planning systems. And it, and eventually an accounting manager in some other areas. So today, to answer that question, my day is so different than it was 4 or 5 years ago. My day now is really working down, you know, with my team, making sure they have their priorities set.

00;11;29;16 - 00;11;54;01

Unknown

They understand where the rest of the organization's going, what deadlines are approaching, what questions we're trying to answer. But a lot of the work is across. So I like to think that my favorite part of being a CFO is all the stakeholders. I kind of have the privilege of getting to work with and be in conversation with. So that'sthe VP of marketing, that's the VP of ops.

00;11;54;03 - 00;12;16;00

Unknown

But it's also our private equity firm, our lender, and sometimes our brokers who work directly with our channel partners. So it varies so much and it's kind of, you know, makes that's what I love about what I do. And now I have a team underneath me that I can really work with and know that they're going to execute.

00;12;16;00 - 00;12;46;11

Unknown

And so I spend a lot more of my time outside the finance and accounting function than inside it. You participated in a keynote this year at SuiteWorld with Sam Levy, who's the SVP of Growth and Operations at NetSuite. So what was that experience like? Oh it's fantastic. I mean, I giggle about it. I went to UCLA Business School 25 years ago and people take different paths and mine is always been under the radar.

00;12;46;17 - 00;13;08;15

Unknown

And so to kind of go in front of a large room and get to talk about raw sugar, which to me is like encapsulatesall the work that came before. It was just such a thrill and really fun. And then on top of it, it's and not to push the product, but I really feel like that suite is like always it's the product they always wished for.

00;13;08;19 - 00;13;26;21

Unknown

And so our road and our growth and, Raw Sugar, it's kind of let us leverage that. So it was really fun chatting with Sam and I like I have to clarify for people, I mean, this was not just a large room. I mean, this was a keynote tent in Vegas. Thousands of people type thing. I mean, huge.

00;13;26;23 - 00;13;50;11

Unknown

So that's like a big jump. Yeah. No. And people joke with me like they're like, did you, you know, see me that big? Did you, do you, have you done a big room before? And I was like, no, no, no. Just kind of think what you get over a hundred. It all feels the same. Yeah, I guess I get that point, you know, you can't quite see that far back, so maybe it just feels the same.

00;13;50;11 - 00;14;13;10

Unknown

It's public speaking at a point. Yeah. And I think the other side and again you hear me if I refer to Ronnie and Don to like Don is still very engaged in our business. And so one of the reasons why both of us continue to be engaged is we're trying to make this brand a forever brand. We talk about it and, you know, you there are financial goals for our investors.

00;14;13;12 - 00;14;33;12

Unknown

We all participate in our success. But like at the core, we could be doing a lot of different things. And what we really want is more people to be aware of Raw Sugar. And, and frankly, for me, I'll say for people to be proud and aware of our team that's just done an amazing job and in a very unique environment.

00;14;33;15 - 00;14;52;18

Unknown

It's funny because it is just in a way, it's a very indirect promotion and all of that in a way, because I've seen products at NetSuite's SuiteWorld and all of a sudden said, yeah, I'm going to start buying that. So interviewed the CFO of Johnny Pops, which was, popsicle brand a couple of years back at SuiteWorld.

00;14;52;20 - 00;15;17;04

Unknown

I now buy their popsicles. I like all of a sudden saw Raw Sugar at Target, and I was like, yeah, okay. Like, as soon as I see a customer name, I'm like, yeah, I kind of want to buy it now. Oh, well, that makes it even more worthwhile. And you kind of alluded to this, earlier, but in the keynote you broke down Raw Sugar's growth journey into three phases: 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0.

00;15;17;07 - 00;15;40;14

Unknown

Can you kind of explain those phases to our listeners? Not sure. I mean, I referenced that earlier and did it in the context I think of the team. You know, a 1.0 was a founder driven model, 2.0 is that transition of scaling and bringing in talent, and three is this journey we've been on for a couple of years now.

00;15;40;14 - 00;16;03;21

Unknown

We call it clean for all I is, but it's once we had some private equity investment. The second quality of it is we had, we've really built a leadership team. I mentioned the VP of supply chain and VP of marketing and a CEO, Mike Maki, who were lucky enough to come over from Johnson and Johnson and OG, a brand that also plays in the clean space.

00;16;03;23 - 00;16;26;29

Unknown

So those characteristics. But most of all, we went for the all, which is the brand was really built out of Target and then Walgreens and then Kroger. So brick and mortar players and Ronnie and Donna would always pick one player who they felt it was the right place to start. So that when you create that level of partnership and work with the consumer.

00;16;26;29 - 00;16;49;21

Unknown

So this next this 3.0 post-Covid, now we're in Walmart. We're on Amazon, we have a DTC site. We are also in CVS. We're also in Kroger as well as Albertsons. We're in Mexico as well as in Canada. So like we're really now trying to take our mission and find as many customers we can wherever we can be impactful.

00;16;49;27 - 00;17;17;15

Unknown

Going from brick and mortar to e-commerce, it's kind of the opposite of what we usually see. What was the thought behind that? Yeah, no, I, I early on told Ronnie and that would be the Harvard business case. If we go all the way, because in 2014, people really wanted to own their customer. People believe that the margin they were able to gather and the email list, they could be that was the way to build the business.

00;17;17;15 - 00;17;47;15

Unknown

And Ronnie and Donna came from a different place, Ronnie, and worked, working with, importing and bringing in things from Asia and really understood manufacturing. Grew up in that family that had a soap business and Don that worked in the brokerage side and worked with major retailers like Target and Walmart and CVS. And so when they came together to create the brand, they really understood that there was an opportunity for buyers.

00;17;47;21 - 00;18;23;12

Unknown

And when I mean buyers meeting at target, especially to help shape a brand that they would then get the traffic for. And when they said that, they said, and we're now going to make this a digital brand, we're going to nurture it in the brick-and-mortar space, and we're going to pick strategic partners. And that was both very unique, but ends up being very smart because it really created a very deep relationship with target that went all the way through to we were brands of the year in the beauty space in 2020, and that allowed the brand to learn, learn what the customer wanted.

00;18;23;12 - 00;18;45;01

Unknown

And there were definitely changes and evolutionary steps along the way, but it really created that level of partnership that sometimes when you're digital or you're grabbing your own set of the profit or your own relationship with the customer, I think the buyers, are more in a competitive situation and it really worked well for us and was a very unique strategy.

00;18;45;01 - 00;19;10;14

Unknown

I can't think of. Another brand started in the teens that, went that way. Yeah, yeah, but I mean, it does make sense because, like, I do I mean, from my personal experience, it's kind of like you go into a store and you're like, oh, this is a really cool bottle. And oh, it's clean ingredients. And then you kind of like, build out awareness there, and that's how you make your purchases a lot of times in that space.

00;19;10;16 - 00;19;40;09

Unknown

Yeah. No. And it's I can just from my prior experience, I worked with a brand called Ulla Henriksen that was acquired by Louis Vuitton and Louis Vuitton. LVMH also owns Sephora, and now there's a whole division called Kendo Brands. But essentially the concept is why should someone shop at Ulta versus Sephora? One of the reasons is to create exclusive relationships with brands.

00;19;40;12 - 00;20;01;12

Unknown

And so it's not the only place that it's happening, but on the brand side, you usually really seek out and find whatever relationship you can, for sales and to be disciplined and say only the brick and mortar is really unique. Okay. Today, the day that I learned that Sephora is owned by Louis Vuitton, that is true.

00;20;01;15 - 00;20;30;18

Unknown

No idea. And, also an amazing place. And the mask space is very different than the prestige space. So it's, that was a great five years. I learned a ton. And, you know, going back to my early start working in public accounting is that's where it really paid dividends, because I really wore both hats. I was part of a small organization with less than $50 million of revenue but was reporting to a public company.

00;20;30;18 - 00;20;50;18

Unknown

And so the public accounting that I learned early on, next, with the work I had done with founders to that point, kind of came together and allowed, I think, that entity to have a lot more space to grow and not kind of, get consumed by a large multinational because we were able to kind of wear both hats.

00;20;50;20 - 00;21;18;23

Unknown

Yeah, that's a great mix of expertise, new and super unique experience. And, you know, really kind of joyful and a brand, I mean, one of the other great parts, I have two teenage daughters and, they really care, what beauty brands I work with. I'm less beauty focused. But, when you start building your career out and you start looking at these brands and seeing them on the shelf, it makes you really proud.

00;21;18;25 - 00;21;47;03

Unknown

Yeah, yeah. That's amazing. So how has raw sugar been using that? Sweet. Honestly, in almost every way. I'mblushing because I feel like I'm selling it, but I will take it dinner with a bunch of CFOs. I'd say the same thing. I worked with Sage. I've worked in QuickBooks environments. I've worked in SAP environments as SAP one especially, and NetSuite for us is the center that we like.

00;21;47;07 - 00;22;12;17

Unknown

We literally have a person who's not an IT expert, but who came in from an ops department of another beauty brand to literally help us implement that suite and then connect NetSuite to all of our business value opportunities. And it's a relationship. So just to think about it, to give you a context, the way we use NetSuite, we use NetSuite to connect.

00;22;12;20 - 00;22;34;20

Unknown

So we have we have three plus in warehouses. We have FDI coming in for all of these retailers for our orders, but also for our payment notifications and our own shipping notifications. We also have planning and budgeting. We need to do so. We use NetSuite Planning and budgeting to do more of our forecasting and some of our demand planning.

00;22;34;26 - 00;23;09;20

Unknown

But then we also use a tool called it which is trade promotions, which is a really big part of being a mass brand.And all the discounts, people saying buy one, get one freeze and markdowns and all those things that happen, they take the price down. Well, those getting charged back to the brand and us being able to track those programs and those promotions and understand the financial obligation and the accruals necessary, are just different ways we were able to use NetSuite to keep track of our business.

00;23;09;24 - 00;23;34;20

Unknown

Why is having a strong tech stack so important specifically for Raw Sugar? Well, I think it's important for everyone. If you go back to the backpacker analogy and what I learned in business school, to know where you are in order to know where you're going, well, now it's exponentially more challenging. The marginal cost for new data is so small, we can get POS information.

00;23;34;22 - 00;23;57;24

Unknown

We can get all of our information from NetSuite, but you have to have the right tech stack to interpret that information. We use NetSuite Planning and Budgeting as a reporting tool, so we can really understand our different channels. So our profitability for Target and Walmart are very different than drug. Then they're very different than our digital channels.

00;23;57;24 - 00;24;42;01

Unknown

And never mind our distribution relationships. And international. So having the right tools allows us to do what's fundamentally and I probably should have said this earlier, but my big joy but also fundamental belief, it's frankly why I like doing podcasts and things like that is I think, CFOs and this goes back to the first partner I worked for, KPMG, who said this to me in the 90s is they're scarcity driven, that they're basically playing a role of finger wagons and counting and scorekeepers, and what they actually are sitting on a treasure trove of value and information that can drive decision making throughout an organization.

00;24;42;04 - 00;25;08;09

Unknown

And so I try to articulate to everyone and our team, but also cross-functionally across our management team is we want finance and accounting to be an informational source to drive value driven opportunity cost decisions. We want to have the best information we can to make better decisions in a timely fashion, and that puts you on the for the front foot and not the back foot.

00;25;08;09 - 00;25;36;12

Unknown

It's not just the reporting package we're trying to do here. We're actually that's a very small amount of what we're trying to do. What we're really trying to do is inform better decision making. And so coupling that suite with other tools like data we get for our point-of-sale information, data we get from our factories, data we get from Shopify as an example, and Amazon being able to leverage all that data and bring it together.

00;25;36;12 - 00;25;58;23

Unknown

NetSuite allows us to do it and then we're able to create information for the organization. Oh man. That is just kind of so spot on to themes that we've been touching on recently. This idea of the CFO being a very strategic business partner and driving value within the organization, not kind of like not as much the back office.

00;25;58;23 - 00;26;26;11

Unknown

We're going to report the numbers after they've happened, you know, and it's just kind of interesting to see that transition. And this person said this to me in 1995. So yeah, just to give you a context of, you know, how meaningful that and if you tie that to then my liberal arts education, it's why I kind of to me the accounting and is really just learning foreign language.

00;26;26;14 - 00;26;55;28

Unknown

It's learning a way to articulate what's happening and to communicate across the organization. The real value is the decision-making process and trying to help marketing and the CEO and our investors and our lenders sometime understand the trajectory of our business and where our where, where there's profit, where there's investment. And that's really I just again, that's what NetSuite does for us without question.

00;26;55;28 - 00;27;21;13

Unknown

And it does it with more and more low-cost data that needs to be transformed into high value information. A big theme at SuiteWorld was, very unsurprisingly, AI. As the technology advances, where do you see it having the most potential for Raw Sugar? I went to SuiteWorld last year and I was excited about.

00;27;21;13 - 00;27;46;06

Unknown

I came back and I spoke to a bunch of different stakeholders for our business, and I said, it's not really thereyet. This year at SuiteWorld, I could really see it. I could see it with some of the applications that seem obvious to me like exception management, automated coding, you know, a credit card bill. They should someone showed walked me through, impacting your cash flow.

00;27;46;06 - 00;28;11;18

Unknown

I mean, within NetSuite, you've got your AR, you've got your app, you've got your order history, you can upload a demand plan. You should be able to do quality cash flow forecasting. And I think that appears to me to be on the horizon. The areas that are next level that I think NetSuite is going to arrive at sooner than later.

00;28;11;20 - 00;28;52;06

Unknown

But where it will really impact our business, I think, is demand planning is a great example. And the reason is because I can kind of you really are talking about very large data sets now from very for a lot of different sources. And so if you can both be in the warehouse as well as the accumulator of the data, and then have the tools to kind of bring that together to express an opinion frankly, which is what I really will do, that will really allow a lot more information to be consumed a lot faster than maybe humans can even or potentially could do.

00;28;52;13 - 00;29;18;05

Unknown

I think about a lot like Excel versus QuickBooks versus NetSuite, and then you've got stuff A has. NetSuite. But the a lot of the work we do right now, even though it happens in that suite, is still very Excel thinking. And I think, having the intelligence of AI should really kind of advance things very quickly. Yeah.

00;29;18;05 - 00;29;25;12

Unknown

Let's get out of those spreadsheets over it. Sure.

00;29;25;15 - 00;29;42;17

Unknown

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00;29;42;20 - 00;30;04;10

Unknown

Well, this leads in pretty well to our next question. What do you think the future of the finance function will look like? Yeah, you know, it starts with what I've always believed in and was lucky enough to get taught and introduced to, which is finance and accounting need to be always on the cutting edge of being a value-addpartner.

00;30;04;13 - 00;30;33;06

Unknown

And, you know, partner internally. Partner regularly regulatory wise, but also external stakeholders and all the decisions need to make. So anything that brings that level of thought and decision-making ability is critical. And what I'm interviewing, you know, that I can teach someone how to take their prior knowledge and then apply it to Raw Sugars.

00;30;33;06 - 00;31;07;18

Unknown

Business. I can teach them how to think like that's just unrealistic. And so, you know, we want to have fine members of our team and and a great example is, you know, and this isn't new, but, you know, it's becoming so easy with technology now with teams and zoom to use, coding from Asia, you know, not just for coding, but AP entry or billing or all these other areas that allows a low value commodity transaction to take place at a lower cost.

00;31;07;21 - 00;31;28;17

Unknown

But the thinking still needs to happen. And the problems and or my analogy would be like, I'd say team is like, we should be using the system as our highway and we should spending 85% of our time, on the service road and the exceptions. And when we're spending time there, we should be asking the question, why is this an exception, and how do we get it back on the highway?

00;31;28;20 - 00;32;01;23

Unknown

You know, what is what is what do we have to change in our process with our contract manufacturer? What do we have? Who do we have to talk to with our brick-and-mortar partner? Or what? How do we need to build between that suite and this partner? Like those are the things we should be doing. And then we should then be taking the information and constantly be thinking about what are ways to more objectively understand what subjectively we're assessing in the marketplace.

00;32;01;23 - 00;32;33;22

Unknown

And I'll give you a perfect example, is we have a demand plan. So internally we assess three months, six months, 12 months what we're going to create inventory around. And yet we're also getting weekly data of what consumers are consuming. And so a year ago those things were not talking to each other. Today, leaderof demand planning has to speak to in meetings.

00;32;33;24 - 00;33;11;26

Unknown

What is the relationship between the demand planning they are presenting and the consumption that they'reseeing? And we're able to do that in a data structure and that it's no extra work for them. It's really just telling them how those two different data sets are talking to each other. So it's a perfect example. You didn't need AI to do that, but putting an objective lens now we can understand how we're going to put our dollars into our demand plan relates to what the is telling us, because it used to just be the retailer told you that information and they're really not accountable for it.

00;33;11;26 - 00;33;33;29

Unknown

And so they have an interest in telling you a big number to make sure you have inventory on hand, but then they're not accountable for it and they're not necessarily going to buy off of that. And they also might have notas strong of a demand planning team on their side. So us being able to tie our plans to what the consumer is telling us, well, that's really interesting.

00;33;33;29 - 00;34;02;19

Unknown

And there's all kinds of more product development and marketing questions that also reside in that data, because that we're also running promotions at those times. So what kind of lifts are we getting? That's data. Those are answered. But there are also different fragrances we use and how they're being reacted to how seasonal they are. What is the reaction in different parts of the country, even, to our lip balm based on temperature and cold.

00;34;02;26 - 00;34;40;29

Unknown

So all of these things are there to be mined and they become objective. If we, we spend the time to create the right structure around it. That's super interesting. I don't even think about, like, lip balm and temperature and everything like that, you know, it's I mean, that's and that's where I was going to come in because there are all these patterns in the data that, you know, it's also someone told me a long time ago, you know, the problem is connecting all of this data and all this computer power to value to margin of marginal cost versus marginal value.

00;34;41;00 - 00;35;03;28

Unknown

The marginal cost has gone so far down to get information, but now we're just sitting in pools of data. And so how do we find those key pieces of information and pull them out of the data to inform us. That's really hard.And that's why, you know, computers will where I will go down a certain road, but it's still realizing patterns.

00;35;04;00 - 00;35;29;03

Unknown

It's the questions that we have to ask and how I understand the brand. I think there's still a real big rolefinance, accounting, the whole team, frankly. And I'm especially interested in your answer to this question because you don't necessarily start at least on the traditional path. I mean, you had a liberal arts degree, dabbled in accounting, kind of, kind of like took different paths to where you are now.

00;35;29;05 - 00;35;54;01

Unknown

What are you looking for when you're hiring finance talent and what skills do you think will become must haves in the future? Yeah. So, I like to think of myself as really open minded, but I'll be honest, if a recruiter settingme a hole said, and we've hired a county manager, we have a controller. We have all kinds of different roleshere.

00;35;54;03 - 00;36;27;19

Unknown

I always am biased to someone who's worked in a consumer products company more than a company. And that's because just from my time in accounting, as well as my time as a CFO, there are so many different typesof accounting out there. You've got financial services, you've got not for profits. And so to have really good information, understanding of inventory and the relationship, the revenue, the receivables, the deductions, the promotions, things like that in our space.

00;36;27;19 - 00;36;54;00

Unknown

It doesn't have to be beauty. It could be anyone who's selling to brick and mortar, and has the inventory. That'sthe first thing I usually ask for. It's not, if the recruiter says, I'm telling you, you should go meet this person. I would always take the meeting, but that's the first thing. If I were to be honest, I think the second and third are really kind of this secretive, raw sugar, and it makes me giggle.

00;36;54;07 - 00;37;25;19

Unknown

Having been here at 11 and running down there, you know, wanting to make sure their culture continued and now we're at 40 and we feel like, how do we how do we continue? The culture is I think there are two qualities of a Raw Sugar employee. The first, which is so fun to work with, is I want to see that someone run towards the fire, that they're like a fire and that they that they feel something's happening in their business and they want to go towards it, not away from it.

00;37;25;21 - 00;37;56;21

Unknown

And it's very measurable and very easy to see. In an interview. And when you have that now you're open forbusiness. And then the flip side of that is really are they friendly and curious? And the way we, as a leadership team think about that is how do we create a no blame culture? How do we make people feel really safe, like, really feel like when an order is missed or our fill rate goes down?

00;37;56;23 - 00;38;19;19

Unknown

You know, that doesn't mean the operations team did anything wrong. It might go all the way back up to product development, but it might go all the way up to an executive who didn't make a decision early enough. And the timelines started to slip off because of indecision, which led to a holiday order not being ready to ship when it's, you know, got a very short window in the marketplace.

00;38;19;21 - 00;38;43;13

Unknown

So how you do that is really challenging, but you can also see it and talk to people about the different partners they've worked with, the different relationships they've built in the workplace, how much they value those relationships. You know, those are people aren't going to change. I qualities like that. And when you understand they have those, then you kind of look for the functional skills.

00;38;43;13 - 00;39;12;13

Unknown

And I wouldn't put any obviously prior accounting and finance is important obviously, or maybe not obviously, but unique experiences that the team don't have that are complementary. I worked for a long time ago on a farm and on the farm. Then I worked there for six months in college, and there was a period of time where my boss was eight years old, and I remember talking about it in one of my first interviews.

00;39;12;13 - 00;39;39;22

Unknown

And the message I got from now is like, the person who knows, knows, and everyone's got a job to do here, and everyone should be an expert at something and better than everyone else at something. And when you see that level of excellence in someone, that they can really take something and own it. And it could be the copy machine, it could be their desire to be available and to do what the brand needs or to travel.

00;39;39;24 - 00;40;04;14

Unknown

It can come in all these shapes and forms. It can also be in the accounting space to want to be an accountant, to really love being in accounting and, and, and I do like I don't love doing the accounting, but I love understanding it, and sharing to the other stakeholders like what this tells us about our business, about our margins, about our cash flow.

00;40;04;16 - 00;40;28;10

Unknown

We've got our inventory. You know, all these decisions are going to be part of making Ross Sugar successful. I need to ask, what did you do on the farm? Oh, I the best if you said what is your best job you had was picking bananas because, bananas require are you out there? There are days where you put bags over the bananas.

00;40;28;13 - 00;40;51;28

Unknown

There are days where you cut down the bananas and you, like, carry them and, you know, they can weigh like 100 pound a bushel. And then there are days where you have, like, a big machete and you cut down the trees. And, and I just remember, like, every day was it felt like I was a little kid. It was so much fun because every day was you were in this three day cycle where you were constantly moving through the grove, doing one of those three things.

00;40;52;00 - 00;41;18;24

Unknown

I want to do the machete day. That sounds fun. Honestly, I, I, in my recollection, is the the taking the bananas, the butcher cutting it. It was a two-person job. And the way you did it was you had you had to tackle like into your shoulder, the bushel. And then just as you were making contact with the partner, had to slice it at the top so that it fell on to your shoulder.

00;41;18;24 - 00;41;37;25

Unknown

And then it's 100 pounds, which is maybe not. And so then you would sprint to this truck and throw it out, and then you keep switching off. And that was also super fun. We might have surpassed my physical abilities there. Okay. I love it, though. I mean, you can turn to anyone and be like, I used to cut down bananas in a field.

00;41;37;25 - 00;41;59;14

Unknown

Like, you can do this. You definitely can do this. And you can. Yeah, do the hard work. And that's like the run towards the fire. You know, you really see it. I mean, I love working with our team on the good days, and I love working with them on the tough days because they really care. But now in that they really feel there'ssomething they can do to make a difference.

00;41;59;14 - 00;42;34;03

Unknown

So turning to kind of our 2025 agenda as a CFO, what are your top financial priorities in 2025? You know, that's that's a great question. We're just starting our budgeting cycle. And so we're just starting to have those conversations. We're actually all gathering next week. You know I think the first one is the consumer. I mentioned this at the end of the SuiteWorld talk, which is the bigger we get, the harder it is to really stay in contact with the customer.

00;42;34;06 - 00;42;55;29

Unknown

And the customer is changing in so many ways. You know, we're leaving this inflationary period on the one hand, but they feel like they've lost their purchasing power yet. Consumer spending continues. And so you worry okay. Well how long can that continue. And at the other axis they're making different choices and evolving on the channel they want to be at.

00;42;55;29 - 00;43;28;16

Unknown

And so for instance, we're moving into Shopify and that Shopify actually TikTok store through Shopify actually. But you know, being where the consumer is not just a necessity. It's a challenge, you know, and we need to keep assessing where that is. And then the obvious one is what are the products they want, you know, and what are the categories that we're positioned to be successful and to meet our mission and be impactful.

00;43;28;16 - 00;43;57;12

Unknown

So I know, you know, those are more business, I think from a finance perspective, you know, I don't look at macro trends. I've never worked in a business large enough. I've always worked in the middle market. And sofor us, the one thing I'm looking at every Monday is what was last week's results versus the prior four weeks, average results versus the average 13-week results.

00;43;57;12 - 00;44;19;17

Unknown

And I'm talking about at a category level and a channel partner level. And then all the way down to the skill level, because those will tell you your brand health, you know, those will tell you, now there are questions to be asking where their promotions and what's going on and what's going on in the competitive sector. Are they promoting but keeping that kind of week to week, quarter to quarter view?

00;44;19;17 - 00;44;43;26

Unknown

I've found that's the best way for me to be the best kind of leader in the organization. It's kind of interesting, what you mentioned around customer preferences and how those trends are changing just because it is something that seems very active right now because we are seeing, you know, younger ages getting into beauty and having very specific preferences around beauty products.

00;44;43;26 - 00;45;06;03

Unknown

I mean, speaking of Sephora, Sephora is just kind of overwhelmed with preteens and young teenagers. Like, how do you how do you keep track of that all? How do you like gauge where things are going? Because I can yeah. No, I think it's, having worked, you know, very closely with Sephora almost ten years ago, you know, I think, I don't know if I would say I'm surprised.

00;45;06;06 - 00;45;26;26

Unknown

I'm surprised, let's put it that way. Where the cohort of teenagers and early teens, 13 or 14 year olds, when you go into a store, you know, one of the things that's a joy of my job, frankly, is I get to attend any meeting that I want to attend because I believe it'll help inform me and doing my job.

00;45;26;26 - 00;45;56;05

Unknown

And so a lot of what I do is sit in with product development, sit in with the marketing team, we get research delivered to us some quarterly about the households that are purchasing us and how they change some monthly about, our POS and the insights about them. And then we actually also get surveys and stuff. So we get panel data on who our customers are and how they're changing, what their families and incomes and, and all of those things.

00;45;56;05 - 00;46;25;28

Unknown

So they all inform the product development, the marketing message, all of these pieces to the puzzle. So, I'lljust have a lot of humility. It's like, you know, I listen a lot. I don't say a lot in those meetings. One thing we keep hearing about, I mean, I mean, this ties perfectly into it, kind of how we've been saying the CFO is evolving to become that strategic business partner and, like, collaborating across departments, attending different meetings, working to understand the whole business.

00;46;26;00 - 00;46;56;17

Unknown

How are you planning on fostering stronger alignment between finance and other departments? So in 2025, such as operations, marketing, HR, to achieve all those overall goals? I only know our culture. I know I'veworked in a lot of other organizations, so I know to contrast it starting with our CEO. But all of us are really like believe strongly to include our lieutenants and our lieutenants, lieutenant, in whatever we're doing, you know?

00;46;56;17 - 00;47;29;19

Unknown

And so there are very we do have the leadership meetings, but they're very few meetings that everyone's not welcome to attend who can feel like it drives value for them. And not only that, from a travel perspective, formy role within my purview, our conversations with our lenders, our controller drives a lot more in that conversation, and I encourage them to have our county manager on it, because I'll listen and I'll highlight parts of the business I think are appropriate.

00;47;29;19 - 00;47;49;04

Unknown

But one of the ways you get people to move up the ladder is to expose them. You know, I was very lucky, I think partly because of some of the choices that I make and rightly because people leaving. But I get exposed to a lot of things really early in my career, had the opportunity to make mistakes, survive them, move forward.

00;47;49;06 - 00;48;13;23

Unknown

But the ad exposure is how people grow. And as we look to the year ahead, are there any challenges or risks that you're anticipating? Oh, yeah. No. You know, I think the number one, we've gotten big enough that people notice and that means our competitors too. And so we have different parts of our business that are very successful.

00;48;13;26 - 00;48;37;23

Unknown

But, you know, it doesn't take a lot for our Unilever or Procter and Gamble to make a big wave, you know, come through with a big boat and decide this is an area we want to have an impact in, and we're going to look over multiple year horizon and, and kind of take share. And so I think that's always the fear in the consumer space.

00;48;37;23 - 00;49;03;28

Unknown

But then the same is in the one you have even less controller is consumer preferences. And are you connected to what. They're the consumer is looking for now. Like I said, our job, like in the finance and accounting place, is to make sure in a timely fashion, we're gaining the insights we need to as best as we can understand that information.

00;49;03;28 - 00;49;24;04

Unknown

And so I think that's the way I think about it, is how quick we can turn information, how consumable can it be? A lot of it is now on a dashboard. You know, that's something that anyone can refresh, or it's a dashboard that highlights, key decision makers, the areas that they're focused on. Like, that's what we talk a lot about.

00;49;24;04 - 00;49;45;29

Unknown

How do we create those moments where people are busy lives from the CEO all the way down across the organization, sales, marketing, ops? And, how do we give them the information in a timely manner in a consumable way that can just help them create better decisions for us? Yeah. Making spark know versions of data.

00;49;46;02 - 00;50;14;01

Unknown

Yeah. For sure. What role do you see technology and automation playing in the finance department in 2025? You know, I think there are things that are in the multinational world that as technology, it's just like in our homes, things that start in the office, make it into our homes, are now really accessible in the middle market.And so, you know, things like scans, invoice scanning.

00;50;14;01 - 00;50;36;04

Unknown

I think that's something that seems obvious to someone at a multinational corporation. But a middle market company has struggled to find a way to implement that technology and to get the return on their investment. You look at places like concur, travel expense and all these things. They make a lot of sense when you are a very large organization.

00;50;36;07 - 00;51;07;27

Unknown

But the implementation costs have come down so much. I think the cloud making not everything client based but basically cloud based and more of a service provider, all of these areas, it's one of the things, I think, why that suite's not only a great product, but a great pricing model, especially for private equity. You don't have to look at it and go, oh my God, it's going to take a year to implement, and we're going to have to turn over our business processes, and we're going to have to write $1 million check.

00;51;08;04 - 00;51;37;29

Unknown

Like, that's really hard for a private equity firm that wants to do a five-year investment. You know, it's really hard to do the math, but if you can get into NetSuite in 4 to 6 months and it's an annual fee, and a one timecost to get in, it becomes a lot more interesting. And I think that functionality look my expectation hope, but also expectation of NetSuite is they keep shrinking where the enterprise software is, where do those technologies are.

00;51;37;29 - 00;52;04;03

Unknown

And making them super accessible and easy for smaller organizations, smaller teams to use. And, that that'smy hope. My wish. And I see it happening. So I, I'm very happy with the platform that we're on. And looking at your current finance team, do you have any plans to upskill or reskill them kind of in the next year as like we talked about the finance function sort of shifts?

00;52;04;06 - 00;52;26;11

Unknown

I don't think so. One of the things I'm really proud of and I in budget season, I always bring it up, is we have the same number of heads as we did in, I think, 2021. Oh, wow. So so we've gone through this growth, we'veshifted around talent and people have laughed in all these things, but from a headcount.

00;52;26;13 - 00;52;53;09

Unknown

And so, you know, my hope or my North Star is development and technology together can make us headcount neutral no matter how big we get. And that's the goal. And I think that'll be you know, how we the baseline assumption as we approach 2025 and, and every year ahead. Now that also means we have to invest in training.

00;52;53;14 - 00;53;12;28

Unknown

We have to invest in technology. We have to make different types of investments, investment. But what thatreally does is it creates an amazing place to work because people have an opportunity to grow and not just get stagnant in the position they're in. So that's kind of the North Star for me, and it doesn't always follow that way.

00;53;12;28 - 00;53;37;28

Unknown

But for us, it's been that way for a while. I like that term headcount neutral. I feel like we could build like an advertising campaign around that. Yeah, I hear you. All right, well, speaking of technology plans, any plans on the docket for the next year? Any new financial technologies building out existing capabilities? You know, we just had this conversation two weeks ago.

00;53;38;00 - 00;54;03;08

Unknown

Oh. Timely. Someone who works with me and my message was, we've done such a great job of implementing technologies to meet the needs of the business. I'm much more interested in maximizing over the next year than implementing new things. We just finished our first, really 12 months on a trade promotion tool, and it has so much more potential to drive decision making.

00;54;03;08 - 00;54;27;06

Unknown

So I said, look, let's focus on that. We use power BI right now as a data warehouse. And how do we create more information flowing quicker into NetSuite Planning and Budgeting. We implemented fourth quarter of last year. Every quarter we're evolving. And now we're having a larger conversation within the demand planning function. So we have these robust tools.

00;54;27;09 - 00;54;49;09

Unknown

I want to make sure we're evolving, rather than moving on to the next great thing. And you kind of touched on this with keeping up with customer preferences, kind of beating out the competition a little. But does Raw Sugar as a company have any overall chain objectives going into 2025? Outside of that? You know, I think that's part of what we're doing in NetSuite.

00;54;49;11 - 00;55;26;12

Unknown

You know, we're always from a look from a product development perspective, from a channel, you know, where we sell those, where those are over one-year cycles. And it can be as much as a three year cycle, in your funnel, I think our brand and our the awareness of our brand and how we acquire new customers and how we get them to have experiences with our brands and, and have those and then potentially even going across categories because we, we are uniquely across a lot of categories.

00;55;26;15 - 00;55;45;15

Unknown

Those are kind of the challenges that we face now as we kind of are in more places and trying to find new audiences, geographically across the country, sometimes in other countries, there's a lot of people who don't know about Raw Sugar, and that's a big challenge for us. I do love that you get into the pet space and called it for kids.

00;55;45;18 - 00;56;22;03

Unknown

That works. That's how I feel. And that's how John, who brought up the idea to us about a year ago, you know, every not everyone, but a lot of people have dogs. We're going to be doing an awesome thing. One of the ways we're going to create that awareness and stay true to our values, we're going to start a program where first in LA, and then if it works well, Will is, putting our for kids products at shelters so that when people adopt pets, they have an opportunity to go home with a shampoo, but also have an opportunity to experience our brand and our values.

00;56;22;03 - 00;56;41;13

Unknown

So, that's something that we're going to start piloting as, as we come to the end of the year. But it's some typeof things, that I think make it awesome to work here. We do really good staff. We also work with a group for water. For people. Water is our number one ingredient. So we help the well in places that don't have enough access to water.

00;56;41;13 - 00;57;11;28

Unknown

And then we work with an organization called eco. So I would recommend any business person look it up. Got an amazing founder who created this business model of collecting use of bars from hotels, melting them down to then create new soap bars, and employing disadvantaged people in Southeast Asia and Africa. And nowdoes it at a very large scale, partnering with Procter and Gamble and other multinationals, with their excess.

00;57;11;28 - 00;57;35;26

Unknown

So we worked with some really cool organizations, and it's important that we make a difference. Yeah. And for our listeners, the website is Raw Sugar living.com. And I'll put the link in the show notes, but it's just a really cool, cool website. I kind of demonstrate some of the stuff you're doing and just really interesting. I was going through it researching for this podcast and it was just I was very engaged.

00;57;35;27 - 00;57;57;21

Unknown

Like, it's just a lot of really cool initiatives that you're doing. Thank you. Yeah. No, no, this is the most proud I'veever been of working any place and for a brand for team. And then, you know, the impact we have and there'sso much more for us to do. So it's fun to share our story and, it's fun to share my perspective on being a CFO.

00;57;57;24 - 00;58;28;11

Unknown

Well, to wrap things up, I mean, a lot of our listeners kind of come on to hear a lot about how business leaders got to where they are, their experience, their advice, different tips that they have. So as we close out, are there any final thoughts or takeaways that you want to leave our listeners with? Yeah, I mean, I think I'll end where we started, which is, you know, we talked about going to UCLA and taking a bunch of liberal arts classes and just enough accounting to sit for the CPA exam.

00;58;28;11 - 00;58;55;24

Unknown

And, you know, I think being unique in the accounting and finance space, but to also bring a point of view and the skills to find your own point of view makes you really valuable. And people notice leadership notices, the person who's paying attention to the data and not just kicking it out. And I think accounting sometimes people will get lost in that.

00;58;55;24 - 00;59;16;10

Unknown

They don't think anyone's looking or anyone's listening. And so they don't think about to, to find those insights or find those opportunities to change the process because you see it and using your voice so, you know, find your way to have an impact, run towards the fire and then realize you're making something and there's a real purpose behind those numbers.

00;59;16;12 - 00;59;33;04

Unknown

And they're not just numbers. I think all those things have served me really well. Made my career really fun.That is such an amazing note to end on. Thank you so much for taking the time, Jonathan. This was really fun.Thank you.

00;59;33;07 - 00;59;53;13

Unknown

That brings us to the end of another great episode. First of all, a CFO who works on a banana farm with a machete. That was a first for me. We always say that CFOs have to be on the cutting edge, but that just takes it to a whole new level. In all seriousness, such a great opportunity to talk to Jonathan in this episode.

00;59;53;15 - 01;00;13;17

Unknown

The health and beauty space is moving so incredibly fast, and it's fascinating to hear how they are using that suite to keep up. A huge thanks to Jonathan for taking time out of his 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.

01;00;13;20 - 01;00;34;10

Unknown

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 NetSuite developments, stories, and insights into the benefits of one integrated system to help you run your business.

Learn more about NetSuite 2025 Release 1: https://tinyurl.com/m5c87ud5 Cohost Megan O'Brien dives into NetSuite 2025 Release 1, 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 first release of 2025 [1:31]. She covers some of the most exciting updates in 2025.1 and what customers can expect. Erik Klein, outbound product manager at NetSuite, joins next to give a breakdown of new AI capabilities [8:30]. Andrew Klockers, a principal industry product manager for healthcare at NetSuite, covers HIPAA compliance in NetSuite, as well as enhancements to Compliance 360 [21:41]. Lastly, Eyal Amir, senior director of product management at NetSuite, goes over three new NetSuite Connectors [32:55]. Follow Us Here: NetSuite 2025.1 Homepage: https://tinyurl.com/m5c87ud5 NetSuite 2025.1 Release Notes: https://tinyurl.com/4ju3uj73 NetSuite 2025.1 Release Preview Test Account: https://tinyurl.com/7m3pkz78 Contact NetSuite Sales - https://social.ora.cl/6009wKalv Learn More about NetSuite ERP - https://social.ora.cl/6003wKaxv Learn More about NetSuite HCM - https://social.ora.cl/6007c4Kih Learn More about NetSuite Analytics & Reporting - https://social.ora.cl/6007c4znL NetSuite Customer Success Stories - https://social.ora.cl/6005c4zt9 Follow us here: 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, #NetSuiteERP, #NetSuiteConnector, #SuiteCloudPlatform, #AI, #GenAI, #HealthcareCompliance, #Compliance360 -------------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript:

00;00;04;07 - 00;00;28;27

Unknown

Hey, listeners. Welcome to the NetSuite Podcast. I'm Megan O'Brien, a co-host of the podcast, and today I'm excited to dive into our latest product release. As many of our listeners know, we do two product releases per year. So this one is our first of 2025. NetSuite 2025 one is absolutely packed with a bunch of great new features and enhancements.

00;00;28;29 - 00;00;54;04

Unknown

The latest release brings new functionality across NetSuite Connector, Bill Capture, Field Service management, and the Suite Cloud platform, just to name a few. There are also great new SuiteApps and AI capabilities in there. 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 info, our sneak peak release blogs are now live on.

00;00;54;04 - 00;01;19;11

Unknown

NetSuite.com. See the links in the description on the app, so to check those 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 in next week who are behind all the moving parts.

00;01;19;13 - 00;01;32;05

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.

00;01;32;07 - 00;01;56;02

Unknown

Kicking us off is Lisa Schwarz, senior director of product marketing at NetSuite. Lisa will provide a quick preview of what's new in 2025 release one, including new AI-powered search capabilities and Suite Answers using NetSuite Expert. She also gives a refresher on how all our customers received the update, and what they can do to prepare for it.

00;01;56;05 - 00;02;23;23

Unknown

We have a few guests joining us to dive deeper into the new functionality and the NetSuite 2025 release one, but could you give us a quick overview of what we'll be covering? I sure can. We've got a greatest hits coming up for everybody. We'll be diving into the world of connectors. There's a bunch of new connectors which will be available in this release, so that will be interesting to get that update and hear about that.

00;02;23;26 - 00;02;52;13

Unknown

We'll be covering some great things around the SuiteCloud platform. That's always super interesting. And a lot of that includes some new AI developer tools and we'll also be exploring new things that are going around with necessary HIPAA compliance and some of our compliance. 360 solution. What's the one feature in this release that you're especially excited about or see as a big win for our customers?

00;02;52;15 - 00;03;26;14

Unknown

Oh one I'm not sure if I could round it down to just one, but kind of my, you know, quick wins or what's getting me excited. I think I would, you know, shout out because some shout outs to, NetSuite Expert, which is a new capability that's bringing AI search powers to Suite Answers, Suite Procurement, which is, one of our, new indirect procurement solution that includes partnerships with staples, and Amazon business.

00;03;26;17 - 00;03;55;08

Unknown

We've got some new specialized user roles for CRM, WMS, and view and approve. And these are particularly interesting for employees who only need access to specific records, reports, and tasks in NetSuite. So you don't have to always purchase a full user licenses. And then there's more pages becoming available in the Redwood UI. So getting some more refresh and a new look to a lot of things.

00;03;55;11 - 00;04;22;16

Unknown

I wanted to quickly touch base on the logistics of the release for any new listeners. Customers who have never been through this before, or those who just need a refresher. How does NetSuite deliver these new features to our users? Absolutely. So we do two releases a year. All 41,000 plus customers receive the updates. Everybody is on the same release using the latest and greatest version of.

00;04;22;16 - 00;04;47;18

Unknown

NetSuite, which is still amazing and always kind of blows my mind. This is the first release of the year. So with this release, accounts will be updated between mid-March through April. Each customer is assigned a date and a time that their NetSuite account will be updated. The date and the time of your update is published in the New Release Portlet on your.

00;04;47;18 - 00;05;06;05

Unknown

NetSuite dashboard, and your NetSuite admin will also get an email with this information. If for some reason this is not a good time for the update to happen. You can go and change the date and time via the CMS tool within NetSuite. So super easy to do that when it comes to the day of your update.

00;05;06;10 - 00;05;33;06

Unknown

You don't need to install or do anything. It's all automated. Accounts will go offline during the update time, which is scheduled for about a four-hour period downtime, but actually most accounts get updated in 60 minutes or less. And what can customers do to prepare for the update? We definitely encourage users to become familiar with what's in the release and try it out in a release preview account.

00;05;33;09 - 00;06;05;18

Unknown

So, you know, while accounts are updated automatically and all customizations come over in the update, it's great to test out, using your own data, workflows, integrations, and customizations. So there are no surprises. I don't know about you, but I don't like surprises now. So for those who are not familiar with the release preview account, this is a specialized test account that clones your production environment and has all the new features and updates in the release.

00;06;05;21 - 00;06;27;27

Unknown

So it's a great way. Also a safe way to test drive things out before you go live. It's free. You just need to have your NetSuite admin request it. Other than this podcast, how else can customers learn more about the 2025 release one. There's a bunch of ways people can learn more about what's in the release.

00;06;28;00 - 00;06;50;24

Unknown

First, you can read the sneak peek blogs, which are on NetSuite.com, as well as well as the release notes if you want a really long read. Which those are. And Suite Answers. You can watch, training videos, which are usually done on a lot of key features. Also hosted in Suite Answers. Download them there.

00;06;50;26 - 00;07;11;04

Unknown

I definitely encourage you to talk to your account manager on a more, you know, specific kind of basis where you can really look at, you know, what key features may be a priority for you guys. And then we've got some webinars. So watch and attend some of these webinars. We had a webinar covered all the new features.

00;07;11;04 - 00;07;36;24

Unknown

So we went, you know, in-depth on the features, which is available to now watch on demand. But there's also a release readiness webinar on February 26th, which provides tips on how you can get ready for the release, like using the release preview account we talked about as well as creating a test plan. This webinar will also be available on demand after the 26.

00;07;36;26 - 00;08;07;22

Unknown

And then last, we've got some SuiteConnect events, which we encourage everybody to attend. So these are one day events that are happening all over the world over the next few months. Definitely go to NetSuite.com under the events section. I'm sure you'll you can provide a link to that page as well. But check out the cities that will be coming to these events cover some of the new features in the release.

00;08;07;24 - 00;08;27;26

Unknown

You'll so kind of getting down to the next level of actually being able to also see some demos and things like that. So definitely check out the website and see if we're coming to a city near you, and we'll be sure to link to that and all these other great resources in our show notes. Thanks so much for joining us, Lisa.

00;08;27;28 - 00;08;54;16

Unknown

Thanks again for having me. This release brings several new AI features to NetSuite. And here to talk about that and other improvements to the platform is Outbound Product Manager Eric Klein. Eric offers a quick refresh on how the SuiteCloud platform works, and then walks through two major features in 2025.1 the SuiteScript Generative AI API, and NetSuite

00;08;54;16 - 00;09;19;16

Unknown

Prompt Studio for Text Enhance. He also dives into additional enhancements that will benefit developers. All right, Eric, let's start with a quick overview of the SuiteCloud platform. How does it work and how does it help our users get the most out of their NetSuite investment? Hi. Hi. Thanks, Megan. I'd be delighted to. But, you know, as many of our listeners are probably already aware, SuiteCloud is really all about customizing a.

00;09;19;16 - 00;09;45;01

Unknown

NetSuite in ways that extend the native product to support specific user tasks and ultimately achieve desired business outcomes. Which, by the way, can really help businesses with an international scope as well. But, you know, a lot of our customers really, you look at, you look at, you know, their environments, their, their sort of business needs. And those requirements are often very unique to their individual businesses.

00;09;45;04 - 00;10;13;10

Unknown

Now, NetSuite is a very, you know, full-featured complex product. So most of these are addressed with out of the box functionality. And we also see almost a virtually unlimited range of use cases that require at least minor changes to native product functionality. And in many cases, this is really easy to do by, you know, taking steps to define things like custom records, fields, forms, custom transactions.

00;10;13;11 - 00;10;33;13

Unknown

I mean, there's a lot of flexibility there in terms of how you can customize the product and do so without writing code. However, in some cases, those changes can be pretty big. And that's where things like, you know, custom scripting, workflows and even full applications or what we call SuiteApps in NetSuite terminology.

00;10;33;16 - 00;10;58;00

Unknown

And these are often built by NetSuite. We build them as well as our team and partner community has a very rich library of, of suite apps and extensions that can be added to your NetSuite environment to deliver specific industry functionality. So think things like, you know, pane and plug ins, integration services, advanced financial solutions, those sorts of things.

00;10;58;07 - 00;11;28;15

Unknown

And I might point out that a lot of these, more basic customizations, as I just mentioned, can be done by administrators using visual no code tools that don't require actual software development. But I wanted to talk a little bit about this upcoming release, NetSuite 2025 release one. And there's a number of areas where we're really working to improve the developer experience, basically setting the stage for even more improvements on the horizon.

00;11;28;17 - 00;12;00;07

Unknown

And just kind of for a quick overview, we're, you know, AI as all the rage, right? So we're focusing on new ways to leverage AI and associated large language models. Which, by the way, we talked a lot about at SuiteWorld 2024. And effectively, these are enabling new ways to think about software development. What does that software development lifecycle look like in the age of AI, and making it vastly more efficient than how things have traditionally been done?

00;12;00;10 - 00;12;26;14

Unknown

And really, these are solutions that, you know, benefit a wide range of user categories, certainly developers. But, you know, again, administrators can benefit from AI, lots of business users and a wide variety of NetSuite end users themselves who can take advantage of this functionality. And you know, in addition to AI, we're also adding a new range of capabilities.

00;12;26;17 - 00;13;02;07

Unknown

These would include things like, you know, new hardened security features based on OAuth two. We're looking at things like specialized roles for more cost-effective access to the product. We're expanding our library of SuiteScript 2.1 code samples for software developers. We'll talk a little bit more about that on the podcast. And these capabilities really show our commitment to enhance native product functionality out of the box as much as possible but make it easier to customize and extend where necessary.

00;13;02;09 - 00;13;23;04

Unknown

And at the end of the day, create a more efficient user experience across the entire suite. And again, since I was all the rage right? Lots of new AI powered features were announced this past year at SuiteWorld 2024. So, you know, there's a lot of resources available for our listeners to learn more about what we talked about there.

00;13;23;06 - 00;13;53;11

Unknown

Tell me about what's new for the suite script developers in this release. Well, Megan, I get I got to tell you, this is a really exciting area for us. Lots is going on. And lots more is coming, some of which we can't really talk about today. But I think we've got some really, really, tangible features and functions that we're giving developers, which, you know, provide them with the ability to connect directly to things like AI services from custom scripts.

00;13;53;13 - 00;14;32;29

Unknown

Now it sounds like a mouthful, but we have a new API called the SuiteScript Generative AI API. And in a nutshell, this provides programmatic access to LMS running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI Generative services. And another name for this way that is probably more commonly familiar with developers is a SuiteScript LLM module. And so depending on how it's use, it can be configured to work with a range of supported models so that that list of supported models is something that that is in our documentation.

00;14;33;00 - 00;15;00;23

Unknown

We could, you know, provide links to that. And it really opens up a lot of use cases to extend the suite. And just kind of a quick example, you can use this a this and lm API module to develop custom functionality such as the ability to through the interface, generate reports, summarize data, manipulate text, perform natural language processing queries.

00;15;00;26 - 00;15;31;08

Unknown

But really, the sky's the limit when you start to think about all of the new ways to do things that are that are perhaps, you know, part of your existing workflow, and then new ways to do new things like automate documentation, integrate chat bots. You can, for example, perform predictive analytics, anomaly detection. Right. All of these are now within reach to any customer or partner with existing product or product that's coming out at 25 dot one.

00;15;31;10 - 00;16;02;02

Unknown

We've even seen some really sophisticated partner applications that consume and exchange information from LMS to power very complex applications. That at the end of the day, drive great user experiences that were previously very, very hard to achieve. So again, super exciting, super exciting area for us. What else is new when it comes to AI capabilities? And NetSuite 2025 release one.

00;16;02;05 - 00;16;34;08

Unknown

Sure. So, you know, there's a lot out there across sort of the landscape of NetSuite. And you know, just to provide a few concrete examples here. Many listeners may be familiar with NetSuite text enhance when working with all sorts of textual content across the product. And we're adding a new feature that we're calling OBS studio that is effectively an AI service that extends Text Enhance functionality.

00;16;34;10 - 00;17;13;24

Unknown

And so in essence, this makes it super easy to create and format text based content throughout the suite. And developers can even use Prompt Studio to generate and craft a wide range of content types. And these include, again reports, email templates, table based representations of data, web pages, generate quotes, and a whole lot more. So prompt studio also gives us an ability to generate any external facing document, and to do so with a really highly polished and consistently branded appearance.

00;17;13;25 - 00;17;34;24

Unknown

So, so this is this is a pretty exciting area for us as well. As we start to wrap up what's been happening recently with code samples for Suite Scripting helpers. Yeah, I mean, this this is really interesting, right? Because, you know, developers work a lot with code samples, especially, especially as they're onboarding to the product or they're working with new areas of the product.

00;17;34;27 - 00;18;01;05

Unknown

And, and, you know, are writing scripts, and you want to be able to access source code based documentation. And we provide these, you know, in the doc, in the help docs, in the forms, formats like snippets and examples, even full applications. And so now we're kind of building up that library of, of source code samples and making these available out on the GitHub repository.

00;18;01;07 - 00;18;30;07

Unknown

Really, at the end of the day, they're an invaluable resource for software developers because it shortens the learning curve when coming up to speed with things like SuiteScript and some of our APIs. And it illustrates how best to implement new or extended file capabilities and do so more efficiently. Now, in the past, we've provided literally hundreds of these types of assets in our help center, which, by the way, is also available on docs.oracle.com.

00;18;30;07 - 00;19;02;18

Unknown

So there's a, you know, there's a web-based equivalent out of our help center. It's not just in product anymore. And we're now taking these sample libraries into the public domain. So we're moving them, to our public GitHub based suite script repository. And we're adding a lot of new ones over time. So really the key takeaway here is that we're serving the NetSuite developer community by providing access to some of the most current examples of technology, such as Suite Script 2.1, right.

00;19;02;18 - 00;19;34;13

Unknown

Squeeze SuiteScript put out there for a long time. There's a lot of scripts based on $1 and 2.0 and really, really encouraging our our customer and partner consultant developers to adopt 2.1. And so relative to the repository, this has been populated with new samples. And we will continue to add more of these with each new each new release, and with a big focus on ways to leverage that latest platform technology, whatever it happens to be.

00;19;34;15 - 00;19;52;20

Unknown

What do you think about all these new features? How would you summarize the value is providing to our developers, admins, and customers as a whole? Oh yeah. I mean, sure. To kind of wrap up, I know we're about to the end of our time here, but again, thank you, Megan, for the opportunity to share these updates with our listeners.

00;19;52;22 - 00;20;25;29

Unknown

And you know, it all ties back to what we often say in our on our team is it's, you know, it's about making the suite your own and other ways adapting and where needed, native ERP functional capabilities to the very unique needs of every business. It's kind of like going the last mile, taking the value that NetSuite provides, then dialing it in exactly to where it needs to be from simple modifications like, you know, creating a custom form.

00;20;26;02 - 00;20;50;13

Unknown

You know, we talked about forms, fields, transactions before all the way to complete industry vertical specific application that extends the suite in new and exciting ways. You know, and since everyone is talking so much about AI, our strategy really, really it boils down to exploiting opportunities to create not just a better but a vastly more efficient way to get work done.

00;20;50;15 - 00;21;14;29

Unknown

And whether that applies to folks who are writing code or administrators defining workflows, business users gathering insights from business data. I mean, it all applies to, you know, to these different areas. So it's a really exciting time, and I'm looking forward to sharing even more about what's new with SuiteCloud Platform for our upcoming releases in our next podcast.

00;21;15;01 - 00;21;24;26

Unknown

We're looking forward to that too. Thanks so much for joining us. Absolutely. Thank you again, Megan.

00;21;24;28 - 00;21;41;22

Unknown

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;21;41;24 - 00;22;07;00

Unknown

Next up, we're incredibly lucky to have Andrew Clockers, a principal industry product manager for health care at NetSuite. Now, Andrew will get into this, but spoiler alert he's actually a pharmacist who came to NetSuite to bring his healthcare knowledge to the system. He'll cover HIPAA compliance in that suite as well as enhancements to Compliance 360. Thanks for joining the podcast, Andrew.

00;22;07;02 - 00;22;24;22

Unknown

Before we dive into the solution, can you share with our listeners your career path that led you to NetSuite? Yeah, absolutely. Megan, thanks again for having me. Yeah. So currently I am the vertical product manager for the health care industry at NetSuite. I've been in this role for a few years now. A little bit about my background though.

00;22;24;22 - 00;22;53;07

Unknown

Most of my experience is actually in health care. I'm a pharmacist by trade and I've worked as a pharmacist and pharmacy manager in various capacities for almost 20 years prior to coming here. Both on the outpatient pharmacy side and the inpatient pharmacy side. And really, kind of through that journey was garnering some additional skills but looking for new ways to help health care and made my way to NetSuite mostly because I wish I had NetSuite when I was running my pharmacy.

00;22;53;09 - 00;23;13;25

Unknown

I mean, it would take me 10 or 12 different pieces of software to run my pharmacy, from payroll to managing the inventory, all the things that are required. I had to jump from system to system. And then when I learned about NetSuite, I was envious of the opportunity to have such a tool. And then, with a growing focus of health care, here it and that's to Eaton broader Oracle that the timing just worked out well.

00;23;13;25 - 00;23;41;10

Unknown

So now I get to help folks like me who are in the healthcare space and help with their back office, improvements and efficiencies. So it's been a been a journey and it's an ongoing one that's a really unique background. And I'm so excited that we get to get your expertise today. Now, while NetSuite is not new to supporting the health care industry, we've had some big developments here as to what NetSuite offers this industry.

00;23;41;13 - 00;24;10;08

Unknown

Can you kind of summarize it for us? Yeah, absolutely. There's a few trains of thought here. So as you said, we've been in the health care space for quite a while. We have, you know, thousands of health care customers with a bit of a rejuvenated focus here and then recent past. I think what's really kind of kick that off was we've been working on going through the HIPAA attestation process, which we recently passed this year, and or excuse me, last year in May and announced at the last SuiteWorld, which is pretty exciting.

00;24;10;08 - 00;24;26;28

Unknown

That's a common question we get asked about is if we are HIPAA attested and we'll sign a BA and the answer is now yes to both of those things. So, it's that's a big regulation in the health care space that a lot of companies expect their vendor partners to abide by. And we can now join that list.

00;24;26;28 - 00;24;47;05

Unknown

So that's exciting. We've also, to support that kind of announcement, we've created some health care center tools that we'll get into a little bit more detail today. One, we've created a NetSuite addition, a SuiteSuccess health care addition that is geared for those organizations that provide patient care and live and breathe in the world of patient data.

00;24;47;07 - 00;25;07;26

Unknown

We've taken our core NetSuite and enhanced it with health care centered, data, KPIs, reports, roles, all the things that kind of align with day-to-day health care operations in the suite success Health Care Edition. And to partner with that and it comes along with it is what we call compliance. 360 this is something that came along with the HIPAA attestation.

00;25;07;27 - 00;25;29;28

Unknown

We also announced it's basically a tool that helps our our customers align the requirements of HIPAA to their needs and provides some visibility into how their users interact with their patient data in that suite. So again, kind of different ways, we're supporting and lifting up the healthcare industry to be as successful as possible. How has the market reacted to this?

00;25;30;01 - 00;25;50;25

Unknown

Yeah. Good question. So we, like I said, we announced this at SuiteWorld this past year. And, we actually did some sessions around it as well where we kind of spoke to our HIPAA journey. What was on vault, the timelines, the details, all those things. And it was met very positively. In fact, after each session, we got a lot of congratulations.

00;25;50;25 - 00;26;12;04

Unknown

I think I dished out quite a few high fives afterwards, which was a lot of fun. And so it was kind of recharge the industry. I feel like there was some great tenants, great feedback, but also great awareness that we have a lot to do. There's, a lot of good questions and feedback about other opportunities we have to enhance our offerings further, which we're really excited to tackle moving forward.

00;26;12;04 - 00;26;40;15

Unknown

And quite frankly, we already are tackling what is unique to the NetSuite solution that other solutions cannot address. Yeah, I think I would couch the answer to that in two themes. One is aligned with how we're supporting HIPAA, and I'll speak to that. And then the other is just our General Health Care SuiteSuccess Edition and the offering, that we're building and supporting these organizations with, health care is a unique, very diverse industry.

00;26;40;15 - 00;27;08;11

Unknown

There's a lot of facets. There's a lot of sub industries within the industry. And really at its core, most of them are both a service organization and a product organization or even a mix of both. And so that's where I think our health care edition and just NetSuite in general, adds a ton of value because you can create a one stop shop, if you will, for visibility to all of those key business practices, those sales avenues and all the things that come with it.

00;27;08;11 - 00;27;30;22

Unknown

Right? Like managing inventory, managing the teams that need to support that, that information, whether it be from a sales side or a support team, you can bring all of that together in one place. And as I mentioned before, it took me a ton of applications to run my pharmacy. And I just think about the amount of time I would have been given back had I been able to centralize that work, and not just personal time.

00;27;30;22 - 00;27;46;02

Unknown

Like, it would have been great to get home earlier. But I also had a team to support, and I was still seeing patients, so that's time I could have given back to them as well that otherwise was being taken away for manual process that could otherwise be remedied. With NetSuite and in particular our health care edition.

00;27;46;02 - 00;28;12;09

Unknown

So I think that's a big differentiator. The other, I think, is how we're supporting our customers with their HIPAA requirements. And we're doing this a variety of ways. One of the most visible that our customers will see is Compliance 360 that I mentioned, the requirement for HIPAA is really to have we as a vendor partner need to provide visibility to how our customers users are interacting with their most important asset, which is their customer data.

00;28;12;12 - 00;28;42;01

Unknown

And so Compliance 360 does that, and it doesn't just provide the data. We wanted to take it a step further because you can imagine if something maybe suspicious was going on, you would need to respond to that and dig into the details to that very quickly. And so not only do we just provide that activity data, we provide KPIs and a dashboard to help guide where that behavior might be coming from, whether it be some data is being exported or printed, you're able to quickly drill into when did that happen?

00;28;42;01 - 00;29;00;18

Unknown

Who did it? How did it happen? All of those things can quickly be discerned. So then the that organization could determine, hey, was this a normal behavior that is occurring or is it something maybe outside the norm that we need to dig into. So it really creates a broad foundation for conducting that research and meeting that requirement.

00;29;00;18 - 00;29;21;28

Unknown

We really wanted to take it a step further. You mentioned Compliance 360 earlier in the conversation. Can you talk about what is new with this in the 2025 one release? Sure thing. We continue to invest in the solution that I just talked about, because we know it's a core tenant of the meeting, the requirement, and want to continue to make it as broad and as user friendly as possible.

00;29;21;28 - 00;29;45;00

Unknown

So I would outline our improvements in two themes. So the one first theme would be the type of information where logging what type of data we're collecting. We're going to be adding more of that, logging into the system and the next release. If you create a custom record and tie the customer record to that, we'll start logging that and then also emails and campaigns.

00;29;45;00 - 00;30;03;23

Unknown

So if an email goes out to a customer, our campaign goes out to a customer. We're going to log that. So you can see when it went out who sent it out and all that, all that pertinent information to that, that information that could be sent outside of necessary to your patients or your customers so that that data activity is going to continue to grow.

00;30;03;26 - 00;30;27;27

Unknown

And also the usability. So, from a user experience perspective, we want to enhance the features as well in the in the SuiteApp. So things like the portlets that we provide, we're going to make those more configurable so that you can align the data with your organization, making it more meaningful, drawing attention to outlying data points that might require some research, a little bit more deliberately.

00;30;27;29 - 00;30;46;19

Unknown

We're also going to take it a step further from just the activity information and create a place to actually document any type of audit that the organization might be doing. There's an old adage in compliance that if you didn't documented, it didn't happen. So we wanted to create a place for our customers to document any type of audit.

00;30;46;19 - 00;31;14;28

Unknown

This is doesn't necessarily have to be just with user activity. Maybe you're auditing the provisioning of your team or doing some sort of rounding in your various departments for policy review or procedure review. All of that information can be logged where you can create an audit, add the controls, add the outcome of those controls. Did the control pass or fail and ultimately kind of create a risk picture for that particular audit, a truly kind of creating compliance?

00;31;14;28 - 00;31;42;03

Unknown

360 is a more 360 tool. Adding different features and functionality will be the theme for not only the next release, but, for the upcoming releases. As we strengthen our compliance offering, it seems like many organizations could really benefit from. Compliance 360 is it available to any customer? It is. So great question. This came up often at SuiteWorld when we announced Compliance 360 and started having our sessions.

00;31;42;03 - 00;32;02;27

Unknown

One of the key questions we got was, hey, this is great for health care, but you know, I'm a legal firm or I'm in manufacturing. We would love this type of visibility for our customer activity and the ability to document audits. Is it available to us. So our initial out of the focus industry was health care. But we realized there's utility here beyond just health care in a variety of industries and use cases.

00;32;03;00 - 00;32;23;29

Unknown

So we are making it available to any industry in North America. This will be a common theme we hear as far as wanting that type of visibility. I think, you know, anytime you look at the news anywhere, there's some sort of cybersecurity, update or breach of data, like, these are the types of tools that we want to put in the hands of our customers to help them with their organizational compliance and risk.

00;32;24;01 - 00;32;42;20

Unknown

And how can our customers access Compliance 360? Yeah, so it is on the suite app marketplace. It is available as a purchase SuiteApp. So the best way to move forward if you're interested in Compliance 360 would be to look at our web page. There's information out there about it, but also your account manager can set you up with a, additional information.

00;32;42;20 - 00;33;10;13

Unknown

And we can set up demos and all the things that come along with it. So those would be great places to start. Well, this was all very useful information. Thanks so much for joining us, Andrew. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Let's close out the podcast with Alan Alameda, senior director of Product management at NetSuite. Alan came to NetSuite after his company, FarApp, was acquired by Oracle in 2021 and rebranded as NetSuite Connector.

00;33;10;16 - 00;33;41;27

Unknown

He covers three new NetSuite Connectors in the 2025.1 release, designed to map data between NetSuite and third-party applications. To kick us off, can you give our listeners a quick overview of your role in that suite and be what NetSuite connectors are? Yeah, of course. So I joined NetSuite back in 2021 with the acquisition, and I helped with the integration of the business internet suite and was then kind of straddling two areas, helping oversee development and product management.

00;33;41;29 - 00;34;06;23

Unknown

And about a year ago I finally a transition to product. And now I run product management for a couple of products, including a NetSuite Connector and EPM, which includes NetSuite Planning and Budgeting and NetSuite Account Reconciliation. My NetSuite Connector team is responsible for the product strategy and roadmap of our connector offerings, and we're always trying to add to and improve our connectors to make them to make integrating popular products to NetSuite as seamless as possible.

00;34;06;25 - 00;34;35;03

Unknown

So for those of you who aren't familiar with that connector, we offer pre-built integrations to some of the most popular e-commerce marketplaces platforms, as well as point of sale and logistics products. You're probably familiar with many of the products we connect to, including Amazon, Shopify, eBay, Walmart, Ship Station, and some more big names in there. NetSuite Connector enables our customers to quickly activate an integration and do some simple configuration mappings to cover their unique needs and be up and running quickly and seamlessly.

00;34;35;05 - 00;34;57;16

Unknown

The connectors run in the background, syncing the most commonly needed data, so our customers can use NetSuite to manage all their channels, instead of having to manage each one separately and logging into all those channels. What are the new connectors coming in the NetSuite 2025 release dot one update? Make sure pretty excited that we're releasing three new connectors over the next several months, which is, quite a lot for us.

00;34;57;18 - 00;35;19;14

Unknown

But we're we're, I'm happy to say that we're connecting to Salesforce, Shopify B2B, and Outlook soon over the years, we primarily focused on B2C, e-commerce, point of sale and logistics connectors. With these new integrations, we're expanding our offerings to include CRM, B2B, e-commerce, and office integrations. So we're opening up the door for future offerings in a lot of new areas.

00;35;19;17 - 00;35;42;09

Unknown

We're also continuing to build on our existing connectors and features and expanding our self-service capabilities, allowing our customers to handle complex configurations with ease. Let's delve into each of these, starting with the NetSuite Connector for Salesforce. Why is it valuable to our customers to have this integration? Yeah, so Salesforce is a market leader in CRM. And so naturally many of our customers use both.

00;35;42;09 - 00;36;13;01

Unknown

NetSuite and Salesforce together. With this connector we're answering our customers' need for a seamless in-house solution to automatically shared data between the two and to reduce data silos, accelerate revenue recognition or to cache processes, and expand business insights. The connector expands visibility into order details, customer contact information, order fulfillment details, and financial information like invoices, payments, sales, etc. so this is our first connector powered by Oracle Integration Cloud, which we're also happy to say.

00;36;13;04 - 00;36;36;03

Unknown

Oh, I see as well known in the industry, it's a secure, industry leading integration service that enables customers to set up, manage and monitor data flows by a self-service interface. We've provided. And that's why this new platform enables greater flexibility and customizability for our Salesforce connector. And customers no longer need to manually manage data in both NetSuite and Salesforce or purchase any third-party solution to connect the two.

00;36;36;03 - 00;36;58;11

Unknown

Now they can do it all with our connector. NetSuite 2025 release one also includes a new connector for Shopify. Like you mentioned right now, and that's we know it already offers a Shopify integration. Could you explain how this one is different and its benefits actually provide connectors for multiple Shopify offerings, including Shopify, Shopify Plus, and Shopify point of sale.

00;36;58;11 - 00;37;19;23

Unknown

So we've been a Shopify partner for many, many years. And with the new connector, we're adding support for Shopify's latest offering, which is Shopify B2B. The new connector supports B2B specific business processes and flows, such as B2B orders coming over to NetSuite. With invoices and payments so fully closes up the financials and standalone customers for B2B customers.

00;37;19;23 - 00;37;43;01

Unknown

For CRM purposes, this enables our B2B customers who are using Shopify to have both accurate financials in a suite, as well as manage all their important B2B CRM functions from within that suite, in addition to all the flows they would get with our regular B2C Shopify connectors. Last, but certainly not least, the latest release includes a NetSuite connector for Microsoft Outlook.

00;37;43;03 - 00;37;59;25

Unknown

Seems to me like that could be huge for sales teams. Would you mind giving us, our audience some details around that? Yeah, we're very excited about this one because we agree the impact for sales teams will be big. Many of our customers sales teams use outlook for their daily communication, but their messages stay within their own email.

00;37;59;25 - 00;38;24;15

Unknown

They're invisible to their colleagues who are collaborating on these opportunities now or in the future. So they spend tedious effort manually inputting data necessary to ensure the important details from their email get tracked in our Outlook Connector. Solves for that enables users to automatically create customer contact and opportunity records in that sweet and sync messages, file attachments calendar events to these records, thereby enhancing NetSuite's CRM capabilities.

00;38;24;18 - 00;38;53;29

Unknown

It gives the sales teams the visibility they need within NetSuite, saving them the tedious manual effort of entering important details themselves. We're continuing to build on the connector and add more features beyond message attachment and event sync, and more to come about that in the next few months. Finally, for customers considering NetSuite Connector, what would be the key takeaway or the most significant benefit they should expect from implementing this solution in their organization and are there any best practices that they should keep in mind?

00;38;54;01 - 00;39;13;13

Unknown

One of our big value props, in my opinion, is time to value. Our goal is to offer seamless and robust integrations that are easy to set up and manage, while handling a wide range of use cases. With these, we try to cover the most popular platforms and all the most common features for those platforms so that our customers don't have to really deal with the complexities of building integrations, which is a lot of work.

00;39;13;15 - 00;39;30;01

Unknown

By offering this in-house, our customers can leverage the expertise of necessary to handle both their ERP as well as their integration needs, so they can go to just one team for any implementation or support needs they may have. And in terms of best practices, what I think our customer should really keep in mind is that our integration comes with that suite.

00;39;30;01 - 00;39;51;08

Unknown

Best practices built in. We were all on board with the SuiteSuccess. And now we've kept those philosophies in our product. This is one of the reasons we've been able to simplify implementations for our connectors. I think the most important and best practice to keep in mind for our integrations is to sync data from the system of record for that data.

00;39;51;08 - 00;40;13;11

Unknown

So as an example, given NetSuite is the system of record for inventory data, we'll naturally sync that out of that suite to our connected platforms. Syncing data from the system of record ensures you're using the systems as intended, and greatly simplifies your business processes, and therefore your integration flows. And reducing this complexity ensures you're up and running faster with less errors in both your manual and automated processes.

00;40;13;15 - 00;40;37;04

Unknown

So overall, following this best practice I think has a big impact. This is fantastic and very exciting. Thanks so much for joining us. Of course. Thank you. So many new capabilities for our customers to look forward to in 2025.1. And the best part is they can access this new functionality and start reaping the benefits right now. Want more information?

00;40;37;10 - 00;40;58;01

Unknown

We've got you covered. If you want to dive deeper into any of the new functionalities we covered today, we have links to our release blogs as well as a bunch of other valuable resources in the description of this episode. Thank you so much to all of our guests for joining us today, and a big thank you to all of you, our listeners, for tuning in.

00;40;58;04 - 00;41;21;01

Unknown

I also wanted to shout out our editing team over at Oracle that does such a great job. We are incredibly grateful to them. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe for more episodes just like this one. Bye! 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.

00;41;21;01 - 00;41;23;25

Unknown

Integrated system to help you run your business.

Learn more about NetSuite Analytics Warehouse: https://tinyurl.com/2pynh34j Tune in for the next installment of The CFO Agenda series featuring Brian Hogeland, CFO of Packer Fastener, a distributor of fasteners and industrial supplies. Brian and cohost Ian McCue kicks off the podcast episode by discussing Brian's background and what brought him to the CFO role [2:06]. They then delve into the biggest challenges Packer Fastener has faced as it has grown [11:07] and its use of NetSuite [16:09]. They discuss talent and the workforce and how automation is playing a role in the future of finance and accounting [23:40]. Brian and Ian conclude the episode by discussing CFO priorities for 2025, including incorporating AI [30:47]. --------------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;04;10 - 00;00;34;10

Unknown

Hey, listeners. Welcome to the NetSuite podcast. I'm Megan O'Brien, co-host of the podcast. And today we're continuing our CFO agenda series with Brian Hogland. Brian is the CFO of Packer Fastener, a rapidly growing distributor of nuts, bolts and other industrial supplies. Brian sits down with NetSuite Podcast co-host Ian McCue and walks him through his background and how roles across finance and technology prepared him for the C-suite.

00;00;34;13 - 00;01;01;01

Unknown

He then explains how Packer Fastener has grown beyond its roots as a regional distributor, despite supply chain and inflationary challenges, as well as the specific framework its use to drive the business forward. The CFO explains how NetSuite helped the company manage its growing operations, which includes actively sourcing 30,000 items and specifically the value it's gained from NetSuite Analytics Warehouse.

00;01;01;04 - 00;01;32;08

Unknown

With new technologies demonstrating potential to reshape the work of the finance team. Brian shares what skills he thinks will remain critical for finance professionals. He also offers perspective on what he looks for when he's hiring and how leaders can attract top finance talent. Brian then sheds light on Packer Fasteners' ambitious plans for 2025. He walks through potential challenges, technology initiatives, and how he's preparing his team to leverage new AI tools.

00;01;32;11 - 00;01;39;29

Unknown

Stay tuned, because all of that and more is coming momentarily.

00;01;40;02 - 00;02;06;19

Unknown

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 in next week 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;06;21 - 00;02;27;16

Unknown

So, Brian, let's start with a bit about your background and who you are. Was your plan always kind of to work in finance and hopefully become a CFO one day? It was. I graduated from college in the mid 90s, and the internet was this really cool thing that had just popped at the time. So I was graduating, graduating with a degree in accounting.

00;02;27;19 - 00;02;48;11

Unknown

Really had been talking to a lot of CPA firms to come in and join them, but was really intrigued by this whole World Wide Web concept. I went into my library my last semester of college and actually bought tickets for the Grateful Dead. Actually sent in, like a money order back in the day. But, so it was this whole new, exciting environment.

00;02;48;14 - 00;03;11;02

Unknown

And, so while I had the, obviously the discipline and the skills to understand finance was really intrigued by this technology part. So a couple of years after I started my career with Arthur Andersen, I moved over into a technology consulting role and really just really had a lot of fun with that, embraced it. And spent probably the next ten years of my career doing technology.

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

Unknown

So it kind of went from being, you know, aspiring to maybe be a be like a CPA partner doing audits and tax work to maybe really hands on technology roles and, probably around 2010, I moved back into like a, typical finance role. So that's where I kind of started to do more of the progression, the typical financial leadership roles.

00;03;32;02 - 00;03;52;08

Unknown

And I guess why? Why did you decide to go back into kind of the traditional finance accounting side after being more on the technology side for a while? Yeah. You know, the sort of there's an analytical aspect of all the financials. Right. So, that was intriguing. The company I had worked for at the time had just onboarded a significant, Oracle, actually, ERP solution.

00;03;52;11 - 00;04;09;29

Unknown

And they were looking for somebody with a finance and technology background to kind of help stabilize that, then implementation. And it was a chance for me to really get back into the finance world, but still not have to stretch too far. Same company. Obviously, you know, the solution, the technology solution. So the kind of trading hats within the same company.

00;04;09;29 - 00;04;33;13

Unknown

And I'd be lying if I said, you know, getting the pager calls at 3:00 in the morning because somebody couldn't log in. I might have had a factor in that switch too. But yeah, I definitely, I liked the stability and the analytical nature of the finance teams. And as you kind of reflect on some of those, those past roles and your progression through your career, were there any particular positions that you feel like really helped you prepare to where you are today?

00;04;33;13 - 00;04;54;00

Unknown

Running, running a finance department for a really fast growing company. So I worked for a large transportation company, for 16 years. And as I moved back into that financial role that I mentioned earlier, there's certain stops along the way there that, there was a corporate accounting role focused really on an month and closed process. And, it's a large, large company.

00;04;54;00 - 00;05;19;02

Unknown

So you have to really gather a lot of different teams together and make sure that executing on a financial close, there's are very specific tasks that have to happen in certain orders. So kind of that monthly closed discipline and moved from there into an internal audit leader role. So focusing on, you know, the audit and compliance and risk management working with our board of directors at the time.

00;05;19;04 - 00;05;47;29

Unknown

We went through an initial public offering during my time with that, and I'd been through several IPOs in the past, but it was really you know, working with bankers and lawyers and, auditors through that process. And then again, a next evolution. That same company was into a more, like a segment controller role where you're focusing a lot on here's how a business financial person looks at, you know, things, who's partnering with some of the, the, or business leaders.

00;05;48;02 - 00;06;09;10

Unknown

How are they analyzing a problem? How can I help support that? Giving some insight into, you know, budgeting and, you know, tracking how you're doing against some of the metrics and the goals, doing financial modeling for specific scenarios. Those all were progressively, important, I think, in getting me to the spot where I'm at today. It sounds like you kind of added like more and more strategic targets, right?

00;06;09;10 - 00;06;26;07

Unknown

When you're talking about things like IPOs and modeling. So you start to move beyond. Well, first it was accounting. Then you started moving into tech. And then you kind of pair them together and started taking these more strategic type, I guess, roles and responsibilities that that kind of fair to say. Yeah. And some of it was, opportunistic.

00;06;26;07 - 00;06;44;22

Unknown

Some of it was intentional. You know, there's a point where you're looking at, for example, as we became a public company, having to manage the Sarbanes-Oxley function as a, as a public company, not something I was super interested in. Anybody that's listening to this that's been through a Sarbanes-Oxley environment knows that it's not exactly the most efficient use of our time.

00;06;44;24 - 00;07;05;06

Unknown

And so really trying to move into more of a how can I how can I learn more, how can I help grow a profitable business? That was a very intentional move. Awesome. And moving into your current role at Packer Fastener. First off, can you just share with our listeners what Packer Fastener does? Sure. So, Packer Fastener is one of eight different entities within our umbrella.

00;07;05;08 - 00;07;26;26

Unknown

The specific business buys and sells nuts and bolts. Kind of a very simply stated, we, we have a warehouse full of threaded fasteners. And we, sometimes move into safety equipment or paint and, types of, of solutions are we have banding or we will, drop vending machines at our customers and fill those vending machines.

00;07;26;26 - 00;07;54;03

Unknown

We have vendor manage inventory, customer manage inventory, some consignment. But it's really out there, trying to support electrical contractors, HVAC contractors, manufacturers, a lot of construction. So as we've seen, a lot of increase in construction spend, in particular the last couple of years, we've been able to, help our customers grow in that space as well. So it's really focused on, again, sort of low tech nuts and bolts and, you know, really growing environment.

00;07;54;06 - 00;08;16;04

Unknown

And Packer Fastener has been around since 1998. So you guys have, you know, pretty fairly lengthy history at this point. But the business, it sounds like, is really focused on expanding in the past decade. Could you just talk a little bit about how the company has grown and how it's evolved and in more recent years? Sure. You know, long before I started with the company, there was a real focus around 2014, a very strategic focus.

00;08;16;04 - 00;08;42;18

Unknown

Instead of kind of being a, you know, sort of a small Green Bay, maybe northeast Wisconsin distributor really focused on how can we grow. Our CEO really came with a lot of perspective on trying to provide opportunities for those around him, really focusing on how can we intentionally set bags and what's our big hairy audacious goals? How can we let's sit down and define who we are, you know, what are the markets we intend to serve?

00;08;42;21 - 00;09;01;18

Unknown

We have this concept of flywheel where it's, you know, how can we take different parts of our business day in and day out and feed the rest of it and essentially get this kind of like a flywheel concept? Take that and keep it growing and spinning and making the business faster and better. So it was a very intentional focus around that time in 2014 and over the years.

00;09;01;24 - 00;09;22;29

Unknown

I joined the company in 2021. So focusing on growing the business significantly. So it's a pretty, pretty lofty goals each year and revenue and volume growth. We meet with a strategic coach four times a year. He helps us get realigned on our we call them rock sets. We kind of subscribe to the whole traction iOS, enterprise operating system model.

00;09;23;01 - 00;09;49;11

Unknown

So we focus on our rocks. Each quarter we set new rocks, we check in. How are we doing on those rocks? And all of that really feels that's this, this strategic growth. So there's be hangs that you said, you know, years ago sort of just happened. You know, it isn't really a surprise when you set through your goals and look back and say, gosh, we ticked off, you know, 95% of those three year goals that we said, so it's a really intentional, disciplined focus that's I think has really helped our organization grow.

00;09;49;13 - 00;10;05;08

Unknown

And what does that look like for the business? Like you said, Packer fasteners just kind of one arm, maybe the biggest arm, but it's one arm of the business. So what does that how is, you know, how does big goals, and that kind of strategic thinking manifested in terms of what the business is now versus what it was five, ten years ago?

00;10;05;10 - 00;10;23;08

Unknown

Yeah, I would say it's when you put yourself in a position where you're setting goals to grow and then holding yourself accountable and your intention, people on that growth, people start to think differently about it, right? So you wake up and, you know, every day you come to work and maybe you're focused on, I have this goal and everything gets reset at zero on January 1st.

00;10;23;08 - 00;10;43;24

Unknown

And so how am I going to grow and meet that, that annual goal? How am I going to meet these monthly goals and breaking those really big goals down into smaller, more manageable pieces for each department? So this whole traction iOS model has this, this notion of setting strategic goals up here, but then you sort of cascade down to the different teams, ultimately all of them supporting that larger goal.

00;10;43;27 - 00;11;01;22

Unknown

And that's really it's taken time. But it was very methodical rollout. Now all the different departments we have our weekly all times we call them and people that are familiar with this model, they get the all time concept group. So we have weekly all ten meetings where you focus on, hey, what are my rocks for the quarter? What are the company rocks?

00;11;01;22 - 00;11;22;27

Unknown

How am I supporting all of that? It's, very intentional, very, very methodical. I like that, yeah. Yeah, it's very interesting. What have been some of the biggest challenges for, for the business as you've grown quickly and expanded and, and kind of thought differently about what the business could be? Certainly people. People as our biggest challenge, we believe strongly I mentioned the flywheel earlier.

00;11;22;29 - 00;11;47;19

Unknown

That starts and ends with people. So we want to hire we want to retain a really good people. We have a very strong culture, really focused on 12 different specific, pieces that we call swagger. And we want people that are really subscribe to that, that buy into that. And so finding people out there that match that, that's that swagger and then finding enough of them to continue growing the business.

00;11;47;19 - 00;12;07;23

Unknown

Right. So all of our growth is geographic growth. It's on landing new customers. It's supporting more vendor manage inventories. A lot of that requires people to do that. And so really finding the right people that match our skill sets, our culture is probably one of the biggest challenges. And then the flip side of that is we have really good retention.

00;12;07;23 - 00;12;26;00

Unknown

So we have a, kind of a running joke here that it's harder to get into our company than it is to get into Harvard. Number of job postings that we have, where the applications we have for a particular job posting, there's fewer people that are accepted or hired when you compare it to Harvard's acceptance rate. So we take a lot of pride in that.

00;12;26;00 - 00;12;46;09

Unknown

We have a lot of really good people, and we really try to nurture that. But in order to keep the company growing, we have to keep feeding that funnel, right? So that's a significant challenge for us. A lot of the other challenges we've had, supply chain issues that were really prevalent during Covid and all the inflation that came with, those are pretty significant items we had to navigate through.

00;12;46;12 - 00;13;04;12

Unknown

And even just on the horizon year was a lot of talk about tariffs and, you know, sort of globalization. We're, you know, anticipating some of those things that are going to continue to be challenges for us. So like a lot of companies, we had to sort of dust off the playbook and figure out, you know, inflation really hasn't been an issue for 40 years, but we got to hear how to deal with it.

00;13;04;12 - 00;13;18;21

Unknown

How are we going to manage that? How are we going to make sure we're still profitable. So you have to pass along some of those price increases to your customers. Those aren't always fun conversations. And how do you so those have been really, really important goals for us to make sure that we continue on and continue to expand.

00;13;18;24 - 00;13;38;00

Unknown

What do you think was key to continuing to grow through that, to grow through especially some of the supply chain and inflationary challenges? Like, what approach do you think worked for you guys? Yeah. So a lot of it was, we have good relationships with our vendors. We, several key vendors that supply us a good chunk of our inventory that we, that we buy and sell to our customers.

00;13;38;03 - 00;14;03;17

Unknown

And so maintaining those positive relationships, being really open and candid with, with our vendors and vice versa, them really having these strong relationships where there's really honest feedback that's been really, really helpful, navigating, keeping, you know, consistent partners and sort of flipping around back and forth. Maybe you'll find the lowest price here, but in the end, you maybe not necessarily getting the same delivery, the same timelines, pricing can fluctuate all over the place.

00;14;03;17 - 00;14;20;00

Unknown

If you when we focus on those strong relationships on the vendor side and also on our customers, we want to make sure that we have that open dialog with the customers. We want to go in and explain to customers that, hey, this is you know, this is the nature of the world right now. We can't get the inventory that you're looking for.

00;14;20;03 - 00;14;41;12

Unknown

Without increasing the cost of that. And, you know, thankfully, it was a pretty prevalent topic during the Covid timelines. A lot of customers understood that that wasn't something that we liked having to do, but it was important and everybody was dealing with it. Yeah. No, I think those are our great tips and great general advice for getting through something like that.

00;14;41;15 - 00;15;04;12

Unknown

And last question that's kind of focused on you, I guess. But what is your typical day look like? What's kind of consistent on a day and day basis. And what maybe is less predictable or changes by the day? Yes. So in my role as CFO, it generally varies, as you would expect, day by day, even, you know, obviously with a month in focus, we the first couple days of the month tend to be focused on trying to wrap up the prior month.

00;15;04;12 - 00;15;25;05

Unknown

But, we have a pretty strong focus on not scheduling a whole lot of meetings on Mondays and Fridays. That allows us to focus on sort of digging in and getting work done. We have a a GSD and get stuff done, you know, type of culture. And you can't just spend your entire week in meetings. You have to have time to, to get in and, and drill into the details and figure out what's going on.

00;15;25;05 - 00;15;44;02

Unknown

So Mondays and Fridays tend to be pretty good. We can focus on those, whether it's quarterly rocks. Maybe doing a deep dive on a topic can be building on a model. My typical day will start. I'll come in and analyze our cash position in any given day. And how are we doing with that? What are big, wrinkles that are coming on the horizon, trying to just assess where we're at?

00;15;44;04 - 00;16;00;27

Unknown

Tuesdays through Thursdays tend to be a lot of focus on our L10 meetings that I mentioned earlier, where we meet with the different departments, maybe sync up on outstanding issues, try to, you know, collaborate on some of our rock, some of our goals, and, really just hey, what are you running into? What are some things we need to be aware of?

00;16;00;27 - 00;16;21;24

Unknown

Let's cascade information throughout the company so that we can all anticipate, you know, when something happens. That's a pretty typical day. Awesome. And shifting a little bit to technology and your use of NetSuite since Packer Fastener is a NetSuite customer. First off, just how would you summarize how Packer Fastener uses NetSuite? Yeah, I would, I would say that.

00;16;21;24 - 00;16;44;27

Unknown

Net suite is our one source of the truth. We've got all of our financials, our inventory, sales, and purchasing all that detail lives in that suite. We've got about 400,000 items in our inventory. So the nuts and bolts and, you know, all the different equipment or, product that we buy installed for our customers. Any given point, there's about 30,000 of them on the shelf and our different distribution centers.

00;16;44;27 - 00;17;06;06

Unknown

So that's a lot to manage. And that suite really gives us a good way to harness all that. We use the CRM functionality for maintaining our customer relationships with all of our sales orders and NetSuite, which flows to the WMS Warehouse Management. When the orders get picked, we use the purchasing modules, for ordering stock from our vendors.

00;17;06;08 - 00;17;29;02

Unknown

Of course, all the financial operations in the back end. So we integrate interface to our. We have a third party transportation management system where our freight business manages all of their load data. We built an interface between that system and that suite. So there's data flow in there. We use some API integrations with a number of SuiteApp integration plans.

00;17;29;04 - 00;17;49;25

Unknown

So our sales tax, our corporate card spend management, we use U.P.S. for our shipping. So it's really that sort of hub where all the data gets collected, the different processes almost entirely will flow soup to nuts through NetSuite. So it's really just that, that main core system or not. Yeah. So obviously you're using that to it for, for a lot of stuff.

00;17;49;27 - 00;18;13;03

Unknown

Any particular features or modules that stand out to you as especially valuable or maybe like better than, systems you've used in the past, something that NetSuite does better kind of pleasantly surprised you. Yeah. I mean, certainly for the cloud and the availability on a cloud solution, there was something that we certainly hadn't had here in or in my prior, you know, points in my career was the main ERP system, a cloud solution.

00;18;13;06 - 00;18;33;19

Unknown

So that's really helpful for us, the sort of the App Store functionality. Like I mentioned, the suite apps, we can take a third-party solution, kind of like we would load an app on your phone, you can load these apps. And this prebuilt customization, probably the most impactful I think is shortly after we went live with our implementation, we started to poke around.

00;18;33;22 - 00;18;56;19

Unknown

It was probably 15 months ago. How can we start to utilize or play in this artificial intelligence, machine learning space? We're looking at other tools that weren't in NetSuite, but really sort of focused on that specific niche. And around that time, I actually had attended SuiteWorld and, in Las Vegas and heard the pitch on NetSuite Analytics Warehouse.

00;18;56;21 - 00;19;27;22

Unknown

So signed onto that about a month later, ran through the implementation. We aligned with that earlier this year, and that's been really helpful for creating visuals on our business. Analyzing budget versus actuals, doing KPI analysis. It's easy to harness that data quickly, build on a, you know, whether it's a graph or, you know, a table or just, massaging all this data and sort of ad hoc, but also creating these regular, repeatable analytics that will pop up.

00;19;27;22 - 00;19;49;21

Unknown

And just recently in the, the, the ability to take those graphs or KPIs and drop them on your NetSuite home dashboard that then it was made available for us. So that's been a really nice add on. In addition to the core of. NetSuite, it's giving us we're using some predictive capabilities in there focusing on potential customer churn.

00;19;49;24 - 00;20;13;23

Unknown

We're looking at inventory stock outs, trying to just starting to scratch the surface on pricing optimization within the tool. So, it's been a great fit for us for a lot of different reasons. NetSuite by Oracle. The number one cloud financial system is everything you need to grow all in one place. Inventory, HR, and more to make better decisions faster so you can do more and spend less.

00;20;13;28 - 00;20;19;05

Unknown

See how at netsuite.com/pod.

00;20;19;08 - 00;20;51;24

Unknown

And just digging into a little bit, would you say it's giving you access to analytics you simply didn't have before? Is it just easier to get, you know, the numbers that you already cared about? Yeah. One of the cool things that the NSA, of course, you know, pulls over data from NetSuite ERP, but it also will allow you to either upload like a large just a CSV upload you can or there's connectors with, I don't know, dozens and dozens of different solutions like Google Analytics or Salesforce or, you know, lots of different pieces that will just connect up the box.

00;20;51;27 - 00;21;12;01

Unknown

So it allows you to pull non-NetSuite data and then merge all of that together in your analytics. So besides, you know, we wanted a lot more budget to actual KPIs and kind of graphs and visuals in NetSuite. So that gave us the ability to do that where we're incented in the company to how we're doing against our budget.

00;21;12;01 - 00;21;29;16

Unknown

So of course that's a big focus. People log in every morning. That's one of the things they want to see. And that Suite Analytics warehouse gave us that capability to build those visuals. Again, doing that ad hoc analysis where you say somebody is asking me this question or maybe a business user has a particular question that's very deep in the data.

00;21;29;16 - 00;21;49;06

Unknown

They can really just take NSA and build out a visualization quickly. Just kind of drag and drop all the data, run some filters on it. And also you've got this really insightful analysis that you can use to manage your business. Yeah. That's awesome. And zooming out a little bit from that suite and just thinking about technology, more, more big picture.

00;21;49;11 - 00;22;16;11

Unknown

What role do you see technology playing in the overall success of a packer fastener? I think we're looking at continuing to find ways that we can harness the data. We really want to be more efficient. We want to continue to grow significantly, but we recognize that we can't just hire people, so we can't hire people in a linear fashion compared to what our revenue growth is, particularly in our back-office functions.

00;22;16;11 - 00;22;37;20

Unknown

We need to be more efficient. We need to support the growth of that business without hiring an army of people to do it. And so our technology, roadmaps really focus on that. The efficiency artificial intelligence is starting to play a role in all that. And digging into AI specifically, how do you see that changing the finance function specifically?

00;22;37;20 - 00;22;58;17

Unknown

Is it just a way to, like you said, not grow headcount at the same, same rate as the business is growing? That's definitely part of it. Yeah, for sure. And it doesn't just extend to the finance teams we're finding. I mentioned earlier some of these predictive models. So the customer churn we can get after well, we noticed this customer maybe is trailing off on some of their purchasing.

00;22;58;19 - 00;23;17;16

Unknown

We can get that in the hands of a salesperson that can then reach out to the customer and see if there's any issues that we need to address. Or is there an opportunity. Maybe there's some variation in their business. There's, again, proactive nature of the AI allows us to do some of that. There's potential, inventory stock outs.

00;23;17;16 - 00;23;32;21

Unknown

So but based on your trends, it, you know, we expect that you will need this much inventory on your shelf based on the lead times. It looks like there might be a stock outs. You might want to advance that purchase another 2 or 3 days earlier so that you're not without the stock for your customers. So there's some of those.

00;23;32;27 - 00;23;55;03

Unknown

Obviously the efficiency is important, but also then trying to be more strategic about how we approach a customer or a purchase that can really enhance us. So I want to move into some questions about kind of talent in the workforce as, as your CFO. So you know what that looks like in the finance function. One thing that's obviously been happening for quite a while at this point is more automation across accounting and finance.

00;23;55;05 - 00;24;19;16

Unknown

What do you think the future of these functions will look like with increased automation, AI, all these things that are either here or coming on the horizon, I have a standing topic in, in my financial term where I asked my team to bring in items they've seen. It's been out there for about 5 or 6 months now. I've had this on a standing agenda item, and I'm asking them to bring in what have you seen in the AI space?

00;24;19;18 - 00;24;52;20

Unknown

How is that something that will impact either our day-to-day jobs or things even outside of AI, outside of work or, you know, your personal life? How was I going to impact those? So the goal that is really twofold. One, that we can be on the forefront and maybe capture something that's new out there that that really might enhance our business, make us more profitable, more efficient as a team, but then additionally trying to get folks comfortable with this instead of being scared about this, this coming wave of artificial intelligence or technology is what's embrace it.

00;24;52;20 - 00;25;23;24

Unknown

Let's see what it's doing. Let's make ourselves better. Let's not be surprised by these advancements here. And in the extent that we're looking at signals out there, we can again be positioned to not just be afraid of what it's going to do, but capitalize on it. And so your thought is, if your staff can kind of understand on this and what it can do for them and how it could help them, that can help lessen some of that fear about what does this mean for my job or my future 100%, you know, and that's you're going to have that a lot of times with any kind of change management, this is

00;25;23;24 - 00;25;56;04

Unknown

obviously a huge impact. And, you know, if you're reading a lot of the information out there, it's not farfetched to think that a lot of this will, you know, replace some of the work that we do today. And I expect it will. But trying to be intentional about that and assessing that and then talking about it as a team, and you can say, hey, look, this is going to do maybe our variation in our flux analysis on our financials, maybe there's a generative tool out there that will allow us to just do that by typing in what happened with our, you know, with our pal this month.

00;25;56;09 - 00;26;17;25

Unknown

That takes away some of the work that somebody is doing. But then we can redeploy that time into other areas. Maybe higher value, more important, building on the profitability of the business. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. As you think about the transition and things changing, what skills do you think are really going to become must haves for people that that work in finance or accounting?

00;26;17;28 - 00;26;47;10

Unknown

Yeah. Analytical skills. And I mean that might seem like an obvious answer because a lot of financial work has always been analytical. But the folks that have been in financial functions that have just been used to, I'm going to enter this transaction and I'm just, you know, I'm going to type in a transaction and I'm going to you know, write a manual check, you know, like a physical check, things like that, that they've been in this, you know, maybe low tech financial roles, really embracing an analytical mindset, intellectual curiosity.

00;26;47;10 - 00;27;11;15

Unknown

So again, mentioned, you know, what's going on in the AI world, but approaching it with, you know, curiosity instead of fear? I think those are really important creativity to craft prompts when you're trying to utilize, like an AI tool, like a, you know, chatbot or Claude, even with a NetSuite, some of the generative AI functions, how can I max Mize the information that this tool is going to present for me?

00;27;11;15 - 00;27;43;01

Unknown

And if I need to be creative about how I craft that question or that query to the model, you need that that intellectual curiosity, the creativity. They're really focusing on efficiency, mastering data. Right. Anybody who's got a really strong background with Excel or if the, you know, sort of the advanced features of Excel, a lot of the formulas and data manipulation people that have those skill sets will translate well into the world, I think, you know, capitalizing on the efficiency of AI.

00;27;43;04 - 00;28;03;10

Unknown

So you mentioned earlier how competitive it is to get hired at your company. When you're looking to hire someone in your department, in the finance department, what are the skills you're looking for? Is it that same stuff you just mentioned? Pretty much. Are there any talent gaps you see right now that you're like this is a priority for me because this is a gap I need to fill in my broader team.

00;28;03;13 - 00;28;28;15

Unknown

Yeah. There's a little bit of as we increase, there's again, as we continue to grow in our geographic footprint, there's some skills that will help support that. So a multi-state payroll, multistate, you know, sales tax, things like that are important. But ultimately, I think somebody who's proactive versus reactive is important as I'm analyzing, you know, if I needed to hire somebody MIT team, I'd rather not report yesterday's news.

00;28;28;15 - 00;28;53;15

Unknown

I'd rather influence and inform decisions as they're being made instead of just sort of, you know, scorekeeping and distributing the box score at the end of the game. I want to be able to influence. Those are really skills I would love to see in folks that are looking at hiring. So, you know, whenever we talk about the workforce and talent and finance, it just feels like it always comes back to the shortage, because for years now, there's been a shortage in this, this field.

00;28;53;15 - 00;29;10;09

Unknown

It's obviously something people talk about a lot when it comes to this. Are there any strategies, or approaches that you've found to be really effective in attracting and retaining, the right people that are going to help, you know, help your business do the things it needs to do and deliver real, real value as a department. Yeah.

00;29;10;09 - 00;29;29;16

Unknown

When I think about why people leave jobs or why they stay, I think certainly, you know, a balance of everybody's got a personal life and nobody wants to, you know, work 20 hours a day. So if some of that is just sort of basic, we want to make sure that people leave. We've got a pretty good rate here of folks, you know, packing up their desks by 4 or 5:00 at night.

00;29;29;16 - 00;29;54;17

Unknown

And it's pretty quiet here. There's really not a whole lot of work on weekends, or nights. So finding that that balance, you know, a lot of these tools we talked about earlier can help manage that, I think providing opportunities for folks to grow. And in a company like ours that's growing so rapidly, there's a lot of maybe I want to switch hats, maybe I want to try a different role or a different team, you know, giving that opportunity.

00;29;54;20 - 00;30;17;06

Unknown

For people that are there on the team here again, trying to treat people fairly, trying to have a fun working environment, trying to compensate people, fairly. All of those are important, I think, to retaining and attracting folks on my team. And do you feel like the automation and embracing technology that you've talked about that can also help pull people in because they're like, oh, I'll be doing more exciting work here.

00;30;17;06 - 00;30;37;02

Unknown

This sounds more interesting than my last job, because, you know, I won't have to do a lot of these manual, mundane things that, that I might have had to do at my last company. Do you feel like that can help pull people in? Yeah. I mean, those are the people that are really embracing that are definitely people that that I would love to hire because they're going to just buy right into the approach out of the gates.

00;30;37;02 - 00;30;56;17

Unknown

Right. They're going to be hungry for it. They're going to, you know, look, in that that intellectual curiosity that I mentioned, they're going to embrace that as a way to enhance their career and the company. And then to wrap up here, I wanted to ask some questions about 2025. It's right around the corner. And we'll be 2025 when, when people listen to this.

00;30;56;24 - 00;31;19;28

Unknown

But as as a CFO, what are some of your top priorities for 2025? So we continue, as a business, we have very significant growth plans for 2025. We recently wrapped up our strategy sessions, where we establish our three-year plan and some very high-level goals for 2025. So, again, as you and I are speaking here, we're working through our budgeting process.

00;31;20;00 - 00;31;39;17

Unknown

And that includes, you know, mapping out we have really large revenue growth and that needs to be supported with a lot of different expansions in various parts of the business. So maybe it's hiring folks, maybe it's, finding new geographic locations and supporting that. So a lot of that is, you know, cash is a big thing for us.

00;31;39;19 - 00;31;59;26

Unknown

So in 2025, we're actually rolling out additional cash management tools, both things with the Net suite. You know, we're looking for some of the some of the enhancements that are probably be there early in 2025, but also some of the, maybe offline models that we're doing to capture some of the not just what is cash flow like for the next week or two, but what does cash look like?

00;31;59;29 - 00;32;21;25

Unknown

You know, for the next three years? And as we anticipate what our capitalization models are, we want to make sure that we've got good numbers and then try to hold ourselves accountable for them. I mean, cash, cash and cash flow is important for obvious reasons, I guess. But why? Why is that so central to your mission? Is it thinking about how much cash are we going to have to put back into the business, and then what can we potentially do with that?

00;32;21;25 - 00;32;37;16

Unknown

Is it that type of thinking that that drives, you know, the focus on, on what does our cash flow look like, not just like you said in the near term, but years down the line. So interest rates, of course. Yeah. Serve as more of an issue over the last two years. Right. So that's, that's a big portion.

00;32;37;17 - 00;32;55;19

Unknown

If you're going to borrow money to fill your growth, you're going to be paying, an interest on that or anticipating additional drops in the interest rates here over the short term. But we expect higher rates for longer. So focusing on efficient use of our cash really will help us, be able to, to take all of the growth that we want.

00;32;55;19 - 00;33;12;29

Unknown

So when you think about when you grow a business as fast as we're growing, we have, you know, a significant growth in our receivables. And then, of course, with the interest rates, you know, a lot of customers want to take longer to pay you. So you're fronting on a lot of cash to your customers. And of course, the vendors don't love you paying them longer.

00;33;12;29 - 00;33;37;29

Unknown

So you have to manage that, that the difference here between fronting cash out for receivables and paying your vendors, there's a, you know, a delta there. So it's the cash conversion cycle. It's inventory. As we expand the number of offerings in our catalog, but also we're popping up different regional distribution centers. And each one of those requires, you know, an initial investment for shelving and the, you know, initial inventory in those locations.

00;33;37;29 - 00;34;06;13

Unknown

And then as their customers grow within those distribution centers, their inventory grows. So all of that is cash that you front in out there too. So really as you think about growing a business, cash really is key. You really can't grow without that positive cash flow. So focusing on that as the data and the tooling gives us insight into that allows us to maybe measure and be intentional about how we grow, where we grow, when we grow.

00;34;06;16 - 00;34;23;11

Unknown

It's all just tied together. And as you think about the new year, are there any particular challenges, or just things that you're, you know, trying to proactively keep a keep a close eye on that you kind of had top of mind of, here's things we need to look out for. I guess as, as we start the new year.

00;34;23;13 - 00;34;42;04

Unknown

Again, I'm really focused on the, a lot of the tariffs. So as we're recording this, we're just after the election here. And so there's, you know, a lot of conversation around will there be a lot of tariffs, particularly as we move into 2025 that will significantly impact, a lot of our inventory that we purchased, you know, originates overseas.

00;34;42;06 - 00;35;17;01

Unknown

So we're analyzing how that can impact our business. Again, we expect that there will be a healthy growth in the economy in 2025. We'd love to ride that wave as much as we can. We find our value proposition to our customers is something that continues to resonate with. A lot of our Midwest work ethic is something that our customers really appreciate and value, and so trying to capitalize on that to one make our customers more successful, provide opportunities for our employees, and then to grow our business, our more profitable growth in our business.

00;35;17;03 - 00;35;34;24

Unknown

Those are all very, very important to us in 2025. So we've talked about AI quite a bit today, but, I want to specifically ask about reskilling and upskilling with your workforce. Are there any plans to try to do some of that, try to, you know, up the skills of your workforce to adapt to these new tools, this new environment?

00;35;34;26 - 00;35;56;17

Unknown

And what might that look like if you do have some of those initiatives? Yeah. So some of it's a little more organic with that. I mentioned we're talking about AI tools within my team. And so a lot of that as we just, we just onboarded a new vendor, Bill, tool where, you know, does the OCR captures the bill, and, you know, there's artificial intelligence baked into that, right?

00;35;56;17 - 00;36;14;11

Unknown

It's analyzing. You can link a vendor bill with the purchase order, analyze all the line items on there. So having the team embrace that is really just it's not like an intentional you're going to go to this course to learn about this. You spend some time onboarding, maybe working with the vendor to kind of get set up there.

00;36;14;11 - 00;36;36;15

Unknown

But then it's, you know, small little day to day wins to capitalize on that. But then, you know, supplement all of that is focusing on what are some other tools out there, maybe, you know, how are you using maybe something like Microsoft Copilot or ChatGPT to enhance what you're doing on a day-to-day basis? Those are specific areas we'd like to focus on as a team.

00;36;36;15 - 00;36;59;11

Unknown

We're really, again, trying to stretch Microsoft's Copilot. We're looking to stretch NetSuite's AI tools. How can we use those? And as we learn about opportunities, it's sometimes it's a deep dive to say, okay, this is what it's doing. Maybe you're sitting around pinging ideas about, creative ways to use this new tool. Within our team, we have an AI think tank that meets, twice a month to talk about, hey, what are we seeing out there?

00;36;59;11 - 00;37;17;13

Unknown

And this is more of a leadership strategic level, but what are we seeing out there in the AI space? Are there things that we need to, we're looking at creating an AI one on one course where we can deploy that out to our teams and have them just to start to understand some of the key terms concepts, look for them to embrace that.

00;37;17;15 - 00;37;35;07

Unknown

I think that's enterprise wide, a great way for us to look to employees, to embrace it. Yeah, some really good, good ideas there. On, on what you can do to try to bring your workforce up to speed. So another thing that people have been talking about for years is the CFO role becoming more strategic and just more prominent.

00;37;35;07 - 00;37;53;22

Unknown

Right. It's a more, I think, a more prominent position in the C-suite. What are you doing or what are you maybe focused on continuing to do to increase alignment and collaboration with other leaders across other departments in the business? Yeah. So, we had a strategy session. We again, we have an annual strategy session, like a two-day session.

00;37;53;25 - 00;38;10;18

Unknown

And it was in the fall of 2023 and had a really a great conversation with the rest of the leadership group. And they said, some of the folks that made it'd be really helpful to meet with you on a, on a one on one basis, on a regular cadence. So we set those up, you know, late into 2023.

00;38;10;18 - 00;38;25;19

Unknown

You know, we've been on and essentially for about a year now. And that's a great way for us to what we'll meet in. We call them huddle rooms with a TV. And you have a screen and you start to look at some of the data, some of the financials you start to talk about, hey, how are you seeing this evolve?

00;38;25;19 - 00;38;51;12

Unknown

Or you just really that, that really open dialog? I think we all approach those conversations with some humility to say, you know, is there things in my team that we can that we can improve on to make ourselves more efficient? But and sometimes it's taking, you know, past experience where I've seen this work at other companies and maybe introducing that to some of my peers as a way to make their teams more efficient or focus on, you know, tracking against schools, things like that.

00;38;51;19 - 00;39;12;21

Unknown

So everybody kind of brings that humility to the conversation. You meet on it regularly. And I think, it's been really fruitful. It's been really good for us to have those connections. Can you share any specific benefits or results of like, you know what, what's come out of those conversations and that kind of intentional collaboration? Yeah. So things like, metrics, you might know.

00;39;12;21 - 00;39;38;26

Unknown

So we really track statistics in the organization. And that was something really that was fairly new when I joined the company is let's specifically track certain key metrics. You know, the focus on like the number of, sales folks that we have on our team or just the number of employees in general. And how are we managing or assessing maybe our revenue per employee or revenue per salesperson, or maybe our profit per our efficiency within certain functions in the team?

00;39;38;26 - 00;40;03;23

Unknown

You know how effectively are we utilizing the workforce? Those are all areas that we've gotten a lot of traction on, and not just measuring what it is today, but maybe we set a plan. And if we want to meet this particular budget objective, we need to stick to a particular plan and timeline. So maybe we hold off on hiring another person because we don't necessarily have the revenue to support that.

00;40;03;23 - 00;40;22;12

Unknown

And just a lot of really good dialog to set a plan, monitor against it and then take action. And when it comes to technology, any specific technology initiatives that you have in mind or at least are considering for 2025, or any goals for what you want, maybe existing technology to be able to do in the next year?

00;40;22;15 - 00;40;42;15

Unknown

Yeah, we are on the front end of implementing an EDI solution, which is, not exactly groundbreaking technology, but for us, it's important, as we're hearing a lot of our customers that are looking for that as a way to, again, be more efficient on their end, you know, provide more timely, consistent data flows. So that'll be an initiative or using one of the.

00;40;42;15 - 00;41;08;07

Unknown

NetSuite called plug ins to utilize that EDI. We think that could really be an improvement for us and for our partners. Great. And, Brian, as we wrap up here, any final thoughts or takeaways for other CFOs, for aspiring finance people, for anyone out there trying to run a business successfully? Gosh, I don't know that I have the perfect wisdom, just humility.

00;41;08;10 - 00;41;36;25

Unknown

Intellectual curiosity. Those are key attributes of a finance leader. And just trying to focus on people and efficiency. I think those are going to serve any, any CFO. Well, awesome. Well, thanks so much for the time, Brian. I really appreciate it. You bet. And thanks. I always find it fascinating to hear about the inner workings of a fast growing, highly successful company such as Packer Fastener, and we're so lucky that Brian was willing to provide that peek behind the curtain.

00;41;36;27 - 00;41;56;28

Unknown

I think there's a lot of business leaders who could learn from the framework that's powered Packer Fasteners' rise the intentional approach to setting and then tracking strategic goals with the help of a coach is one part of the business approach that could help a lot of different companies, but I want to thank Brian for joining us on this episode of the podcast.

00;41;57;01 - 00;42;24;13

Unknown

I also want to thank our editing crew at 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 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.

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.