The NetSuite Podcast

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/    

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

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].

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

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: probono_ww@oracle.com   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

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

Learn more about NetSuite 2024 Release 2: https://bit.ly/3W7y8vS   Cohosts Ian McCue and Megan O'Brien delve into NetSuite 2024 Release 2, with several guests joining to cover the latest and greatest features included. To start off, Lisa Schwarz, senior director of product marketing at NetSuite, gives an overview of the second release of 2024 [1:29]. She covers some of the most exciting updates in 2024.2 and what customers can expect. Tanios Boudames, product marketing manager for NetSuite SuitePeople, joins next to give a breakdown of new capabilities in NetSuite's human resource management system [11:46]. Peter Bouyonan, an industry solution advisor at NetSuite, delves into the new supply chain and manufacturing features [24:48]. Lastly, Jessica Turnpenny, group manager of product management at NetSuite, goes over new SuiteBilling capabilities and how they will help subscription businesses [37:41].   Follow Us Here:   NetSuite 2024 Release 2 Homepage: https://www.netsuite.com/portal/products/newrelease.shtml   Oracle NetSuite LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLI Facebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFB Instagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIG Twitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW   #NetSuite #NetSuiteERP #NetSuiteSuitePeople   --------------------------------------------------------   Episode Transcript:   00;00;00;00 - 00;00;23;08 Hey NetSuite Podcast listeners. Thanks for tuning into this episode breaking down our newest NetSuite release. I'm Ian McCue, senior content marketing manager at NetSuite and I'm joined by NetSuite's business and finance editor Megan O'Brien. The summer means it's our second product release of the year and that NetSuite 2024 Release 2 is packed with a bunch of awesome new features.   00;00;23;10 - 00;00;50;19 Absolutely. NetSuite 2024.2 brings new functionality across SuiteBilling, SCM mobile and Manufacturing mobile, and SuitePeople, as well as new suite apps to help businesses run their supply chains more efficiently. We have four different guests breaking down the latest capabilities in detail and explaining how they benefit you. And if you're looking for more, our sneak peek release blogs are now live on NetSuite.com.   00;00;50;22 - 00;01;16;19 See the links in the description of this episode to check this out. Stay tuned because we have a lot of exciting updates that you won't want to miss. You're listening to the NetSuite Podcast where we discuss what's happening within NetSuite, why we're doing it, and where we're heading in the future. We'll dive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts.   00;01;16;21 - 00;01;41;22 Unknown We'll also feature customer growth stories discussing the ups and downs of running a company and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale. Kicking us off is Lisa Schwarz, senior director of product marketing at NetSuite. Lisa will provide a quick preview of what's new in 2024 Release 2, including an updated user interface that customers can now try out for the first time.   00;01;41;25 - 00;02;13;00 She also gives a refresher on how all our customers receive the update and what they can do to prepare for it. So, Lisa, we have a few guests joining us to dive deeper into the latest functionality in NetSuite 2024 Release, 2. But could you give us a quick overview of what's new? Absolutely. So we have a slew of new supply chain and manufacturing features ranging from NetSuite WMS to some of the mobile applications, as well as some hot new suite apps related to supply chain.   00;02;13;03 - 00;02;36;11 Unknown We'll be diving into the new SuiteBilling capabilities, which is our subscription management and billing solution. And finally, you'll hear about some of the new things going on with our HR solution, SuitePeople. So what's one feature in this release that you're kind of especially excited about or maybe see as a big win for our customers? Wow. That's a tough one.   00;02;36;11 - 00;03;02;06 It's like, you know, picking your favorite child or, you know, they're all special in their very own ways. From a practical point of view, it's great to see the evolution of Bill Capture, which we continue to fine tune the ML models that help increase the accuracy for matching the invoices to your NetSuite record.   00;03;02;08 - 00;03;39;13 So that's increasing productivity for our users. There's also Ship Central, our packing and shipping solution. With this release, there's some great new functionality to automatically find the best shipping rates, which is pretty cool so that's saving users time but also money. So those are great. But I actually wanted to talk about a feature that's included in the release, but it's an early release status, so going into that a little bit.   00;03;39;15 - 00;04;05;05 What we're going to be doing with this release is to start to roll out some of the new Redwood UI elements to NetSuite. Users may have heard about this already from Oracle, which they have all their applications using this or you actually may have seen it in some of the Oracle applications that we make available to NetSuite users like Planning and Budgeting or Analytics Warehouse.   00;04;05;08 - 00;04;37;06 Those two solutions have already the Redwood UI design system applied. So what you're going to see in NetSuite are changes like fonts, icons, and colors applied to various pages. There's no functionality changes, no changes to workflows. It's strictly an aesthetic, you know, user interface change. One thing to note and to understand is that this new UI won't be turned on by default.   00;04;37;09 - 00;05;01;11 You'll need to go in and change the preference settings to do that, but your admin can usually do that. It's a great way just to start to become familiar with this. We're going to see more pages updated over the next few releases with more of the design elements applied and at some point it will become the default UI of NetSuite.   00;05;01;14 - 00;05;27;04 But it's just starting and that's what I think is really exciting. Yeah, very cool stuff. And if someone wants to learn more about Redwood UI and maybe, you know, what might be might be changing a little bit, just an appearance in NetSuite. Where could they go to learn more about that? As usual, with all the stuff in every new release we'll have details in the release notes.   00;05;27;06 - 00;06;07;16 But we're also planning to start rolling out over the next few months some added communications and tools that users can use to become familiar. So you should be seeing some blogs on this. We're actually trying to line up a speaker for the podcast at some point soon down the road. So lots more to come on this. Awesome. And I wanted to quickly touch on kind of the logistics of the NetSuite release for any new listeners, any customers who have maybe not been through this before or those that maybe just need a refresher.   00;06;07;16 - 00;06;35;18 So how does NetSuite deliver all these new features that you covered to users? Yeah, it's actually still to this day, as many times we've been doing it, it's still super cool to watch it from the other side of getting it applied. The process and everything. But to remind everybody, we do two releases a year, all of our customers, which right now we're at 38,000+ customers receive the updates.   00;06;35;21 - 00;07;13;04 Everyone is on the same release using the latest and greatest version of NetSuite. So this is our second update of the year. With the release, accounts will be updated between mid August through July. That's the span of the rolling upgrade window. Each customer is assigned a date and a time that their NetSuite account will be updated. The date and the time of your update will be published in the new release portlet on your NetSuite dashboard and your NetSuite admin will also get an email with this information.   00;07;13;07 - 00;07;48;11 If for some reason this time doesn't work for your company, you can change the date and time of the update via the CSM tool within NetSuite. Again, something pretty fast and easy that your admin can do. So on the day of the update, you do not need to install or do anything. Everything is automated. Accounts will go offline during the update time, which is scheduled for about a four-hour period, but most of the updates happen in 60 minutes or less.   00;07;48;14 - 00;08;09;02 And it sounds like there's not a whole lot for customers to do, which is obviously a good thing. But what can customers do to prepare for this update? Yeah, like I mentioned, this is all automatic, but we definitely encourage users to become familiar with what's in the release and to try it out in a release preview account.   00;08;09;04 - 00;08;43;28 So while accounts are updated automatically and all customizations that you may have done to your account come over with the update, it's great to test things out using your own data, workflows, integrations, and customizations just so there are no surprises. I know I don't like any surprises, so for those of you who are not familiar with the release preview account, this is a special test account test environment that clones your production account with the new release functionality in it. It's free.   00;08;44;05 - 00;09;12;24 Unknown You just need to have your NetSuite admin requested, but definitely encourage to, as we used to say, test drive before you go live. And other than this podcast, how else can customers learn more about 2024.2? Yeah, lots of ways to engage and learn more. So the first thing you can do is read about this sneak peek blogs.   00;09;12;28 - 00;09;37;04 You can read about the enhancements in the sneak peek blogs on NetSuite.com, as well as the release notes. The release notes go into a ton of details on each of the new features and capabilities. There's also training videos that are made available in SuiteAnswers that you can watch on selected new features and enhancements.   00;09;37;06 - 00;10;06;04 Another way, we encourage you to talk with your account manager about what's new, kind of what they're recommending you. You may want to pay a little special attention since they know your environments a little bit more. So engage in some conversations with your account manager. We've got some upcoming webinars that you could also, if you know, kind of seeing is more of your thing rather than reading.   00;10;06;07 - 00;10;37;03 So we have a new release features webinar coming up actually just a few days after this webinar—this podcast goes live so you can sign up to watch that to participate in that webinar July 24th. Or if you can't make that it's available, it will be available to watch on demand. And there's also another follow-up webinar coming up in early August about release readiness.   00;10;37;05 - 00;11;03;10 So this is a little different webinar. It's not going to go into details on the actual features, but more about giving you tips on how to get ready for the release, like using the release preview account, which I just mentioned, creating test plans. And then there's also an opportunity to learn about some of the services that we have available that you may want to look at to help with release readiness.   00;11;03;12 - 00;11;38;08 And then last but not least, you know, we've got SuiteWorld coming up. So that's happening in Las Vegas, September 9th through the 12th. We've got over 200+ sessions, seminars, hands-on learning and training that cover a lot of the new capabilities, not only from this release, 24.2, but also from the previous release, 24.1. So lots of different ways to learn about the release depending upon your, you know, how you like to learn and get up to speed on things.   00;11;38;11 - 00;12;05;13 Well, lots of cool and exciting stuff to look forward to there. So thanks for walking us through it, Lisa. Thanks again. Happy to. SuitePeople, NetSuite's human resource management solution, saw several new features in NetSuite 2024 Release 2. Joining us to discuss how these updates will help companies better manage their workforce and associated costs is Tanios Boudames.    00;12;05;13 - 00;12;33;22 Product marketing manager for NetSuite SuitePeople. For those who are not aware of NetSuite's HR solution SuitePeople, could you give them an overview? Yeah, of course. So SuitePeople is part of NetSuite's DNA, right? It works seamlessly with the rest of the platform. It's NetSuite's comprehensive human resources management system. So it's designed to streamline, automate a lot of the complexities that HR   00;12;33;23 - 00;13;20;16 Teams and processes kind of face. And it offers a robust set of tools for managing core HR business processes. That's like keeping employee records, running payroll, providing benefits, understanding performance of different teams, scheduling and optimizing workforce scheduling and planning, and really by integrating with the NetSuite ecosystem and being a part of it, you can really enable your business to better manage your workforce by having real-time insights, by having real-time analytics that drive better decision making because SuitePeople is with NetSuite on the same platform and it really allows customers to better understand how they can manage their workforce and optimize it.   00;13;20;19 - 00;13;47;24 And all of this is leveraged because again it's connected to NetSuite. So we can connect to SuiteAnalytics, SuiteProjects, into all the different products that NetAuite offers. And in terms of SuitePeople itself, diving deeper in, in terms of what the modules and products are that we sell, we have US payroll, we have HR administration, we have workforce management, then we have performance management.   00;13;47;26 - 00;14;21;06 So these are really covering the key areas that HR folks are going to be looking for in terms of providing HR functionality to their business. And this helps really provide a unified solution for finance and HR. And one solution with NetSuite. Well, why is it important to have a finance and HR system that is unified? Yeah, so there's really three areas that I always think of when it's when it's having a unified solution, especially when it comes to two really key lines of business like finance and HR.   00;14;21;09 - 00;14;43;19 The first is collaboration, right? It's being able to understand when you want to make changes to your workforce, you want to either hire people or you want to maybe readjust learning or reskill employees or understand where you need make shifts in the workforce in terms of scheduling and teams is understanding how you can collaborate as a HR person with finance or vice versa.   00;14;43;25 - 00;15;29;00 Understanding the budget, understanding the costs from the finance side, and then understanding things like the goals of performance. The really HR information location, how you can readjust workforces to be optimized to improve revenue performance of the business. The second is having actionable insights. And this kind of goes on the collaboration is not just being able to talk to each other, but also as a finance person or as a HR person being able to pull up dashboards, things like headcount analysis, things like performance across teams or across individuals or across products, being able to forecast different aspects with workforce management, being able to understand, okay, I need like three people here at this at this   00;15;29;00 - 00;15;54;22 job site for this season, right? Because it's going to be very busy. We need more staff. So being able to have those actionable insights from across the business, whether it's coming from projects or whether it's coming from the HR side as a finance person is really important. And that's what SuitePeople provides with the unification of it being together, And the last having the data integrity—data integrity and data privacy.   00;15;54;22 - 00;16;17;27 So everything is in one solution. You're not having to import data sensitive data like employee data across different solutions. It's all within NetSuite, all protected. So this helps with the privacy, the security aspect, and integrity. You're not having a duplication of data, right? There's one source of truth. You go to NetSuite, you check an employee record, you check the financials, etc. All of it is within one system.   00;16;17;27 - 00;16;49;15 So that's really the power of having a unified in those three, those three elements, really. How has the product grown to support NetSuite Financial customers over the years? Yeah, so SuitePeople really started out with payroll and HR. And we've grown and added performance management and workforce management and really grown alongside with our customers. I mean, now we process 6 billion annually in payroll transactions across thousands of employees.   00;16;49;17 - 00;17;18;23 We're really very much ramping up as we'll see in this update around workforce management and around providing a more complete HR solution for our customers with things like benefits offering and benefits solution. So, it's very much improved with financials as well and NetSuite Financials to offer deeper analytics reporting features that help understand workforce costs, productivity, products for locations.   00;17;18;23 - 00;17;47;01 Right. Being able to understand where the demand is from the business and that comes from things like compensation, planning, performance management, and understanding the whole aspect of your business. And at the same time from an employee side is we've really grown to offer employees more of the self-service capabilities. So this is allowing them to get the information that they need at the time that they need it without having to go to HR.   00;17;47;03 - 00;18;11;00 Unknown Without having to bother or really distract business folks from focusing on more impactful tasks to ask for things like a payslip or to ask for things like time off or schedule around that. Right. So workforce management allows for that. We have the self-service portals in in HR to allow you to access payroll slips, etc. Right. Let's get to the good stuff.   00;18;11;02 - 00;18;43;08 What enhancements are coming to SuitePeople in 2024 Release 2? Yeah. So for workforce management, we have two really key enhancements coming and one of those is around being able to track to multiple time fields, right? So this is going to allow businesses to understand not just by, for example, a location or a team or a product, but to be able to dive even deeper into how employees are spending their time, where are the labor costs coming from?   00;18;43;10 - 00;19;26;03 For example, you are running, let's say, a coffee shop, right? Where are your employees spending the most time? Cleaning, making the coffee, talking with customers, whatever it may be. Being able to log those times across multiple time fields now allows you to understand where maybe you need more support. For example, another is like a contracting business, right? Where you have multiple people working on building a house, people who are doing the platform, the foundation, the concrete, who are building, the paint, the electrical, all the different stuff that you have within a project, being able to map across how many hours are being spent on which item, on which project, on which task is really   00;19;26;09 - 00;19;52;18 impactful for our customers now being able to use that and to map to different fields. And the second is around really enabling compliance for our customers. So being able to ensure that employees take their full break. So this is like a early break prevention enhancement where employees now will take their full break and cannot clock back in until their break is completed.   00;19;52;18 - 00;20;24;24 And this is important for a lot of states that will penalize businesses if employees don't take their full half an hour, hour, whatever the regulation is. So this is a this is really powerful enhancements for the workforce management product we offer customers. And then from an HR administrator viewpoint, we now have a benefits partner so we now can offer customers benefits, enrollment, and brokerage services through our benefits partner, Simply Insured.   00;20;24;24 - 00;20;49;06 Unknown And all of this is within NetSuite. So it's all within the NetSuite interface. Employees don't have to go outside of NetSuite to sign up and to enroll in and benefits. And, at the backend, the payroll is deducted. So any costs that come from an employee signing up for a benefits plan, they can see that reflected automatically in their in their payroll as a deduction.   00;20;49;06 - 00;21;09;06 Unknown And then from a financial standpoint, you can see as a finance person, the GL showing the costs of how much benefits costs, how much each plan even is costing the business, and being able to optimize. Are a lot of employees using this plan? No, but it's also costing a lot. Okay. Maybe we should look at offering other plans for employees.   00;21;09;06 - 00;21;43;12 So that's the two big enhancements or three I guess two for workforce management and one for as a new partnership with benefits that we have in 24.2. How does this help businesses monitor and track rising labor costs? Because that's a that's a huge issue for our customers. Yeah. So for SuitePeople, especially with the workforce management, I'll talk on that because this is really where, as I was saying earlier, it's going to provide visibility into so many different components of the workforce—when they clock in, where they're clocking in to, where they tracking their time to.   00;21;43;12 - 00;22;06;03 So being able to understand the different components of expenses, wages, overtime, anything that they're spending extra time on. So being able to identify cost trends and being able to budget and forecast ahead. So saying, okay, these projects are taking our employees way longer. Or these tasks or this assembly line or this product is taking double the time that it should.   00;22;06;03 - 00;22;42;16 And now we're accruing overtime, let's put more employees on that or maybe let's adjust how we're moving forward as a business and a business strategy for that product or project or offerings and services. Right? So it's going to help businesses really dig down deeper into what labor costs are affecting their growth. And this can happen from so many different fields that are that are within NetSuite of time fields and being able to map to those as an employee when you clock in and being able to say what you're doing at certain hour and time is going to really help businesses monitor and track where their labor costs are.   00;22;42;18 - 00;23;04;20 Now, how do these enhancements help employees and perhaps also help businesses? Anything that you might have not have mentioned so far? Yeah, so I've talked a lot about businesses and the organizational side of it with finance and HR. For employees, there's a lot of great enhancements with this. I mean, it's going to provide a lot greater transparency and access to their HR.   00;23;04;21 - 00;23;45;09 Information. So, for benefits, for example, being able to have that that solution as a business to offer to your employees so that they can access health benefits through their employer is really empowering to them. They're going to be able to enroll and access and view different plans all within NetSuite. Right. So that's really impactful. And again, all the self-service that comes with SuitePeople, right, being able to have the self-service to understand what your pay is, understand where maybe you need to update some personal information to reflect accurately, and being able to request time off, understand your scheduling and schedule within workforce management.   00;23;45;09 - 00;24;10;02 All great, really empowering aspects and enhancements for employees. From the business standpoint, a lot of this, again is streamlining the processes across HR and finance. So what you're doing from the workforce management standpoint with the time fields is understanding, okay, people are clocking in, they're aligning their time to certain tasks and projects. From a finance standpoint, where do we want to adjust the budget?   00;24;10;02 - 00;24;35;17 Where do we want to move forward in terms of adjusting how our workforce is operating from teams to products to focus? Right. And all of this is just really helping HR become more strategic in terms of how they operate and allowing finance to get to gain greater visibility in terms of the costs and how the workforce is operating so they can better optimize budgets and really grow revenue.   00;24;35;19 - 00;25;06;20 NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud financial system, is everything you need to grow all in one place. Financials, inventory, HR, and more. Make better decisions faster so you can do more and spend less. See how at NetSuite.com/pod. Next, we have Peter Bouyounan, an industry solution advisor at NetSuite. Peter will walk through the biggest new supply chain and manufacturing features in NetSuite 2024.2, explaining how they can help businesses reduce costs and increase productivity.   00;25;06;22 - 00;25;32;19 So, Peter, to start, could you just share what are some of the key goals for manufacturers when it comes to production? Sure. One of the key goals in the manufacturing process is really to optimize the inventory levels. What I mean by that is to produce enough to meet your demand without having a lot of excess. So, at the end of the day, you're maximizing output with minimal waste.  00;25;32;21 - 00;26;00;29 And for a lot of manufacturers, what they're trying to do is ensure steady flow of raw material and components. You know, they're trying to streamline their process and just make sure their production time is reduced. They just need the flexibility to be able to adapt to any changes from the demand, like what their customers are demanding or even from production requirements.   00;26;01;01 - 00;26;38;24 And I know in this Release 2024.2, there's some new functionality around aligning supply and demand in NetSuite. Could you could you tell us a little bit more about what we what we've added to support that? Yeah, a couple things actually. Supply planning updates, we've done and there's three new SuiteApps to support that as well. With the supply planning, that's going to give customers the ability to increase their accuracy and control of the supply planning quantities, their minimum order quantities, and their lot sizing.   00;26;38;25 - 00;27;09;12 It's combined now to ensure proper quantities are ordered. So it's really merging the two together. So there's options there that they have at the end of the day that supports the right number of products and raw materials that are available. So that update is done to the supply planning. And then we have a few new SuiteApps that's going to support them as well.   00;27;09;14 - 00;27;47;22 There's NetSuite Supply 360. That's essentially just viewing the manufacturing component requirements when you get the work order, you get you get a visibility of the ability to review the levels of component inventory for upcoming work orders. So that's going to give you a better way to plan as well. It's, you know, Supply 360, so you're getting to see the whole 360-degree view of your manufacturing and the components that are required.   00;27;47;24 - 00;28;09;13 In addition to that, that really complements it as well, is Available to Build. So that's going to give you a view and it gives customers answers to see how many more of an assembly can be produced. It's based on the current inventory, so they're able to see that inventory and then they can see how many we produce.   00;28;09;13 - 00;28;35;00 A lot of times you see those requirements from customers as they have a work order and have certain raw material quantity and they can produce more than what's required since visually, if you can see the machinery is working right. Once you have a set up and you start working, you don't want to stop just because you supported the work order, right?   00;28;35;01 - 00;28;57;01 You have enough to do a work order, but you can go ahead and continue having available to build. You can see that perhaps you can run a little bit more and have that in stock if necessary, as opposed to just shutting down. And then now you have this raw material sitting. So that helps most customers in that regard.   00;28;57;01 - 00;29;24;27 And then very important aspect of everything is the cost, right? So we have a cost variance analysis that's going to take actual cost versus what you planned. So if you have a work order and you know what your planned cost is, now you can run a report to see what that variance and see the actual cost. And that's going to help customers identify, you know, where the actual cost landed.   00;29;25;00 - 00;29;52;20 Are they up or are they down? Great. Yeah, lots of exciting stuff there. And how can our customers access these new SuiteApps? So in general, the SuiteApps are either on the tab or, what I do typically, is search on the global bar for SuiteApps and you can see, view, browse, search for these apps and install them or they can go to SuiteApp.com in the marketplace.   00;29;52;20 - 00;30;19;03 You know, they can visit that in a lot of times if they're already, you know, NetSuite customers, those users can have access directly from the NetSuite instance. And these are at no cost to customers. Right. And are there any modules they need to have in place to access these SuiteApps? So the SuiteApps that we just discussed, those three: Supply 360, Available to Build, and the Cost Variance Analysis are actually free to download.   00;30;19;05 - 00;30;36;21 There is a prerequisite for them. It's Work Orders & Assemblies. And just keep in mind that you can you can check with your account manager and they can they'll help you navigate through it as well. So let's shift gears a little bit and talk about the production process itself and how NetSuite plays into that.   00;30;36;22 - 00;31;04;19 So NetSuite has done a lot of work to make production and warehouse processes executable directly from a mobile device. Could you tell us about new enhancements in this release when it comes to mobile functionality? Just want to go back a little bit about mobile. Mobile apps, they support multiple efforts our customers have been asking for. For one, it's paperless and it's physically flexible, hence the mobile aspect of it.   00;31;04;21 - 00;31;47;02 But you're not tied down to having a desk station for every workstation. And that's why we're putting so much effort into our mobile applications. The SCM mobile, what we've done is put printers that can be grouped into print groups that's going to allow the user to select a printer based on a print group preference so that the user will see a list of printers based on the group they selected. That's going to help them, you know, quite a bit to not be tied down to a specific printer, but then they can select which printer they want to print to.   00;31;47;04 - 00;32;18;10 Hence since it's mobile. In addition to that with the SCM Mobile, you have condition based coloring so you can color data tables and rows. That's going to give the user a quick way to distinguish rows of data. Right. So if you got order released, that may look, you know, could be in green. If the work order is in process, it could be yellow. If it's planned, it's in red.   00;32;18;17 - 00;32;47;19 Just to kind of give you a little bit of visual of what it would look like. And then the Manufacturing Mobile. So the enhancement there is that employees now can clock in and clock out with their badge. So that will provide actual machine and labor time on a specific operation on a step. And then Manufacturing Mobile as well has a GS-1 barcode.   00;32;47;21 - 00;33;19;23 So that's an enhancement to allow you to scan a lot or a serial number. And a big one that our customers have always been asking for is to have like an auto-generate lot or serial number and that's a SuiteApp and it's integrated with the Manufacturing Mobile as well. The third one I mentioned was the quality management and so the capabilities for that.   00;33;19;25 - 00;33;50;20 Unknown Inspection has been enhanced. It's going to give the user more control with like a parent transaction on inventory inspection so they can perform on-demand inspections. This includes like inventory quantities and decimals. And then that's very helpful for a lot of our customers in the food and beverage industry as well. And then there's compliance control, visibility of inspection results.   00;33;50;22 - 00;34;22;21 So that's all going to be it's more of visual information on hand. And then lastly with that is the ability to navigate between inventory transaction and inspection queues. So you're you have now both as well. Great. And could you remind everyone where they can where they can access these mobile apps and if they if they cost anything and what NetSuite modules customers may need to have to use them.   00;34;22;24 - 00;34;47;07 Yeah. So mobile apps in general are available on any iOS or Apple products or Android devices. You know, you can search for NetSuite and download the app. So it's, in general, high level to get the mobile app. But the manufacturing mobile is actually a free bundle. It does require Work Orders & Assemblies. So there is a prerequisite for that.   00;34;47;09 - 00;35;19;18 Unknown The SCM mobile, it's really is a framework which Manufacturing Mobile is built on. But to use the functionality within, you need a manufacturing module license. And then the quality management is also a licensed bundle. And that will require inventory management. So the mobile application is available through the SCM Mobile as well. And then one other area I want to touch on is Ship Central.   00;35;19;18 - 00;35;49;14 So Ship Central helps businesses fulfill orders with packing and shipping functionality. What's new with Ship Central in this release to make those packing and shipping processes even easier? Yeah. So again, I want to go back just a little bit from the last fiscal year. Ship Central in general adds real-time integration to partial shipping carriers. These features, like they give you real time rate shopping.   00;35;49;17 - 00;36;18;27 It's integrated shipping labels. You could do address validation to make sure that you were capturing the right address with, of course, the ability to void labels as well. So that was an enhancement that we've done in the past. And now what we've done, we've got usability improvements. So we added more to this functionality we had with Ship Central, and now you can automatically select the cheapest shipping method.   00;36;19;00 - 00;36;47;20 Instead of having a list and trying to figure out yourself, it will provide you that information. Print return labels. So if you have anything that came through, as we talked about just a minute ago in regards to the quality management and if you see something that needs to be returned, that can be done with the same carrier that came in, or you can choose a different carrier as well.   00;36;47;23 - 00;37;13;22 It depends on the cost factor for you. You can create, print, you can create and print hazmat labels. So those are great, especially for the United States Postal Service or DHL. You know, they have their own standards. So being able to do that, you can comply with their standards and operators can pack items by searching and grouping orders with the wave number.   00;37;13;25 - 00;37;41;01 So that makes it really convenient. Awesome. And how can our customers access Ship Central? What do they need? Or how can they take advantage of some of these new capabilities? Ship Central is great because actually if you have WMS, it would be included with it. Okay. But it's not reliant on NetSuite WMS. So it can be used with or without WMIS and it can be a standalone.   00;37;41;04 - 00;38;10;13 Well, lots of exciting stuff here, Peter, and I appreciate you walking me through it. Thanks to you. Thanks for your time. Now let's take a deeper dive into the enhancements around NetSuite SuitteBilling in 2024 Release 2. We have Jessica Turnpenny, group manager of product management at NetSuite, joining us next to cover how several new pieces of functionality and in NetSuite SuiteBilling will help ease subscription management.   00;38;10;16 - 00;38;52;18 We hear that subscription based business models are becoming increasingly popular. Many businesses benefit from the recurring revenue and increased growth and profitability. But what are some of the challenges that businesses face when they're trying to manage subscription revenue and billing models? Subscriptions have tons of advantages, but when you start having high volumes of recurring billing, it becomes unmanageable unless you're able to automate it, and especially if you have complexities around contract modifications and it becomes really hard and cumbersome for teams to manage all of those changes and make sure that it's accurate and as well.   00;38;52;18 - 00;39;23;12 Revenue recognition for subscription billing is very specific and so it can also be really hard for revenue teams to make sure that the way that they're recognizing their subscription revenue is accurate. And all of those things become more complicated with subscription billing because you're billing in a recurring way, not just a single one-off invoice. So yeah, it can be hard, especially at high volumes. For those who are new to NetSuite or could use maybe a little bit of a refresher.   00;39;23;14 - 00;40;02;16 Can you share some information about SuiteBilling? What is it and what does it do? So SuiteBilling is NetSuite's subscription billing module. And what SuiteBilling does is it really simplifies and automates the management of subscription billing for our customers. The module supports one-time, recurring, and consumption or usage based billing. So we support flat, tiered volume based pricing, you know, time based discounts, free trials, you know, all of the complex sort of ways that you can price in a subscription model.   00;40;02;16 - 00;40;27;13 And we try and simplify that for you to be able to configure it using subscription plans. You can make that really easy to get up and running in a repeatable and accurate way. We automate all of those recurring type subscription invoice bulk runs for you so that can all be automated. It doesn't have to be triggered in any way.   00;40;27;16 - 00;40;55;12 We also have a really powerful rating engine that supports the proration associated with contract modifications as it has a really deep integration into our Advanced Revenue Management module. So it also seamlessly integrates with that module and automates all of your revenue recognition for your subscriptions. So it's a really powerful subscription billing product. We hear a new feature is coming.   00;40;55;12 - 00;41;41;09 To Suite Billing in release 2024.2. What can you tell us about it? So in 2042.2, we are releasing our prepay with drawdown feature, and that feature will allow our customers to receive a pre-payment for whatever specified amount and then be able to draw down or consume that prepayment across multiple subscription lines within that subscription. So you could take a prepayment for a set amount and then as your customer consumes whatever subscription products you've sold them, as they consume those, it burns down the prepayment.   00;41;41;11 - 00;42;10;19 Now, how would customers be invoiced in cases like this? So they're invoiced for the prepayment upfront. And then subsequent invoices, they see how that prepayment is consumed or burned down, and they also see what's left of that prepayment. So that initial invoices is that upfront payment and then subsequent invoices are more communications on how that's being consumed.   00;42;10;22 - 00;42;39;02 Unknown What's exactly the added benefit of being able to record prepayment within SuiteBilling? So being able to record those prepayments allows our customers to speed up cash flow. You have an upfront prepayment and but you get the advantage of consumption billing. So traditional usage based or consumption billing is billed in arrears as it's used. And customers really love that model.   00;42;39;02 - 00;43;07;18 So you get the advantage of that consumption based model, but you reduce the risk by having the upfront cash flow. So you have that prepayment in hand and then it can be reupped or you can recharge that prepayment at any time. So it does give customers that reduced risk with the great, you know, consumption-based model. And perhaps the most important question, how soon will customers be able to use this feature?   00;43;07;20 - 00;43;35;03 It is being released in our 2024.2 NetSuite release. It's all very exciting. Plenty of new capabilities for our customers to look forward to in 2024 4.2. And the best part is they can access this new functionality and start reaping the benefits right now. For sure. I really appreciate how the new features cut across so many areas.   00;43;35;06 - 00;43;55;09 Financials and accounting, supply chain manufacturing, HR, There's something here for so many different roles across a variety of companies. And a quick reminder, if you want to dive deeper into any of the new functionalities we cover today, we have links to our release blogs in the description of this episode. Thank you so much to all our guests for joining us today.   00;43;55;11 - 00;44;16;27 Thank you to all you listeners tuning in. I want to shout out our editing team over at Oracle, who does such a great job, and we are incredibly grateful for them. Don't forget to rate for view and subscribe for more episodes just like this one.    00;44;16;27 - 00;44;30;24 Tune in for developments, stories, and insights into the benefits of one integrated system to help you run your business.

DESCRIPTION: Learn more about the AI functionality embedded in NetSuite: https://bit.ly/4b2OICx In this episode of the NetSuite Podcast, Oracle NetSuite's Brian Chess, Senior Vice President of Technology and AI at Oracle NetSuite, joins co-host Megan O'Brien. The episode starts with Brian giving an overview of his role at NetSuite [1:09]. They then discuss the business challenges NetSuite is looking to solve with AI [2:53]. Brian describes NetSuite's unique approach to AI, including its use of Oracle technologies and NetSuite's inclusion of AI in its suite of applications for no additional cost [6:06]. They delve into how NetSuite is keeping the human in the loop of AI applications [10:01]. They end the podcast by talking about the future of AI at NetSuite and where people can go to learn more [13:54].Follow Us Here:Brian Chess: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bchess/ NetSuite Artificial Intelligence: https://www.netsuite.com/portal/products/artificial-intelligence-ai.shtml Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #AI #NetSuiteERP #Automation #Technology

Learn how NetSuite OneWorld can help you manage your global business in a single ERP solution: https://bit.ly/4b6Ua8h In this episode of the NetSuite Podcast, Guidecraft's Dana Schultz, NetSuite Data Content and IT Support, and Kristin McCue, Director of IT and Distribution, joins co-host Megan O'Brien. The episode starts with an overview of Guidecraft [1:59]. They then discuss Guidecraft's previous system, where it fell short, and its adoption of NetSuite [5:14]. They dive into Guidecraft's use of NetSuite OneWorld to run its global business [8:50]. The Guidecraft team illustrates their use of NetSuite Analytics Warehouse to pull in data from multiple sources to run quick, on-demand reports [12:21]. They conclude the podcast by discussing the benefits of having needed capabilities in a single suite [16:15]. Follow Us Here:Kristin McCue: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristin-mccue-2b312140/ Dana Schultz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dana-schultz-9b0897173/ Guidecraft: https://guidecraft.com/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #NSAW #NetSuiteERP #GlobalBusinessManagement #InventoryManagement

Learn about all the new capabilities in the recent release of NetSuite's leading professional services automation (PSA) system.

Discover how NetSuite Learning Cloud Support can empower your business: https://bit.ly/3ICXEmu In this episode of the NetSuite Podcast, I.B. Stottlemyer, senior principal instructor at Oracle NetSuite, joins co-host Megan O'Brien to discuss NetSuite dashboards. The episode starts with a discussion of I.B's role at NetSuite and then dives into the Learning Cloud Support or LCS program [1:41]. I.B. introduces the topic of dashboards and why they are so important to cover [4:38]. He then delves into why NetSuite users should have multiple dashboards [17:33]. I.B. and Megan discuss what the future of dashboards look like in NetSuite, as well as some best practices and things to avoid [26:26]. They conclude the podcast episode with a discussion of how NetSuite users can learn more about setting up their dashboards [39:32]. Follow Us Here:I.B. Stottlemyer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/instructorbob/ NetSuite Learning Cloud Support (LCS): https://www.netsuite.com/portal/services/training/suite-training/learning-cloud-support.shtml NetSuite LCS Live Events: https://mylearn.oracle.com/netsuite/search/?filters=Format-Live%20Session NetSuite SuiteConnect: https://www.netsuite.com/portal/company/events/suiteconnect-2024.shtml NetSuite Learning Labs: https://www.netsuite.com/portal/company/events/learning-lab.shtml NetSuite Explorer Pass: https://mylearn.oracle.com/netsuite/story/explorerpass Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW

Uncover deeper insights into your business with NetSuite Analytics Warehouse: http://tinyurl.com/3rrub2d4 Mark Chuberka, NetSuite Administrator for home goods retailer BirdRock Brands, appears on this episode with cohost Ian McCue. Mark kicks off the episode by explaining what goods BirdRock sells [1:52] and how the company has expanded to three warehouses and 50 employees [3:55]. He shares how Amazon provided the business's big break [4:42] and how its previous systems struggled to support the Seller Fulfilled Prime vendor [7:01]. The NetSuite admin walks through immediate benefits the ERP provided [9:00] and then highlights how NetSuite Connectors have simplified sales on online marketplaces [14:48]. After that, he dives into why the company added NetSuite Analytics Warehouse [20:22], how the retailer uses the application [22:41], and what distinguishes it from native NetSuite reporting capabilities [26:59]. Mark also details how the entire suite drives efficiency across the business [31:51] and the value BirdRock has gleaned from NetSuite Learning Cloud Support (LCS) [33:28]. He wraps up by sharing the retailer's future plans [38:03].Like what you learned? Subscribe Now! http://bit.ly/NetSuiteYouTubeFollow Us Here:Mark Chuberka: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markchuberka/ BirdRock Brands: https://www.linkedin.com/company/birdrock-brands/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #NetSuiteERP #NetSuiteAnalyticsWarehouse #BirdRockBrands #onlineretail

Dig into new features including AI-powered tools, Enterprise Performance Management, Field Service Management, and more in NetSuite 2024.1.

Rayburn Electric Cooperative Controller Stephanie Weeks joins the show to share more about the Texas electric utility and its journey with NetSuite

Learn how NetSuite Analytics Warehouse can advance your company's data usage: https://bit.ly/44b0ico In this episode of the NetSuite Podcast, Jeff Hampton, senior manager of reporting and analytics at Terlato Wine Group, joins co-host Megan O'Brien. The episode starts with a discussion of Terlato Wine Group, including its origins and current state [1:50]. Jeff then speaks about his role at Terlato around reporting and analytics and his use of NetSuite Analytics Warehouse or NSAW [5:53]. He covers the biggest immediate benefits seen after the company's NetSuite implementation [14:15]. Jeff covers the improvements Terlato has seen to reporting since starting on the platform [19:39]. He delves deeper into the company's choice to adopt NSAW and their usage of the technology [21:20]. Jeff concludes the podcast by discussing Terlato's future plans and NetSuite's role in them [31:37].Follow Us Here:Jeff Hampton: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffery-hampton/ Terlato Wine Group: https://terlato.com/s/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #NSAW #NetSuiteERP

NetSuite founder and EVP Evan Goldberg shares his highlights from SuiteWorld 2023, walks through new product announcements, and shares his key learnings after 25 years.

Discover how NetSuite Learning Cloud Support can empower your business: https://bit.ly/3ZkBHQB In this episode of the NetSuite Podcast, NetSuite Learning Cloud Support program manager Jessica Jennings joins co-host Megan O'Brien. The episode starts with a discussion of Jessica's role at NetSuite and then dives into the LCS program [2:00]. Jessica covers the new Guided Learning offering from NetSuite [8:35]. She also delves into NetSuite MyLearn and the LCS Live sessions [11:11]. Jessica and Megan talk about LCS' planned presence at SuiteWorld 2023 and what attendees can expect from a learning perspective [16:08] and how attendees can prepare to get the most out of their experience [22:12]. Jessica describes the remote learning options for those who cannot attend SuiteWorld in person [24:36]. Megan and Jessica conclude the podcast episode with a discussion of how NetSuite users can best take advantage of the various learning opportunities that NetSuite offers [26:12]. Like what you learned? Subscribe Now!Follow Us Here:Jessica Jennings: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicahannusch/ NetSuite Learning Cloud Support (LCS): https://www.netsuite.com/portal/services/training/suite-training/learning-cloud-support.shtml NetSuite Guided Learning: https://www.netsuite.com/portal/services/training/suite-training/netsuite-guided-learning.shtmlNetSuite MyLearn: https://mylearn.oracle.com/netsuite/homeLCS Live: https://learn.oracle.com/ols/live-events/netsuite/85171 SuiteWorld 2023: https://www.netsuitesuiteworld.com/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #SuiteWorld #ERP #CloudERP

Sarah Rynja, a system architect and project manager, joins the podcast to discuss the implementation of NetSuite at global boutique bridal brand Grace Loves Lace. Sarah starts by diving into the Grace Loves Lace brand, including its commitment to ethical, sustainable gowns [2:16]. She details how the company's rapid growth led to its adoption of NetSuite [8:02] and its use of NetSuite today to enhance the customer experience [11:42]. Sarah explains the custom record the company has put in place through NetSuite to track customer preferences and feedback on gowns and how that has enhanced the customer experience [16:40]. Sarah explains how NetSuite OneWorld has helped ease the complexities of running a global business [18:47]. She then delves into how NetSuite's demand planning capabilities has helped Grace Loves Lace stay ahead of unpredictable demand fluctuations [25:26]. We then conclude the podcast by discussing the future of Grace Loves Lace and its technology priorities [32:05].Follow Us Here:Sarah Rynja: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahrynja/ Grace Loves Lace: https://graceloveslace.com/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #NetSuiteCRM # NetSuiteERP #NetSuiteOneWorld

Danielle Brodsky, director of IT at supplements and beauty products manufacturer Twinlab, joins cohost Ian McCue on this episode. Follow Us Here:Danielle Brodsky: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-brodsky-06aa33177/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #NetSuiteWMS # NetSuiteERP #Twinlab

Learn more about NetSuite 2023 Release 2: bit.ly/3Q15Ce6 Co-hosts Ian McCue and Megan O'Brien cover NetSuite 2023 Release 2, with several guests joining to delve deeper into the latest and greatest features included. To start off, Lisa Schwarz, director of product marketing at NetSuite, gives an overview of the second release in 2023 (1:18). She gives an overview of some of the most exciting updates in 2023.2 and what customers can expect. Rami Ali, a senior product marketing manager at NetSuite, joins to give a rundown of NetSuite Account Reconciliation, including what it is, how it works, and why it's important to businesses right now (8:20). Matt Wisner, a master principal solution consultant at NetSuite, delves into the new supply chain features in 2023.2, including enhancements to NetSuite WMS, Ship Central, and Manufacturing Mobile (15:29). Lastly, Chris Meade, a senior learning manager for NetSuite Education Services joins the episode to talk about Guided Learning, a new learning tool included in all editions of NetSuite going forward (26:44).Like what you learned? Subscribe now!Follow Us Here:NetSuite 2023 Release 2 homepage: https://www.netsuite.com/portal/products/newrelease.shtml Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #NetSuiteRelease

Learn how to dig deeper into your data with NetSuite Analytics Warehouse: https://bit.ly/44b0ico Co-host Megan O'Brien sits down with Tom Kelly, Director of Product Marketing, Management, and Analyst Relations at Oracle NetSuite. Tom starts off the episode by discussing his background as a CFO and CIO and his current role at Netsuite (2:08). He delves into how he has seen the CFO role evolve over the course of his career (5:40). Tom expands on the idea of the CFO as a “scorekeeper” (12:07). He covers how the CFO can lead in tougher economic times and the “adversity quotient” (24:57). Tom and Megan dive into how CFOs can fulfill numerous expectations and competing priorities (28:28) and how they can best equip their finance teams to meet these expectations (36:10). Tom addresses the CFO's position in adopting technology (42:26) and the NetSuite features that can help in the journey (45:44). Like what you learned? Subscribe now!Follow Us Here:Tom Kelly LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tkcloud/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #CFO #CFO #CFOInsights

Find out how NetSuite Planning and Budgeting helps you prepare for the unexpected: https://tinyurl.com/4yavc6esGachina Lanscape Management IT Director Dan World shares the story of one of the leading landscaping services companies in the Bay Area.

Learn more about NetSuite's move to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure here: http://bit.ly/45Sq9Ha Co-hosts Ian McCue and Megan O'Brien team up to interview Nick Mooney, Director of Product Management at Oracle NetSuite. The episode starts with a discussion of Nick's role at NetSuite and then dives into cloud infrastructure (2:24). Nick then breaks down the various acronyms commonly used in the cloud realm, like PaaS, SaaS, and IaaS (4:45) and delves into NetSuite's move to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI (8:51). Nick covers how this transition will benefit NetSuite  customers (13:10) and the expected timeline for all customers to be moved over to OCI (15:35). Nick explains how the move to OCI differentiates NetSuite from competitors in the market (17:30) and OCI's capabilities around AI and machine learning (18:30). He then shares the security measures in place on OCI to protect customer data (21:54), and the podcast concludes with a discussion of OCI's scalability and where people can go to find more information (24:56).Like what you learned? Subscribe now!Follow Us Here:Nick Mooney LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasamooney/ Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Homepage: https://www.oracle.com/cloud/NetSuiteTV Segment on OCI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VK-Avw-XZY&t=4s Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #CloudInfrastructure #Oracle #IaaS #OCI #OracleCloudInfrastructure #ERP

Learn more about NetSuite OneWorld here: https://bit.ly/3OgtUQv Guest host Mike Stiles sits down with Ryonet, a screen printing equipment and supplies company. He is joined by Ryan Moor, the founder of Ryonet. Moor starts the podcast by delving into how he started Ryonet by creating t-shirts for his band and supplying other bands the equipment to create their own (1:18). They then discuss Ryonet's recent growth into five separate companies and NetSuite's role in it (4:15). Moor discusses some of the efficiencies found with NetSuite, including being able to pivot business models quickly (8:20). They go over why Ryonet made the switch from Sage and Quickbooks to NetSuite and how that helped them spin off subsidiaries (11:07). Moor jumps into how NetSuite has helped from an inventory management perspective across multiple warehouses (15:22). They then discuss what's next for Ryonet (19:42). They conclude by speaking to Ryonet's efficiency initiatives in light of massive demand drops and surges during the pandemic (21:48).Like what you learned? Subscribe now!Follow Us Here:Mike Stiles LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikestiles/ Ryan Moor LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanmoor/ Ryonet: https://www.ryonet.com/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #Ryonet #NetSuitePodcast #NetSuiteCustomer

Unlock improvements across your supply chain with NetSuite Supply Chain Management solutions: https://bit.ly/3KYCeSS Chris Benner, a vertical product manager for retail at NetSuite, joins co-host Ian McCue to share ideas on how businesses can better manage their supply chains. Chris touches on the importance of internal and external data in inventory forecasting (3:37) and how economic uncertainty impacts inventory management strategies (8:13). He explains where spreadsheets fall short with demand and supply planning (14:32) before highlighting metrics products companies should watch closely right now (15:43). Chris then breaks down several NetSuite solutions that can help businesses strike the right balance with inventory (20:49), sharing the stories of multiple customers that have seen success with the system (24:07) and where financial solutions like NetSuite AP Automation can help (27:06). With AI dominating the news, he explains potential applications of this technology in the supply chain and how NetSuite uses machine learning (31:02). The retail industry veteran covers common challenges when working with external partners and potential solutions (35:04). To close, he suggests a few supply chain priorities for organizations in the face of such uncertainty (40:22).Like what you learned? Subscribe now!Follow Us Here:Chris Benner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-benner-b991045/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #NetSuiteERP #supplychain #SCM

Learn more about NetSuite Advanced Customer Support (ACS) here: https://bit.ly/3AcJggl Guest host Mike Stiles sits down with Delgado Stone, an industry leader in natural stone products. He is joined by Delgado Stone CEO, Mike Wolfe. They kick off the podcast with a discussion on Delgado Stone as a company (1:15). They discuss Delgado Stone's use of Accumatica and what spurred them to switch from that to NetSuite's more robust ERP system (5:44). Mike Wolfe delves into the criteria he had while looking for a new ERP and how NetSuite ticked those boxes (9:02). They describe their experience with the NetSuite implementation process (16:58). Mike Wolfe then explains the company's use of NetSuite Advanced Customer Support (ACS) and Learning Cloud Support (LCS) and how that direct support from NetSuite helped them get the most out of their solution (20:30). Both then talk about how NetSuite has empowered Delgado's finance team to actually have time to analyze the numbers, not just report on them (27:39). Lastly, they wrap up the podcast with a discussion on how NetSuite is helping them move forward from an efficiency and automation standpoint (34:28).Like what you learned? Subscribe now!Follow Us Here:Mike Stiles LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikestiles/ Mike Wolfe LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-wolfe-57a847182/ Delgado Stone: https://www.delgadostone.com/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #NetSuiteLearning #NetSuiteTraining

Build more efficient, profitable operations with NetSuite Supply Chain Management solutions: https://bit.ly/3KYCeSS Guest host Mike Stiles is back with First Line Technology CEO and President Amit Kapoor and Director of Operations Laura Schwartzkopf. Kapoor starts by breaking down First Line's innovative products for first responders and receivers (2:30). He then details the smorgasbord of disconnected systems the business used (5:26) and how that led to a sluggish fulfillment process, making the need for a change clear (7:09). The CEO explains how NetSuite's reduced need for customization helped it stand out over Microsoft Business Central (9:33), and Schwartzkopf shares how the system ensures a positive customer experience for customers on their worst days (13:52). First Line has also leveraged NetSuite Advanced Customer Support (ACS), and the two recount how that has helped them get the most out of the system (14:45). Kapoor describes how NetSuite has simplified internal operations and opened the door to new possibilities for the business in the future (18:54). He closes by quantifying some of the most impressive improvements First Line has seen with its new ERP system (20:59).Like what you learned? Subscribe Now!Follow Us Here:Amit Kapoor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akapoordc/ Laura Schwartzkopf: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurapeard/ First Line Technology: https://www.linkedin.com/company/first-line-technology/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #NetSuiteERP #FirstLine #FirstResponders

Find out how NetSuite ERP helps CFOs cut costs through automation and better visibility: https://bit.ly/3ZvlPcv Service Pros Installation Group CFO JJ Pace joins the podcast with co-host Ian McCue to break down the company's path to becoming Lowe's largest flooring installer. JJ describes how Service Pros has benefitted from its partnership with large retailers (2:41) and details the company's growth in his nine years there (4:02). After that, JJ digs into the challenges his finance team faced as the company completed more jobs (6:25). He specifically details where QuickBooks Enterprise fell short (8:06) and how he got buy-in for an ERP system (9:35). The CFO explains how NetSuite beat out Sage Intacct (11:16), as well as how the new system saves his finance team time and eliminates rote manual work (12:17). JJ touches on why Service Pros added NetSuite OneWorld (15:31) and the business's other plans for the solution (16:39). He sheds light on what the future might hold for the company, including potentially expanding its partnership with Lowe's (18:11). JJ closes with a few pieces of advice for aspiring finance chiefs (19:57) and explains how he adds value to his organization (20:51).Like what you learned? Subscribe now!Follow Us Here:JJ pace: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jj-pace-mba-12341b20/ Service Pros Installation Group: https://www.linkedin.com/company/service-pros-installation-group-inc./ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #NetSuiteERP #ServicePros

Find out more about the NetSuite Learning Labs: https://bit.ly/3JkjL2o Co-host Megan O'Brien is joined by Reg Singh, Vice President of Education Services and Strategic Initiatives at NetSuite, to discuss the NetSuite Learning Labs. They begin the podcast by delving into what the Learning Labs are (2:42) and how the idea originated at SuiteWorld 2022 (4:13). Reg discusses who should consider attending the Learning Labs (7:55) and gives an overview of a typical Learning Lab day (10:21). They then dig into the curriculum of a Learning Lab and what participants can expect (14:19). Reg and Megan talk specifically about the latest session in New York (18:26). They then discuss why the Learning Labs are important to participate in, particularly in a business environment when companies need to learn how to do more with less (25:20). Reg delves into what customers can expect to gain from these educational events (30:18) and how they can get the most out of them (34:40). The podcast concludes with information on future sessions and where to go to find out more (36:47).Like what you learned? Subscribe Now!Follow Us Here:Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #NetSuiteERP #NetSuiteLearning

Learn more the NetSuite Connector for ecommerce: https://bit.ly/3XNzzOY Co-host Megan O'Brien starts off the podcast by introducing guest host, Mike Stiles, who will be hosting episodes with NetSuite customers to gain insights into their winning business strategies (0:15). Mike sits down with Sterlitech, a company that produces laboratory filtration solutions and equipment. He is joined by Sterlitech president and founder Mark Spatz, director of operations Kristina Morris, and channel account manager Cesar Luna (0:54) The podcast kicks off with a deep dive into what Sterlitech does (1:56). They then talk about the three different systems that Sterlitech was using to run their business prior to NetSuite. (4:20). Sterlitech covers what brought them to NetSuite and set NetSuite apart from other solutions (5:54). Mike and the Sterlitech team talk about how the NetSuite implementation proved to be a better fit than the implementation process at Acumatica, the other solution they were considering (8:18). They then delve into their use of NetSuite, particularly their use of the ecommerce connector (10:37). Sterlitech explains their success indicators for ERP and the benefits they've seen (12:10). They then conclude by discussing where they are going next now that their operations are streamlined with NetSuite (15:15).Like what you learned? Subscribe Now!Follow Us Here:Mike Stiles LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikestiles/ Mark Spatz LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/spatz/Kristina Morris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinashahbazian/Cesar Luna: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cesar-luna-a6a602214/ Sterlitech: https://www.sterlitech.com/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #Sterlitech

Discover why NetSuite OneWorld is the perfect fit for businesses with multiple subsidiaries or multinational operations: https://bit.ly/3Xv1mDQ Lionel CIO Rick Gemereth sits down with co-host Ian McCue to walk through the company's long history and its journey from legacy systems to NetSuite. Rick starts by explaining what's given Lionel, a brand that's manufactured iconic model trains since 1900, staying power (2:11) and why it added a diecast cars line of business a decade ago (4:11). As evidence of the business's evolution, he shares examples of how the company has embraced technology in innovative new products (7:45). Rick then talks about why a new ERP system was the first priority when he took over as CIO of Lionel Holdings in 2010 (11:20) and describes the company's old tech stack (14:00). He explains what made NetSuite the right system for Lionel (16:24) and the benefits it's seen with NetSuite, specifically with NetSuite OneWorld (18:34) and Inventory Management (19:48). As omnichannel took hold, Rick describes how Lionel has adjusted (24:14) and why it switched from Magento to SuiteCommerce Advanced for ecommerce (25:39). The CIO shares how NetSuite Learning Cloud Support (LCS) has helped get new employees up to speed faster (29:07) and the value of NetSuite's self-service reporting capabilities (30:51). Rick closes by detailing Lionel's vision for the future and how it plans to connect with a younger audience (33:21). Like what you learned? Subscribe Now!Follow Us Here:Rick Gemereth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-gemereth-3372b21/ Lionel: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lionel-llc/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#Lionel #Manufacturing #NetSuite #NetSuiteERP

Learn more about the latest CFO.com survey, fielded by Wakefield Research and sponsored by NetSuite: https://bit.ly/3YpaSt4 Host Megan O'Brien, NetSuite business and finance editor, is joined by managing director and head of content at CFO and Proformative, Andy Burt, to discuss the recent CFO.com survey, fielded by Wakefield Research and sponsored by NetSuite. We start by taking a closer look at the background of the survey, including the demographics and when it was fielded (4:42). Andy explains his team's goal in creating the survey and the importance of creating stories based on the data (8:33). We discuss the high-level findings from the survey, most notably the optimistic slant of responses, the increase of resilience and how that translates into the respondents' economic outlook (10:21). We dive into the cost cutting measures planned by companies should a recession occur (17:00). We touch on how small companies are leaning more towards technology adoption to combat their talent issues than their larger counterparts (22:50). Andy explains some of the measures being taken by companies to address inflation (33:08) and spending plans for 2023 (36:17). Lastly, we examine the differences between respondents in companies under $50M in annual revenue versus those with over $250M in annual revenue. (39:36). We conclude with where people can find the current survey and plans for future surveys (42:05). Like what you learned? Subscribe Now! Follow Us Here:Andy Burt LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyburt/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTWSurvey: CFO's 2023 Outlook: https://bit.ly/3YpaSt4 Navigating a Changing Business Environment with Evan Goldberg: https://bit.ly/3YH7DgL #NetSuite #CFOSurvey #BusinessOutlook #EconomicOutlook 

Learn more about NetSuite 2023 Release 1: https://bit.ly/3WgDymw Hosts Ian McCue and Megan O'Brien cover NetSuite 2023 release 1, with several guests joining to delve deeper into the latest and greatest features. We kick things off with Lisa Schwarz, senior director of product marketing (1:15). Lisa gives an overview of the first 2023 release and highlights some of the most salient new features, providing a helpful primer on how the updates are delivered and how to best prepare (2:53). Next, Product Marketing Manager Abby Jenkins delves into challenges customers are facing today with their supply chain (9:27) and how the debut of Ship Central in 2023 Release 1 is designed to address these challenges (13:04). Scott Beaver, senior product marketing manager, then describes the new features around smart financials and operational automation, going in-depth on AP automation (17:42). He explains how email bill capture, vendor approvals and payment automation enhancements (20:09) will help customers. We then move to improvements in project billing, reporting, and Project 360 dashboards for services businesses with Vertical Product Manager Adam Mayo (25:55). Adam lays out some of the biggest trends in services (27:45) and how NetSuite helps to combat issues around project scheduling and budgeting (29:34). He dives into 2023 Release 1 features like project cost-to-cost percent complete (32:35). After that, we discuss updates to NetSuite Analytics Warehouse (NSAW) with Product Marketing Manager Pamela Pierce (36:21). She covers what tends to go wrong in businesses' approach to data and how capabilities in NetSuite's new release help put them on the right path through features like new metrics dashboards and the expansion of NSAW to new regions (40:21). Lastly, Tanios Boudemos, product marketing manager, joins us to discuss the release of SuitePeople Workforce Management (44:40). He walks through how the new solution unifies scheduling, wages, employee engagement, and operational analytics (48:38) and explains the benefits of the workforce management mobile app (51:56).Like what you learned? Subscribe Now!Follow Us Here:Resource Hubhttp://bit.ly/3QYFleL Release Overview Blog: http://bit.ly/3XKWTxf Release Notes: http://bit.ly/3J3uBtC  Release Preview Guide: http://bit.ly/3HhQNiu  2023.1 Feature Highlights Webinar: http://bit.ly/3J4aStL  Release Readiness Webinar: http://bit.ly/3J7xRUT  Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #NetSuiteRelease #NetSuiteUpdate

Discover how NetSuite OneWorld makes it easier to manage your global business: https://bit.ly/3WIX2RO  Reveal Group CFO Darren Cooper sits down with host and NetSuite Sr. Content Marketing Manager Ian McCue to explain why the automation consultancy has seen a surge of business and how it has expanded into a global operation. Darren first explains how Reveal's automation expertise and software help businesses (2:15). He details the typical returns clients see (5:32) and how the company has maintained 50% annual growth for the past several years (8:54). Darren goes on to lay out the company's financial technology challenges when he stepped in as CFO in 2019 (12:33) and why the SuiteSuccess implementation methodology was a big reason Reveal chose NetSuite (17:30). The CFO digs into how NetSuite vastly improved project reporting capabilities for the business (21:27). He explains how OneWorld has greatly simplified management and reporting for a company with a global footprint (22:28), as well as key benefits realized with the revenue management (25:59) and fixed asset management (27:57) modules. As the head of a small finance team, Darren outlines the value Reveal provided by NetSuite Advanced Customer Support, or ACS (29:28), as the consultancy continues to grow. He closes by sharing his perspective on why NetSuite is a strong fit for services businesses (31:35) and what Reveal's future plans look like (36:37). Like what you learned? Subscribe Now!Follow Us Here:Darren Cooper: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darren-cooper-1b9ab526/ Reveal Group: https://revealgroup.com/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#RevealGroup #Automation #NetSuite #NetSuiteERP

Enable your sales team with NetSuite CRM: https://bit.ly/2kun1PY  Host Megan O'Brien, NetSuite's business and finance editor, is joined by the CFO and VP of PharmChem, Shana Veale. Shana kicks things off by explaining her choice of accounting as a major (2:41) and why she ended up getting her master's in accounting, too (4:21). She then dives into her career start as an external auditor and the lessons she took away from public accounting (7:30). Next, we delve into her controller roles, beginning with her position with the National Cutting Horse Association (10:30). Shana also explains her experience with the program Leadership Fort Worth, a class designed to enhance leadership skills and her takeaways from the program (19:05). We jump into how she came upon her role at PharmChem (23:19) and her experience in switching industries, including how her “auditor's mentality” assisted in that shift (29:32). Shana talks about her transition to CFO and how her reporting of KPIs helped her build a relationship with the board (34:40). Shana covers the technology journey of PharmChem to date, including their switch from Quickbooks to NetSuite (38:11). We then dive deeper into how she makes the time to take a more analytical look at the company (46:45) and the metrics she tracks on a daily basis (48:30). Shana discusses the challenges faced by the company at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the influx in demand faced by PharmChem when the federal government temporarily banned urine drug tests (51:38) and future priorities and plans for PharmChem (57:08). Lastly, she covers her advice for aspiring CFOs (59:27). Tune in for all of this and more!Like what you learned? Subscribe Now!  http://bit.ly/NetSuiteYouTubeFollow Us Here: Shana Veale: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shana-veale-cpa-822b2aa/ PharmChem: https://www.pharmchek.com/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #NetSuitePodcast #CFO #PharmChem

Find out how NetSuite ERP can help you run a more efficient, profitable business: https://bit.ly/3BruraN  Co-host Ian McCue chats with Michael Card, the VP of Finance for a brand that's quickly become a household name: Crumbl Cookies. Michael starts by explaining why two cousins decided to open a cookie store (2:13) and where the idea for offering new flavors every week originated (5:12). He gets into the numbers on just how quickly Crumbl is expanding (7:43) and what challenges that's presented for the finance team (8:47). Michael explains what it means to “grow smart” (10:28) and why technology is at the heart of every big decision leaders make (11:48). He paints the before picture of Crumbl's tech stack (14:23) and what separated NetSuite from Sage Intacct during the selection process (18:13). Since moving to NetSuite, he shares the biggest gains around finance (19:49) and inventory management (24:18). Michael also walks through how the system has made planning and budgeting more collaborative (26:28). Crumbl recently added NetSuite warehouse management system (WMS), and Michael details his goals for that module (27:55) as well as how NetSuite Learning Cloud Support (LCS) has helped users get more out of the system (29:44). To close, he sheds light on Crumbl's ambitious goals for the future (31:47) and what role NetSuite will play in that (34:54). Tune in for all that and more!Like what you learned? Subscribe Now!Follow Us Here:Michael Card: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcardcertus/ Crumbl: https://crumblcookies.com/index.html Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW

Get better visibility into your inventory with NetSuite: http://bit.ly/3Xruehl  Host Megan O'Brien, NetSuite business and finance editor, is joined by the CFO of JonnyPops, Connor Wray. We kick things off by talking about Wray's choice of majors–computer science and economics –in college and how they have benefitted him (3:13). We then jump into the idea behind JonnyPops and how he got involved (5:10). Wray goes into JonnyPops' capital raising process as he and his co-founder worked to build their company (10:16) all the while balancing the responsibilities of being a college student (13:42). We then discuss what  JonnyPops looks like now, 10 years after its founding (18:21), to what he attributes the company's growth and success (20:09) and the advice he has for fellow entrepreneurs (22:17). Wray delves into his view of the current CFO role (25:58) and how NetSuite has played a part in JonnyPops' journey (27:04). He also explains how JonnyPops has been handling recent disruption (30:01) and the biggest challenges in taking on the CFO role (33:15). He unveils his top metrics to track (35:40) and concludes by discussed plans for the future of JonnyPops (39:24). Tune in for all this and more!Like what you learned? Subscribe now!Follow Us Here:Connor Wray: https://www.linkedin.com/in/connorwray/ JonnyPops: https://www.jonnypops.com/Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #JonnyPops

Learn how you can automate painful manual processes with NetSuite CPQ: https://bit.ly/3TIBfYT  Granite Partners founder and CEO Rick Bauerly joins Ian McCue, senior content marketing manager at NetSuite, to share his story of building an investment portfolio of 10 businesses worth nearly $1 billion. Bauerly breaks down how Granite evaluates potential investments (3:45) and reveals how personal experience sparked the idea for a different kind of investment firm (6:32). He digs into what creating value for all Granite shareholders looks like and how 100-year sustainability impacts every decision the holding group makes (9:47). The founder details the overarching strategy for managing a diverse group of Minnesota businesses (13:23) and where outdated, disconnected systems were holding the business back (17:21). That led Granite to search for a new solution in 2020, and Bauerly outlines what made NetSuite the right fit (20:42), telling the story of one business that eliminated barriers to growth by replacing Microsoft with NetSuite (24:31). He dives into what was previously a painstaking configure, price, and quote process for several companies (28:22) and how NetSuite CPQ has saved them time and money (29:35). He also shares how the system has greatly expanded Granite's reporting capabilities (33:51) and boosted efficiency across manufacturing floors and warehouses (36:11). Bauerly closes by sharing his thoughts on how the current economic landscape affects Granite (37:55) and its vision for the future (39:48). Tune in to hear all that and more!Like what you learned? Subscribe Now!Follow Us Here:Rick Bauerly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-bauerly-2261571/ Granite Partners: https://granite.com/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#InvestmentFirm #FamilyBusiness #NetSuite #NetSuiteERP

Guest hosts Ian McCue, Senior Content Marketing Manager at NetSuite, and Megan O'Brien, NetSuite's Finance and Business Editor, turn the tables on host Kendall Fisher and interview her to celebrate the 100th episode of the NetSuite Podcast. Kendall first explains why NetSuite decided to start a podcast (2:50) and the goals behind the idea (5:02). She takes on the evolution of the podcast from the first episode through today (7:42) and how it's expanded to cover a variety of topics relevant to our audience (10:15). Having never hosted a podcast before coming to NetSuite, Kendall talks about the biggest challenges in starting a podcast series (13:10) and her advice for others looking to do the same (14:17). She highlights the most memorable moments from the first 99 episodes (16:07), like interviewing founder Evan Goldberg for Episode 1. Kendall then dives into how to build a loyal listener base (21:20). After that, she makes a BIG announcement about the future of the podcast (28:01). Finally, Kendall shares the lessons she's learned through 100 episodes (31:33) with hopes you will take away a few lessons, too!Like what you learned? Subscribe Now!Follow Us Here:Kendall Fisher: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kendallfisher07/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #PodcastStrategy #NetSuitePodcast

Learn more about about the skills you need to create value as a CFO here: https://bit.ly/3CxrxkQ  Guest host Megan O'Brien, NetSuite's business and finance editor, joins the managing director and head of content at CFO and Proformative, Andy Burt. We kick things off by delving into the science behind a good business handshake (4:30) and why he has seen himself become more of an extrovert as his career progresses (5:07). We then jump into Andy's role as the managing director and head of content at CFO and CFO.com and the brands' connection to NetSuite (6:30). He then talks about the importance of making finance executives the star of the content he produces (9:42) as well as some of our favorite CFO interviews from SuiteWorld 2022 (11:05). He explains what makes an effective leader after years of interviewing finance executives. (15:50), and then we discuss companies that experienced exponential growth during the COVID-19 pandemic (16:34). Andy covers how the role of the CFO shifted significantly during the pandemic and how it's continuing to become more strategic (20:25). Through his experience with running the CFO publication, he is able to explain how conversations between CFOs are changing (26:15) and how finance executives can learn more about other parts of the business (28:28). Andy also touches on the importance of hiring and retaining great talent, highlighting his conversations with the CFO of Edgewood Companies (33:18). He describes his top takeaways from SuiteWorld 2022 (38:21) and concludes the podcast with what he sees as the top topics on the docket for the CFO platform in the next year (45:25).Like what you learned? Subscribe Now!Follow Us Here:Andy Burt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyburt/ CFO: https://www.cfo.com/ Proformative: https://www.proformative.com/ SuiteWorld: https://www.netsuitesuiteworld.com/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #CFO #FinanceLeader 

Get the most out of your data with NetSuite analytics and reporting tools: https://bit.ly/3e1ZDVL Host Kendall Fisher and guest co-host Megan O'Brien, NetSuite business and finance editor, join the CFO of Xpansiv, Suzy Taherian. She kicks things off by explaining her initial career goals as an engineer in the renewable energy sector (4:54) and why she eventually ended up getting her MBA (6:07). She then dives into her career history as a controller at Chevron Argentina, which led to her taking on a Director of Planning and Forecasting role with Chevron (9:05). From that experience, Suzy shares advice for planning and forecasting today and how to navigate the changing economic environment (17:33). She then explains a bit more about Xpansiv, which provides global market infrastructure for data-driven environmental commodities (19:56) as well as the role technology–and, more specifically, NetSuite–plays within the company (22:31). Suzy says her diverse background across both private and public companies of all sizes helped her become the CFO she is today (26:24). Through her experiences, she‘s able to list the things that make for a successful IPO (30:51) as well as successful mergers and acquisitions (33:24). Finally, Suzy explains how she began leveraging key performance indicators to drive performance within Chevron (37:54), how she's continued developing that strategy with Xpansiv (40:52), and how NetSuite makes it easier to deploy and track (43:35). Tune in for all of this and more!Like what you learned? Subscribe Now!Follow Us Here:Suzy Taherian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sezaneh-suzy-taherian-493a24/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #Data #CFO #Finance 

Register for SuiteWorld 2022 here: https://bit.ly/3BxmuBv SuiteWorld 2022 is just around the corner! Whether you're already planning to attend or still considering registering, host Kendall Fisher chats with NetSuite head of global events, Laine Sobel, about everything you need to know. After explaining a bit about her role and what it entails (2:12), Laine answers two burning questions for our new listeners (or anyone who needs a refresher): What is SuiteWorld and why should YOU attend (6:24)? She then takes us on the evolution of the event (10:24), including this year's theme, Full Suite Ahead (12:55), and what that will entail for both in-person and virtual attendees (15:20). Finally, Laine reveals what she hopes everyone will take away from SuiteWorld 2022 (20:25) and what she's looking forward to the most (25:37). Tune in now for all of that and more!Like what you learned? Subscribe Now! http://bit.ly/NetSuiteYouTubeFollow Us Here:Laine Sobel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lainesobel/Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #SuiteWorld

Learn more about Studio McGee's NetSuite story: https://bit.ly/3AJaLQ5 Host Kendall Fisher chats with the Studio McGee Vice President of Technology, Josh Batchelor, about how the incredibly popular home decor brand is preparing for the 2022 holiday season. Josh kicks things off by first divulging what he thinks sets the business apart (2:22) and why that translated into major growth over the past two years (3:14). Of course, we can't discuss those years without recalling some of the obstacles faced amid the pandemic (5:47), how Studio McGee transformed its supply chain to navigate those challenges (6:57), the impact they had going into the 2020 and 2021 holidays (9:05), and how the business used NetSuite to make data-driven decisions around all of that (10:15). Josh then dives into Studio McGee's priorities right now amid a new set of challenges (12:19), how he sees them impacting the upcoming holiday season (13:55) and the ways the business is utilizing NetSuite to look at historical trends and put forward the inventory they know will sell (15:01). He reveals what major retail partners like Target expect from the company during the holidays (19:32), especially after news of dramatically missing earnings estimates in the first quarter of 2022 (20:54).  Josh also explains how the company prepares for an influx of ecommerce shoppers (23:42) and managing customer expectations, like fast shipping (24:54). Finally, he concludes with insight into how Studio McGee is looking to create efficiency, boost productivity and improve the bottom line through the holidays and beyond (29:34).  More on preparing for the holidays: https://bit.ly/3Pw37MU Follow Us Here:Studio McGee: https://studio-mcgee.com/ Josh Batchelor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshbatchelor/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #Holidays #2022Holidays

Get the most out of your data with NetSuite analytics and reporting tools: https://bit.ly/3Q0q3ot Host Kendall Fisher and guest co-host Megan O'Brien, NetSuite business and finance editor, join Melissa Hurrington, CFO and VP of Operations at Premier Claims. She kicks things off with some fun insight into herself (2:15), before we dive into her career journey, from working with nonprofits to a publicly traded company, an events company and now a rapidly-growing public adjusting firm (8:54). Melissa explains the unique role of being a controller for Levy Restaurants, a hospitality company for major events and concerts (19:15), and why that role really made her “fall in love” with data analysis and letting the numbers tell a story (28:23). She then discusses how that controller role set her up for success as the CFO at Premier Claims (34:24), the ways she's been able to use data to navigate leading a company through its early stages (39:29), and why taking on the VP of Operations role was a seamless decision (45:01). Melissa goes on to explain the importance of technology for Premier Claims (49:31) and how NetSuite is helping the company meet their goals of efficiency through their internal motto: “Automate, delegate and eliminate” (54:01). She shares her top priorities right now (58:34) and the ways she'll use NetSuite's reporting and data analysis capabilities to make decisions toward those priorities (1:03:18). Finally, Melissa concludes with an anecdote about how she became an influencer on LinkedIn (1:04:34) and her advice for anyone in a minority position who wants to take on a CFO role in the future (1:16:08). Tune in for all of this and more! Like what you learned? Subscribe Now!Follow Us Here:Melissa Hurrington: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissahurrington/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #CFO #Finance #Data

Everything to know about NetSuite 2022 Release 2: ​​https://bit.ly/3Q60Vwv NetSuite 2022 Release 2 is here! And we're rolling out updates around rebates and trade promotions, Smart Count, mobile and more! To kick things off, Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Lisa Schwarz, provides an overview of what's to come in 2022 Release 2 (1:39) as well as a reminder about how releases work (3:37) and how to best prepare for them (5:31). Then, Laura Maready, our Sr. Principal Product Manager, joins us to discuss our all new Smart Count functionality. She begins by laying out the benefits of periodic inventory counting over full inventory counts (10:00), before explaining some of the challenges businesses (especially those in retail and high-volume industries) face in conducting cycle counts (13:43). Of course, this is where our all new Smart Count functionality becomes a major tool (15:51). Laura dives into what it is, how it will help our customers alleviate pains around cycle counting and how it works within the overall suite  (18:33). Next, Industry Product Manager for Wholesale Distribution, John Bek, dives into our new Rebates and Trade Promotions SuiteApp. After defining rebates and trade promotions (19:36), John explains their impact on the bottom line for manufacturers and distributors (21:05) and lays out the common challenges businesses face in managing and implementing them, especially with high-volume orders (22:58). He then dives into our new SuiteApp and how it helps minimize manual tasks, relieve headaches and improve processes around promotions and rebates (23:48) as well as the additional benefits of being part of the overall suite (25:19).  And to wrap up our 2022 Release 2 episode, Vice President of User Interface,Malin Huffman, and Sr. product Manager, Tom Bartak, jump on to discuss updates around our NetSuite mobile app (27:21). After Malin provides an overview of our mobile app, Tom delivers the exciting news that both the Android and iOS apps will function the same now, with all capabilities available in both apps (28:40). He then dives into the features we'll see in 2022 Release 2, most notably around recent records and the global search functionality (31:19). They conclude with some insight into future features (33:43), how we're making it easy for customers to find functionality they need in the moment (35:09), and what to expect from mobile updates to come (36:17).  Like what you learned? Subscribe Now!Follow Us Here:Sneak Peek of 2022 Release 2: https://bit.ly/3PsUZxC Mobile App for iOs 10.1 Demo: https://youtu.be/anuEy1ciTqQ Register for SuiteWorld 2022: https://www.netsuitesuiteworld.com/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW

Learn more about our ACS and ACS playbooks offering: https://bit.ly/3yoq8eh Host Kendall Fisher joins NetSuite Regional Vice President for Customer Success, Vinay Intwala, and Sitecore Director of Financial Systems, Madison Farnsworth, in a discussion about Advanced Customer Support (ACS), our proactive managed service to help you maximize the value of your NetSuite solution on a continuous basis. Vinay kicks things off by covering what ACS is (3:32) and why it benefits NetSuite customers (6:13). He explains the difference between our Learning Cloud Support (LCS) Company Pass (8:53) and why the two are a “power couple” for NetSuite users (11:48). He also dives into ACS Playbooks (14:10) and the major business areas they cover, including global expansion, financial planning, supply chain management and more (16:38), and how all of this meets the unique business needs of our customers (19:42) and helps them navigate a changing business environment (23:10). Then, Sitecore's Madison Farnsworth joins to provide a real-life ACS use case (28:42). After explaining a bit more about Sitecore, Madison reveals some of its unique business challenges (30:11) and how NetSuite helps to solve them (32:02). Sitecore implemented NetSuite using a partner in 2014, and when Madison entered the business in 2021 (having implemented NetSuite four times prior), she walked into some major configuration issues around intercompany accounting, Dunning Letters, advanced revenue management and more (33:34). She decided to partner with ACS to avoid a complete reimplementation, which not only solved these challenges (39:05), but helped Sitecore leverage new functionality, most notably electronic bank payments (45:45). The experience, she says, “Exceeded all expectations” (52:50). Tune in to hear the full story!  Like what you learned? Subscribe Now!Follow Us Here:Madison Farnsworth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madison-farnsworth-98711b8a/ Vinay Intwala: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinay-intwala-a9ab571/ Register for SuiteWorld: https://www.netsuitesuiteworld.com/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #NetSuiteCustomerSupport #NetSuiteERP

For more advice on handling economic volatility: https://bit.ly/3xB1HtB Host Kendall Fisher and guest co-host Megan O'Brien, NetSuite business and finance editor, join three-time CFO Chris Caprio, the current CFO of Focus Technology and co-chair of the CFO Leadership Council for the Boston Chapter. He'll kick things off by diving into his educational path and why he chose to get an MSA over an MBA (3:36), before taking us on his career journey leading up to his first CFO role in 2010 (5:40). He then explains the skills required in his role as a controller (9:30) and how they've shifted over the past decade (12:16). He also recalls navigating the 2008 recession, during which he learned the importance of focusing on macroeconomics (13:25) and valuing people above everything else when cutting costs (15:32). Caprio then explains the key differences between a controller and a CFO (19:17), including tracking KPIs around DSO and forecasting as well as metrics pertaining to the workforce (20:34). He also unveils the challenges that are specific to Focus Technology, most notably around cybersecurity (25:31), and why a big portion of the budget is allocated to hiring and retaining top talent to overcome those challenges (27:37). As for his role as the CFO of Focus Technology, Caprio says a majority of his time is spent on strategy (30:26) and one of his current priorities is creating greater automation within the business (34:29), especially amid economic volatility (39:04). Caprio says NetSuite automates many of the core processes within the business, including accounting, finance, CRM and project management (44:46), and is used by almost 75% of the company's employees on a daily basis. He then explains how he uses NetSuite to track success around employee retention, turnover rate, references and more (48:37) as well as communicate important data and decisions with other C-level executives and the board (52:23). Finally, Caprio concludes with his No.1 piece of advice for other financial leaders or those hoping to become one (55:29).  Like what you learned? Subscribe Now!Follow Us Here:Chris Caprio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-caprio-a709769/ CFO Leadership Council: https://cfoleadershipcouncil.com/ Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#CFO #CFOTips #ChiefFinancialOfficer #Finance 

Learn more about our Learning Cloud Support (LCS) Company Pass: https://bit.ly/3NgW0HJ Host Kendall Fisher joins NetSuite Senior Learning Experience Manager, Kerman Camacho, and Fermob Vice President of Operations and Administration, Scott Welker-Reyes. Kerman begins the conversation by explaining that LCS Company Pass is our subscription-based training for all NetSuite users to easily and cost-effectively engage in continuous learning (2:31). He then goes on to describe the benefits of using LCS (5:19), how it supports your unique business needs (6:50), and how it differs from our Advanced Customer Support, or ACS, offering (9:12). Scott Welker-Reyes joins next. He begins by explaining how Fermob Group is the leading designer of garden, terrace, and public space furnishings (18:56) and dives into some of the unique challenges they face in warehousing and supply chain management (21:21). He says they initially implemented NetSuite for finance and inventory management (23:04) and have since evolved into using all of NetSuite's core functionality, most notably SuiteCommerce and warehouse management (23:56). Scott then explains how education has played a role in Fermob's evolution with NetSuite (29:51) and how they've learned to leverage the system to create extra functionality specific to the business (34:01). Scott concludes by noting that our offering enables you to continue to get the most out of NetSuite “on your own time” (36:05). Tune in for the full story! Like what you learned? Subscribe Now!Follow Us Here:Kerman Camacho: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerman-camacho-2300a51/ Scott Welker-Reyes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-welker-reyes/ Fermob Group: https://www.fermob.com/en Oracle NetSuiteLinkedIn: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteLIFacebook: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteFBInstagram: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteIGTwitter: http://bit.ly/NetSuiteTW#NetSuite #NetSuiteTraining #NetSuiteERP