NetSuite SuiteWorld 2022: The Biggest Announcements

Accounts payable automation, NetSuite CPQ and Ship Central are among the biggest announcements being made at this week’s SuiteWorld 2022.

A new accounts payable automation feature, a new tool for warehouse tracking and an add-on for configuring, pricing and quoting products are among the biggest announcements being made at this year’s NetSuite SuiteWorld conference.

NetSuite, a subsidiary of Austin, Texas-based enterprise software giant Oracle, is holding SuiteWorld in Las Vegas and online this week from Tuesday to Friday.

The company has more than 32,000 customers, an increase of about 19 percent over the customer count during SuiteWorld 2021, according to the company.

NetSuite has played a major role in Oracle’s recent growth, reporting a year-over-year revenue increase of 27 percent, according to Oracle’s most recent quarterly earnings.

Bobby Coffin, vice president of operations at Clearwater, Fla.-based NetSuite partner SCS Cloud, told CRN in an interview that his company expects a year of growth north of 70 percent.

A large portion of new SCS customers have come from the food and beverage and health and beauty industries, including light manufacturing and outsource manufacturing. Customers have sought integrations for e-commerce, third-party logistics (3PL) and electronic data interchange (EDI) tools.

SCS, which has about 100 employees, has been investing in training employees around new NetSuite functionality and growing a managed services practice, Coffin said.

“Each year our client base grows by 20, 30, 40, 50 clients,” Coffin said. “So we‘ve quickly found ourselves supporting well over 120-plus clients to one extent or the other, a couple hours a month or many hours a week. So we’re really starting to put more investment in our managed services practice so that we can not only implement new customers on NetSuite but continue to support them as their business expands. So that‘s been a focus of ours for the latter half of this year and will be a big focus in the next.”

During a call with reporters before SuiteWorld, Craig Sullivan, NetSuite’s group vice president of product management, in answer to a question from CRN, said that NetSuite bases some of its new functionality every year on the needs and demands of services partners, including managed services providers.

“Their opportunity is growing along with the product to find new customers to extend the implementations of their existing customers with their NetSuite deployment to get even more value out of the suite,” Sullivan said. “So all of this news really is additive. … It‘s greater than the sum of its parts in terms of the opportunities that the partners have with respect to the product on our customer base.”

What is NetSuite announcing At SuiteWorld 2022? Here’s what you need to know.

Accounts Payable Automation

One of the biggest reveals at NetSuite SuiteWorld 2022 is the new AP Automation offering to save time on accounts payable processes.

Now available in the United States – with a 50 percent discount on subscriptions until No. 30 for the first 1,000 customers – AP Automation embeds banking services into a cloud enterprise resource planning system to speed up bill processing and vendor payment from within the NetSuite system, according to the company.

HSBC provides the processing services with a virtual credit card, check or its Automated Clearing House service. Non-HSBC bank accounts can still fund payments.

Other features of AP Automation are bill capturing, bill matching and approvals, payment automation and payment reconciliation.

NetSuite CPQ

NetSuite announced a CPQ offering during SuiteWorld 2022, offering sales teams a tool for configuring, pricing and quoting complex products using NetSuite.

Available in North America as an add-on service, NetSuite CPQ was designed to allow product feature selection and customizable business rules to save time from double checking and reworking orders. The service also provides an e-commerce-like catalog experience for workers.

Configuring an item generates a bill of materials (BOM) automatically. The BOM is usable with NetSuite Manufacturing modules including advanced manufacturing and work order assemblies.

Ship Central

During SuiteWorld 2022 NetSuite unveiled its Ship Central mobile application, which aims to improve warehouse operations efficiency.

The app – slated for availability in November – is meant to eliminate manual processes with picking, packing and shipping capabilities for workers using mobile or kiosk devices, according to NetSuite.

Workers can track packages faster, find the best carrier based on delivery date and location type, print labels and create documentation, among other tasks, according to NetSuite.

SuitePeople Workforce Management

The new SuitePeople Workforce Management offering from NetSuite seeks to automate staffing tasks including scheduling, tracking employee hours worked and calculating wages.

The Workforce Management offering also provides operational metrics around sales, production targets and labor costs, plus employees can use the tool for clocking in and out and requesting shift changes from a mobile device.

The offering is part of SuitePeople, the human capital management service from NetSuite. It’s now available in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, according to NetSuite.

Analytics Warehouse Updates

NetSuite updated its Analytics Warehouse service to accelerate time to insights and provide access to more third-party integrations and industry-specific content.

The new integrations include a Shopify connection and deeper integrations with Google Analytics and Salesforce, according to NetSuite.

The company also expanded access to customers with data centers in Australia and the United Kingdom. Data center operators in Germany will receive access later this year, according to NetSuite.

Analytics Warehouse is built on the Oracle Analytics Cloud and Oracle Autonomous Database. It is meant to replace legacy and siloed systems, according to NetSuite.