The News: At its annual SuiteWorld user conference, Oracle NetSuite announced a series of new product innovations that have been designed to help organizations reduce costs and run more efficiently. These innovations incorporate both traditional and generative AI-powered capabilities across the entire suite; new field service management and enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions; and new capabilities that are designed to help finance and customer experience professionals improve business efficiency and accuracy.
You can view a release detailing the new innovations at NetSuite’s website.
NetSuite Unveils New Innovations to Improve Business Efficiency
Analyst Take: Oracle NetSuite announced at SuiteWorld several new traditional and generative AI-powered capabilities across its entire suite, new field service management and enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions, and new capabilities that help finance and customer experience (CX) professionals improve business efficiency.
The goal of these enhancements is to help users work more efficiently by leveraging AI and automation to reduce or remove repetitive or manual tasks, enabling workers in finance and accounting, HR, supply chain and operations, sales and marketing, and customer support to focus on higher value tasks. AI is also being used to surface information and insights, make predictions and recommendations, and intelligently automate data analysis tasks using information captured across a customer’s entire organization.
Leveraging the Power of Generative AI and Predictive AI
NetSuite has introduced new generative and predictive AI-powered capabilities across the entire suite, with the aim of helping customers reduce manual data entry tasks, enhance planning and budgeting, and expand business insights.
On the generative AI front, NetSuite announced a generative AI tool, dubbed NetSuite Text Enhance, for use across HR, finance, supply chain, and sales. This tool, which is powered by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s (OCI) generative AI technology, can generate content for any text area based on a few starter words that describe intent. The tool is designed to help workers quickly develop drafts of content that can be easily reviewed, edited, and approved.
Evan Goldberg, the Executive Vice President of Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit (and NetSuite founder) said that NetSuite will continue to leverage work being done by its parent company, Oracle, as well as by partners such as Cohere, to develop and build out AI technology, and that it will be “aggressive” in implementing new AI features within NetSuite in the coming year. However, NetSuite is positioning generative and predictive AI as assistive technology, stressing that a human is always supposed to be in the loop to review the AI suggestion or prediction before it is acted upon. This approach is particularly important when using AI-generated suggestions or predictions that may have a real-world impact on planning, forecasting, and business outcomes.
New Field Service Management Capabilities
NetSuite is also adding a new feature, Field Service Management, to help enterprises improve business efficiency of their end-to-end field service operations, thereby increasing customer satisfaction. According to the company, customers can improve field-to-office communications by simplifying scheduling and dispatch, automating inventory and customer asset management, and increasing visibility into real-time data. This feature will be generally available within the next 12 months.
NetSuite Introduces New Finance Solutions to its Product Suite
At SuiteWorld, NetSuite also highlighted a new integrated set of finance solutions that is designed to connect financial and operational planning, automate account reconciliation, streamline close processes, and enhance tax and narrative reporting. NetSuite EPM is designed to allow customers to increase business visibility, productivity, and efficiency, thereby helping to enhance decision making and growth.
NetSuite also announced the general availability of three additional features. NetSuite Capital, an embedded service, is designed to help enterprise customers improve their cash flow and reduce day sales outstanding. Meanwhile, NetSuite Pay is designed to allow enterprise customers to accelerate and simplify the application and onboarding process for new merchant accounts. And, in conjunction with company partner Avalara, NetSuite Electronic Invoicing allows customers to connect directly to national and international networks from within NetSuite to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and address compliance with global e-invoicing mandates.
Another AI-based capability generally available now is NetSuite Bill Capture, which is designed to help enterprises capture and categorize expenses based on historical data, and then leverages that data to reduce future manual bill-entry tasks on a move-forward basis. This feature should improve both business efficiency and the accuracy of the information captured.
NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, which is built on Oracle’s Autonomous Data Warehouse and the Oracle Analytics Cloud, is also getting new features that will be incorporated within Analytics-embedded dashboards. The company also says that the solution will get more frequent data refreshes, enhanced analysis of financial data, improved user access management, and deeper insights. These features are expected to be made available to customers within the next 12 months.
NetSuite Adding New Capabilities to Planning and Budgeting Tools
NetSuite is also adding new capabilities to its planning and budgeting features to help enterprises to automate data analysis for preparing budgets, using predictive algorithms that continuously monitor and analyze plans, forecasts, and variances. Enterprises can use these analyses to uncover and highlight trends, anomalies, and correlations. These capabilities are generally available today.
New Features for Senior Management
In addition to the latest updates, the company is adding new features to help ease various tasks of chief financial officers (CFOs) and other enterprise planners. NetSuite Transaction Line Distribution, which is expected to provide an easy way for enterprises to split a single transaction among subsidiaries, departments, and other segments, is designed to let CFOs and controllers establish percentage-based or predetermined amount-based distribution templates and automate journal entry creation to improve business efficiency and increase the speed and accuracy of transactions and financial reporting.
Further, the company is adding another tool, NetSuite Benchmark 360, to allow enterprises to analyze key operational and financial metrics and understand how they are performing compared with similar enterprises in their industries and regions. In addition, the company has updated its NetSuite CPQ (configure, price, quote) tool to include a feature that will allow enterprises to offer subscription options to their customers.
While NetSuite Transaction Line Distribution and the NetSuite CPQ tool are generally available, the NetSuite Benchmark 360 will be made available in the next 12 months.
NetSuite’s Push to “Suite Up” Its Customers
NetSuite’s announcement of a variety of new features and AI-enhancements are part of a “land and expand” go-to-market strategy the company is dubbing “Suite Up.” Many of the company’s core ERP customers are unlikely to consolidate and replace their entire tech stack at once, but instead will take a staggered approach.
NetSuite’s core value proposition revolves around being able to capture and use data from across its entire suite of applications, to provide more timely and granular insights that can aid in forecasting, planning, and guiding business actions. Although NetSuite integrates well with other systems and platforms, the company is clearly highlighting the added benefits of having all company operating, sales, marketing, and financial data within its suite, where it can be easily accessed and activated to improve business efficiency.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Other Insights from The Futurum Group:
NetSuite Offers Guided Learning to Reduce Training Time and Accelerate Adoption
Oracle Generative AI Capabilities with Cohere
Author Information
Keith has over 25 years of experience in research, marketing, and consulting-based fields.
He has authored in-depth reports and market forecast studies covering artificial intelligence, biometrics, data analytics, robotics, high performance computing, and quantum computing, with a specific focus on the use of these technologies within large enterprise organizations and SMBs. He has also established strong working relationships with the international technology vendor community and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events.
In his career as a financial and technology journalist he has written for national and trade publications, including BusinessWeek, CNBC.com, Investment Dealers’ Digest, The Red Herring, The Communications of the ACM, and Mobile Computing & Communications, among others.
He is a member of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP).
Keith holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Magazine Journalism and Sociology from Syracuse University.
