NetSuite Arrives in UK
NetSuite Inc on Thursday set up shop in the United Kingdom, unveiling localized versions of its NetSuite and Oracle Small Business Suite hosted business applications, as well as launching a UK Solution Provider Program.
Localization for the UK market includes changes in language convention, advanced sales order management with VAT (value-added tax), statutory accounting requirements, and reporting.
The Oracle Small Business Suite, as well as NetSuite, for mid-market customers, tie in customer relationship management (CRM) functions with enterprise resource management (ERP), providing order management, shipping integration, and integrated inventory data.
While many large enterprises use integrated application suites, they are generally too expensive and complex for the 1.2 million UK small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs), according to NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson. As a result, these companies may buy separate software packages to manage financials, order fulfillment, sales force automation and customer support. Then they spend money on the hardware to run the software, and on the resources to install, maintain, and integrate the data from the various systems, he said.
“Companies struggle to integrate multiple software applications to run their business, and software vendors like Sage and Microsoft whose primary application integration strategy is to hand the customer one invoice that ‘integrates’ line items for separate ERP and CRM applications only makes the problem worse,” Nelson said. “We built a single application integrating complete CRM and ERP by design. For the first time customers can spend their resources on running their business, rather than spending them on running some vendor’s software.”
NetSuite Inc. was founded in 1998 by Oracle CEO and Chairman Larry Ellison and current NetSuite CTO Evan Goldberg to eliminate this cost and complexity. “Oracle Small Business Suite and NetSuite bring the power of integrated application suites and low-cost utility computing to small and mid-sized enterprises, while giving SMEs a system in many ways more powerful than those used by most large enterprises,” Nelson said. “They enable companies to manage all key business operations in a single application.”
NetSuite actively pursues resellers to share in the growth of online applications, and the company has signed more than 200 productive Solution Providers in the past year. Many UK IT resellers already have signed up for the NetSuite UK Channel Program even before the company released its localized products this week.
“The fact that UK resellers signed up to offer NetSuite even before we introduced our localized product is another indicator that on-demand CRM/ERP applications will change the way small to mid-size companies manage their businesses,” said Susan Gallagher, director of channel sales at NetSuite. “I am confident that UK resellers will enjoy the 400 percent-plus sales growth that their counterparts in the US have enjoyed.”
