“How are you going to be able to make really confident, well-informed decisions? And that’s critical to success and to align to your objective. So having that single source of truth that NetSuite provides, really that’s the number one factor.”
– Scott Wiltshire, Vice President & GM, Oracle NetSuite ANZ
Today, I’m excited to bring you something new: a series of interviews from the 2024 Oracle CloudWorld and SuiteWorld conferences, in Las Vegas.
Think of the next few episodes as an Oracle NetSuite appetiser. You’ll get a flavour of the Oracle NetSuite world.
First, here’s a quick overview of Oracle NetSuite.
Oracle was founded in 1977 by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates in California. Everyone at the conference was very excited that Larry Ellison, the co-founder, was speaking. He delivered a keynote address on Oracle’s Vision and Strategy.
NetSuite, started in 1998 by Evan Goldberg with Larry Ellison as a major stakeholder, was acquired by Oracle in 2016. Now, Oracle NetSuite offers ERP solutions: Oracle for large companies like Amazon and Coca-Cola and NetSuite for mid-sized businesses such as TGI Fridays and GoPro.
Both (Oracle) Cloud World and SuiteWorld conferences were held simultaneously, with around 22,000 attendees, which was a bit confusing compared to last year. I’ve created six short podcasts to help you better understand Oracle NetSuite and the ERP space.
In this first episode, I speak with Scott Wiltshire, Vice President & GM, Oracle NetSuite ANZ. Scott is keen to help customers and employees identify and solve business challenges that deliver real value.
I also interviewed Scott Wiltshire last year; check it out here.
For this podcast, we discuss some of the new feature announcements from NetSuite, which includes
- NetSuite Financial Exception Management, which helps organisations detect and mitigate financial risks.
- SuiteAnalytics Assistant, which allows users to generate reports using natural language.
- NetSuite Prompt Studio, which enables users to configure AI-generated content to suit their business needs.
- AI SuiteScript API, which helps connect multiple systems,
- Code Assist, which assists developers in writing code.
A big thank you to Oracle NetSuite for hosting me.
Got a packed schedule? Now you can get your CPE credits while you’re on the go! Tune in to my podcast on Earmark and earn NASBA-approved CPE or IRS-approved CE—just by listening. It’s that simple. Head to my Earmark CPE channel, register and launch the course.
Don’t miss the details at the end of this blog to learn more about Earmark CPE. Now, let’s dive into this episode! 🎧
Relevant links:
Scroll down for a full transcript
This transcript has been generated and transcribed by AI.
How has NetSuite presence in the ANZ market evolved in the last decade?
Scott
Well, thank you for having me, Heather. It’s fantastic to be back here. And yeah, well, that’s a challenging question. How have we evolved in the market over that time? So I’ve been with the business now 10 years, so since 2014, obviously. When I first started with the business, there was that real shift, you know. The themes in the marketplace were really a shift to Cloud. Companies wanting to focus on their business and creating value for their business, and not managing their IT, and worrying about things like their, you know, managing their financial systems. They wanted to use their financial systems, but know that they were there, they were available, and they would scale with them. Now, they were spending a lot of time on IT-related tasks, and they wanted to outsource that. And as a result, with the advent of the, you know, obviously the internet, and with this infrastructure in Australia like NBN getting much better. It was far better for companies to look for Cloud service, for service providers to handle that for them. So that was the kind of, the first evolution that I saw in NetSuite. It was a really good time as a booming time for our business. And then fast forward a few years, we probably looked at, although those themes never went away, of adopting the Cloud and shifting your own assets to Cloud services. The next thing that I noticed was really the advent of omnichannel commerce. So businesses, well, consumers probably started with changed their expectations on the way they want to shop, right? More people were shopping online, but not only online. They wanted to be able to pick up in store or have partial deliveries. Their expectations had really improved. So as a result, businesses were looking to fulfill that need, and they needed a solution provider that could help them with an omnichannel commerce solution. So that was a big, you know, couple of years for us. So we released NetSuite, our e-commerce solution, NetSuite SuiteCommerce, so companies can have an online presence as well as shipped direct from the warehouses, or have in-store point of sale solutions all connected on one single platform, on NetSuite. Fast forward a few years. We all remember Covid and how that was a great accelerator, and so our business really again, it was another boom time for us, as it really accelerated the businesses need for Cloud solutions, obviously. But with everyone in lockdown and having their workforce far more distributed than ever, they needed to ensure that there was availability of or continuity of business, and to do that, you needed available solutions in the Cloud that could connect all the employees with their customers. So again, you know, it worked in our favour, because, you know, potentially the laggards that still had on-premise solutions found it really challenging during that time. Businesses were really focused on their survival, and in that kind of downtime, and then in that disruption, a lot of companies were looking to focus on their business and the future of their business, and how could they modernise. So again, we saw another uptake of demand for NetSuite services.
Heather
During Covid and during the lockdowns.
Scott
Yes.
Heather
Wow, that must have been quite challenging to do an implementation and run out in implementation during that time, when people are in such challenging positions.
Scott
Well, yeah. I mean, when your customers aren’t allowed to walk into your shop, or your customers you’ve got a business and you can’t send your employees to work, it was a good opportunity to keep people busy and create value for your business. So yeah. So during that time, I actually saw an acceleration of demand for Cloud services. It was so very challenging environment for us as well, but we didn’t skip a beat. We run our business on NetSuite as well, so all of our staff just went home. Home and work from home, without skipping anything. Then, you know, most recently, you know, you would have noticed that this week, the advent of the explosion of AI, and all the new capabilities that are really controlling the narrative now. It’s very, obviously, the hype is there, but it’s very front of mind. Everyone’s looking to this new technology and the potential and thinking about, what can it do. And so, you know, here we are announcing a whole raft of AI solutions for our NetSuite customer base.
Heather
Yes, it’s very exciting. Now I’d like to talk about that, but before I do, I’d just like to ask you a brief question.
Businesses across Australia and New Zealand are smaller than their counterparts in maybe the USA and maybe Europe, that we potentially have a simpler business environment?
Scott
Look, I don’t know whether I would put it that way. I would say, in my experience, the Australian and New Zealand companies are real fighters. They’re real challenges. So yes, we don’t have the marketplace that, you know, the US has. Well, we do have a global marketplace, so we have plenty of customers still selling into the US. However, the local marketplace obviously isn’t the same size, and the tyranny of distance is so much greater. So logistically, there’s some challenges there. However, we have some fantastic customers that are real challenges in that space, and they really have to roll up their sleeves and fight. So I see, you know, a greater level of tenacity and a greater level of focus on efficiency and competition so they can be successful in that challenging marketplace.
Heather
Yeah, absolutely. Like that tenacity, the scrappiness, the being innovative, absolutely. So I speak to a lot of people over the last few days, in terms of journalists and people from other countries, and they kind of say Australia is so far ahead in adopting the Cloud. I was kind of you have the inside knowledge on that.
Do you see Australian businesses further ahead on adopting Cloud strategies or technology?
Scott
Look, I don’t have data to suggest that you know we’re ahead or behind. But I can tell you from experience that you know all day, every day, I deal with customers and partners that on the forefront of adopting newer technologies to help create that competitive advantage. And I guess that talks to the previous question around you know, the differences in the market opportunities and the differences I see in Australian businesses. They are real fighters, they are real competitive scrappers. So they’re always looking for that edge, and they’re willing to, you know, be the early adopters of newer technologies, rather than laggards. So I definitely see that as a theme, but I don’t have any data to suggest, you know, one slightly ahead of the other.
Heather
Yeah, no. Thank you for that. So let’s circle back to talking about what other developments and products that we’re seeing rolling out that are tied into AI.
Yoco automates complex approvals to move at speed
What do the Australian, New Zealand customers need to know about developments and products and tied to AI?
Scott
Yeah, well, the last few days, we’ve announced, I’ve got a whole list here. I’ve got to announce so many AI updates for our customer base, starting with NetSuite, the financial exception management. And this helps organisations increase efficiency and mitigate risk by automatically detecting financial exceptions, putting them to a list to say, Hold on, there’s something going on here.
Heather
Yes. Have a look at it. Check it.
Scott
Before you try to close your books and have an anomaly in there. Let’s have a look at these exceptions and give them to a human to just review. Right? And that’s just another level of automation and that will drive not just efficiency, but also improved accuracy and compliance. So it’s absolutely there to help mitigate risk, as I said earlier.
Heather
Will everyone get that or is it a bolt-on?
Scott
These solutions will be available to all customers.
Heather
Okay.
Scott
And there’s so many AI updates. So, the theme here is AI everywhere. So there’s going to be solutions that will be bolted on, but for the most part, all the AI will be embedded in the system. It’ll be up to, you know, if you want that particular module that has that AI embedded. It won’t be so much as bolting on the AI. It’ll be bolting on that module.
Heather
Yes.
Scott
And then that gives you the availability of that module which has AI embedded. But for the most part, for all the customers, for the solutions that they have, there will be new AI functionality embedded in the suite. It will be absolutely AI everywhere, ubiquitous across the suite.
Heather
For the people in the finance department, this is now a new area for them to look at. The exception area.
Scott
Absolutely, it’s just going to speed up the way they do their work, their day-to-day job, and improve the accuracy and speed with which they close their books. So in addition to that, we’ve also announced NetSuite SuiteAnalytics Assistant. So this is an AI assistant which you can interact with in natural language. So SuiteAnalytics is like reporting functionality. Is what it sounds like, analytics and reporting functionality, but you’ll be able to ask, you know, for accounts payable reports, or, you know, debtors that are outstanding, or, you know, give me the top five customers by balance, and quickly generate summaries and key takeaways. It’ll actually produce some insights for you, some findings for you that you can then read back. This is, you know, it’s doing some of that grunt, yeah. That’s some analysis work that you would otherwise have to do,
Heather
And you’re asking for it in natural language, rather than going through and plucking out fields and saying this to that, this to that.
Scott
Exactly. So if you’ve, I’m sure your listeners have had that experience when you’re working with a system. You’ve kind of got to understand the language that that system works in. You’ve got to understand how those fields have been recorded in a database often and sometimes it comes down to nomenclature. You’re saying the field name around the wrong way, right? So this is just asking in natural language and having the AI interpret that and understand that and say, Okay, I know what you’re talking about here. I’m going to produce this report.
Heather
Yes.
Scott
So in addition to that, we also have prompt studio. So prompt studio is really wrapping around the generative AI. So if you think about everyone’s pretty familiar with ChatGPT and the ability for AI to generate content. So you can ask that, you know, provide me a product description for a new like, see a bunch of flowers here for a new range of flowers that we’re selling at our florist and the generative AI will create that description. But with prompt studio, you can configure the tone and the creativity and the format that that does it. So you can add some configuration to those prompts to make it that when it when the AI generates that content, it comes back in the kind of the flavour or the tone or the format that you want.
Heather
Whether it’s serious or whether it needs to be suitable for engaging Etsy market or something like that, and how it needs to be.
Scott
Exactly. I mean, at the moment, you would get that generated and then convert it yourself. It’s just that extra layer of converting that tone so it’s specific for your business and your needs. I could keep going, but I can tell you. I’ll just give you a summary of a few others we’ve got. We’ve released AI for SuiteScript API. For connecting multiple systems, we use APIs. This is an AI solution that’s going to help speed that up, connect these two systems, get the right fields connected, so you can have information flow from one back and forth from one to the other. We’ve also the Suite Code Assist. So this is for developers, typically, or admins that are looking to write code in SuiteScript. This is an AI where you can again engage it in natural language and create some code. So it’ll be fantastic. Typically used by developers, but also people that have a kind of a good understanding this is going to be really invaluable for them. Because if they’re not really sure what that line of script does, you can ask the AI, tell me what that does, and it’ll come back to you in natural language.
Heather
Yeah. So quite a number of easy-to-adopt time savers that are just being rolled out.
Scott
Exactly. It’s all about, yeah, about efficiency, minimising risk. And if you are thinking scratching your head going, well, how the hell am I going to take advantage of that? That’s beyond me. We also have an AI service around our advanced customer support. So we have a team that’s dedicated to your business that would understand your business needs and can work with your people to help create these AI efficiencies for you and manage them.
Heather
Real people?
Scott
Real people. The real people will implement the AI.
Heather
Yeah. One of the common themes I’m getting from everyone is how important the partnership relationship is with NetSuite and the actual people in supporting them.
Scott
It can’t be underestimated, really. You know, a lot of the benefits come down to communication and having a team at NetSuite understand what your business is trying to achieve, from the high-level strategies to the initiatives that are going on and just constantly…NetSuite gets newer and newer twice a year, right? We do two major releases a year. So it’s fantastic to be able to have a team that’s available to say, Hey, you want, I understand where you’re going, and this release has some functionality that’s going to be super important for you. And then with this layer of you know, AI, they can say, well, we can automate some of this even further by implementing these AI services.
Heather
Yeah. So it’s really important for the persons who are sitting out there who are feeling, I’ve got NetSuite in and I’m feeling overwhelmed by it, to actually go back, connect with your partners at NetSuite and just sort of make sure you’re getting all that communication, and that’s happening from them.
Scott
Absolutely.
ANZ businesses are currently navigating economic challenges and supply chain disruptions. How is NetSuite helping those businesses?
Scott
So in addition to all those raft of AI enhancements that we’ve just announced, you know, we’ve always been about a business, a single platform for all your business, for your complete business suite to manage your business. So this, when you think about that, what is that,that’s about having live information that spans the breadth of your business, making sure that that’s presented to you in a dashboard that’s easy to understand, that gives you the critical information you need to make decisions. That embeds or drives agility for your business. So we talk to customers all the time, and the number one thing that they love is the fact that they can log in and they see live information from the breadth of their business. So no matter what the market’s doing, you have the ability to respond quickly. Conversely, the biggest challenge, and the reason why people come to NetSuite is when they have disparate systems. So they’re outgrowing their financial solution. They’re getting too big. They might need one or two different solutions. They’re not talking to each other, and the information isn’t live. So in these challenging environments, and it’s not always challenging. In some segments, it’s been fantastic and and others, not so much. But no matter what the kind of the macro or the environment is when you’re struggling with your information, when you’re having to go back to your stakeholders or your board or your investors to say, sorry, here’s a new set of financials. Thus ignore those last ones, and that happens quite a lot. How are you going to be able to make really confident, well informed decisions? And that’s critical to success and to align to your objective. So having that single source of truth that NetSuite provides, really that’s the number one factor. And then, of course, we go deeper with, you know, we’ve just released cash 360 so managing your cash flow is super critical. So having good understanding of ingoings and outgoings, making sure you’re staying afloat and being able to look after your business and invest in the right things. Of course, we continue to, you know, innovate and acquire and release new functionality all the time to help improve and and allow our customers to adopt more and drive more efficiencies across their business.
Heather
So I was just speaking to Bruce from Extel Technologies, based down in Victoria, and he said that, in addition to everything in terms of the technology that NetSuite provides, one of the good things is the industry groups that they gather together. While he’s based in. Melbourne, I know he mentioned he came here to Las Vegas to participate in those.
Are there any industry groups happening in Australia?
Scott
It is. We do that globally. There’s industry groups. So we can do that virtually. We can do that in person. We are trying to establish more of those groups in Australia. At the moment, we have user groups, and we do work with industry associations, and that’s something that we’re really trying to accelerate. So our current priorities are that we have a very healthy channel and ecosystem. We have something like five, more than 500 SDN partners. This is the Suite Cloud Developer Network. You think about our ISVs, you might call them, but partners that extend the functionality of NetSuite. We have very healthy channel partner ecosystem. What we want to do is really focus now on the partner experience, and part of that is bringing these groups together more frequently and having them engage with our customers in more structured environments like what you’re talking about.
Heather
Yeah, seems very, very, very useful.
NetSuite has an “act global, be local” strategy. How is that impacting the partner ecosystem? How does the NetSuite partner ecosystem in ANZ contribute to localising solutions for the market?
Scott
Yeah. Absolutely, you know,. It’s always been a strategy for NetSuite to kind of look after the core functionality and then have partners extend that functionality, whether that is compliance or tax compliance or payroll. For example, we’ve had a great payroll partner in ZonePayroll for many years. We’ve also got partners such as FullClarity helping us customise and tailor the solution for construction industry. We’ve got other partners doing that for distilleries and beverage manufacturing, and the list goes on. Like I said, we’ve got 500+ partners. Not all of them are in Australia, but the majority of them are. They have a have great presence there. So we have this really healthy ecosystem. So there’s, as I said, the focus now is just making sure that our customers are much more well informed and the partner experience is improved, so we can connect the customers and the partners as best we can to just generate more value from this great ecosystem that we have.
Heather
Yeah, absolutely.
For a technology company or a third-party vendor company considering a partnership with NetSuite and potentially exhibiting at the next suite world, what advice would you give them?
Scott
We’d love to have you here. My advice is, we are actually going on a partner recruiting spree, so in Australia and New Zealand, we’re really looking to grow. As I said, I’ve mentioned a couple of times now, improve that customer and partner experience, it’s a big focus for us. So we’re looking for new partners all the time. I mean, do we have a solution for absolutely every industry, for every you know, idea that any business has? No, we don’t. But we do have, you know, I think we have a customer in almost about every industry category across the globe. So there’s still opportunity for, you know, innovation in our ecosystem. And, yeah, if you’ve got a solution, and you think that it would be great to extend, you know, be complementary to NetSuite, and it would be extender functionality and drive value for our customers, we’d love to hear for you.
Heather
What steps do they take? Who do they contact? NetSuite is so vast.
What’s the job description of the person they should be contacting, or where should they be going?
Scott
Well, our GM of channels is Tony Field. So you could look Tony field up on LinkedIn. We’re all active on LinkedIn. My name’s Scott Wiltshire. You can look me up on LinkedIn and direct message me. You can come through our sales hotline in Australia, and we’ll connect you as well. That happens all the time.
Heather
Fantastic. Hopefully that gives you a few routes to explore. Now, you did suggest that there are some things missing from the marketplace. Is there any ones that are quite big out there that you think that we could throw it into the ether and see if we can make it happen?
Scott
Yeah. Look, I don’t think there’s any large gaps in the solution. In fact, you know, I’d consider, you know, it’s just like AI. You don’t know what’s around the corner, right? So if you asked me about AI two years ago, and what we would have, how could I answer? And so this is one of those situations. I’d love to know what innovations are out there where, you know, some vendors have decided, well, you know, we’ve got a real solution here that’s addressing a real need, and you know, we’re looking for a partner to help bring that to market. We’d love to hear from you. So there’s absolutely, yeah, we’ve got hundreds of industries covered. We do like to focus on our core kind of verticals. We look to partners to help us expand and expand our functionality and outreach in the market.
Can you share one surprising key takeaway that you’ve learned from attending SuiteWorld 2024 this year, without mentioning AI?
Scott
How do I do that? It was actually the procurement. The NetSuite procurement solution was the surprise because it didn’t mention AI. Now, that’s not to say that AI is not embedded. It is. But it was, yeah, just a surprise.
Heather
Was that the one that linked with Amazon? That one?
Scott
Yes, yes.
Heather
And it was another company, Staples.
Scott
Staples, yeah. So those are connected in the US. Yeah, absolutely. So when that comes down to Australia, we’ll be looking for local marketplaces to connect into as well. But yeah, that was probably more of a surprise to me, because of the so much hype around AI really has taken over, hasn’t it?
Heather
Yes, and sort of it’s our role to try and disseminate that. So what’s actually useful, and that particular solution that you’re referring to, is within the NetSuite solution. You go and you look to purchase from Amazon, and it populates a purchase order for you with all the information. So, no data entry.
Scott
You were paying attention. Yes, fantastic.
Heather
But that was what you’re referring to exactly. I’m sure our listeners know what was happening there. Thank you so much again, Scott, for spending time with me. Really appreciate it.
How can our listeners get in contact with you?
Scott
A pleasure, Heather. I think LinkedIn is probably the best if they want to reach out to me personally. I am active on LinkedIn. Check it all the time. So Scott Wiltshire at Oracle NetSuite, and you will find me.
Heather
Fabulous. Thank you so much. Awesome.
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