“Imagine having a personal assistant that has all the wealth of information out there in the world as well as contextually relevant information about your business and the activity that you’re doing right now to help you do things a lot faster, with more accuracy—this is a really powerful solution.”

“We’re giving those customers the ability for personalised, contextually relevant, and company-specific information to generate and refine content based on their own company information inside NetSuite.“

– Scott Wiltshire, Vice President & GM, Oracle NetSuite ANZ.

Today, I’m speaking with Scott Wiltshire, Vice President & GM, Oracle NetSuite ANZ. Scott shares insights into AI-driven automation. We discuss its impact on unlocking productivity for finance and operations, and why Australian & NZ businesses should embrace this next-gen technology.

Key Learnings from the episode:

  • NetSuite’s “Text Enhanced” Feature: Uses generative AI to automate content creation within the ERP system.
  • Boosting Productivity: AI-powered automation helps finance teams with collections, journal entry annotations, and other manual documentation tasks.
  • Data Security & Compliance: The AI assistant ensures strict security protocols, protecting company data within Oracle Cloud.
  • Personalised AI Assistance: AI-generated content is tailored to specific company data, improving accuracy and relevance.
  • Competitive Advantage: Businesses leveraging AI early gain efficiency, scalability, and a productivity boost.
  • SuiteConnect 2025: NetSuite’s regional conference in Sydney will unveil more AI-powered innovations and training opportunities.

Scroll down for a full transcript

This transcript has been generated and transcribed by AI

How are you this morning?

Scott Wiltshire

I’m fantastic. Heather, very excited actually, to be talking to you in the same time zone as my mind for once. So yeah, really nice to be with you today.

Heather Smith

Fantastic. I’m looking forward to our conversation. It sounds like you and NetSuite have been quite busy since we spoke last in Las Vegas in September 24.

Are there any updates you want to share with our audience?

Scott Wiltshire

We have been, absolutely. I guess that’s what I was alluding to before. Vegas is never the best place to do these for me anyway, to do these sorts of interviews. So I am looking forward to it. We have been really, really busy. Obviously, you know, AI is a hot topic on everyone’s mind at the moment, despite all the things going on in the world. Yeah, it’s very exciting for us today in Australia and New Zealand to announce NetSuite Text Enhanced is made, being made available to Australian, New Zealand customers. And for those of you on the podcast or listening to the podcast that don’t know, Oracle NetSuite is a cloud based ERP provider.

We have 43,000 customers around the globe. We have very healthy and significant customer base here in Australia, and we typically take customers who are outgrowing accounting. Businesses that are quite small with rapid or views of rapid expansion and growing very well and looking to punch above their weight and really do more with less. And NetSuite today the announcement that we’re making around Text Enhanced is a generative AI service, powered by Oracle Cloud infrastructure, so powered by the mothership. That really provides all our customers the ability to scale their business even faster and achieve their business goals quicker. Because we’re giving those customers the ability for personalised, contextually relevant and company-specific information, to generate and refine, I should say, content for based on their own company information inside NetSuite. So this should be a real game changer for productivity, for our customers. And, like I said, I’m very excited to talk to you about it today.

Heather Smith

Yeah, absolutely. I’m excited to hear all about it and the thing that can differentiate businesses is they have the data. It is actually overlaying the AI across that data and actually using it, enhancing it and as what you’re going to do…

Scott Wiltshire

Exactly.

Can you explain a bit more about this ‘Text Enhanced’ feature?

Yeah, I mean, at the moment, we all have access to things like the Meta AI and ChatGPT, but that’s not your customer. That’s not your company-specific information. Your structured data within your ERP is so valuable.

So this service gives those customers the ability, for example, we can look at a finance and accounting team being able to generate collections, notices based off the structured information within their team. Now, of course, this is all secure. You know, the service really adheres to all existing security protocols. So no information leaves your the OCI instance.

Regarding safety, is this feature ring-fenced?

Scott Wiltshire

Yeah, it’s absolutely ring-fenced. No customer data is shared externally. It’s all role-based permissions are adhered to. But being able to generate content like collections notices to say who’s it or how much they owe, when was the invoice, all of that great, fantastic information that you would have a person manually going through and kind of pulling that information out. Well, you can do that now to click of a button, so it’s a huge time saver.

Heather Smith

Oh, absolutely fantastic. Now, to pull back slightly, can we explain just in basic language what the Text Enhanced feature is?

In simple terms, what is this ‘Text Enhanced’ feature all about?

Scott Wiltshire

I guess if you’re not sure of a generative AI model, if that’s too technical, and for many it is. We’re talking about that ChatGPT. Most commonly, people would understand ChatGPT. So what does that do? It creates the first draft, essentially, of content. But you want that content to be, you know, we’re giving the ability now to for it to be company-specific information, so not just generic information, but really personalised to the user that’s logged in to the context that you’re looking at. So if you are, for example, a Sales User, and you want to create a new campaign or an outreach email, you could go log into your NetSuite instance, and your view would be essentially the CRM. So you would look pull up a customer record and click the button and say, I want to generate an outreach to this customer, rather than you typing out to the correct contact email address. You know what you’re reaching them out to about. You can click the button that first draft is created for you, and then you can go in and refine that. Yeah.

We also have some tools, sorry, just to expand on that ability to refine. We do have some tools built into the system already that allow you to, you know, just change well, let’s have another go at that, or let’s make it bigger, or let’s make it smaller, and then, of course, go back. You could put some prompts in there. I must, you know, with this email that I’m reaching out to, I need to have this sort of content included in it, and it will do that for you.

Can you put a brand tone across emails and define it to create content in Australian English spelling?

Scott Wiltshire

Yes. So, great, fantastic question. So today we’re announcing step one, which is the availability of Text Enhance in our region. We do have solutions like Prompt Studio that are in the pipeline. They’re released internationally, but not yet in Australia and New Zealand, but they are coming down to us in the next few months. We hope Prompt Studio will be able to do what you’re talking about there. Really, you’ll be able to define the tone and the structure. So when you’re creating product descriptions, for example, you can say, I want all my product descriptions to sit suit this particular structure. It might be two sentences, and it must have, you know what the materials made of, the texture, where it’s made, you know, the availability, whether it’s a special order or it’s on back order, things like that. So you’ll be able to tailor that.

But at the moment, it’s you’d have to prompt those in yourself. But again, you know, it’s a fantastic leap forward for our Australian customers. I really think it will drive our competitiveness for NetSuite users in Australia. And really, when you think about it, it brings scale, the economies of scale, to those that don’t necessarily have that scale. So think about any user logging into NetSuite and having a personalised AI assistant that understands your business, understands the context of what you’re doing in that moment, and can generate and advise you on information or generate content for you that is contextually relevant, as I said, to help you speed up just that day to day operations that you’re doing.

Heather Smith

Yeah, absolutely. And for people listening in, it’s really beneficial to get on board now so it can learn from you and treat it as your co-pilot. Just don’t leave it there to do what it needs to do, treat it as your co-pilot, and work with it to enhance.

Scott Wiltshire

Absolutely, yeah. So, in NetSuite, we kind of talk about these AI services as agents and advisors. In this one, we’re talking about, you know, it’s an assistant, or an advisor. And this is an assistant to really help you do your work. So imagine having a personal assistant that has all the wealth of information out there in the world, as well as contextually-relevant information about your business and the activity that you’re doing right now to help you do these things a lot faster, with more accuracy. This is, like I said, it’s a really powerful solution.

Heather Smith

It sounds it sounds very exciting. And the evolution of what we’re seeing in technology at the moment is startlingly fast but incredibly enabling for companies. So you have touched on it.

How do you see finance teams using it? What tasks does it streamline for the finance teams?

Scott Wiltshire

I did touch on it before. I think collections process is, you know. If you think about these processes that require a little bit of manual creation of content. Collections, is an easy one. In addition to that, authoring for notation of journal entries as well. But where’s the value in this, right? So I think that’s fantastic. You know, you’re going to be able to collect better than you have before. But is really that? Is that the end of it? It’s actually not. I mean, what are you doing in that time that you save when we’re when this is essentially adding more hours into your day.

It’s freeing you up to be far more innovative and creative and value-adding for the business that you’re doing. So you that you’re working within, so you can do much more higher value-added tasks. So I speak to finance execs all day, every day that talk to me about how well NetSuite handles their business and how it does automate all these tasks.

But typically they are running very competitive businesses, and they need to control their costs and have great visibility into their business and the metrics, key metrics around their business, is super important for them. And you know, wouldn’t it be nice if we could just go hire another 12 people to do all that fantastic work for us? Well, here’s an opportunity to get a lot of that mind power, that expertise, that value-adding workload from your existing workforce, because they’re not doing this kind of low-level manual creation of content.

Heather Smith

Absolutely.

Is this feature rolling out across all existing users? Or do you switch it on? How do you apply to access ‘Text Enhanced’?

Scott Wiltshire

It will be rolled out to all customers around Australia and New Zealand, with all being managed on the Oracle Cloud infrastructure service. So it’s part of that service. Now, if you want to opt out, there will be a process that you can opt out, but everyone will get it by default.

Heather Smith

I’ll touch on the opting out. Sometimes you might want to opt out, but give it a week or so, and then maybe perhaps opt back in again. Because sometimes, and I’m not saying with Oracle, but sometimes these things happen, and it’s like, ah, trying, trying to absorb them and deal with new changes can be overwhelming.

Scott Wiltshire

Absolutely can be. But at the end of the day, the change management for users will be a little box that appears. They can ignore it if they want, but they might just want to hover over and click on it and just see what it can do for them. We just know that, like I said, you know, Australian businesses are so competitive with our customer base is typically growing really quickly. They’re smaller businesses, smaller and medium-sized enterprises, so they have a finite resources.So you know, it’s just not possible for us to have 25 hours in a day or hire an extra two or three people to do this work all the time. So this is, you know, as I’ve been kind of banging on about, this is just a fantastic productivity boost, and I think the early adopters will really see a competitive advantage in their business. The sooner you can get your workforce using these AI services as a true Assistant, you’re having a real multiplier affecting your business. So instead of having, you know, 10 employees or 20 employees, you have the you know, the infinite knowledge of these AI, large language models, as well as the company specific, personalised and contextually-relevant information. And of course, I’ll keep saying this, but it is secure, you know. It adheres to all the existing security protocols, so users can’t go in there and it will not come back and generate information that the users aren’t allowed to see.

Heather Smith

That’s really good to know. And so for businesses that who are hesitant, there’s the option to turn off, but we encourage you to check it out and leverage it and leverage this feature functionality.

Is there anything else that you would like to share with our listeners about this ‘Text Enhanced’ feature, or what they need to know about NetSuite in the future?

Scott Wiltshire

Well, look, you know, for if you’re a NetSuite customer at the moment, we are looking to make further announcements in the future. We’re about to announce our largest, you know, our regional SuiteWorld. We call it SuiteConnect, which we’re going to hold in April later this year. We’re looking to to announce some further enhancements to these AI services as well. But this is, you know, today, it’s just such an exciting day for us. Me, you know, I’ve been with the business now 11 years. We have a very, very significant customer base around Australia and New Zealand. I know that those customers have been crying out for this service because they see the value in their structured data, within their ERP, their financial system. They know that being able to compete tomorrow means they have to be more efficient and find ways to gain productivity today. And this is just a huge leap forward for all of us. So, yeah, really excited. And you know, thank you very much for helping me get the message out.

Heather Smith

That’s awesome. And I think SuiteWorld is going to be in Sydney.

Scott Wiltshire

SuiteConnect. This is the regional version of SuiteWorld. What does that mean? That just means it’s our largest customer conference, and we’re going to bring in as many of our partners as well around the ecosystem, and we’re going to bring our customers together, and you’re going to hear from our execs and our subject matter experts and as well as our partners, as well as other customers and partners. We’ll hear about how they’re using NetSuite to drive real competitive advantage in their business and grow and scale and really achieve their business objectives. That’s what it’s about.

Are you aware if they’ll have technical sessions for people to learn more about NetSuite at SuiteConnect 2025?

Scott Wiltshire

We are putting that together as we speak. But, yes, absolutely. You know, training is a huge draw card. Actually, we love giving back to our customer base. It’s not all every day we get this sort of opportunity, so we will. As we bring those customers together, we’ll be offering a range of training services there. But they can avail themselves. So not only do they learn a bit about NetSuite, the product, the direction of the company, what’s happening latest, maybe we can actually teach them how to use NetSuite better, and when you get back to your work, share what you’ve just learned.

Heather Smith

Yeah, absolutely. So for those who are listening in, I’ve attended a couple of of these big conferences. If you are either in the space already, or you’re working with companies that kind of are moving into the space, I would encourage you to go along the networking of just meeting people and hearing what they’re doing and comparing notes. And some people I know in the past have said just meeting people from the same industry and hearing how they’re doing and how they’re using it was a massive boost to what they were doing within their business. So very exciting that you are having that conference. And I’ll put the details in the show notes for our Australian, New Zealand businesses eager to explore Text Enhanced.

Where should those interested in exploring the ‘Text Enhanced’ feature start? Is there any further information online?

Scott Wiltshire

For existing customers, you know, we all we provide personalised account management services to all existing customers. So reach out to your account manager. If you’re buying through a partner or buying direct from NetSuite, it doesn’t matter. You still get an account manager. Just give them a buzz. If you’re not sure who that is, just jump on NetSuite website. But absolutely, speak to your partner if that’s the case. We will have information on our website about this new release, and so you know, you’ll be able to click there. You can find me. Scott Wiltshire, I’m the vice president, General Manager on LinkedIn. I author a lot of content. I’m quite active there, so you’ll be able to search and find me, reach out to me, and I’m happy to have a chat with you. Point you in the right direction. But yeah, we have teams of people here ready to help our customers adopt this service. And of course, if you’re not a customer, if you’re thinking about you know, if you’re a business now that’s outgrowing your accounting, or you’re using an existing ERP, and you’re struggling to get live access to information, and the power that brings and the ability to help scale your business, whether that’s locally or internationally, that’s really our sweet spot. And so Text Enhanced is an additional value add over and above what we currently do. But you know, NetSuite is, you know, an absolute market leader. We’re a pioneer in Cloud ERP. If you’re struggling with multiple systems and not getting the information you need. Reach out, jump on our website, have a look at we’ve got to offer, fill in the form, and we’ll have someone reach out to you and see if NetSuite is right for you.

Heather Smith

Thank you so much, Scott for joining us on the Accounting Apps Podcast. I’m sure our listeners will be interested in what you’ve shared with us today. They know all the places to go and look further for it. So thank you very much. And I look forward to seeing you in Sydney in April.

Scott Wiltshire

My pleasure, Heather. Great to catch up with you again. Thank you very much for having me. And yeah, I’ll speak to you in April. Absolutely.