Cloud firm challenges traditional ERP
NetSuite challenges ERP giant SAP to match application functionality development, dismissing its rival's strategic database vision for building out commerce systems
The development of commerce
software can be characterised through the tale of two user
conferences, it emerged today.
That's according to Zach Nelson,
chief executive of NetSuite, who addressed a 5,000-strong audience at the
cloud-based financials, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and commerce
software company's third annual customer conference in San Jose.
Nelson drew a number of
comparisons between the strategic vision and development roadmap of NetSuite
versus that of SAP, which is simultaneously holding its own SapphireNow user
conference in Orlando, in support of what he called, "the next generation
of commerce".
Strategic system of record
"SAP is unveiling their
database in the cloud," he stated, "while no customer has ever asked
for a database in the cloud. They want new application features and
functionality."
He argued that, going forward, core
operational ERP systems should become the customer-facing system of record regardless
of channel and that SuiteCommerce, which NetSuite launched last year, was “defining
the next platform for global commerce”.
“We talk about it today as e-commerce,
but every company has to interact with customers whether they are business
customers or consumers, in a modern, automated and web-driven way,” he added. “CRM
[customer relationship management] is also much easier when you have the order
as a central customer record.”
Large enterprise traction
The company was keen to validate the multichannel and international credentials of SuiteCommerce when it also unveiled Williams-Sonoma as its first multi-billion dollar retail customer.
Having helped the US kitchen and homewares brand owner go live in Australia with new operational and store systems within 10 months and complementary transactional sites within three, Nelson declared that it demonstrated the “traction and diversity of use of the product”.
Evan Golberg, NetSuite founder
and chief technology officer, aimed to underline this message when he revealed
details of the upcoming second version of the commerce platform's front end – SuiteCommerce
Advanced Storefront.
He admitted: “The SuiteCommerce
experience has not been optimal for the e-commerce manager. But we’re going through
a massive overhaul of how you work with your site.”
Adding to commerce technology
Just as last year, when the
company added point-of-sale (PoS) capabilities to its suite with theacquisition of Retail Anywhere, this year Goldberg pointed to the addition of web
software developer Element Fusion as a key building block of the SuiteCommerce
vision.
Goldberg highlighted new
functionality acquired with LightCMS from Element Fusion, including assetdrag-and-drop, automatic resizing of
images to the size of the element and features like real-time views of stock
both online and by store using a postcode search populated directly from the
NetSuite lead record, as well as social media integration.
To speed responsiveness, the
likes of Akamai’s content delivery network and the Javascript framework facilitating
Solr server queries – AJAX Solr – will also aim to beef up the commerce capabilities.
Andy Lloyd, general manager of
commerce products at NetSuite, summed up the difference in strategic direction between
NetSuite and its traditional ERP competitors by confirming its interests lay
firmly with the verticalisation and localisation of its applications, including
commerce.
“If it’s a standard process, then NetSuite should be building that,” said Lloyd. “But we have great examples of localisations in every market and will be looking more at partners to take the product that last mile in terms of integration.”