Eminently suite-able for the NZ market: Reflecting on the rise of cloud ERP

My visit to the NetSuite conference taking place in Las Vegas this week got off to a great start. Sitting down at the bar for an epic steak dinner at Peter Lugers at Caesar's Palace, I struck up a conversation with the man next to me. When he offered to take a picture of the US$90 steak in front of me – these things do need to be recorded for posterity – I returned the favour.

Turns out that man is a senior executive with NetSuite. But at this point, he was just a nice guy enjoying a meal and a chat. As for me, I've not attended an Oracle conference previously, but have encountered the company frequently, having worked with several partners along the way, mostly writing case studies.

Among those case studies I've produced are many for NetSuite itself. So, yeah, fair to say I know the vendor.

For those who don't, NetSuite is the 'OG' cloud ERP. Founded by Evan Goldberg in 1998, the idea was rather ahead of its time with an internet in its infancy and enterprise software closely guarded and very, very on premise. I probably first encountered NetSuite while working at Computerweek in South Africa back in 2002. Seemed crazy, this SaaS thing. Now look.

Anyway, skip-to 2016 and the ever-acquisitive Oracle snapped up NetSuite for nearly US$10 billion. Evan Goldberg is still the boss as EVP and thanks to his early vision of cloud computing, the product he kicked off is now used by around 43,000 customers in 219 countries and territories globally. (Note that's from Oracle itself; there are in fact 195 officially recognised countries in the world, so one imagines the territories distinction is important).

Now, at these big conferences the real stories aren't found in the carefully choreographed keynotes and press sessions. Nor, even, the one-on-one interviews, where you will not be left alone with an executive. There is always an eager PR person (and don't get me wrong the PR people are lovely, whether that's forced camaraderie or not) hovering nearby, watching your every question and keeping those execs 'on message'.

It never used to be like that, but hey, here we are.

Open discussions, therefore, are revealing. My exec made for a rather delightful exchange, because he gave numerous insights into how NetSuite is 'suite-able' for anything from the S part of SME all the way into the E. That is, it scales pretty well from 'several' users all the way into the hundreds. NetSuite itself runs on NetSuite (which is comforting, why wouldn't they).

The determinant of if a business should run an ERP as opposed to an accounting system like MYOB AccountRight or Xero's celebrated package, or Intuit etc, isn't users though. It is far more about complexity or sophistication of needs.

Since New Zealand is a nation of small businesses (even our 'big' businesses like Fonterra or Spark are medium by US standards), NetSuite really is in something of a suite spot as a product suitable for the NZ market. That combines with our excellent internet infrastructure and the recent availability of local hosting from hyperscale providers AWS and Microsoft Azure.

There is, of course, absolutely no shortage of competitors: Microsoft Dynamics is key among those, with its powerful value proposition of combining with the popular Microsoft 365 setup including Office and Teams, the Power platform, etc.

Additionally, there are tens if not hundreds of other products out there, scaling from AccountRight and Xero, through to MYOB's more upscale products, homegrown 'mini' ERPs like N2, and, and, and. Even SAP dabbles in the lower end of ERP, with BusinessOne.

Despite the competition, NetSuite has through its partner network achieved good traction in NZ. One perhaps surprising example of a business for which NetSuite proved ideal is a veterinary practice in the Bay of Plenty. With multiple locations and fairly demanding processes around the handling of medications and other goods, and thousands of transactions every week, Vetora needed more than an accounting package. High complexity. But a low number of users. The flexibility and capability of NetSuite met the need (Google for more).

Coming back to my exec encounter, and without the necessity for PR oversight, that's exactly what the 'suite' spot is for NetSuite. The fact that it can scale to 'whatever' that vet practice, or any other business, might reasonably grow to, is an added bonus.

Another valuable insight was the nature of markets across APAC. The exec noted that in many countries, the lower end aren't interested in regulations and don't attract the interest of regulators. This is a component of relatively unsophisticated business practices, with little appetite for anything more complex than spreadsheets to run sometimes quite intricate operations, combined with a basic accounting package.

In more regulated markets like NZ, the need becomes more pronounced. That said, despite the fabulously advanced age in which we live, it is quite surprising that many, many businesses one might expect to be using highly integrated and capable software systems, are still running on the technological equivalent of a length of shoelace and a piece of half-chewed bubblegum.

Think about that reality the next time AI rears its ugly head in conversation.

There is, in fact, plenty of far more basic and unsexy work to be done elevating essential foundational systems that will contribute to better business management. And if you needed a helpful indicator of if it's time to look at a NetSuite or similar ERP system, good news. It's called the spreadsheet. Often used to plug gaps between various systems and processes, the spreadsheet is one of the more reliable canaries in the coal mine, telling you it's time to up your software game.

Oh, and Peter Lugers? If you enjoy steak, don't go past it. Worth every cent, and that dinner wasn't a NetSuite comp but a personal choice.

Donovan Jackson is attending SuiteWorld in Las Vegas as the guest of NetSuite.