SuiteWorld 23: Oracle NetSuite pushes business efficiency by way of AI

Oracle NetSuite’s Evan Goldberg posited AI old and new as means for organisations to do more with fewer resources, speaking at the company’s annual global SuiteWorld conference in Las Vegas

Brian McKenna,
Business Applications Editor

Published: 18 Oct 2023 10:15

Evan Goldberg, executive vice-president of Oracle NetSuite, advocated a slew of traditional “old-school” machine learning and generative AI (GenAI) products as offering ways for customers to do more with less, at the supplier’s 25th global conference in Las Vegas.

The vendor also trumpeted newly NetSuite minted field service management and enterprise performance management (EPM) systems, and new capabilities that are said to help finance and customer experience professionals improve the speed and accuracy of business processes. The field service management capability has come in by way of a recent Oracle acquisition, Next Technik.

Goldberg said in a statement: “Over the past 25 years, our mission has stayed the same: deliver a unified suite of cloud applications that enable customers to do more with less and grow their businesses.

“We continue to extend the capabilities of NetSuite to support this mission and help our more than 37,000 customers benefit from the latest cloud and AI innovations. Our new updates include traditional and generative AI capabilities embedded throughout the suite to help increase user productivity, reduce costs, and improve overall business efficiency.”

In his keynote, he said: “We have a big vision for the quantum leaps of AI. But we’re also going to see an AI woven through the features we’re announcing. These features will allow you to achieve more while spending less in both your financial foundations and in powering your growth.”

NetSuite is also introducing a licensing model that is said to give customers task-specific licenses for employees that don’t require full access. For example, a warehouse employee who only needs NetSuite access for receiving, “putaway”, picking, and shipping, will gain access to NetSuite’s relevant warehouse management functionality without requiring a full subscription.

In broad support of the vendor’s full-suite approach, Kevin Permenter, research director of financial applications at IDC, said: “The economic volatility of the past few years has created a greater need for small to mid-size businesses to have an integrated suite of financial management and planning tools that can help them make more informed, data-driven decisions.

“Enterprise performance management tools give businesses the ability to plan for different economic and performance scenarios, build detailed forecasts, and leverage automation and AI/ML capabilities for more efficient and accurate financial planning and reporting.”

BirdRock Brands, a Texas-based NetSuite reference customer that offers goods for home, outdoor, pets, kitchen, holidays, and the office, confirmed at the event that it is using NetSuite Analytics Warehouse to calculate and forecast profitability.

Swooto Mark Chuberka, NetSuite administrator at BirdRock Brands, said: “With thousands of daily orders and ever-evolving requirements for inventory, webstore development, sales, and business planning, the AI features in NetSuite Analytics Warehouse help us make more informed decisions based on patterns and customer insights.”

Read more on Business intelligence and analytics

NetSuite ERP aims to reconcile the books faster