SuiteWorld 2018: Keynote & Netsuite Manufacturing Progression

I’m in Las Vegas at SuiteWorld 2018. Annual event organized by Oracle NetSuite – one of the largest cloud ERP service provider. Yesterday, I gave you some background and today I want mostly share what I’ve learn during the main keynote and manufacturing session. The SuiteWorld 2018 venue is very familiar to me. Las Vegas Venetian Hotel is a place of Autodesk University, so organization is pretty much the same.

Few slides I captured during the keynote. NetSuite is 2 years after acquisition by Oracle is very much enjoying the speed and feeling of innovation and at the same time using huge Oracle branding and resources. Sometimes you can hear questions about when “NetSuite” brand will be eliminated by Oracle, but I found it minor (Yeah.. this is what companies do sometimes – changing their brand. But I didn’t find any confirmation of that). So, you can see 2 separate ERP brand Oracle Fusion and Oracle NetSuite.

I found the following slide interesting because it shows how NetSuite position itself to grow within customer base.

An important message from NetSuite – single product and focus on user experience.

The story of “single product” is heavily used to position against competitors (e.g. Microsoft)

I’ve been very interested about what NetSuite does in manufacturing segment. After all, ERP world is diversified and to be able to provide a solution for manufacturing companies is not the same as financial companies or healthcare businesses.

I attended manufacturing keynote – Understanding NetSuite Manufacturing. It sounded like NetSuite is fighting marketp perception that NetSuite is not for manufacturing companies and investing resources in this process.

In the following picture, you can see how NetSuite Manufacturing progression roadmap is presented. It is still not done and feels like NetSuite is developing and acquiring assets and technologies to bring product to completion. As such acquisition of iQity  to adding deep next generation manufacturing capabilities.

Here is another interesting slide showing where NetSuite can provide a good customer fit with current capabilities.

It is clear to me that traditional manufacturing business with heavy presence of CAD and PLM functionality is still a lower fit for NetSuite. Which raises many questions about possible partnership between cloud providers from CAD and engineering world with NetSuite.

And the answer on almost traditional question – why cloud is better was provided by Oracle Mark Hurd during his Q&A session during the keynote. So, according to him, cloud is better because of the following 3 reasons: 1/ it is cheaper; 2/ it brings innovation and 3/ it is more secure.

What is my conclusion? NetSuite gives you an interesting feeling of fast growing cloud based software. You don’t see bad user interface, complex experience and sense of old fashion “ERP” business. It is new, cloud-based and active. It makes you think about future trajectory of NetSuite business and features focusing even more on manufacturing businesses. But cost of implementation is still an issue and NetSuite is focusing on building out of the box processes. How all cloud services from CAD, engineering and manufacturing software can be integrated together to provide a seamless environment for manufacturing companies is the question that I have in my mind. Will look for answers later today and tomorrow. Stay tuned….

Best, Oleg

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Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing cloud based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.