NetLedger Unveils NetSuite

Today NetLedger unveiled the latest member of its family of hosted solutions for low-end mid-market companies, called NetSuite. The solution, designed for companies with 100 to 500 employees, builds out NetLedger's customer reach, which traditionally targeted companies with 100 employees or less with its Oracle Small Business Suite. In an effort to scale functionality up to the needs of NetLedger's larger customer-base, the company is packing more advanced functionality into the NetSuite product, which combines front and back-office operations in one suite. Some of the advanced functionality includes accounting, warehousing, CRM, PRM, and customization features that are not available in Oracle Small Business Suite. Some examples include multicurrency capabilities for the accounting application, multilocation inventory for enhanced warehousing functionality, advanced marketing automation, email tracking, and sorting capabilities for the CRM component. According to Zack Nelson, president and CEO of NetLedger, one of the most notable additions is its customer self-service functionality. "This enables companies to store their own knowledge-base on line and allow customers to query it," Nelson says. Another noteworthy addition to NetSuite, according to Nelson, is its partner relationship management (PRM) functionality. The company drinks its own PRM Kool-Aide as it uses its own solution to manage its growing list of systems integrator partners that help sell and support its solutions. "We focus on partner sales. It's probably in the top two features we will augment moving forward," Nelson says. He expects this will help further distinguish NetSuite from competitive products as he says, "pure CRM products have very weak PRM solutions." There are three major customization capabilities within the NetSuite product. The first is workflow and form customization, which enables organizations to make minor changes such as changing the word estimates to quotes, and selecting the fields that appear on forms. The second customization feature enables companies to develop new application functionality and tie it into other business functionality in NetSuite or Oracle Small Business Suite--an example might be a search on customers whose warrantees will expire in a given month. The third advanced customization option enables organizations to enhance functionality through Java script, such as advanced mathematical algorithms, and validations. NetSuite will be generally available at the end of the month.