SuiteWorld19 started off with a bang at the Sands Expo & Convention Center in Las Vegas. The annual celebration of Oracle NetSuite customers and partners from all around the globe held its opening keynote with NetSuite Vice President, Evan Goldberg, and Oracle CEO, Mark Hurd on April 2nd - and here’s what happened.
Our team is hard at work at SuiteWorld, hosting our biggest booth yet! Luckily, we still had a chance to listen in on some of the amazing keynotes taking place during the industry’s premier Cloud ERP conference.
For those of you who did not have had the chance to make it to SuiteWord this year (check out why you should be putting it on your calendar for next year), or for those of you that want to relive the experience, we’re running you through some of the key takeaways from the opening keynote!
What is the Blueprint for Growth?
NetSuite Vice President, Evan Goldberg, and Oracle CEO, Mark Hurd, broke down the 6 key elements that your company needs to achieve growth.
1. Simplicity
The most important thing for any growing business, especially a notable organization like NetSuite, is simplifying complex processes.
People don't want to deal with more complicated processes or features - frankly, they don’t have the time. People want user-friendly solutions which are clear and streamlined to meet their needs.
Evan Goldberg goes on to say that NetSuite's true north is continually trying to improve and update their software for simplicity. The team behind NetSuite strive to offer users the best solution to help their businesses adapt to the Cloud during crucial stages of growth, where they might be otherwise slowed down or bogged down by the common obstacles that happen to any fast-growing company.
2. Visibility
Having complete visibility into your processes will help your organization identify both its strengths and potential threats. Focusing on your organization’s strengths is a great way to grow and build credibility while shedding light on your weaknesses allows you to improve.
As NetSuite continues to become more user-friendly, it also introduces more efficient methods for getting visibility into your process with new tools like SuiteAnalytics workbooks.
Guest speaker Rob King, CFO of the American Cancer Society, joins the conversation to highlight how visibility is crucial for non-profits, like the American Cancer Society, throughout their growth. In order to be successful, nonprofits need transparently and viability.
King began by asking, “How do you bring awareness to such a tremendously important issue?”
Firstly, you identify the organization’s True North. For the American Cancer Society, that would be saving and celebrating lives while leading the fight against cancer.
They succeed in doing this by ensuring that everything in their business processes goes towards achieving that goal. NetSuite was a key factor in helping the American Cancer Society align their processes with their goals.
NetSuite was able to give them great visibility into their organization’s processes and helped them understand the positive changes they needed to make in order to expand their impact and reach a wider audience. This process required NetSuite to integrate with different systems in order to fully understand the organization’s infrastructure.
Because the American Cancer Society handles millions of dollars in research funds, it was crucial that that revenue was handled with viability and used to make the right impact. Providing people with the information they need to make the right decisions is a priority for non-profit organizations.
3. Control
There are circumstances that may happen in your company that you may not be able to predict. Trade disputes, audits, scandals, financial turmoil. These things can happen to any business, but how do you overcome them? The key is to have complete control over the aspects that you can predict.
Shawn Assad, the CFO of Vice Media, stepped on stage to talk about the obstacles that they've overcome by taking control of their business processes. He begins by asking, “When is the right time to hire more people?” When your company is growing, your current processes may soon become inadequate to handle new pressures. Essentially, the longer you wait, the more your outdated processes will harm your growth.
Assad goes on to say, "Don’t design processes around the wrong people. You need the right people to take on the right processes that are right for your company."
He then speaks about NetSuite’s role in Vice Media’s growth. Vice Media was running on three separate systems that, essentially, did not interact with each other. They had very little visibility into their data, and they needed consolidated information.
They were attracted to the Cloud capabilities and the scalability of NetSuite, and the way in which NetSuite would allow them to take control of their processes, in a clear, streamlined manner. By implementing software that allowed them to open communication between their systems, Vice Media could essentially take control of their systems.
4. Agility
The world is always evolving - especially the world of technology. That’s why, in order for your company to stay relevant, it has to change and adapt just as quickly.
Evan Goldberg uses Roku, a media player box that attaches to your TV, as an example of how industries are dynamically changing to adhere to growing demands for agility.
Roku began as a NetFlix streaming tool, but later saw an opportunity to fill in the gap with smart TVs. Roku now offers a service to manage different streaming experiences from your TV and they strive to deliver the best streaming options to their clients.
Roku ultimately grew to adapt to the needs of their clients. With the surgence of services like Netflix, people wanted better and easier ways to watch whatever they wanted, how they wanted, and when they wanted. Roku adapted to that need.
5. Productivity
The next key for growth is productivity. In order to grow, a company needs to be active, to change, and to adapt. Success does not happen without work.
Goldberg begins by saying, "76% of customers look for sites that show their products in their local currency." He then asked, “How do you enable your business for rapid global expansion?”
The answer: Adhere to local business practices, and take control of global expense management for capturing expenses in any currency and reimbursing in any currency.
It’s no secret that people are more willing to buy products when they can actually understand how much they cost. Most people aren’t going to spend their time manually converting prices to their local currency. If businesses work fast to display prices in multiple currencies, they’re also working to globalize their business.
And that is Goldberg’s main point: GET. GLOBAL. FAST.
He tells the audience to streamline their business’ compliance with different tax laws, from all countries they’re selling to. This is all about making the customer experience simpler and more transparent. The smoother your customer experience, the more streamlined your transactional processes, the more power of growth your company will have.
6. Collaboration
The final key is collaboration. Whether it is collaboration between your business’ departments, systems, partners, or clients, being able to openly communicate and understand all the needs within your company, will help you align your processes to meet all of those needs.
Collaboration is one of the major benefits of NetSuite. Essentially, NetSuite connects your financial, manufacturing, retail, and employee management systems within your organization to help information flow seamlessly between them.
The best ideas emerge through open communication, understanding, and collaboration.
We’ll leave you with this final thought from the keynote:
“Creativity means thinking beyond what is possible and being fearless in your vision for what you want to do as a tech company.” - Mark Hurd.
Watch the full opening keynote from SuiteWorld19 below!
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