Why NetSuite isn’t bothered about chasing Salesforce or any other competitor
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Oracle NetSuite Not Worried About Chasing the Leaders of the Pack in Submarkets Like CRMdespite its importance in these areas, the company’s GVP of Strategy has said.
In conversation with TechRadar Pro Bee SuiteWorld 2022Jason Cowan answered questions about the company’s ability to compete with Salesforce in the CRM market, as well as vendors of one product in other segments covered by the platform.
“Ultimately, the core of Salesforce is CRM and the core of NetSuite is ERP finance,” he told us. “I don’t think that means we have to chase Salesforce to create a best-of-breed CRM. We can have a very attractive offering for many industries, without saying we have to win in every market.”
Grandeur in ‘suiteness’
While NetSuite is a powerhouse in the ERP market, it specifically plays second fiddle to Salesforce in CRM. Likewise, Salesforce is rapidly expanding beyond CRM – into areas such as: e-commerceanalytics and so on – in a way that could impact NetSuite.
However, Cowan is convinced that by leaning on his heritage in finance, his strength in the cloud and relationship with Oracle from an infrastructure perspective, NetSuite will continue to increase its market share.
At SuiteWorld, NetSuite is still eager to draw attention to its recent investment in CRM. In particular, the company launched a new CPQ service designed to make it easier to configure, price, and quote products with a high degree of accuracy. But the real emphasis is on finance and accountancy.
“We’ve invested in our CRM, with new sales dashboards and additions like CPQ, which is probably one of the biggest CRM upgrades we’ve made. [But our primary focus] is about empowering finance teams by improving visibility and insight into cash flow, spending and profitability.”
The same message was echoed earlier in the week by James Chisham, VP International Product, who explained that NetSuite “cannot do everything”.
“We cannot be everything to all people. That’s very hard to achieve,” he said TechRadar Pro. “If we see financials as the backbone of what we do for our clients, then it’s super important to build on that. It’s about improving those processes, taking away some of the pain and manual effort.”
Both executives also suggested that NetSuite takes significant advantage of the interconnectedness of its product suite, a feature the company describes as “suiteness.”
“What we’ve always tried to do is use the power of our suite in a cohesive way. And apart, we’ve always been happy to have a rich ecosystem of partners that fill in any gaps for us and cover areas we don’t cover,” Chisham added.
The key to deepening this value proposition, according to Cowan, will be to lean on themes such as data visibility, machine learning and UI improvement over the coming months. While he couldn’t give us any details, the suggestion was that NetSuite has a few more tricks up its sleeve.