Insights from SuiteWorld on Next Generation Cloud, Big Data, and Other New Tech

This was my first time attending SuiteWorld. Held annually in San Jose, CA, SuiteWorld is a fantastic event put on by NetSuite – covering ERP, CRM and more. The event brought in 8,000 attendees, along with 100 solution providers, and featured 150 breakout sessions with thought leaders sharing tips and insights from a wide variety of industries.

While it is impossible to attend all the sessions and panels at SuiteWorld, I attended several. I’ve decided to share some of the key insights from the thought leaders at SuiteWorld right here.

Let's start with one key takeaway from SuiteWorld hosts themselves: NetSuite and their ability to build strong partnerships. Everybody can implement stronger partnerships into their organization to drive growth. I was absolutely amazed by the level of deep partnerships NetSuite has created, which have only been accelerated in the past four years since they started SuiteWorld. Six years ago when SuiteWorld first started, there were 200 partners in attendance. This year the number has grown to 1,000.

NetSuite’s CEO, Zach Nelson gave the opening keynote and made it very clear that creating relationships is at the heart of everything NetSuite does. Integration seems to be the name of the game for NetSuite. NetSuite has integrated with a host of other platforms, SaaS, and applications that greatly enhances the value they can provide to customers all accessible on one easy platform. This has enabled NetSuite to innovate faster. Cloud integration with their partners has enabled NetSuite to offer more features than their competition, which from my perspective has been the catalyst to their incredible growth. NetSuite’s success can be seen directly in their most recent earnings report.

“NetSuite’s fiscal year 2016 started strong with record first quarter results as we grew year-over-year revenue by more than 30 percent for our fifteenth consecutive quarter,” said Nelson. “Our financial results, and the results we are delivering for more than 10,000 companies operating around the globe are driven by a new approach to building business software.”

One of the startups I work with, beBee, has close to 11 million users on its business social media and blogging platform worldwide. We also have created many global partnerships with other companies and contributors worldwide. As you can imagine, the data we need to manage that is already huge, and the plan is to continue to grow the network on a large scale. So, naturally I was interested to hear what Dun & Bradstreet had to say, a company with over 250 million business records on companies large and small, private and public.

Dun & Bradstreet and NetSuite recently released the first phase of jointly developed solutions on NetSuite’s SuiteApp that enable users of NetSuite to easily access and use two key solutions: D&B Data Management for NetSuite and DNBi Risk Management for NetSuite. As a former B2B Business Development rep who spent hours upon hours manually entering funnel data, I can’t tell you enough how appealing and game-changing this is. As Dun & Bradstreet's SVP of Data as a Service Solution, Noam Reininger put it during his panel discussion, “Quality of data is critical. Dirty data inhibits growth. DNBi allows companies to go from zero to insight out of the box.”

D&B Data Management for NetSuite will quickly reduce duplicate, inconsistent, and fragmented records while monitoring and enriching a company’s existing data with additional elements from Dun & Bradstreet’s database.

Dun & Bradstreet’s booth was buzzing with demos of their new solutions during the show. Photo Credit: Rolando Ramirez.

In his session, Dun & Bradstreet’s VP Product Management of Trade Credit Risk, Sachin Rajpal, discussed Growth By Data-Inspired Risk Management which takes an approach of arming sales reps with data and use it to better qualify prospects. Rajpal also touched on DNBi Risk Management for NetSuite, which enables real-time credit decisions within the NetSuite platform, eliminating the lost productivity from manual decisions. Combining this approach with this product appears to be a major win for sales teams that leverage it. 

Speaking of insightful data, iCharts’ application literally caught my eye. They turn raw data using the SuiteCloud into beautiful charts all within the NetSuite platform and in real-time. When it comes to data, a visual component always helps me to better interpret it. In his panel discussion, iCharts’ CEO, Seymour Duncker spoke about his company’s value to clients, “iCharts helps you manage your business in real-time, and gain immediate insights to spend your time working – not building reports.” Normally, it would take at least two systems to run a solution like this to get these type of insights. However, with the integrated solution of iCharts and NetSuite users don’t have to log-in and -out to multiple systems. 

Being in social media, I was of course very interested in what Snapchat had to say. Snapchat’s Chief Strategy Officer, Imran Khan, discussed the strategic vision behind Snapchat. He told us that with Snapchat everything starts with the camera. Snapchat believes everyone is creative, and a camera is one of the most widely used methods for communication today. Additionally, a camera encourages people to create content.

It’s no secret that traditional television viewership is declining and mobile video watching is increasing; this is especially true with Millennials. On Snapchat, 100 million users are watching 10 billion videos per day. For companies, this means that video has become a critical means to reach their customer base. If your brand is not using video to tell your story, it should be!

SuiteWorld was full of great insights that will help those companies achieve smart growth. If you attended this year, what do you think?

About the Author:: John White is a recovering 13-year veteran of the wireless industry, current owner and chief marketer at Social Marketing Solutions, Brand Ambassador for a new affinity-based social media network called beBee, and contributing writer to The Good Men Project, Dice Insights, and the Social Marketing Blog. When he is not blogging or Tweeting, John enjoys being a dad, playing tennis, and eating Mexican food. Call or text me anytime: 970-692-3270.