NetSuite boosts global capabilities of its SaaS business software

IDG News Service - NetSuite on Wednesday announced a series of enhancements and offerings meant to make its on-demand ERP (enterprise resource planning) software more desirable to larger companies, particularly those with international operations.

Most of the new features concern NetSuite OneWorld, which wraps features such as support for multiple currencies and tax laws around the core suite. NetSuite has further fleshed out OneWorld's capabilities in the new release, which is now available.

The latest version of OneWorld supports automated tax reporting for 42 countries, up from seven at the start of this year, said Paul Turner, senior director of product marketing. In addition, the system now supports 17 languages.

OneWorld's financials module is gaining more abilities with respect to the closing of financial periods. Accounting modules can now be locked "on a subsidiary-by-subsidiary basis, further improving controls and accountability during monthly and annual closing," NetSuite said in a statement.

Manufacturing customers now have a standard costing feature, which will be appealing to larger companies, Turner said. Customers can attach a standard cost to each inventory item and then compare those figures to actual costs as they go through a quarter. Any differences they spot could help them figure out ways to save money either during procurement or production.

NetSuite has also plugged in a fixed asset management system that allows users to track the lifecycle of their buildings, vehicles and equipment. That capability was recently acquired from NetSuite's partner, Nolan Business Solutions, and is already being used by many NetSuite customers, Turner said.

Other improvements center on analytics. Customers can use a new feature to slice and dice data within the system, rather than off-loading it to an Excel spreadsheet.

NetSuite is also boosting its security capabilities through a new partnership with CA Technologies. Under the agreement, CA's two-factor authentication technology will be applied on NetSuite's back-end systems and sold as an option to customers.

While NetSuite had already offered two-factor authentication, which couples the usual username and password with an encrypted token, the CA partnership takes the technology to an "enterprise" level, Turner said. Moreover, the cost of such a system would typically be quite burdensome for a midsized company, he said. "We can run this very, very efficiently."

OneWorld is now deployed in about 100 countries around the world, Turner said. While NetSuite isn't yet serving as the sole ERP provider of a major multinational corporation, OneWorld is making inroads in companies as large as education company Knowledge Universe, which has more than 40,000 employees.

Knowledge Universe is rolling out NetSuite's software now and will ultimately have "thousands" of subscription seats, Turner said. NetSuite is also targeting its products at large companies interested in "two-tier" ERP, where to save money and time, a third-party package like NetSuite is rolled out in a new foreign office or subsidiary and tied back into a core system from vendors such as SAP or Oracle.