First and Only Unified Cloud SRP Solution to Meet the Functional Needs of Product and Services Companies
New SRP Offers Industry-Specific Needs of Project- and Product-Based Businesses in Software, IT Services, Consulting, Advertising and Marketing Services
NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N), the industry's leading provider of cloud-based financials / ERP and omnichannel commerce software suites, today announced the next-generation services resource planning (SRP) solution, the first and only cloud suite that brings together the strengths of ERP and professional services automation (PSA) to enable project- and product-based businesses to run their entire business life cycle—from project management, resource management, time-and-expense management, to project accounting—all in one unified software solution, and the first and only solution that unites all of the functionality to meet the needs of product and services companies in one single system. The new release enables multi-model billing for service delivery across the services value chain from fixed fee, to milestone and to time-and-materials. Designed for tomorrow’s businesses, NetSuite SRP also offers mobile and social capabilities that give on-the-go services professionals access to real-time business information anywhere, anytime and better collaboration across the organisation. With functional richness and depth unmatched in the industry, NetSuite SRP also enables services organisations to customise the solution to their unique needs through the SuiteCloud Development Platform.
NetSuite’s pioneering SRP solution enables both product- and project-based businesses to modernise and transform operations the way manufacturing resource planning (MRP) did for manufacturing businesses in the ‘90s. It helps organisations automate and manage key aspects of their business across the complete bid-to-bill lifecycle, giving them what they need to stay competitive, gain efficiency, deliver quality services and delight their clients.
With NetSuite SRP, modern services organisations will gain comprehensive visibility into back-office financials and front-office services operations in one unified system to increase project profitability, maximise billable resource utilisation and make informed, data-driven, strategic and tactical decisions with powerful and insightful business metrics. The new NetSuite SRP suite also addresses global businesses’ needs by giving them comprehensive real-time visibility, integrated financials, resource optimisation and services management from corporate to subsidiaries, down to the individual project level across geographies, currencies and tax jurisdictions. For companies selling both services and products, NetSuite SRP supplies complete visibility and control over enterprise-wide processes with such capabilities as revenue recognition for diverse revenue streams, and unified billing across multi-model service and product delivery.
Need for SRP and Market Opportunities
Both project- and product-based companies have for years faced the challenge of siloed information and maximising the efficient use of staff. Traditionally, executives were forced to track services data in disparate spreadsheets, sharing that data with the finance department via email, which resulted in a lack of real-time visibility into operations and the risk of manual data entry errors and duplicate entries. Additionally, these companies have struggled to put the right person on the right project at the right time to maximise performance, profitability and client satisfaction. PSA software addresses many of these challenges, but without the financial component, organisations can’t track profitability through their back-office financials.
“In order to drive profit and growth, project- and product-based businesses have a clear need for visibility into the services, product and financial data that has traditionally been siloed across their organisations,” said Mike Fauscette, Group Vice President, Software Business Solutions at IDC. “Having that data in one unified, cloud-based system is a compelling offering in the global SRP market, which my research indicates reached $2.9 billion in 2013 and is growing at a rate of 9.5 percent year-over-year.”
Breakthrough Capabilities
With NetSuite SRP, project- and product-based businesses have one system to monitor the financial health of their organisations while also gaining real-time visibility into operational metrics. The new release delivers the following key features and benefits:
- Project Management – enabling project managers and team members to collaborate and update project status anytime, anywhere, improving project efficiency, satisfying clients and reducing non-billable work. Deep functionality includes project templates, task dependencies, Gantt charts with baseline and critical path highlights. And the new project center is designed to increase consultant productivity. The iPhone app helps on-the-go professionals to bill time and file expense reports anywhere and anytime.
- Resource Management – ensuring that the right resources are working on the right projects, based on real-time project timelines, with no one sitting on the bench. Capabilities to assign the best available talent to a project based on skill sets and industry expertise to optimise resource utilisation.
- Project Accounting – advanced Job Costing allows for labor from timesheets to be tracked to financials, creating real-time insight into project profitability while detailed project budgeting allows for categorisation of costs directly from the project, providing real-time metrics on Budget vs. Actuals.
- Mobile and Social Functionality – the availability of NetSuite SRP for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets gives on-the-go services professionals the ability to manage time and expenses, as well as more flexibility to quickly and easily access and manage critical business information from their device of choice from a client office, airport, home or any location in the world. The embedded social activities within the SRP suite helps improve collaboration.
- Delivery Billing Flexibility – empowering organisations to deliver complex multi-model billing across the services value chain, including fixed fee, milestones and time-and-materials models.
- Time and Expense Management – simplifying timesheet and expense reporting and tracking, and mapping entry and approval processes to unique business needs, helps improve consultant efficiency and compress billing cycles.
- Job Costing – providing instant visibility to finance, with billable hours going directly to the general ledger.
- Revenue Recognition – automating revenue recognition to schedule, calculate and present accurate financial statements.
- Financial Management and Reporting – providing real-time visibility into all aspects of a project-based business, allowing everyone to work off a single source of financial data with robust reporting and analytics to optimise the entire services business lifecycle.
Vertical Focus for Software, Advertising, Marketing Services, IT Services and Consulting
NetSuite SRP is designed to meet the needs of a variety of vertical industries. These include: project-based businesses such as advertising, marketing services, IT services, consulting, and product-based businesses such as software companies with embedded services teams that deliver implementation and consulting services, or resellers of hardware supported by service offerings.
For software companies, NetSuite’s next-generation SRP delivers project budgeting to easily and efficiently manage and analyse project finances with advanced project accounting software, from bid preparation through time and expense tracking to client billing and internal charge-back. NetSuite SRP supplies deep functionality to manage key drivers of a services business—revenue, billable utilisation, profitability and days sales outstanding (DSO)—while streamlining revenue recognition across subscription businesses, all from one unified system.
Advertising and marketing services companies facing a transformation in the industry with the shift to digital and fee- and performance-based revenue can take advantage of NetSuite’s next-generation SRP for complete job routing from procurement to client to legal approval and streamline project management, resource optimisation, pitch-to-invoice; and other critical advertising and marketing business processes by optimising quotes and staffing, increasing staff utilisation and agility. IT services and consulting companies benefit from NetSuite SRP capabilities to improve resource utilisation and project profitability through assigning talent efficiently, developing more accurate quotes and identifying areas for margin improvement. NetSuite SRP’s global capabilities allow management consulting firms to manage and monitor a global workforce, assigning resources across geographies and subsidiaries while maintaining one accounting system.
With the added power of the SuiteCloud Development Platform, NetSuite SRP customers can easily customise the application for industry- or business-specific workflows and optimisation and those customisations carry forward automatically with every NetSuite upgrade.
Customers Transform Services Efficiency
Services organisations such as YouGov, W2O Group, and Just Marketing Inc. are transforming their performance and profitability with NetSuite technology.
YouGov, a global market research business headquartered in the UK, has already seen the advantages of integrated services and financial data on NetSuite. With a mix of services that leverage its online panels of some 3 million survey takers, YouGov’s revenue sources include BrandIndex, its subscription-based brand intelligence product, the fast-turnaround Omnibus research service, and a range of project- based custom research services. YouGov thus faces the challenges of recognising revenue and tracking its sales pipeline and financial performance across three distinct business types. Its data products and Omnibus are usually treated as a one-time sale whereas custom research operates as more of a traditional service business. With NetSuite, YouGov is able to track projects and monitor how resources and time are being utilised across the business; while recognising revenue across its different business types on regular schedules, helping to generate key information and achieve fast financial close.
“NetSuite’s integration of CRM, sales and financial functions means that we have one version of the truth and different business functions can rely on information that is defined in the same way across the business,” said Alan Newman, CFO of YouGov. “Because NetSuite makes it easy to create a consistent structure, we can treat specific sales items the same way everywhere. My aim has always been to avoid complexity. I’m very excited about the prospect of NetSuite providing more project functionality.”
Additionally, NetSuite’s cloud-based system and OneWorld international capabilities have supported YouGov’s global expansion and helped to control back-office costs, including setting up an office in France with its accounting supported by the London office, and bringing a recent Hong Kong acquisition onto the corporate system in just four weeks.
W2O Group, an independent network of complementary marketing, communications, research and development firms, turned to NetSuite SRP to bring its project, finance and customer data all together in one system, to better serve clients, manage staffing resources at offices across the U.S. and improve profit margins.
Just Marketing Inc. (JMI), a global motorsport marketing company operating primarily in the NASCAR, Formula 1, and IndyCar circuits, was also struggling with separate services and financial systems. The siloed systems created challenges in managing time and expenses and financials for JMI, while its existing reporting structure made it difficult to view project profitability, set and establish billing rules and mix billing types.
“With NetSuite’s unified system, we’re able to monitor project profitability in real-time and make quicker decisions that have a real, measurable impact on the bottom line,” said Greg Nordhoff, Corporate Controller at JMI. “Our clients are happy with more accurate and timely invoicing while we’re a more agile operation.”
Global Approach
Global services organisations have lacked the integrated business management tools necessary to truly manage corporate performance on a global basis. Spreadsheets and homegrown systems offer an opaque view into subsidiaries and divisions, making it difficult to weed out unprofitable projects. Finding the right resource with availability to work on a project can be like finding a needle in a haystack. Gauging demand and backlog across geographies is a guess at best.
These businesses also face a number of complex multi-currency billing, expense and revenue recognition management issues across tax jurisdictions that can sap time, resources and increase financial risk—all while trying to ensure ongoing prompt project delivery, billing and receivables across dispersed divisions and subsidiaries.
The new release addresses the issues of global project and financial management. The product's comprehensive services management functionality makes it ideal for both project-based and product-based organisations with international operations. With its automated multi-currency management, built-in support for international tax, compliance and sophisticated revenue recognition management, NetSuite SRP eliminates arduous manual processes and shortens the period-end close cycle. NetSuite SRP enables global services businesses to unlock these benefits with anytime, anywhere access and minimum capital expenditure, while ensuring fast deployment, and lean requirements for ongoing management, allowing teams to collaborate across the globe.
Today, more than 20,000 companies and subsidiaries depend on NetSuite to run complex, mission-critical business processes globally in the cloud. Since its inception in 1998, NetSuite has established itself as the leading provider of enterprise-class cloud ERP suites for divisions of large enterprises and mid-sized organisations seeking to upgrade their antiquated client/server ERP systems. NetSuite excels at streamlining business operations, as demonstrated by a recent Gartner study naming NetSuite as the fastest growing top 10 financial management systems vendor in the world. NetSuite continues its success in delivering the best cloud ERP/financial suites to businesses around the world, enabling them to lower IT costs significantly while increasing productivity, as the global adoption of the cloud accelerates.
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