Staria’s sixth annual NetSuite Day took place on November 24th. It was held as a hybrid event, with about 300 participants in total joining us either live in Helsinki or following the live stream.
The day was kicked off with a delicious breakfast, followed by Staria’s CEO Artti Aurasmaa delivering the opening words about growth. Aurasmaa’s speech was built around three themes: growth, co-operation and how technology and systems like NetSuite enables better customer service.
Robin Kurtén, Growth Ambassador, Staria
Artti Aurasmaa, CEO, Staria
Building business champions
The first keynote speech of the day was given by Ville Koskenvuo, Partner at Vaaka Partners, and Bernardo Krüger, Private Equity & Venture Capital Practice (EMEA) Director at Oracle NetSuite. Koskenvuo and Krüger spoke about “Building business champions”.
Krüger amazed the audience with NetSuite statistics: 27,000 customers worldwide out of which 5,500+ are PE or VC backed and 182 NetSuite customers are listed in 2021. “Almost 2/3 of technology IPOs in 2021 are NetSuite customers”, stated Krüger with pride.
Koskenvuo revealed insights on how Vaaka Partners as a Finnish PE company works and how they select the companies, help them out on their growth path and what happens during the exit strategy.
The role of ERP system was one of the topics for the keynote. Koskenvuo mentioned that in most cases the next stage of the growth path is to replace the old systems with a new ERP system. If you want to do performance management, have better visibility and more – you need a proper business platform like NetSuite.
Ville Koskenvuo, Partner, Vaaka Partners
Bernardo Krüger, Private Equity & Venture Capital Practice (EMEA) Director, Oracle NetSuite
Vinted - Unicorn Story
Then, it was time to be inspired by the first customer success story of the day – Lithuania’s first tech unicorn Vinted. Marija Buivydaitė, Senior Director of Finance, and Indrė Andruškevičiūtė, Vinted’s NetSuite System Project Analyst, talked about how Vinted manages 15 different international markets with NetSuite. After becoming a unicorn in 2019, Vinted’s level of growth had them looking for an ERP solution that could scale with their growth and replace 7 separate accounting systems. They chose to implement NetSuite and are also utilizing Staria’s SuiteApps like INFlow and localizations.
Buivydaitė explained how their finance team has evolved from a “one woman band” to a team of over 60 professionals. At the start of Vinted’s growth path they did not have regular month-end closing and doing the audit took 9-10 months. With the help of NetSuite and Staria they are now able to handle regular month-end closing and the audit timeline is 3 months.
Andruškevičiūtė highlighted the importance of having a local NetSuite partner who could help and train their team. “Staria helps us being more and more compliant with new regulations. They are helping us by sharing their knowledge and experience to choose the right supporting solutions for NetSuite to support our growth”.
Indrė Andruškevičiūtė, NetSuite System Project Analyst, Vinted
Marija Buivydaitė, Senior Director of Finance, Vinted
Next up was Staria’s Director of ERP Consultancy, Susanna Ylimäki, who presented Staria’s 5-Star NetSuite team and introduced some of our NetSuite consultants. The NetSuite team has handled over 200 projects and over 120 implementations. Staria’s NetSuite team consists of over 50 NetSuite professionals out of which we got to meet 14 on stage.
Susanna Ylimäki, Director of ERP Consultancy, Staria & Part of Staria's 5-Star NetSuite team
PatientSky - From start-up to scale-up
Next to share an inspiring customer success story was Søren Hveisel, Vice President of Global Business Intelligence at PatientSky, who talked about PatientSky’s exciting journey “From start-up to scale-up”.
Hveisel listed 5 things to keep in mind during ERP implementation process:
- Do not underestimate YOUR work in an implementation – allocate enough resources (human capital & financials)
- Business processes dictates system support, not vice versa – have documented & aligned process mapping
- Remember the good old “Shit in, shit out” is still valid - define & clean your master data
- Have focus on change management (systems = people)
- The journey is never complete – ensure a continuous development of the systems with a dedicated team & good partner
Søren Hveisel, Vice President of Global Business Intelligence, PatientSky
Mikko Kurki, Manager of Reporting and BI Solutions, Staria
Boosting NetSuite with supporting solutions
Then it was time to hear about Staria’s newest solution, Staria BI & Planning, which makes it easier to guide business through data. Mikko Kurki, Staria’s Manager of Reporting and BI Solutions, explained how the cloud-based business intelligence and planning solution helps NetSuite users to make better business decisions. Kurki presented Staria BI & Planning key features and explained how it can be used to harness NetSuite and other data to create valuable business insights.
After a nice lunch to recharge, the event’s second partner and sponsor FloQast took the stage. Adam Zoucha, FloQast’s Managing Director (EMEA), and Nikko Jones, Senior Account Executive, had a demonstration of how NetSuite users can "transform their month-end close with FloQast".
Zoucha explained how FloQast is helping teams close the books on average 30% faster. Participants were interested on hearing that FloQast is quick to deploy – the product can be up and running in 4-8 weeks.
Read more about FloQast's solution and watch the recorded demonstration in this blog post.
The final presentation of the day was given by Andrei Postolache, Senior NetSuite Solution Consultant at Staria. Postolache spoke about the history of ERP and the evolution of NetSuite. He then highlighted NetSuite’s top new features released in 2021, followed by a SuiteAnalytics Workbook demo.
Nikko Jones, Senior Account Executive, and Adam Zoucha, Managing Director (EMEA), FloQast
Andrei Postolache, Senior NetSuite Solution Consultant, Staria
Panel discussion: Unicorns growing internationally with NetSuite
After concluding the presentations, it was time for the highly anticipated panel discussion with three NetSuite unicorns – Wolt, Vinted, and Rohlik – on stage. The panelists were:
Vincent Pakkala, Financial Systems Manager, Wolt
Marija Buivydaitė, Senior Director of Finance, Vinted
Lukáš Zmátlík, Finance Transformation Manager, Rohlik
Bernardo Krüger told at the start of the event that 42% out of the companies which became unicorns in 2021 are using NetSuite, so having three unicorns on stage was the highlight of the day.
The panel discussion focused on the topic of “breaking through to international markets with NetSuite”. The panelists each shared growth experiences and pain points during rapid growth.
Wolt is currently managing international business in 23 countries, Vinted in 15 and Rohlik in 4 countries (and 4 more countries coming in 2022). All companies are rapidly expanding into new countries and having a scalable global business platform like NetSuite is crucial for such international unicorns.
Panel discussion with Wolt, Vinted and Rohlik
Finally, to conclude the event, we had networking, cocktails and snacks sponsored by FloQast.
Overall, NetSuite Day was a success, and we sincerely hope that everyone who attended the event were inspired and enjoyed themselves. Hope to see you next year!
From the right: Nikko Jones, Adam Zoucha and Brittany Shaw from FloQast
The happy hour was sponsored by FloQast