Staria’s annual NetSuite Day was held on September 15th for the fifth time – this time, however, in slightly different circumstances than in previous years. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the event was held as a two-hour online version. The event gained a record number of registrations – more than 300 people from around the world signed up for the event! In previous years, NetSuite Day has been organized as a full-day live event.
One of the speakers was Richard Cutler, SuiteSuccess Lead (EMEA) from Oracle NetSuite. Cutler has two roles at NetSuite: he’s leading SuiteSuccess, but his team is also working with European investment funds. So, his role provides a good insight of what’s happening in the markets. Cutler started his keynote with his observations about the trends emerged during this current situation in the world – for example, how has the situation affected the toughts, focus, strategy and actions of customers and investors.
However, the main focus of the keynote was on a report called Unlocking growth, which examined what are the things that either thrive or restrict the growth of different companies:
Small – medium – large
The first thing that came up from the report was the size of companies. Growth strategy depends on whether the company is small, medium or large. Companies with different life cycle stages have very different mindsets, too.
Data – it’s all over the place
Another factor is the role of data and its importance. Having right data in a right form is critical for businesses. Half of the companies that utilized data were able to meet the growth targets, while half of those which did not utilize data weren't able to do so. However, the amount of data nowadays is huge and up to 94% of interviewees sometimes felt that they were drowning in data – so data management is important.
Agility and control
Third topic that Cutler brought up was agile systems. A system which is too light can restrict growth. We have also written about the topic earlier - read more about agile systems here. This is an aspect that Cutler comes across in his work with investors. A company which has a system change coming up, can be hard to sell. In addition, agility needs consistent control as its counterweight.
Future Proofed
In his keynote Cutler tells about one customer, who wanted to discuss about ERP-system change even though they hadn’t finished the initialization of the previous ERP-system yet. The company had outgrown of the system within two weeks. Even though a situation like this is rare, the scalability and adaptability of systems needs to be considered carefully.
Deep Insights
According to Cutler, getting deep insight about business depends highly of the ERP-system that the company is using. NetSuite provides information that old school on premise-systems can’t offer. By utilizing this information proactively, it is possible to meet growth targets.
We thank Richard Cutler for the informative presentation. In the end of his keynote, Cutler answered to some questions that came from our audience. You can watch Cutler’s whole keynote from the video below.
Click here to see the whole event and other NetSuite Day speakers too.
