Its Just So....So....Solid

I'm leaving from San Francisco right now. Just spent four days - with much of it focused around the "One World" release of NetSuite - which Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite, called the most significant release of NetSuite since its inception. But more on that in a minute. I've always like NetSuite - and for entirely contrasting reasons. I've always found their corporate culture incredibly cool - an upscale, treat people well, let them luxuriate, environment. As a result, not only do they have an highly talented staff, but a hard working staff because they're treated like humans who deserve good things. They treat their contacts - whether customers, analysts, press, or just friends - as well as they treat their employees. They are genuinely good people. This culture is fostered by their CEO Zach Nelson, who is literally my favorite CRM-related CEO. He is accessible, has zero pretensions and likes the good life - and shares that with his staff. His only flaw is that he's an Oakland A's fan - which has a kinda cool side benefit - Billy Beane, General Manager of the A's for those of you completely out of it when it comes to baseball, is on his Board. The only thing I'm concerned about with that is that, because of Beane, Zach will trade some of his more experienced and higher paid staff to salesforce.com or SAP as they get increasingly capable. In a good way, the products/services offered by NetSuite are the opposite of the company culture. They are not "cool" or "luxurious" products. But they are absolutely solid. At a time when most of the major vendors are beginning to provide social (2.0) components to their enterprise applications, NetSuite isn't. Instead, NetSuite offers a suite of enterprise applications that they just keep solidifying. That means ERP, CRM and Ecommerce applications. The latest release, One World is what seems to be a remarkably well thought out way to take an on demand single instance and add multi-currency recognition and conversion, localized (national) versions of quotas, forecasts, commissions, payments, and a global or local reporting capability that provides the kinds of reports by country, region, or even globally that can be role-based (or not). While not sexy particularly, it is slick and can do things like automatically calculate the appropriate national taxes or local taxes in the right currencies without you having to do much more than go to a pulldown menu that has the names of the countries you have your business in. You can view things in the currency and language of the country (I think they support 12 languages so far) or you can see it as a global and integrated whole. All in real time. Solid, Jackson. This One World offering was demonstrated by Zach and three senior NetSuite people using a GHQ, Japanese, German, UK and to some extent, Danish version of interrelated business activities stemming from an order through its fulfillment and with all the back office things that go on so someone can see from multiple standpoints how the revenue derived from the order is booked, recognized and applied to commissions. Given that it was released Wednesday, they already have a significant customer list (upward of 30) including ABS (multimedia/network of the Philippines), KANA (of all companies), Virgin Money, Domin-8 - all of whom sat on the stage yesterday and attested to the ease of use of One World - in a convincing manner, I must say - and I'm usually a customer testimonial skeptic and dismiss them out of hand. Not these. NetSuite has another 50 One World customers (opportunities? prospects? contracted? I don't know)or so in the hopper. All in all, One World does what NetSuite does well. Provides absolutely solid capabilities that keep getting better and better. Do I have any problem with any of their applications? Yep. Marketing. It has all the classic functions and does what traditional EMA does, but its ponderous to use. But that's actually the state of almost all EMA applications that are part of enterprise suites. So they just become run of the mill there. Beyond that, they are solid - very solid and frankly, if you're not looking for a lot of 2.0 functionality, should be at the top of your list. So there is a combination here of a really cool corporate culture and a not cool, but totally solid enterprise application suite. Sweet.