Year
founded:
|
1998
(originally incorporated as company name NetLedger)
|
Target
market: |
Small businesses
In September 2007, Reuters reported NetSuite
retained 5,300 customers.
In a February 2007 Accounting Technology
magazine interview article, CEO Zach Nelson
identified NetSuite's customer acquisitions
based on the systems new clients converted from.
His breakdown was: |
|
More than half of new customers are
companies previously using QuickBooks
|
|
About 30% of new customers come from Sage
products (primarily the MAS family) and
Microsoft's Great Plains
|
|
20% come from new startups
|
|
Vertical
markets: |
|
Wholesale/distribution
|
|
Services companies
|
|
Software companies
|
|
Company
locations: |
San Mateo,
California, USA (headquarters)
Ontario, Canada
Sydney, Australia
UK/Middle East/Africa
Singapore
Hong Kong |
Awards: |
The CPA
Technology Advisor - 5 Star Rating (2007)
Real Time CRM Award (2007)
CRM Excellence Award (2005, 2007)
Top 15 CRM Award (2005, 2006, 2007)
CNET Enterprise Software, United Kingdom (2006)
CRM Magazine Market Leader Award (2004, 2005, 2006)
Inc. 500 (2006)
|
Partners: |
Apple
Computer
FedEx
Merchant e-Solutions
NEBS
NetReturn
PayPal
UPS
VeriSign |
Subscription pricing |
NetSuite
charges 'setup' fees, user licensing fees and add-on
fees for various support and services offerings. |
Hosted
and/or on-premise |
Hosted at
Level 3 with outsourced back-up provider Savvis. |
Product
modules |
NetSuite
NetSuite Small Business
NetSuite CRM+
NetSuite CRM
NetERP
NetCommerce
SuiteFlex |
Service
Level Agreement (SLA): |
Yes |
SLA
financial guarantee |
Yes,
financial credits applied for failed performance |
Support
Programs: |
Help desk,
partner network |
Co-founded
in 1998 as NetLedger by former Oracle executive Evan
Goldberg and financially backed by Oracle CEO Larry
Ellison. The company started out developing accounting
software integrated with the Oracle 8i e-business suite
and hosted through Oracle Business OnLine. After years
of struggling as an unknown startup, the company gained
some muscle by partnering with its chief investor (Larry
Ellison) and relaunching its hosted solution as the
Oracle Small Business Suite (SBS) in 2001. While the two
companies maintained a marketing and revenue sharing
partnership, NetSuite was not owned and was not a
subsidiary of Oracle. In June 2004, the three year
marketing arrangement lapsed, the Oracle Small Business
Suite on-demand service provided by NetSuite was
rebranded as NetSuite Small Business Suite and NetSuite
set out to create its own identity without Oracle
(although Larry Ellison, then both Chairman and CEO of
Oracle, retained his more than 50 percent ownership
stake in NetSuite).
Things
we like about NetSuite:
-
Good accounting system; NetSuite
has been producing accounting software longer than
CRM software and is much better known for their
hosted accounting solution than there CRM product
(hence there original company name was NetLedger and
later changed to NetSuite)
-
Excellent e-commerce module
Things
we don't like about NetSuite:
-
Because of the lack of functionality and
flexibility, we believe the system is limited to
small businesses; perhaps that
describes NetSuite's seemingly very strong focus on
acquiring QuickBooks and Intuit customers
- We
don't care much for their CRM software;
find it weak relative to the core CRM players
-
NetSuite's choice to provide
no redundant data center for service
delivery and customer data is completely
unacceptable. As first reported by Informationweek
on July 12, 2007, in a story titled
SaaS Vendor NetSuite Has No
Separate Backup Center For Customer Data,
NetSuite has no separate backup data center for
customer data or any of its services. NetSuite
acknowledged in its S-1 filing to the SEC that its
single data center is located in a third-party
facility in an area of California that's vulnerable
to earthquakes. More disturbing, in the SEC filing
dated July 2nd, NetSuite acknowledged using only one
data center to deliver its services and further
wrote "We do not currently operate or maintain a
backup data center for any of our services or for
any of our customers' data, which increases our
vulnerability to interruptions or delays in our
service," the company said. The SEC filing went on
to say that it planned to add a second data center
next year, but not for backup services, "We
currently intend to add a second data center
facility in 2008, the primary purpose of which is to
add capacity," the company said.
We're
expecting some price and hosted delivery changes from
NetSuite. In a September 19, 2007 Wall Street Journal
interview, CEO Zach Nelson commented “even with free
trials, it takes two months and three to five product
demonstrations to close a sale. He was further quoted as
saying, “It isn’t easy to figure out how to acquire
customers and keep them happy at a low enough cost that
you still earn healthy margins.” A post on ZDNet
suggested this may be just a method of explaining a high
customer churn rate, however, we suspect the cost of
sale referenced by Nelson is real and rising and may
impose further price escalations in the near term.
For
additional NetSuite reviews and readers posts, see:
|
All
information on this page is based on the authors
experience and opinions
Information is believed to be accurate, however, may be
incomplete
Updates or modifications may be made without notice
Various trademarks held by their respective owners |