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Highlights from SuiteConnect 2019

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Oracle NetSuite kicked off its global conference series SuiteConnect 2019 in Australia. where they shared their achievements and aspirations for this year.

Here are some of my favourite moments and ideas.

Australia, we count. Big time!

The year 2016 was frequently mentioned throughout the day. This is when Oracle bought NetSuite, a significant milestone. Adding up the numbers from two different talks, it seems that Australian customers make up 20 percent of NetSuite’s new client acquisitions since 2016 globally (600 out of 3,000 new sign ups).

This is huge since we are talking an American product that is well established in the US market.

No wonder they flew over their hotshot seniors from California to see us up close and in person 🙂

Note: while these numbers were mentioned on stage, I could not confirm them later chatting to NetSuite execs. Either way, the evident huge investment in the conference shows that Australia considered a primary market for NetSuite.

 

Taming the implementation beast

There was a lot of talk about SuiteSuccess, Netsuite’s new implementation model that is claimed to have cut average implementation time, cost (and the toll on mental health, I suppose) by a staggering 50 percent.  

Turns out that much of the intensity of ERP implementations stems from the need to customise a standard platform to the unique needs of a business. This awkwardly makes us all assume the role of software architects, really.

The new approach sensibly recognises that there is a lot in common across businesses. NetSuite have done their homework in pre-configuring the platform – for our region (thank you), and for particular industries and circumstances.

SuiteSuccess is based on ready-made templates, a pre-defined set of roles and permissions, an abundance of saved searches (NetSuite’s powerhouse of in-app querying facility), and dashboards and forms already optimised for numerous user roles.

The teams push back on customisation, at least initially, so that implementations are faster and more successful.

This leaves significant money on the table; NetSuite’s approach will reduce its revenue in consulting fees.  A refreshing choice coming from a company whose revenues are part subscription, part professional services.

Well done favouring long term success over short term revenue, NetSuite!

A bit more on this here:

A learning machine makes smarter decisions

I was excited to hear announcements around the ways NetSuite is starting to put its analytics power to good use:

  • Intelligent Form Assist which learns how I usually interact with forms and dynamically adapts the page for me
  • Predictive risk analysis algorithms that alert you to potential operational issues in real time
  • Prescriptive analysis algorithms that suggest and apply solutions faster than any human could

The magic in these tools is that they are not based on human defined rules. They are live, machine learning algorithms that constantly hunt for patterns in our data and use them to make real time suggestions.

Will they sometimes get it wrong? Sure they will. But consider the potential gain in all the times they get it right…

More about this if you prefer video:

And if you prefer to read, here is more detail.

Knowing when to go ERP

JCurve Solutions, a Netsuite award winning implementation partner, invited some of their clients to share their stories of moving to ERP. While you could sense that they were on their best behaviour as guests of the organisers, their insights were still valuable, inspiring and thought provoking.

And here is some of the story of the legendary ThankYou team:

Helping us grow through Big Data insights

Given the vast amount of data that NetSuite gathers, one would expect it would start gleaning insights and constructing business ideas from it.

NetSuite claims to have learned how to use this information to identify that a business is ready for the next step of growth. And then, offer their templated approach to take the business to the next stage.

I don’t know if they are actually doing this, but I love the idea. I think more cloud software providers should adopt it.

You have the data, tell us what it shows!

 

One of Netsuite’s growth templates

 

Word of the day: Searchandising

We learn something new every day, and at the event I learned about Searchandising. It means organising the search results in an ecommerce situation not just based on search relevance. It also predicts what the user actually means given everything we know about them, and then places other relevant merchandise in the search results.

Just like merchandising in a physical store.

Some more on this here:

I can’t wait to see the next chapter in ERP for small business.

Disclosure: Inbal Rodnay Steinberg travelled to SuiteConnect 2019 in Sydney as a guest of Netsuite.

3 Ways analytics is revolutionising ERP software and how we interact with it

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How personalised would you expect your interaction with your ERP system to be? Turns out, our operational apps can be more adaptable, more proactive, and more insightful that we’ve ever imagined.

Oracle NetSuite ran its SuiteConnect conference in Sydney this week. Paul Farrell, VP industry product marketing and Jason Maynard, SVP global field operations, shared some exciting ideas about the future of ERP.

ERP will adapt itself to how we use it

Paul showed their Intelligent Form Assist. This enthusiastic helper identifies patterns in how I complete data entry forms, and then starts guessing what I will do to before I do it. For example, it will: 

  • Identify that I usually only complete four out of the nine fields on the page when I record a new client, and highlight those fields for me
  • Notice that I typically tick the GST-free box for certain types of suppliers, and pre-tick it for me
  • Figure out the logic I intuitively apply when deciding order priority and suggest the priorities as I would

These are not rules that someone created in the system. It is simply the system watching my on-screen behaviour, identifying patterns, and predicting what I will do next.

My favourite part is that it marks every action it takes, and shows a little tooltip that explains the rationale behind it. It will be interesting to see what it teaches users about the workings of their own intuitive decisions.

I love this new sense of elasticity in a system category that we traditionally perceived as rigid and heavy.

 

Netsuite’s Form Assist suggests: You have set Order Priority of 1 to 84% of customers with industry Wholesale and Annual Revenue greater than $5M.

 

ERP will identify, think and act faster than us

What Paul showed next, gave me the same feeling I had when I first experienced a sports car from the driver seat: right, now we have power, let’s go! As background, we looked at how “analytics latency” drives “reaction latency”.

As a human:

  • It takes me time to know that there is a problem. Eg., a shipment is running late
  • Then it takes me time to understand why. Eg., that shipper has been slack recently
  • Next, I scramble around figuring out a solution
  • And finally, I need to actually go about fixing to the situation

So: Detect -> Analyse -> Decide -> Act.

Every step that requires a human, will take time. Any step that can be automated will shorten our time to resolution and minimise the potential damage.

Paul showed a live demo (recorded, but real working system) of Netsuite’s Predictive Risks page. It showed that a certain shipment is at risk of being late. At risk, but not late yet. We are predicting a problem before it actually happened.

Predictive risk: 78% chance of this shipment being late

It then goes on explaining (Analyse) that this is because 61% of the shipments by that shipper over the last week were late. It then suggests a solution (Decide). The ERP should fulfil the order from another location from which 89% shipments arrived on time in the last week and it also has excess inventory.

A one-time recommendation dynamically constructed by the ERP system

Finally, I can authorise the system to just go ahead and apply the fix. This saves me the hassle of updating orders across the system.

So we’ve seen the system convert ‘identifying that we have a problem’ to ‘predicting that we are at risk of having a problem’, explain the reasoning, suggest a solution, and carry it out.

The effect on reaction latency must be huge here. It turns the whole idea of reporting on its head. I don’t want to review reports. I want this enormous computing power to analyse, predict and really think for me.

 

Big Brother, but in a good way

Consider the colossal amount of business data that Netsuite has access to. More than 20 years of business data, across 40,000 Netsuite users plus access to (anonymised) Oracle data cloud.

That’s a lot of data.

Data + machine learning = better business results. Oracle Netsuite has a group of savvy data scientists fine tuning a bunch of sophisticated algorithms to draw business potential out of data.

Netsuite has access to a vast amount of business data

Privacy concerns aside, there is a lot to be learned from such a treasure trove of a dataset. NetSuite claims to be able to recommend business improvements and fine tuning, but more excitingly, opportunities for growth, based on machine learning algorithms analysing our business data, and the cohort of other businesses in our industry.

NetSuite can identify that one of its users is at a prime position to grow into a new market, optimise their pricing structure, or bring manufacturing in-house.

Speaking to Netsuite partners it seems that they still don’t have access to this knowledge to make growth recommendations for their clients. But assuming that the tools are being cut and sharpened now, the power of ERP systems for small business has just been supercharged, big time.

Disclosure: Inbal Rodnay Steinberg travelled to SuiteConnect in Sydney as a guest of Oracle Netsuite.

Firm of the Future 2018: Regional Business Services (AUS) – app stack and business model

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Meet the other finalists:

Recommending apps is clearly one of the strongest ways to increase the relevance of your firm. Ian Yesberg of Regional Business Services, in Australia, has adjusted the composition of his staff by hiring more tech-savvy juniors to research apps and find recommendations for tradesmen and health professionals.

FIRM STATS

Name of Company Regional Business Services Pty Ltd
Location of Company Townsville, AUS
How long have you been in business?  18
Number of staff? 8
Number of clients? 0
Staff to client ratio 0
Do you outsource bookkeeping or accounting work? No
What % of your clients are on value pricing/fixed fee? 50
What % of your clients are on cloud accounting software? 99
What % of your clients are on QBO? 95

 

Digital First: Why do think you are a finalist?

Yesberg: We’ve probably gone a little bit harder, a little bit faster, than other people that we come across in the ProAdvisor community. That’s the only reason. I see a lot of us are all on the same journey; we just seem to have got there a little bit quicker. You can count on one had those we don’t have on cloud accounting software. We do some advisory, and we get involved in social media, to expand our reach.

 

Digital First: With advisory, what exactly do you offer?

Yesberg: There’s the standard financial accounts and we use Fathom for that. I’ve been doing this for 18 years. Prior to that, I had 25 years in commercial finance in a bank. Back in those days we actually pulled apart financials. Since I left the bank we’re now creating the financials, so we’ve got a fair insight into that. We’ve always talked to our clients if we think things are moving not quite right.

We also take advisory to mean introducing small business productivity apps to help get their business more efficient.

 

Digital First: So what type of apps, and how many apps do you feel comfortable recommending?

Yesberg: We stick to a smaller number. The apps we use ourselves in our office environment, and then point of sales, mainly job management type software, point of sales, your Google Drives. ServiceM8 is a big one. They’re the main areas.

FIRM APPS

What apps do you use for productivity? Office 365
What apps do you use for workflow? Work
Tax and Statuory accounts? QBO, Gov Reports
Electronic signatures? Adobe
Document storage? Google, One Drive, Hubdoc
CRM? none
Time tracking? QBO
Expense management? Hubdoc
Credit Control? none
Management reporting? Fathom

 

Digital First: And how do you recommend apps? Do you have one person in the business who does it, or does everyone who’s client facing has some experience?

Yesberg: There’s three of us who get involved out of eight staff. One spends all their time in it. In term of the apps, we do a bit of research then go to the client, and offer them three packages. Which is really we’ll get you up and running and then you’re on your own, through to we will help you fully implement it, train you in it, and provide support for two or three months while you’re getting things going.

 

Digital First: How do you find the time to train yourselves in all these apps so that you can train your clients?

Yesberg: Not easy. The two or three of us who do it are probably all tainted with the same brush; we just like to fiddle with things. It’s more an interest, and probably more done outside of normal work hours. But if we come across someone who’s done something similar, we see things that work with other clients. We’ve got a couple of hundred clients, and they tell us about (a new app), and we then go away and focus on that or look at the alternatives that others are recommending.

 

Digital First: Do you focus on any specific industries?

Yesberg: Two or three. The health industry is our target for the next 12 months for bookkeeping, advisory or working with them on their KPIs. We’ve been working with that industry for 20 odd years, so we know it inside out. Then probably the tradie industry. We’re not specifically targeting that as such but we get a lot of referrals in that area. And that’s more your plumbers, using apps like ServiceM8 and simPRO or Tradify,, which are fairly common in that industry.

 

Digital First: Do you think that you’ll look for staff who are interested in technology more than accounting?

Yesberg: We’ve just started with a third year accounting student in the last couple of months. We’ve hired her specifically because she’s far more advanced in their knowledge and skills in tech than I will ever be. It’s native to them, where it’s not to me. We’re using that as a bit of a test, but if that works out, we’ll bring on more staff with those skills.

 

Digital First: And do you think this is a model for accounting firms, that clients would be turning to accountants for technology?

Yesberg: Yeah. We’ve had a deliberate strategy. Our staff are aged from early sixties through to Catherine who’s 20. And we find that that works really well because the clients I’ve got a rapport with are all starting to think about selling their businesses and moving on. The younger people can react far better on a day-to-day basis. So in some ways, it’s a deliberate strategy to make sure we’re remaining relevant to all sectors of the market, to all demographics.

 

Digital First: And in terms of automating the compliance work flow, what have you found has made the biggest impact?

Yesberg: Without a doubt, it was the bank feeds, that started with us. Then we started 18 months ago with Hubdoc. Even simple things like a rule in Outlook that when a statement or an invoice comes into the customer’s inbox, a copy is automatically sent straight through to Hubdoc. When an item comes into Hubdoc, it can automatically save a copy into the QuickBooks and the client’s Google Drive.

So when clients go looking for what used to be bits of paper – invoices, statements – they can actually access that in Google Drive without necessarily looking into QuickBooks, which we’re working on all the time. So the little things within the apps, if you really know the detail of what they can do, it can really make that automation experience that extra step.

So it’s really knowing your products intimately that we use in-house, that is what makes the difference.

Firm of the Future 2018: Reconciled (USA) – app stack and business model

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Meet the other finalists:

Michael Ly is convinced that the rapid growth of his three-year-old firm to 18 staff is connected, at least in part, to the location of its head office. The firm, Reconciled, is in Burlington, Vermont, a city and state associated with the good life.

Not that all 18 staff live in Vermont. Reconciled has a distributed or remote team that communicates via video (Zoom, Google Meet) and chat (Slack). The work-at-home vibe contributes to a culture that flows through to better customer service, Ly says.    

FIRM STATS

Name of Company Reconciled
Location of Company Burlington, Vermont USA
How long have you been in business?  3
Number of staff? 18
Number of clients? 100
Staff to client ratio 10
Do you outsource bookkeeping or accounting work? Yes
What % of your clients are on value pricing/fixed fee? 100
What % of your clients are on cloud accounting software? 100
What % of your clients are on QBO? 100

 

Digital First: Why do you think you are a finalist?

Michael: The reason that we are a finalist is the Intuit is recognising the work that we have been doing over the past three years. We have 18 people, working in five states, and we have established ourselves as a pioneer in the online bookkeeping space.

We are a distributed virtual team and we leverage all the technology that Intuit has given us as a firm to serve our clients, as well as the app ecosystem.

(Other reasons for our selection include) the team that we have built here at Reconciled and obviously the growth that we have been having as a firm.

 

Digital First: How are you a pioneer?

Michael: I think we have built a brand that customers can trust. When our customers look at the landscape of what’s being offered to them with cloud based accounting firms they look for a brand story, a trusted brand that they resonate with. They see my story in starting Reconciled and it resonates with their own story as an entrepreneur.

Cloud based accounting firms might be the norm in the rest of the world but it’s not the norm in the US. it’s still a small percentage of firms that are cloud based and distributed.

 

Digital First: What is it about your brand that makes you trusted?

Michael: I think that they want a genuine, authentic person behind the brand. I moved to Vermont to raise a family and I wanted to find a way to build a business and a legacy for my family while doing it from a small state and city like Burlington, Vermont. Burlington is known for high quality products. When we talk to customers a lot of them say they like that we’re in Burlington, Vermont. Even though we’re not in the same state we resonate with the story and what Vermont represents – high quality products and services, progressive values, as well as a meaningful life.

You hear a lot of stories coming out of Silicon Valley but a lot of entrepreneurs desire the higher quality of life that Vermont has to offer.

 

Digital First: I don’t know anything about Vermont. What high-quality products does it produce?

Michael: Ben and Jerry’s, a famous ice cream brand. Seventh generation is a high quality cleaning brand. Lake Champlain Chocolates. We also have the highest amount of breweries per capita in the US. We have really high quality alcohol. A number of tech companies have come out of here.

Probably the most famous guy to come out of here is Bernie Sanders. He’s down the street from my house.

 

Digital First: So your clients are getting a slice of high-quality life by using you as their bookkeeping firm?

Michael: Yes, and they can see that our employees are not hurried or rushed. They work as a distributed team and from home so they are able to enjoy their lifestyle and work. Rather than getting in a car and driving to an office (every day) our employees can invest that time into their families and community. Our clients understand that they are much more fulfilled.

I’ve believed that if I could give quality of life for my team it would resonate out through their services. Because the work that they are doing can be repetitive work – reviewing financials and transactions. It can also be stressful. We built a work environment and we have given them a normal amount of work that a normal human being can do.

I really think our team is happier and fulfilled and that reflects in the way that they communicate with our clients.

 

Digital First: So culture is a big selling point?

Michael: Yes.

 

Digital First: Do you provide advisory and software implementation?

Michael: We have a standard software stack for clients. We use Receipt Bank, Bill.com and QuickBooks Online. Then about 25 percent of our bookkeeping clients sign up for advisory services. These would be anywhere from cashflow forecasting, estate planning, helping them raise money with a bank or investors, big debt negotiation and general management and advisory services. We also do app implementation and heavy research in apps when our clients request us to – it could be inventory or supply chain or e-commerce reporting. We demo the apps to the clients and implement the software.

FIRM APPS

What apps do you use for productivity? G Suite, Slack, Zoom, QBOA Work
What apps do you use for workflow? QBOA Work and Slack
Tax and Statuory accounts?  QBO
Electronic signatures? Practice Ignition
Document storage? Receipt Bank, G Suite, Sharefile
CRM? Hubspot
Time tracking?  TSheets
Expense management? Expensify
Credit Control?  N/A
Management reporting? QBO

 

Digital First: How do you charge for the R&D?

Michael: Almost all of our work is done on value pricing. We can estimate the amount of time that it will take to do the implementation and the value it will bring to the client.

 

Digital First: You must have multi-skilled people to cover that range of apps?

Michael: We have technicians who understand not just the bookkeeping side but understand the apps. We designate our team specialists; they choose one or two specialty areas in their research. We have a person that is into e-commerce related apps, another on sales tax for multi-state sales tax reporting, we have somebody on our team who is a blockchain expert and a cannabis expert. There are a variety of different areas and we let our team members choose what are they want to specialise in.

 

Digital First: Isn’t that a strategic decision about which industries to go after? Why let teammates choose?

Michael: We have been able to define our strengths and skillset. We target e-commerce companies, digital marketing agencies, breweries, distilleries and wineries, so we have a few areas of expertise. We also actively work with cannabis companies. There are only a few accounting firms that will work with cannabis companies because cannabis isn’t federally legal on the hemp side. Some firms are avoiding working with them until it is federally legalised.

(It’s the same with blockchain.) Not many accounting firms understand the nuances and questions that blockchain companies have to deal with.

 

Digital First: What are those nuances and questions?

Michael: Some of the questions that come up – are smart contracts legal in the state I’m operating in? Will they be acceptable in a court of law? In an open blockchain who are the owners and partners of the company if you have miners that participate in creating a blockchain and making the blockchain bigger? Are miners considered partners or owners?

Do people exchanging coins on your blockchain receive 1089 forms or are they considered contractors? Should you do a coin offering or not and what are the tax implications?

 

Digital First: Do you have a larger R&D budget or training budget?

Michael: We require all our bookkeepers to receive their certifications before they can start working with the client. That usually takes them a week or two to finish them and start getting familiar with all the internal apps. We use Slack internally to do efficient communications as a team. Often we’re the first company that introduces them to tools like Slack or Zoom or Google Meet.

 

Digital First: Are you using QuickBooks Online Accountant and Slack?

Michael: We’re probably one of the largest firms using that integration. We have a private slack channel for every client that we’re working on. We can integrate QBOA’s work tab with that. It’s been very helpful as a reminder and a pulse of where bookkeepers are at with their work.

MYOB Doubles Down on Supplier Feeds: Accountech.Live 18

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Banks feeds were the killer feature that fuelled the rapid rise of cloud accounting software. But the bank rec is not fully automated yet. MYOB says it knows what will take it another big step closer – detailed supplier feeds.

MYOB is investing in higher quality, direct feeds to plumbing distributors Reece and TradeLink and office king OfficeWorks, with line item detail flowing directly into AccountRight and Essentials.

The idea is to create a “holistic” approach to expense management, says MYOB product manager Dale Dixon.  

“We found that customers struggled to keep track of expenses on the job,” Dixon said. “The Reece integration brings in the (item) lines of what they purchased and also allocates to the job in the system.”

MYOB AccountRight can switch on tracking for reimbursables in each job. Tradies give a purchase order number at the point of sale which is added to the invoice. Then when the tradie invoices the customer the software automatically adds a selection or all expenses.

“In the past you got your paper copy of your statement and worked out which ones you have invoices for that work. Now you can integrate it end to end,” Dixon says.

MYOB is not the first to add feeds to major suppliers (Xero has OfficeWorks and Reece already) but it is the first to add line item detail. This one change will make a huge difference to the speed of bank reconciliation, says Dixon.

“We are working with a bunch of suppliers to automate those feeds. It’s not just about getting the bill in the system, it’s about automating the workflow,” Dixon adds.

The supplier feeds are one part of MYOB’s push to improve data processing. It has also switched from billsapp@myob.com.au to a unique email address for forwarding invoices to an “in tray”, similar to Xero’s Inbox.

Now a company can hand out the unique email to suppliers so they can send bills directly to the accounting software, or multiple staff within a company can forward invoices they have received.

MYOB Essentials can also store receipts as well as bills by attaching them to transactions in the bank reconciliation screen, Dixon says.

You can hear more about MYOB’s plans at Accountech.Live, November 13-14 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Register for free now.

 

Session: The next killer feature in accounting? Holistic expense management

Presenter: Simon Dennis, head of partnerships at MYOB

When: 10:05am – 10:35am, Tuesday 13 November

 

Image credit: MYOB

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Digital First covers news and opinions on accounting technology and is read by tech-savvy accountants who understand the importance of technology in establishing competitive advantage.
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