SuiteWorld 24 - NetSuite unveils new procurement and PSA products and multiple AI capabilities

Oracle NetSuite has added new AI capabilities and deepened its integration with Oracle infrastructure in announcements coinciding with the opening of its annual SuiteWorld conference in Las Vegas today. As well as a slew of new AI announcements, NetSuite is unveiling a new indirect buying product and the launch of a new PSA product.

The new product for indirect buying is called SuiteProcurement, which includes features to help automate purchasing approvals, order creation, invoicing, and reporting, with links to suppliers via the Oracle Business Network. It launches with offers from Amazon Business and Staples Business Advantage. A 12-month, no-cost Amazon Business Prime Medium membership, valued at US$1,299, provides business-only pricing and savings and a 50% discount on membership renewals in subsequent years, while Staples Business Advantage will offer customers dynamic pricing to yield an average 10% savings on business essentials.

The launch of SuiteProjects Pro, the successor to OpenAir, the Professional Services Automation (PSA) product that NetSuite acquired in 2008, expands on the NetSuite-native SuiteProjects PSA solution and will provide a new user experience and advanced capabilities such as AI-powered project risk analysis and staffing recommendations, with per-user pricing.

AI updates

There are multiple AI updates across the core product as well as NetSuite's analytics and performance management tools. These include:

• Exception Management in NetSuite Financials, which uses AI to automatically detect anomalies in financial transactions, across journal entries, invoices, sales and orders, to immediately flag anything that's out of pattern. Customers can quickly assess the situation, identify activity that needs to be investigated, and get insights to help to action and resolve issues.
• A SuiteAnalytics Assistant helps customers create reports and visualizations and use a Gen AI natural language interface to retrieve information from their workbooks. For example, users can ask the assistant for reports on accounts payable aging, or the top five customers by balance, and quickly receive generative AI-powered summaries and key takeaways.
• Prompt Studio helps customers refine the quality of AI generated content by enabling administrators and developers to configure the format, tone and creativity level of the responses, giving customers the ability to define how Large Language Models work for them.
• For developers, the generative AI for SuiteScript API helps customers quickly introduce new AI-powered functionality, by supporting them to embed generative AI capabilities into NetSuite extensions and customizations. This complements NetSuite’s out-of-the-box AI features with generative AI-powered SuiteApps to support their unique business needs.
• Oracle Code Assist SuiteScript Optimization enables developers to build extensions and customizations in NetSuite with the help of an AI code companion. Developers can quickly and easily create boilerplate code, build and run unit tests, generate documentation, and receive answers to coding questions.
• An Advanced Customer Support (ACS) AI Playbook helps organizations configure, optimize, and create new AI-powered capabilities throughout the suite.

NSAW and EPM

There are new embedded AI capabilities in NetSuite Analytics Warehouse (NSAW):

• NSAW Auto-Insights help customers accelerate reporting and improve decision making by generating data visualizations and natural language insights based on a dataset's attributes, measures and other points of interest.
• A new explain feature uses AI to identify meaningful business drivers, contextual insights and data anomalies within business data.
• The Oracle Analytics AI Assistant in NSAW can convert data into nearly 50 types of visualizations, such as charts and heat maps, and allows customers to streamline data discovery through conversational interactions, where customers can ask questions on data patterns, and the assistant will create an answer in relevant data visualizations.
• Out-of-the-box AI models are no-code models designed for specific use cases in scenarios such as predicting customer churn and inventory stock-outs.
• AutoML automates algorithm selection and customizes modeling workflows.

AI updates for NetSuite Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) include:

• The use of generative AI to draw up reports and add details such as charts, text explanations and key takeaways.
• When doing planning and budgeting, the AI can identify patterns, trends and anomalies and deliver detailed commentary and narratives.
• New predictive forecast explanations will give customers a detailed description of how those models arrived at their conclusions.
• A new AI-driven digital assistant helps finance teams accomplish a variety of tasks using natural language conversations via an intuitive AI-driven interface.

Redwood rolls out

In other developments, the Oracle Redwood Design System user interface is rolling out more widely across the NetSuite product portfolio. Already in use for NSAW and Netsuite EPM, Redwood will now roll out to NetSuite SuiteProjects Pro, Customer 360, and will gradually extend to the entire NetSuite application, starting with the most widely used areas such as dashboards, lists and forms.

A real-time connector for Salesforce, powered by Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC), automatically shares data between NetSuite and Salesforce to reduce data silos, accelerate order-to-cash and revenue recognition processes, and expand business insights.

A new managed service built on NetSuite Guided Learning allows organizations to tailor learning resources to their own unique business processes, along with analytics reports to help fine-tune learning effectiveness.

Finally, the integration of SimplyInsured's small business-focused health benefits marketplace directly within NetSuite provides for self-service enrolment, with costs deducted automatically from an employee's pay and posted directly to the general ledger.

My take

With NetSuite having completed its migration to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), it is able to adapt even more of its parent company's platform to serve its customers. This is most evident in the integration of Oracle AI capabilities into the core NetSuite product, alongside the analytics warehouse and EPM products that come from an Oracle pedigree. Meanwhile, Oracle's Redwood user interface is seeping further across the NetSuite product suite, while the introduction of an indirect procurement product owes much to the Oracle Business Network.

But while the technology infrastructure owes more and more to Oracle, NetSuite's covenant with its customers remains intact. I'm told that the overall theme of SuiteWorld this year is 'All systems grow'. Colleagues on the ground in Las Vegas will be reporting on how that theme is being brought to life, and customer stories rather than product features will be at the forefront of that narrative.