Friday, March 29, 2024

NetSuite: Cloud adoption now on inflection point

As it bared its new customers in the country, Silicon Valley firm NetSuite said the local and global markets are currently witnessing the turning point for the massive adoption of cloud computing.

At a press briefing held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Makati City on Friday, Sept. 20, top NetSuite executives Mark Troselj and James Dantow said companies are now moving en masse to the cloud as the new technology brings not only efficiency but affordability as well.

NetSuite Asia Pacific managing director Mark Troselj (standing) with James Dantow, NetSuite’s general manager in the Philippines, (seated left) and Roxas Holdings CEO Renato Valencia

Dantow, NetSuite’s general manager, said the Philippines has, in fact, directly benefited from the explosive growth of cloud computing worldwide.

“NetSuite Philippines has about 800 seats now, making it one of the largest software employers in the country,? said Dantow, who is also the company’s vice president of worldwide support.

To substantiate its claim of the growing base of cloud adopters in the country, NetSuite presented at the press event its new customers — logistics firm Air21 and sugar producer Roxas Holdings.

Roxas Holdings, which supplies about 25 percent of the country’s demand for sugar and serves customers such as Nestle Philippines and Alaska Milk, moved to NetSuite OneWorld in early 2012 to manage business operations in its head office, two sugar mills, one sugar refinery, and one bio-ethanol plant.

With NetSuite OneWorld, the company said it has gained real-time financial visibility and simplified reporting while realizing cost savings by moving from an on-premise IT infrastructure to the cloud.

The cloud solution is also helping company prepare for the challenges of the impending tariff reduction on sugar to five percent under the Asean Free Trade Agreement Common Effective Preferential Treatment (AFTA-CEPT) scheme that will be implemented in 2015 by providing comprehensive insight into pricing and profitability.

Roxas Holdings tapped Manila-based CloudTech, the 2013 NetSuite APAC Solution Provider Partner of the Year, to conduct an evaluation of NetSuite?s cloud ERP platform.

The sugar group went live on NetSuite OneWorld after a month of defining the business requirements and about three months of customization by CloudTech, working in tandem with the in-house development team of ITG.

With the implementation, Roxas Holdings now uses 160 NetSuite user subscriptions for financial consolidation and inter-company transactions across the parent company and its sugar mills in Nasugbu, Batangas and in La Carlota City, Negros Occidental, handling accounts payable and receivable and custom reporting with summary-to-detail drill-down.

Francisco S. Rondilla, vice president for information technology at Roxas Holdings, said the shift to the cloud has allowed the company to scrap its IT capital outlay and just align it with its annual operating expenditures.

Cargo carrier Air21, meanwhile, implemented NetSuite to manage its core business operations including sales force automation, customer relationship management (CRM), and customer service and support.

Selected over competing SAP solutions, NetSuite replaced a heavily customized, home-grown CRM system to consolidate Air21’s operational processes into a single cloud management solution.

The company said it previous software system struggled to provide the real-time data necessary to drive sales and grow revenue due to a lack of integration.

Implemented by NetSuite solution provider partner Cloudware Technology, the cloud solution allowed the company for cross-selling across affiliated companies of the Lina Group, a conglomerate that operates Air21 and other businesses in logistics, information technology, food, environment, waste management, business process outsource, travel, communications and media.

“We needed a technology solution that was ready to go at the time of purchase. Our IT organization did not want to be saddled with the usual headaches associated with traditional software solutions. Our sales organization wanted something user-friendly and as easy to use as Facebook,” said Theresita Eisma, Air21?s Group CIO.

Lastly, NetSuite also named two new local IT firms — Mustard Seed Systems Corporation and Achieve Without Borders — as part of its NetSuite Solution Provider Program.

Both partners will offer NetSuite implementation services and support to small, medium, and large enterprises in the Philippines. The addition of the new partners will bring the network of NetSuite solution providers in the Philippines to seven.

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