Smithbridge Group, a construction and engineering business operating across Australia, New Zealand and Guam under brands including Universal Cranes, ran 20 subsidiaries on a patchwork of disconnected tools for payroll, resource allocation and finance. With data siloed by entity, leadership had no consistent group-wide view for board reporting, and finance teams spent much of their time reconciling numbers rather than analysing them.

Working with NetSuite partner Annexa, Smithbridge implemented NetSuite OneWorld to bring finance, operations and project data onto a single platform, then layered in NetSuite Analytics Warehouse to combine that data with time-and-attendance and resource-allocation systems from other vendors, integrated via Celigo.

The result is a standardised, self-serve reporting environment: finance and operations staff can now see workforce spend alongside asset utilisation and financial performance in one place, replacing a fragmented Microsoft BI setup and freeing accountants to work with managers on analysis instead of compiling static reports.

With the right inventory management solution in place, distributors can flex and adapt quickly regardless of market conditions, challenges or changing business models.

During the startup phase, distributors focus on launching their businesses, building market share and creating sustainable business models. Setting up shop, establishing physical or virtual locations, staffing up, choosing product lines, and finding customers are all top of mind during this stage, and rightfully so.

Distributors that have the right inventory solution:

• Solve their biggest pain points
• Scale up as distributors grow
• Transform your inventory management approach

Download the whitepaper: How to pick an inventory management solution that scales with your business

CFOs need to operate in an ever changing world. A clear vision can help CFOs deal with new technology in the finance function: artificial intelligence and blockchain, while juggling ‘traditional’ responsibilities of internal controls, compliance and closing the books quickly.

Mastering this can help your company:

• Free up time for opportunity and innovation
• Impact commerce with a single source of truth
• Prepare with change and scalability

“Meet the self-driving car of software”

Table of contents:

• Introduction
• The CFO’s role is always changing
• Meet ‘The self-driving car of software’
• Smart CFOs are using blockchain
• How can CFOs be strategic while delivering on traditional responsibilities?
• But they’ve got to do their real job, too
• NetSuite’s strategic CFO hall of fame
• Gone are the days of the bean counter!

Download the whitepaper: The future of finance is in the CFOs hands

In 2011, Two Birds Brewing became Australia’s first female-owned brewery. Founded by Jayne Lewis and Danielle Allen—best mates from college—the company grew from a single beer to a range of five distinct flavors brewed year-round. They even set up a brewery, which they’ve affectionately named “The Nest,” just outside of Melbourne in Spotswood.

 “Because it’s live, we have all the information right there before we go in to talk to a customer.”

On this episode of “The NetSuite Podcast,” we sat down with Allen (a.k.a. “The Other Bird”) to discuss the conception of Two Birds Brewing, the journey the birds have flown with the brewery over the last eight years and the business systems that allowed them to achieve their five-year goals in just three-and-a-half.
But it wasn’t always a slice of cake…Or a beer on a hot day, in this case.

Two Birds faced unprecedented growth after the launch. Allen and Lewis quickly discovered their outdated systems and spreadsheets weren’t going to keep up. Data is crucial to the company’s success, so they sought out to find a cloud-based business management solution to keep track of vital functionalities like inventory management, payroll and account purchasing.

Allen says she and Lewis ultimately chose NetSuite due to its true cloud foundation and real-time data. At the time, the co-founders were working in different states and needed a system that could allow them to do so.

“The reporting out of NetSuite is second to none,” Allen says. “The information is at our fingertips, and because it’s live, we have all the information right there before we go in to talk to a customer.”

Source: This article was originally sourced from NetSuite

With the introduction of a new GovReports SuiteApp, built in collaboration with GovReports, NetSuite is driving automation of tax filing for its Australian clients. The new solution is ‘Built for NetSuite’ verified and integrated into NetSuite’s cloud-based business management software.

Founded in 2010, GovReports is a Standard Business Reporting (SBR) product and service provider, lodging between 5,000 and 12,000 Business Activity Statement (BAS) submissions to the ATO every month on behalf of Australian businesses and accounting professionals.

The Australian Government is decommissioning its Electronic Lodgement Service (ELS) in June 2016 and replacing it with the SBR approach to online or digital record-keeping. This provides a channel for businesses to report electronically to the ATO directly from NetSuite, rather than switching over to the tax department portal for lodgement.

The GovReports SuiteApp automatically aggregates sales, expense and Goods and Services Tax (GST) required for tax reporting purposes from NetSuite, prefills the data to the relevant Business Activity Statement (BAS) report and securely transmits the reports directly to the ATO at the appropriate reporting times, using the highest levels of encryption. SuiteApp provides a queuing facility for peak demand times or, in case of an ATO system outage, enables reports to be lodged automatically once the system is available again.

GovReports SuiteApp is multi-user capable, providing for collaborative efforts on taxation reporting, and provides an audit trail within NetSuite, with a record of preparation and lodgement details allocated to specific users if required.

The GovReports SuiteApp is also able to extract payroll data from NetSuite SDN partner Infinet Cloud to complete the Instalment Activity Statement (IAS)/ Business Activity Statement (BAS) reporting and lodgement for NetSuite customers which will be available later in the year.

The Infinet Cloud Payroll SuiteApp provides all the functionality that companies registered with the ATO need to fulfil their payroll responsibilities – from time and leave management, through to tax and superannuation calculations, employee salaries and posting to NetSuite.

“Organisations today demand financial management solutions that are flexible enough to accommodate dynamically changing business needs,” said Mark Troselj, ANZ VP and GM at NetSuite. “We have introduced a fully integrated solution so our customers can securely, efficiently, and accurately report into the ATO and meet its compliance obligations. The GovReports SuiteApp will help our customers keep fully up-to-date with any changes to taxation reporting requirements in Australia, and is therefore advantageous to our cloud platform.”

The GovReports SuiteApp is now available to NetSuite’s Australian customers.

A growing developer of software that powers radiology departments in 250 sites across Australia, Healthinc’s success was taxing the systems used since its 2001 inception.

“By 2007, our directors realized that they were outgrowing our business systems,” says Raymond Close, financial controller at Healthinc.

“MYOB is good from a straight accounting point of view, but the business controls it offers are very weak. We needed sophistication because we were doing more complex and comprehensive client projects across multiple locations.”

Because Healthinc’s previous infrastructure lacked integration, the company spent a great deal of time exchanging calls, faxes, and spreadsheets in an attempt to stay current.

Reliance on hard copy, and the lack of access to reliable, real-time customer information, meant that the company was leaving money on the table even as it appeared to be successfully expanding.

“It was time- and paper-consuming, and messy administratively. We needed to get better control of the service contracts in our business, as we were missing revenue opportunities,” Close says.

The solution
Healthinc managed its own migration to NetSuite beginning in mid-2007. After successfully importing its customer and contract data from the previously disconnected systems, the company has a much clearer view of its operations.

“They say financial control is the second-oldest business in the world, but certainly NetSuite has made things easier for us,” Close says.

“And NetSuite’s local support can’t be praised highly enough – they have been very accessible and worked tirelessly to solve our problems.”

Replacing manually managed spreadsheets with NetSuite’s CRM capabilities has given Healthinc’s sales organization much greater clarity into the sales funnel, improving deal velocity.

“Customer actions could slip through the cracks because copies of the spreadsheet being mailed around perhaps weren’t the latest. Now we can do a better job working on our leads and opportunities, and a faster job of converting opportunities to quotes and orders,” Close says.

“Our software is customized for each client on a continuous basis and is used on 2,000 workstations, so it is important to us to understand all of our customers in real time,” Close says.

“The advantages of NetSuite’s Web-based architecture have been enormous.”

Results
Healthinc has improved the strength and profitability of its customer relationships with NetSuite.

“The central repository of customer records in NetSuite has helped us get better control over our client engagements,” says Close.

“Our salespeople are much better informed and can see where they are headed against their monthly targets. Our people in the field find it much easier to log expenses and get reimbursed, no matter where they are.”

Integrating all of its customer operations into NetSuite has helped Healthinc close business faster.

“Before, it took us hours to migrate from a quotation to a sales order and invoice, work that had to be repeated even for minor changes,” he says.

“Now, we can do that migration with the click of a button, which is a much better use of our sales peoples’ time.”

NetSuite’s support ticketing system has also replaced the company’s internally-developed database application used to track bugs and customer issues.

“Our old system was simply adequate, but now our engineers automatically receive copies of customization orders from our salespeople, allowing us to take the right steps to ensure that we meet our customer obligations without anything falling through the cracks.”

The greater visibility provided by NetSuite is helping Healthinc boost its bottom line through better service contract monitoring and enforcement.

“Our services revenues have been lifted by 20 percent, now that we are properly monitoring service contracts and renewal dates with NetSuite,” Close says.

Netcat develops content management systems (CMS) and knowledge transfer software for government and business, with a major focus on the legal sphere.

The Australian-owned company has been operating since 1997 and has developed Netcat WCM – a software suite for medium- to large-sized organisations.

As Netcat’s footprint extended across Australia and into India and Canada, with the UK slated for near-term expansion, the company realised it needed a more powerful way not only to track its accounts but to manage employees and projects as well.

Netcat was having difficulty efficiently managing employee time and expenses across multiple states and countries. In addition, its accounting, customer support and project management systems were disconnected.

Reporting was also difficult because a complete picture of company performance was scattered across multiple systems, making analysis time-consuming and, as a result, laggardly.

Entering its second decade of operation, Netcat knew it needed a powerful, integrated solution to keep growth on-pace and to be efficient.

“The company has been around for over 10 years and we are growing quite quickly, so we needed a scalable option,” says Sandra D’Souza, the company’s chief financial and operations manager.

“And we needed something that could be implemented quickly.”

Quick roll out
Netcat considered trying to support its business with Salesforce.com and satellite third-party applications but decided to trust its business to the end-to-end, single-source solution provided by NetSuite instead. After deciding on its solution of choice, in February 2008, implementation was completed by the end of April, meeting the company’s requirement for a quick roll out.

“The NetSuite model was quite attractive compared to using five different systems that might be very good in one particular area but wouldn’t necessarily talk to each other very well,” says D’Souza.

“We didn’t want to move from the low end of QuickBooks into the middle range, but we did want a solution that would provide us with the power and flexibility we need. The unified NetSuite platform means that business insight is no longer hidden in multiple disconnected systems.

“Certainly, the management of our information has improved, because we are able to see so much of our business every time we log-in, through the dashboard,” she says.

“Management can view sales and support activities, and case escalation, without intervention from the finance department. And, when managers are not bogged down generating reports, they have the capability to make better decisions.”

NetSuite is giving Netcat all the room it needs to grow with confidence, adds D’Souza.

“As we look at establishing more overseas entities, we feel comfortable knowing that our accounting and operations will be stable. NetSuite makes it easier to focus on the next steps in growing our business.”

Results on-track
Netcat relies on NetSuite for all of its employee time and reimbursement tracking, project management and accounting needs, says D’Souza. NetSuite has helped each new hire in the growing company become an instant contributor.

“Now, when we bring a new person on-board, it’s easy to get them going with time-sheets and full access to our project system. Before NetSuite, that might have taken a few weeks and we would lose precious time on projects.

“We rely on Employee Centre to keep our two dozen professional staff and contractors organised and properly reimbursed for expenses. This is for work across the country and overseas as well. The seamless, multicurrency support ensures sales and expenditure are properly denominated and rolled up to central office.

“Our people now simply scan in receipts and submit them, and they get paid much faster than before.”

Replacing its legacy support case-management system with NetSuite has not only enabled managers to track support issues more easily, but has made it possible for Netcat to extend customer log-ins to clients, so they can track the status of open tickets.

“NetSuite’s case and project management capabilities give us the transparency we need to understand where our resources are going, and how efficiently they are being allocated,” says D’Souza.

She adds that the on-demand model means Netcat can simply pay for the licences and capabilities it needs, without worrying about physical hardware and software maintenance or upkeep.

“Because NetSuite is Software-as-a-Service, we don’t have to constantly worry about capital upkeep requirements or making additional capital investments to support new staff and new clients.

“And we can quickly switch the way we use NetSuite as our business develops.”

EcoNova produces water recycling and treatment systems to suit applications ranging from a single home to a mining camp or entire municipality.

Founded in 2003, the company has had to manage rapid growth and changes as it expanded from a start-up defining its market to a company of over 80 employees and the same amount of channel partners operating in multiple regions and countries.

“As recently as October of 2006, we were still working out of one small office at the Innovation Centre of the Sunshine Coast University and it was obvious that our model would involve distributor partners,” says Christian Uhrig, director of marketing and sales at EcoNova.

The company’s incumbent operations software was inadequate to run a more diverse organization. Properly protecting accounting data while exposing relevant customer and prospect information to outside partners posed a significant challenge, and the company wanted a business operating platform both lean and powerful enough to be quickly extended into new countries and markets.

The solution
EcoNova implemented NetSuite in June 2007 on a very tight budget with the help of NetSuite’s Professional Services team and has nearly 100 internal and external users to date.

“Early 2007, when we were looking into what could be done with our existing systems, we came across NetSuite and evaluated what they could do for us,” Uhrig says.

“Seeing that NetSuite could manage our sales as well as accounting, we realized it would be beneficial to have one integrated system.”

Dozens of partners are already interacting with EcoNova through the NetSuite Partner Center to obtain leads and register sales. More are on the way in Australia, and EcoNova plans to duplicate the successful structure of its Australian operations in other territories as it expands internationally.

“We make it mandatory for our partners to use the NetSuite Partner Center, and the online training modules NetSuite provided have been important to get people using it successfully.”

Partners are able to get up and running quickly with NetSuite, and the access controls EcoNova can easily apply ensure that partners see only the data that is relevant to their tasks.

“NetSuite supports our needs for granular right-based access for every user and outside business partner with access to the system,” Uhrig says.

“That was a key feature for us, and one which will make it possible for us to roll out into new countries in a matter of weeks instead of years.”

As EcoNova establishes its market leadership, the company is confident that it has the right operational foundation to grow without fear of over-reaching its capabilities.

“Because we are a relatively young company in a young industry, we redefine ourselves as we learn how to do things differently,” Uhrig says.

“NetSuite is the stable platform which allows us to implement our new and improved processes quickly and at economical cost.”

The results
EcoNova is realising greater efficiencies and more powerful partner relationships thanks in part to the NetSuite software-as-a-service solution.

NetSuite helps EcoNova’s customers stay current with the support and maintenance of their water management systems, even those sold by independent plumbers who lack the in-house computing expertise to track detailed customer lifecycle information.

“We implemented our customer / system lifecycle management in NetSuite so we can centrally document every installed system and all of the service requirements and reporting,” says Uhrig.

“This helps customers stay current on their maintenance requirements, which should bolster customer satisfaction as well as make corporate revenue more predictable.”

EcoNova feels NetSuite provides a competitive advantage in the water recycling field, where many opposition companies simply manufacture product, sell it to the middleman and disappear from the picture.

“Our products last for 15 to 30 years, so having NetSuite help manage customer experience long-term is very important,” Uhrig says.

“What we’re doing is groundbreaking in our industry.”

NetSuite is helping EcoNova expand without forcing it to adopt systems and practices that will prove costly and inefficient in the long run.

“One of the temptations for every business is to see a need and then buy a tool to fix it, and then buy another tool to fix another need, and then you end up with fifteen software applications that are not linked together or integrated,” Uhrig says.

“NetSuite is something we can grow into, because it is so easy for us to add more functionality.”

Carbon Planet is an expansion-stage company carving out a leadership position in the emerging market for carbon impact management services.

The Adelaide-based business’s mission is to enable every individual and business to manage their contribution to global warming.

It expects skyrocketing demands for its services as companies are increasingly motivated to internalize the economic impact of their business operations.

Being in position to grow in a healthy, orderly fashion both across Australia and internationally is a key concern for Carbon Planet, and the company’s start-up operations platform was not up to the task.

“We knew that we had started out with a smallscale software package and that we would need to go global, but we didn’t want that to bring with it responsibility for a lot of back-end servers and databases,” says Remco Marcelis, Carbon Planet CFO.

And as an Apple Macintosh-focused office, Carbon Planet was looking for a solution which would be fully compatible with its internal desktop machines, but extensible to international franchisees and partners using Windows PCs.

The solution
To meet its needs, Carbon Planet turned to NetSuite’s integrated online business management system. NetSuite was the right fit for Carbon Planet, from agnostic web-based design to a flexible, affordable approach to business infrastructure.

“We considered another solution which said it was browser-based, but we found that it was really only Internet Explorer-based,” Marcelis says.

“We’re a Mac shop, and we quickly saw that NetSuite was much more functional in terms of crossbrowser functionality, and worked well for us using Safari on the Mac as well as in our tests with Firefox,” he says.

“And we know that if our franchisers are using browsers on the PC, it will still work the same for them.”

Although Carbon Planet looks to NetSuite to help define its emerging business practices, the company has also been able to quickly customize the system as desired.

“We have been able to do our own tailoring of screens and fields on the NetSuite screens to better suit our needs, and expect to do more as our business grows.”

With the realities and economics of the carbon management business just starting to enter the mainstream business consciousness, Carbon Planet can now feel comfortable that its back-end operations will not be an impediment to growth, or a drag on earnings.

“We know that we are going to be global and need access to our business from anywhere,” Marcelis says. “NetSuite’s browser-based approach will play a huge part in enabling us to grow while managing our cost of ownership.”

The results
Carbon Planet is realizing its mandate to quickly build a distributed global enterprise with the help of the NetSuite on-demand business operating solution.

“We needed to be able to grow in a consistent, managed way into a multi-entity organization, and NetSuite is an important part of that growth,” says Marcelis.

With NetSuite’s Partner Center, Carbon Planet can transparently observe and analyse the performance of its franchise partners across the country and abroad.

“We knew that we would need full sales reporting for our franchise sales model, and the NetSuite Partner Center was the right fit for us,” he says.

NetSuite’s CRM capabilities also give the company the insight it needs to manage a productive sales force.

“The pipeline reporting in NetSuite makes it easy for us to keep an eye on our sales, monitor performance, and see when people are not making the cut.”

Carbon Planet has been able to implement best practice approaches to new disciplines such as lead management and pipeline probabilities by simply following NetSuite’s proven workflows.

“NetSuite has strong built-in business processes, which was important to us as a growing business because we were able to adopt them out of the box to be our processes,” Marcelis says.