Last February 12, a new edition of Netsuite On Air Latin America was held, at the event it was mentioned how technology has boosted corporate strategies in Latin America and has helped to overcome current and future challenges. To talk about this panorama of changes in businesses of the region during the last year and to know how this enterprise suite born in the cloud helped them to face these challenges, we interviewed Gustavo Moussalli, Oracle Netsuite Vice President for Latin America.
Oracle organizes annually its SuiteWorld event (scheduled for this year from October 18 to 21 in Las Vegas), where it shows to more than 10 thousand attendees the latest news, customer experiences, business partners, in order to help companies overcome their obstacles. Taking into account the current global health crisis, the company held NetSuite On Air Latin America, a purely virtual meeting, and Gustavo Moussalli tells us in this interview about the topics discussed in the last edition.
According to the executive, companies of different types and markets come to NetSuite when “they have a business barrier, need to grow or turn to another type of business area”. So, the first question for our interviewee was why SMEs in Latin America should take into account Oracle’s proposal with NetSuite for the Digital Transformation of their businesses: “We have a product that is ERP, CRM and ecommerce in the cloud, it is an integrated cloud suite; precisely the big difference is the concept of the suite, where companies can have all their information, visibility, control and agility needed to make decisions in one place,” he emphasized. “It helps a company to manage its entire business, the financial part, sales, supply, customer relations, sales optimization, manufacturing, a complete product; and the great benefit for executives is that they have all the information in one place for a much more assertive decision making,” he insisted.
“Every company starts with an idea, for those entrepreneurs it was always their dream to offer that service or product; they start to grow but at one point they stop because the systems they have are not working for the size they are getting. With NetSuite we can keep them growing.”
In that sense, the company highlights that NetSuite solutions provide three insights to customers: Visibility to know what all processes look like and to be able to reinvent and change businesses; the ability to control their business for all expenses and to know in which locations there is the possibility of making investments; and agility that allows them to make quick decisions that enable them to become agile companies.
NetSuite’s role in the pandemic
Considering the challenges experienced by customers in the last year, the interviewee commented that during the event, talks were held with customers to tell them about their experiences and how Oracle’s suite helped them in this context. Such was the case of the Argentine wholesaler Ceven: “NetSuite helped them to transform their business, it leveraged them to continue working from home from one day to another”, he said. They also presented the case of Linio, one of the largest marketplaces in Mexico, which uses NetSuite for its financial back office and supply operation. “They were pioneers at the time, and with the pandemic they had a turnaround that was the explosion in online sales,” he said.
Another case presented was that of the company Kavak: “It was a startup that nobody knew about two years ago, which proposed greater accessibility in terms of mobility to the Mexican population; they buy used cars, give them service and resell them with warranty to customers. The company started with us with a couple of users, and two years later it became the first unicorn in the country, reaching more than a billion dollars. But the pandemic affected them because nobody was thinking of buying cars; they wanted to sell to have liquidity. So they changed the business model, and instead of selling used cars, they offered financing for the car that individuals had, and the customer paid for that financing,” he explained, emphasizing once more how NetSuite helped them to quickly change the business model.
Moussalli stated that no company, no matter its size, was fully prepared for a situation like the one we experienced as a result of the pandemic, but he stressed that a system like NetSuite allowed them, from one day to another, to continue operating without interruption. “Many had already made the Digital Transformation, others are implementing it right now, but now it was not a question of transformation but of survival,” he said.
In the same sense, he said that a great differential of Oracle’s solution is that it was born in the Cloud, the support is prepared in the Cloud, and the implementation methodology is made to be in a Cloud product. “My advice is that, one way or another, sooner rather than later, they are going to have to enter this model or move up to a remote management model, things changed and they are not short-term changes, we are here to leverage the difficulties, the developments and the future of all companies,” he emphasized.
However, he said that the great benefit offered by this solution developed for SMEs is that it is a suite that covers all areas of the company, available in Spanish and with Spanish support for Latin America included in its products. “Being in the cloud, in addition to the cost, is the possibility of scaling, and you no longer depend on a person or a company, your employees can be geographically distributed and access the business management tool, there are no limits and, mainly, for SMEs that suffered before that did not have this type of solutions,” he concluded.
Latest updates
The company reported that the product updates are aimed at:
o Finance and accounting professionals.
– Accounts Payable Automation: helps customers reduce manual efforts and streamline financial management, enabling finance teams to digitally manage workflows and automate invoice entry, electronic payment processes and scheduled payment runs.
– Invoice automation and transactions: helps clients eliminate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, enabling finance teams to automate invoice batching, intercompany charges, and transaction creation and posting.
– Accelerated period-end close: Helps customers accelerate the financial close process, allowing users to assign roles to close tasks and create a reliable audit trail that tracks the progress of a new period-end checklist.
– Tax automation: Helps Mexico-based clients set up deferred taxes and specify target accounts for all types of deferred taxes, as well as perform accounting adjustments.
o Administrators and developers
– SuiteAnalytics enhancements: helps customers create reports and analysis across the company, supporting multiple data sets in the SuiteAnalytics workbook. Administrators and developers can take advantage of new pivot tables and advanced visualization features to view sales performance, project status, and product inventory and fulfillment.
