Australian Case Studies of NetSuite

I was building a sitemap of our main website at NetSuite when I came across a goldmine of case studies. Each case study provides a very good summary of how NetSuite was adopted for a particular company and the differences it makde in that company. A Google listing of these case studies can be obtained by searching in Google using the search query: site:netsuite.com.au case study filetype:pdf.

The individual case studies are found at the following locations as per the Google Search:

[PDF] ARGUS SOLUTIONS CASE STUDY

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML ARGUS SOLUTIONS CASE STUDY. Company: Argus Solutions. Location: Sydney. Industry: IT, biometric security. Challenges:. » No integration of CRM, accounting ... www.netsuite.com.au/site/case_studies/Argus.pdf - Similar pages

[PDF] NANOTEC CASE STUDY

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML NANOTEC CASE STUDY. Company: Nanotec. Location: Sydney. Industry: Manufacturing;. Nanotechnology-based surface. protection. Challenges: ... www.netsuite.com.au/site/case_studies/Nanotec.pdf - Similar pages

[PDF] PRIMAVERA AUSTRALIA PTY LTD CASE STUDY

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML PRIMAVERA AUSTRALIA PTY LTD CASE STUDY. Company: Primavera Australia Pty Ltd. Location: Headquartered in. Melbourne with offices in Sydney and ... www.netsuite.com.au/site/case_studies/primavera.pdf - Similar pages

[PDF] SOUTHFERT CASE STUDY

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML SOUTHFERT CASE STUDY. Company: Southfert. Location: Head office in Geelong;. five other despatch locations. Industry: Fertiliser distribution. Challenges: ... www.netsuite.com.au/site/case_studies/SouthFert.pdf - Similar pages

[PDF] GUARDIAN CHILDCARE ALLIANCE CASE STUDY

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML GUARDIAN CHILDCARE ALLIANCE CASE STUDY. Company: Guardian Childcare. Alliance. Location: Headquartered in. Brisbane, offices in Sydney and. Melbourne ... www.netsuite.com.au/site/case_studies/Guardian.pdf - Similar pages

[PDF] INVERTEK CASE STUDY

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML INVERTEK CASE STUDY. Company: Invertek. Location: Brisbane. Industry: Distribution, electric. motors, variable speed drives. Challenges: ... www.netsuite.com.au/site/case_studies/Invertek.pdf - Similar pages

[PDF] DUVAL PARTNERS CASE STUDY

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML DUVAL PARTNERS CASE STUDY. Company: Duval Partners. Location: Melbourne. Industry: Full accountancy services. including technology consulting. Challenges: ... www.netsuite.com.au/site/case_studies/Duval.pdf - Similar pages

[PDF] EPHOX CASE STUDY

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML EPHOX CASE STUDY. Company: Ephox. Location: Brisbane. Industry: IT, web content creation. and management software. Challenges: ... www.netsuite.com.au/site/case_studies/Ephox.pdf - Similar pages

[PDF] MAINPAC CASE STUDYFile Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
MAINPAC CASE STUDY. Company: Mainpac. Location: Sydney, Adelaide,. Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. Industry: IT, software. Challenges: ...
www.netsuite.com.au/site/case_studies/Mainpac.pdf - Similar pages

Quite a smattering of companies and industries. Through reading each of these I get a sense that you could possiby apply NetSuite to many industries if you worked at it. However, I see that the one's that are most suited are the software, finance and technology industries.

Have a good read of each of these.

Google & On Demand Software

Recently found an interesting take on the direction software might take in the future. Certainly it seems that Google, our recently diversifying search engine, is voting on the side of a "web-based experience" of computer use compared to Microsoft's proprietary Desktop Software as discussed in this Forbes article talking about the new Google Pack:

Google, Microsoft Head-To-Head - Forbes.com: "'These are all of the tools that someone would need to basically enable a purely Web-based computer experience, rather than focusing on the [operating system],' says Charles King, principal with Pund-IT Research, a tech consultancy. "

With a "web-based experience" being the approach that is apparent in the selection and presentation of tools in the pack, it is not too distant a stretch to think of Google being interested at some stage in a web-based experience when applying its software in a corporate setting. Certainly with Google's predisposition to an agnosticism towards operating systems, it would be thinkable that Google may be interested in teaming up with a company like NetSuite.

Now this is not to say that anything like this would ever happen, but let us say, it is in keeping with their approach to be aiming towards something like NetSuite. Of course they could include in their pack an Open Source CRM package, or an Open Source ERP system and this is likely a way to go -- similarly in the way it has supported the Open Source "Firefox" instead of the proprietary "Opera".

However, I am not the only one talking about the possibility of Google taking such a position. See also where Steffan Hughes says something similar:

Screedz - Journal - When is Google Going to Run Your Business Software?: "It would not surprise me if at some stage in the new few months Google offered NetSuite an offer to purchase. It all fits. Google wants to organize the world's information and I could not think of a company better suited to be a potential Google company. SO what do you think? Am I stark raving mad? Or is it that Google is starting to look so much like Microsoft we are making some wild assumptions about how much it is going to look like Microsoft?"

So where does Google go from here? Is it going to be the darling company that everyone has made it to be for very much longer? What I do know is that anyone in a Fast Company needs to be watching Google and identifying where their business is headed. Take a wrong move and you might find yourself in opposition to Google which could mean the end of your company rather than the end of Google. Google is the new monolith to watch on the horizon.

The Accounting Blog | Business Dashboards

Found this great little piece about Business Dashboards -- great plus for NetSuite. Of course one must be a NetSuite user to obtain the benefits of this dashboard. See what it promises:

The Accounting Blog | Business Dashboards: "How would you feel if you could turn on your computer every morning and immediately have a complete, real-time picture of your company’s financial performance? Not only that, but what if the information was presented in an easy-to-understand, visual manner (i.e. gauges and graphs) as opposed to the usual bunch of lifeless numbers? That is the basic idea behind business dashboards, a promising management tool that is gaining more attention in the business world these days."

Of course what the reader did not say was that the Dashboard can be re-organized by each individual to see the aspect of the business that the section manager needs to see, or that a particular employee needs to see. For example, I need to see how my marketing campaigns are performing, while the accountancy department needs to see how payments are flowing in and so on.

See more about NetSuite Dashboards on the NetSuite.com.au site.

Audience, The Podcaster and A Summer's Midnight Breeze

According to Wikipedia (which by the way is more accurate than most any encyclopedia we might name) the idea of podcasting is defined by the nature of transmission, the practice of aggregation, and directing those aggregated files to an instrument that can be played at the will and the time of its potential audience. Now got that? Wikipedia (which you must read if you didn't get it here) says all that in about 400 words.

But what it means is this. Fifty people record their own voices each in a file of its own. Each of those fifty people locate the file as an enclosure (put it in an envelope) so that it can be transmitted to those people who subsribe to that feed. When your podcatcher calls the feed and finds an envelope, it is downloaded. Your podcatcher will go to as many of those 50 feeds of those fifty people as you like. When you connect your MP3 player to your computer you can then move all those Podcast files to your mp3. Then at your leisure you have a fantastic array of information, programs, whatever was put into those envelopes. Gone are the days when you have to listen to a radio at a set time to get the news, find more about second mortgages, or the state of the war in Iraq.

Forget about that for a minute and lets think about midnight on a hot summer night. It is 39 degrees C, your bed is wet with perspiration, you are so hot that you decide to get up and suck an ice block from the freezer. Ahhh! You can feel it already. That lovely sweet juice running down the inside of your neck. You swallow and the coolness of that juice is oh so good. But then you remember, since I cannot sleep what do I do? Yes, you guessed it, your podpaper, or is it your poddio, or your podzine whichever it is most like is waiting and ready to listen to.

There in the middle of the night you don your stereo headphones connected to your MP3 player (or if you are like me you now have an MP4 player on which you play your MP3 stuff). You sit out on the front verandah where you hear the hoot of an odd owl or two, and the screetch of a parrot being annoyed by its neighbour, and the sound of a father Kookaburra calling a loud warning sound to his sleeping wife and potential progeny. You start the MP4 player, the sound drowning out the sounds of the night, and there in its five hour array, you have podcast after podcast, after podcast, after podcast. You make a mental note, to unsubscribe to some of these feeds because there is too much to listen to.

This all stimulates my mind enough to begin thinking. When I set up my podcast (which dear reader I will do very soon) who will be my audience, and when will they assemble to listen to my dulcet tones? Or is the whole idea that by unleashing the broadcast of sound from the ever present regimen of time, we create for ourselves an unknown audience, in an unknown time, and with no idea of the overall effect, if any, of what it is we had to say. Will my podcast then be able to be used by whomever, wherever, for any reason?

Working in a fast company is going to my head, I think. I need to sit in a cold bath for a bit and cool it all down.

Yes, I am an ODF!

So you want to know what an ODF is? OK, so you don't want to know. I am going to tell you anyway. I am a fully committed, seriously mentally disturbed and freakish "on-demand freak" . . . know by me and others as an ODF!

My rule for a simpler and easier life is -- never buy software anymore!

Now my ODF conviction is not a type of bigotry or religiousity like the Linux people have, reported recently:

Time for Linux bigots to take a back seat: ZDNet Australia: News: Software: "Linux and open source software has always been dogged by a kind of University campus idealism that is brutally incompatible with the harsh realities of the commercial world."

I would hope my commitedness to being an ODF is based on a more logical base that can be tested in a world of harsh realities. You see, this ODF conviction has come about by working in a world where there is no time to research, think and write about ideas given the time of academia where a 5,000 word paper can be researched and written over a period of a year. No, this world in which I live demands that I write everyday more than 2,000 words, and build a readership, and interact with people in the business, and take phone calls, and make up to six or seven contacts who are likely to be purchasers of NetSuite.

So why am I such an on-demand freak?

Simple, I do not have the time to continually evaluate software, purchase, maintain and add patches. Second, I need to have software that will be available to me at work, at home, when I travel, and so on. Now carrying a laptop doesn't cut it any more. Too heavy, too much trouble getting it through x-ray machines, and too to bother about in keeping the thing going. I want simple!

I don't want to download music, photographs or movies. I want that with any device I might use I can obtain what I want on-demand. Why download music and then have it go out of currency the day I have downloaded it? Why download software and find that it needs a patch to starta working properly. No, I want to use on-demand anything - music, photographs, anything.

The device I have in mind would be a mobile telephone-like tool that can play music for me, it can deliver my emails, it can be used to read documents, and anything I do with the software it uses is available to me on my computer at home, at work and any other device I might use.

As a committed ODF I use NetSuite for my business activities. NetSuite is the only full featured on-demand package that can run an entire business whether it be a small business or a large business unit of a conglomerate. Why NetSuite? Because only NetSuite can satisfy an ODF like me. There are just so many ways to use NetSuite, so many ways of doing things, so many ways of making it work -- even your unique business selling dorphs to dolphins could use it! And for another thing, my business is a virtual business (in some of its activities) and NetSuite just suits this perfectly.

So why am I telling you all this?

Because I want you to know that while I am an ODF and there are many ODFs around, the fact that there are ODFs mean that there are also people who are not ODFs -- you possibly being one of them! It's allright! I will let you be what you want to be, but if you want to really know the good, the bad and the ugly totally mixed and full of reality, then come and seek my advice about on-demand issues. I am not into selling anything. I will just tell you my life story as an ODF and you will know everything you need to know about on-demand stuff.

See you around more often!

So What Does 2006 Offer a Fast Company

There is one thing for sure, it only seems like a short time since 2000 and now we are here over halfway through this decade. This decade has had some momentous times, such as 9/11, the tsunami and the war again terror! In the technology world we have seen the appearance of a range of hand-sized tools -- iPods, Blackberry, smart mobile phones, and more. And in the past few years we have also seen the uptake of broadband, removal of servers from businesses to server farms, and fully functional business software being made available as a service instead of as a product. This is how Inside Bay Area sees the development:

Software that's purchased and installed in your computer — or your company's server computers — is being replaced by software that resides on the Web and can be licensed from companies such as NetSuite of San Mateo. The idea wipes out the need to purchase and maintain expensive server hardware — a boost for many small- and medium-sized companies.

Then we have the convergence of phones, computers and access to the Internet. Because of VOIP we can now have only one network within an office:

Screedz - Journal - Why VOIP is Good for Small Business: "All that is then required for the small to medium business is a single broadband connection that can be delivered via Foxtel Cable, ADSL or for even larger businesses where fibre is available you may wish to obtain a 10MB connection for about $2,500 per annum which can successfully run both your computer network and your telephone converged network."

And what is that in your hand? A phone or a computer? Not too distant from now we can quite conceivably complete an order from my client's location on a computer/phone and have it interact with the NetSuite server and provide real-time data on availability of stock.

I am not intending to complete a full round-up of what is becoming available -- just those things that have struck me as being somewhat useful and good in the coming year. Personally I have been interested as to how Google is working to make the world's information more available. They are serious about "the world's information" as a representative of Google stated in the official blog recently:

Official Google Blog: About the AOL announcement: "Our goal is to organize all of the world's information. When we say 'all the world's information,' this includes AOL's. We're going to work with the webmasters at AOL -- just as we work with webmasters all over the world -- to help them understand how the Google crawler works (with regard to robots.txt, how to use redirects, non-html content, etc.) so we don't inadvertently overlook their content."

This, of course includes organizing your personal files on your computer, your email in Gmail, and your searches in "psearch". So with 75 enhancements to Google last year, what can we expect this next year?

Now how does all this fit in with NetSuite my major program in which I work? Integration of Gmail with NetSuite? Integration of Google Search with NetSuite? This will be an interesting year!