Oracle NetSuite gets generative AI, performance management and much more

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Oracle Corp.’s NetSuite subsidiary today is adding dozens of new features and financial tools to its enterprise resource planning suite grounded in generative artificial intelligence and aimed at improving operational productivity, financial planning and business analysis, along with a more flexible licensing model for task-specific employee roles.

The generative AI highlight is NetSuite Text Enhance, a large language model-based service that leverages Oracle Cloud Infrastructure generative AI to assist in drafting contextual and personalized content based on starter words. Its general-purpose model is aimed at expediting writing tasks such as letters, reports and marketing messages.

Financial professionals can use it to write personalized collection letters and generate narratives for financial reports. Supply chain teams can create customized procurement orders. Human resources professionals can write job descriptions, create detailed goal statements and summarize performance.

Meanwhile, sales and marketing teams can develop personalized content for making campaigns and sales pitches and generate contextual responses to leads. And customer service professionals can automatically create responses to online customer comments, generate escalation notices and annotate customer support cases.

Built around strong customer data privacy and security, it only allows companies to use custom models trained on their data. Role-based security embedded into workflows helps to protect sensitive information about customers and only recommends content that individual users are entitled to view. Text Enhance “will be put through the entire solution and will be very context-specific in how it operates and optimizes,” said Paul Farrell, NetSuite vice president of product management. “It will put structure behind unstructured data.”

Smarter warehousing

Enhanced AI capabilities in NetSuite Analytics Warehouse centralize data for faster access to visualizations and reports. Based on Oracle’s Analytics Cloud and Autonomous Data Warehouse, the warehouse uses AI to centralize and consolidate data from various sources, including NetSuite transactional and historical data, as well as data from cloud or on-premises applications accessed through connectors.

Users can now integrate visualizations from NetSuite Analytics Warehouse directly into their NetSuite dashboards to avoid the need to switch between platforms. New data pipeline settings offer greater flexibility in scheduling the frequency and timing of data updates. A new subject area in financial analysis lets users explore financial activities from multiple angles and include data from other business systems. Line-level details have been added, allowing for deeper analysis of areas like sales orders and inventory activity. Security enhancements include single sign-on and more granular control over user views and access rights.

Comparative performance

A major new feature for top business leaders is NetSuite Enterprise Performance Management, a financial tool suite that automates account reconciliation and enhances reporting to provide better insight into overall business performance. It’s intended to centralize and automate such financial processes as planning, budgeting, account reconciliation and tax reporting with predictive algorithms that continually monitor plans, forecasts and variances.

Based on Oracle’s Fusion Cloud ERP suite, NetSuite EPM integrates with other NetSuite functions and uses AI for predictive analytics as well as account reconciliation, a feature launched in July that automates reconciliation processes for various accounts for faster closing. It also combines narrative writing with financial statements in a single report and helps businesses better understand segments and customers that are performing profitably.

“Customers already have access to elements of EPM,” Farrell said. “Today we’re bringing these together under the category of EPM.”

A related feature, NetSuite Benchmark 360 analyzes key metrics and compares business performance to published industry standards as well as anonymized data from other NetSuite customers. “It will not only say how companies compare to others in their industry but offer best-practice advice on how to improve metrics based on how other customers have used the product to improve metrics,” Farrell said. Customers may choose to opt out of having their anonymized data included in the models.

Speedier financials

For financial professionals, new AI features in NetSuite Planning and Budgeting automate data analysis to speed up decision-making and help to better identify trends and anomalies. Bill Capture uses machine learning to intelligently capture and categorize expenses, thereby eliminating manual bill entry, the company said. NetSuite announced combined bill capture and payment automation through a relationship with HSBC Bank PLC last September “but we had a big demand for bill capture so we separated it into its own SKU using [optical character recognition],” Farrell said.

Electronic invoicing streamlines global invoicing compliance while reducing costs. Transaction Line Distribution enables chief financial officers to distribute transactions across departments. The SuiteCommerce e-commerce platform now provides enhanced self-service. The Configure/Price/Quote feature has been upgraded with support for subscriptions.

NetSuite Capital is a new service that aims to improve cash flow and reduce days sales outstanding by expediting payments. “For many small companies, cash is king,” Farrell said. “This is part of our trend toward embedding business services directly in NetSuite. You submit an invoice for the amount of capital needed and get paid in advance. It’s an easy way to borrow against accounts receivable without taking out a loan.”

A new digital payments module called NetSuite Pay simplifies application and onboarding for new merchant accounts. Versapay, which is the business name of Solupay Consulting LLC, is the first payment partner for the service and NetSuite said others will be added.

Narrative Reporting is a centralized space for finance teams to collaborate on management and regulatory reports. A new Profitability and Cost Management feature reports on different business segments’ profitability to help make resource allocation decisions. Tax Reporting centralizes them into a single dashboard for easier management.

NetSuite is also launching new field service management capabilities based on technology it acquired with the purchase of Australian software provider Next Technik Inc. last month. Field Service Management improves field-to-office communications by simplifying scheduling and dispatch, automating inventory and customer asset management and increasing visibility into real-time data.

The company also introduced a more flexible task-specific licensing model that lets employees with limited needs use the platform to access relevant functions without requiring a full subscription.

Photo: NetSuite