May 18, 2016
By Sam Del Rowe, contributing writer

SuiteWorld 2016: NetSuite Launches SuiteBilling

SAN JOSE, Calif. — NetSuite introduced SuiteBilling, a cloud-based order-to-billing-to-revenue solution, and announced two major product extensions at SuiteWorld 2016 Tuesday, as NetSuite executives weighed in during the keynotes and provided insight into the new releases and NetSuite's overall direction.

The SuiteBilling solution offers users maximum flexibility with managing their billing and revenue processes, as it can process orders from multiple channels, and collect them in a single, centralized system. It features billing and revenue work centers—geared toward billing specialists and revenue accounts—that are designed to streamline workflows, and it aims to integrate invoicing and revenue recognition processes while simultaneously fulfilling the needs of each process. In addition, it provides customizable customer billing portals based on NetsSuite’s e-commerce platform.

Along with the launch of SuiteBilling, NetSuite announced new additions to OneWorld, its global business management platform, and Intelligent Order Management. Designed to assist companies in adapting and innovating in the global business environment, OneWorld now features secondary books consolidation and financial reporting, which aims to assist companies in complying with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) when operating globally. OneWorld also now offers an electronic invoicing framework, designed to assist users in creating country-specific electronic invoices, and has been updated with global vendor management that helps multi-company users centralize and manage global vendor relationships. The solution's updated country-specific localizations support tax calculation and reporting requirements for more than 100 countries.

Intelligent Order Management, an update to NetSuite's cloud-based order management solution, features several new functionalities. Automatic location assignment aims to reduce costs, speed up delivery, and provide vendors with a fulfill-from-anywhere solution. An automated release-for-fulfillment process determines when to release orders and notifies each fulfillment location about which order to fulfill, while providing managers with full visibility. Store pickup functionality enables merchants to elect which locations and items will be involved in the pickup process, and ship-from-store functionality enables merchants to fulfill customer demand with in-store availability.

During his keynote speech, NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson emphasized the importance of NetSuite's customization capabilities, noting that custom fields—the ability to add information—and custom records—the ability to add entities to NetSuite—are the two most widely used features in NetSuite. "If you don't think customization is important, the number one and the number two features used by all of you is customization," Nelson said. "This is an incredibly important piece of the strategy, and of our success, and of your success in running every business on the planet on NetSuite.”

One of the other keynote speakers was Imran Khan, chief strategy officer of Snapchat, a NetSuite customer. Khan discussed the philosophy behind the social media channel, which allows users to send disappearing photos and videos. "If you think about [it], the vast majority of conversation is ephemeral in nature.… The Internet is supposed to make people's lives better, but what happened is that when we moved into the digital world, we found that everything we do, everything we said, gets recorded and gets saved.…People change, and what Snapchat does is it gives people…the choice [to save a picture or not]," Khan said.