Earlier this week NetSuite released a SuiteWorld like barrage of press releases – to the point I checked if I missed a SuiteWorld conference – but it was ‘just’ all about opening the vendor’s beachhead on the European continent – with opening operations in The Netherlands and expanding the NetSuite product serving the Benelux markets… and yes – the title is a little joke – there is no BeNeLux language, people speak Dutch, Flemish, Belgian French and Luxembourgish (and German is an official Belgian language, too).
So let’s take a part the main press release in our customary style (it can be found here):
LONDON—13 April 2016—NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N), the industry's leading provider of cloud-based financials / ERP and omnichannel commerce software suites, today announced the expansion of its business operations into The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg (Benelux). This accelerated expansion includes the opening of NetSuite’s Benelux headquarters in Amsterdam; a strategic alliance with Deloitte in Belgium; and new customers such as Transavia, ESOMAR and Qardio in Holland and Zembro in Belgium. In conjunction, NetSuite unveiled NetSuite OneWorld for Benelux-headquartered companies. This move is in response to the growing opportunity for cloud ERP and rising demand for NetSuite in the Benelux region, particularly from innovative, fast growing and international businesses.MyPOV – Good intro, summarizing well what NetSuite is up to. Good to see a physical presence with a headquarters, good to have customers in the first paragraph. And yes, the BeNeLux region has attracted an above share of international company headquarters, for a number of reasons.
“Our new Benelux operations are the latest steps in NetSuite’s European expansion and our commitment to providing businesses in the region with software and services that meet both their regional and global needs,” said NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson.MyPOV – Good quote from Nelson, addressing the usual European concern with US based vendors – are they really committed to the complexities in the region...
Since its inception in the UK in 2002, NetSuite has established a strong footprint in Europe and has taken the lead as the #1 cloud ERP software vendor in the region. Due to NetSuite’s powerful OneWorld product, NetSuite has a large number of global enterprise customers operating subsidiaries in Europe and in the Benelux region. In the Benelux region alone, NetSuite has more than 850 subsidiaries and legal entities of companies like Misys, American Express Global Business Travel, Commvault, and Meltwater running their mission critical business processes on NetSuite OneWorld. The NetSuite OneWorld solution provides companies with multi-subsidiary management and global financial capabilities to run business operations in the region in a two tier model, implementing NetSuite at the subsidiary level while maintaining their legacy, on-premise systems at headquarters.MyPOV – Good to see the traction for NetSuite – but also interesting to see that the vendor has followed its customers – who have taking the OneWorld product earlier with no in product vendor support to run countries on the European continent. Given NetSuite arrived to the UK 14 years ago – a very prudent expansion strategy for NetSuite, slower even than e.g. client server era based expansion in Europe of e.g. Oracle or PeopleSoft.
Market OpportunitiesMyPOV – Always good to quote the market opportunity. Local vendors with presence of SAP and Oracle on the high end, Unit4 all the way to specialists like Raet will see a new competitor that usually isn’t shy in the market place.
Offering a friendly business environment and home to fast-growth companies in technology, media, banking and other industries that have embraced cloud computing, Benelux represents the latest step in NetSuite’s commitment to Europe. Gartner estimates the ERP applications market for Netherlands and Belgium to be $724.1 million in 2015, growing to $849.8 million in 2018 (Source: Gartner, “Enterprise Software Forecast, 2015 Q4,” December 2015).
“Businesses in the region are already seeing the advantages that a flexible, scalable system with rich international capabilities like NetSuite can provide,” said Mark Woodhams, SVP & Managing Director of NetSuite EMEA. “We’re excited to help more businesses in the Benelux countries transform their operations with the #1 cloud ERP.”MyPOV – Good quote from Woodhams. BeNeLux companies will certainly see the value of a cloud based offering.
European DatacentresMyPOV – A key move by NetSuite to address the European data residency and privacy concerns. With the invalidation of the EU / USA Safe Harbor act, the installment of the Privacy Shield and related uncertainty (more here) can only be countered with EU based data centers (nice move on the localization to British English on the headline!). NetSuite has been relatively late to have EU based data centers, so good to see the vendor addressing this in late 2015. A must have table stake for business in Europe.
NetSuite opened two major European datacentres late last year, one in Amsterdam, Netherlands and the other in Dublin, Ireland. The two datacentres support NetSuite's growth in Europe and meet the needs of the increasing number of European companies that are adopting NetSuite's cloud to more efficiently manage and transform their businesses. Both datacentres are fully operational with live customers. NetSuite has started provisioning new EU customers in the EU, and plans to move existing EU customers to the datacentres in the coming weeks.
New PartnershipsMyPOV – Good to see a partnership announcement as part of the initial come to market. Shows NetSuite has done its homework before the announcements. It also speaks to the power of the NetSuite brand and reputation that the vendor could sign up a major partner like Deloitte.
NetSuite and Deloitte partnered to extend the strategic alliance to Belgium. Deloitte Consulting in Belgium provides implementation, finance transformation, change management and a full breadth of consulting services to businesses in the Belgian market seeking to gain business efficiency, grow revenues and expand globally with NetSuite cloud ERP.
In addition, NetSuite also has a vibrant partner ecosystem in the region. Solution providers such as E-Litt and ERP FastForward have helped NetSuite establish a strong footprint in the Benelux region.MyPOV – Good to see there is more than Deloitte in the partner system.
New CustomersMyPOV – Always powerful to have customers on a press release – especially when it is the launch to new countries / regions. Good to see different industries and different countries covered.
New customers announced today include Transavia, ESOMAR, Qardio, and Zembro.
Transavia Airlines, a leading low-cost carrier serving Europe, has selected NetSuite OneWorld to help execute its ambitious plans for growth. Transavia will replace a legacy AS 400-based system at its office in the Netherlands and an Infor system in France with NetSuite OneWorld. Transavia plans to use NetSuite to run its mission-critical business processes across Europe including financials, financial consolidation, multi-subsidiary management, procure-to-pay, reporting, and support for multi-language (English, Dutch and French), multi-currency and multi-country tax compliance.
ESOMAR, the global trade association for market, social and opinion researchers founded in 1948, has implemented NetSuite OneWorld to drive global business and membership growth. ESOMAR is now relying on NetSuite OneWorld for enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and website content management after replacing Exact ERP, an on-premise CRM and a content management system (CMS) that used to support its website. NetSuite OneWorld can deliver ESOMAR key benefits including increased efficiency and a real-time view of its business across its 5,000 individual and 500 corporate members in more than 130 countries and business intelligence for management at its headquarters in Amsterdam, as well as 50 of its local representatives.
Qardio, fast growing smart health solution provider, has implemented NetSuite OneWorld to fuel its business growth and expansion into new global markets. Qardio uses NetSuite OneWorld to manage its mission-critical business processes including accounting, financial consolidation, procure to pay, order management, inventory management, customer relationship management (CRM), multi-currency (US Dollars, British Pounds, Euros), and multi-country tax compliance across its head office in San Francisco, and subsidiaries in the UK, the Netherlands and Asia.
Zembro, the Belgium-based creator of the first intelligent armband specially designed for the elderly, has selected NetSuite to meet its ERP and CRM needs. The company is now running its mission-critical business processes including billing, inventory management, customer relationship management (CRM) and multi-currency management for Euros and British Pounds on NetSuite.
New Product: NetSuite OneWorld for Benelux-Headquartered CompaniesMyPOV – Good to see not only sales and marketing and delivery extension – but also product extension. Obviously doing business only pitching NetSuite to subsidiaries is missing out on a lot of the market. But having the necessary product extension and localization ready in time shows good timing.
NetSuite OneWorld gives today’s businesses the ability to expand and transform their organisations and reinvent their business models to meet the ever-changing demands of their markets and the expectations of their customers. NetSuite OneWorld supports tax compliance in more than 100 countries, 20 languages and 190 currencies, along with the capabilities for global businesses to transact in more than 200 countries and dependent territories around the world. It allows multinational corporations in the region to more efficiently manage their subsidiaries without the high upfront costs and deployment hassles of on-premise software.
NetSuite OneWorld for Benelux-headquartered companies is localised and designed to meet the business needs, regulatory and tax compliance of regional businesses, and brings them an agile and flexible cloud software application to run their mission-critical business processes with unmatched global financial capabilities in the industry. This comprehensive set of capabilities include: global currency and accounting, comprehensive tax compliance, country-specific tax support, country-specific reporting, local bank and payment support, local language support and robust development platform that allows businesses in the region to customise the software to their specific needs and integrate with other third-party applications. For more information about NetSuite OneWorld for Benelux-headquartered companies please see the separate release issued today.MyPOV – Good to see all statutory, regulatory and localization demands addressed. Not a trivial task and good to see it achieved in product today. Next step will be go lives of customers, and never an area for a vendor to rest.
“The Benelux countries are home to many vibrant, innovative and fast-growing businesses – whether they be local disruptors or regional HQs of global organisations - exactly the sort of organisations that have created efficiencies, grown and transformed their operations with NetSuite,” said Craig Sullivan, Senior VP of Enterprise and International Products for NetSuite. “We see the region as the natural place to expand and hope to become NetSuite’s next European success story.” […]MyPOV – Good quote from Sullivan. A common beachhead for US vendors, avoiding the larger and usually more demanding larger economies of Germany, France and Italy in a first step.
Overall MyPOV
Good to see NetSuite expanding into Europe. For our taste the vendor may have waited long, possibly even too long to achieve a similar market position as in North America. But Europe is expensive not only for sales and marketing activities but also for the product and operational extensions required to be build and maintained. The good news is that NetSuite has been able to watch the market for a long time from the UK, so we can assume the vendor knows exactly what it is getting into. Europe has entrenched vendors, starting with SAP and every country has local vendors with strong customer bases, take e.g. Unit4 in The Netherlands and Belgium. But NetSuite has the understanding of more in tune with the 21st century business processes such as omnichannel support and more. As these practices become required best practices in Europe over the next years, it will be good to see NetSuite leveraging this advantage.
On the concern side, NetSuite now needs a European roadmap. European companies are export oriented and very well connected, a common market with the E.U. has created inter-dependencies beyond what NetSuite customers in North America are used to with NAFTA. The Top 3 trading partner for The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg is… Germany. And close behind France. So BeNeLux based customers will ask for support coming for these countries soon – pretty sure NetSuite is aware of that and has a plan.
But for now congrats to NetSuite who has achieved a remarkable ‘all in’ the BeNeLux from a go to market (local headquarters), product (localized version), services (partnerships with service providers) and delivery (local data centers) capability. Few vendors get that all done for a market launch and seldom we can dissect such a complete offering in a press release, so congratulations. Now we will be watching for the next round of local customer go lives.
More about NetSuite
- News Analyis - NetSuite announces Cloud Alliance with Microsoft - read here
- First Take - NetSuite SuiteWorld - Zach Nelson Day #1 Keynote - read here
- First Take - Ultimate Software UltiConnect Day #1 Keynote - read here
- Event Report - Netsuite powers on with targeted innovation - read here
- Why NetSuite acquired TribeHR - read here
- Act III the cloud changes everything - Oracle and NetSuite with a touche of Deloitte - read here
- Act III and final day - A tale of two conferences - Sapphire and SuiteWorld - read here
- The middle day - 2 keynotes and press releases - Sapphire and SuiteWorld - read here
- A tale of 2 keynotes and press releases - Sapphire and SuiteWorld - read here
