NetSuite Shares A Vision Of The SuiteLife With Partners

The Oracle subsidiary's largest investment in its partner ecosystem looks to supercharge a thriving ERP business by helping partners around the world rapidly bring new products to market, achieve consistency across the ecosystem and develop industry expertise

NetSuite, on a growth tear since being brought under the Oracle umbrella more than two years ago, introduced to partners Monday an initiative that represents the 20-year-old cloud pioneer's largest-ever investment in its channel.

Partners have been the driving force behind a global surge in sales of NetSuite's ERP solution, and the SuiteLife initiative will fuel that expansion with new channel enablement programs, marketing and technical support resources, and focus on industry expertise, Harish Mohan, global vice president for strategy & international operations, told CRN.

NetSuite told partners at its SuiteWorld conference in Las Vegas that SuiteLife is designed to help them grow existing practices and speed the time for new ones to realize their first successful engagement.

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Solution providers and developers in the NetSuite ecosystem "played a critical part in helping to drive that acceleration" of growth in recent years, Mohan said.

With an eye on the future, "we need to recruit more of these type of channel providers as we scale," he said.

As the next evolution of NetSuite's channel, SuiteLife will lay the foundation for where the company wants to expand its market reach. The initiative was developed in close consultation with partners, Mohan told CRN.

One foundational principle was alignment with SuiteSuccess, a customer engagement methodology focused on implementing and optimizing NetSuite applications for specific industries that was launched at the same event two years earlier, Mohan said.

Building off SuiteSuccess, NetSuite focused on speeding partner delivery of new solutions in mature, new and emerging markets around the world.

SuiteLife brings online new services to support that work, including subscription support plans that put specialists throughout the company a phone call away from its partners.

The initiative also emphasized the need to standardize engagement practices across its global channel. Customers should see consistency in quality and access to NetSuite services and products in every market the company sells it ERP, CRM, HCM and e-commerce solutions.

In new and emerging markets, like Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, partners serve as NetSuite's brand identity. That makes it essential not only to recruit NetSuite implementers, but quickly make them productive as far as seeing revenue and their first customer success story.

Through the initiative, NetSuite will further encourage partners, wherever they are, to carve out their niche.

"Verticals are winning," Mohan said. "Whether charter schools or microbreweries. We're starting to see partners that placed these bets last year and they're really building out. And we're supporting them."

One major benefit of the initiative will be allowing partners access to the same enablement processes that serve NetSuite's internal teams, said Mark Rhyman, a partner at ERP Success Partners, a NetSuite solution provider headquartered in Montreal, Canada.

By tapping into those existing NetSuite resources, new partners will become operational faster, and existing ones will be able to expand their practices while focusing more on verticals and tackling complex deals, Rhyman told CRN.

"We can see that with the creation of the SuiteLife program that NetSuite is capitalizing on partner growth to ensure a customer satisfaction level that will be undeniable," he said.