NetSuite Adds Advanced CRM Features For Billing, Purchase Intelligence And E-Mail Integration
New Functionality Furthers NetSuite Lead in Order Management
SAN MATEO, CA—March 3, 2004—NetSuite,
Inc., today announced the release of NetSuite 9.5, adding
advanced Customer Relationship Management (CRM) features
including line-item billing capabilities, customer mining
and segmentation tools, and no-click e-mail integration
for popular e-mail systems such as Microsoft Outlook,
Lotus Notes, Yahoo! Mail and America Online. Continuing
the commitment to customer satisfaction, NetSuite 9.5
also includes the fulfilment of over 250 customer requested
enhancements in addition to previously announced advancements
to NetSuite's industry leading real-time Dashboards.
The company's products include NetSuite, NetCRM, NetERP
and Oracle Small Business Suite. To find more information
about NetSuite 9.5, please go to www.netsuite.com.sg/advancedcrm.
The Oracle Small Business Suite name is used under license
from Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL).
The challenge with stand-alone CRM systems is that
they do not natively track customer purchase history.
In traditional CRM systems, when an order is placed,
the user leaves the CRM system and enters the actual
order elsewhere. This disconnect greatly decreases the
effectiveness of sales people who need to know customer
purchase history; of marketing users who want to create
up-sell campaigns; and of service personnel trying to
determine the best way to support customers. It also
adds to the cost of the system as this order information
often has to be re-imported into the CRM system, driving
up IT integration, maintenance and data cleansing expenses.
NetSuite, as the only on-demand CRM solution with integrated
order management, eliminates this major limitation of
traditional CRM systems. And the new features in NetSuite
9.5 extend this advanced capability by allowing contract
terms to be reflected automatically in billing and by
allowing customer purchase data to be mined and acted
upon.
"NetSuite 9.5 delivers next generation billing
capabilities for handling contract terms and subscription
business while other CRM vendors have yet to deliver
on promises of basic order management," said Zach
Nelson, CEO of NetSuite. "The 'C' in CRM stands
for customer, and knowing your customers means knowing
their purchases and service history and being able to
handle their billing correctly. NetSuite 9.5 does that
and more."
Highlights of NetSuite 9.5 include:
- Automatic Term-Based Billing Tied To Quotes,
Invoices and Commissions
For companies offering service contract terms or recurring
subscriptions, keeping track of billing schedules
can be an extremely labor intensive process. For example,
a customer might commit to a one-year membership billed
monthly, or a three-year service contract with quarterly
invoices. Keeping track of invoicing schedules, managing
the billing process (knowing when it is time to invoice,
how much to invoice) and handling incentive compensation
on billings (knowing when and how much to pay reps
for sales commission) can be a major challenge for
such companies, and doing so effectively is critical
to successfully managing revenue systems. NetSuite
9.5’s Advanced Billing capabilities automate
these billing schedules and commission payments so
they are processed faster, more conveniently, and
at a lower cost to the business. In addition, revenue
forecasting of these scheduled payments is projected
accurately rather than in one lump sum at the time
of order placement.
- Customer Mining and Segmentation Tools
Customer information is of no use unless it can be
searched, analyzed and used to drive business decisions
and revenue-generating activities. To that end, NetSuite
9.5 includes several powerful data mining tools.
Advanced Expression Builder – allows
for creating complex criteria using search expressions
of And, Or, and Not across any combination of fields.
Parenthetical groupings are also included, enabling
the ability to perform cross-analysis of customer
purchase history, service patterns and current pipeline
activity for segmentation analysis.
Target Group Creation Tools – enables
users to mine customer purchase, case, opportunity
and transaction histories to create target groups,
which can then be used to run up-sell and cross-sell
campaigns. These campaigns can be tailored to contain
focused messaging that resonates with the segmented
group since it is based on rich knowledge of the customer
relationship.
Analytics Via Search – provides
an easy to use interface for quick, on-the-fly analysis
of customer profiles, purchase histories and service
logs using Saved Searches. Group, Count, Sum, Average,
Minimum and Maximum values of a search result set
can be configured by the most novice users with a
few point and clicks of the mouse. These mini-reports
can then be placed on real-time Dashboards for visibility
across the entire business.
- Patent Pending, No-Click E-Mail Integration
To coordinate communication between an email system
and a CRM system, users have had to manually move
e-mails from one system to the other. NetSuite has
a breakthrough that eliminates this tedious process,
and ensures all correspondences are automatically
tracked both in the e-mail system and the CRM system.
This patent pending no-click e-mail integration works
seamlessly with popular e-mail systems such as Microsoft
Outlook, Lotus Notes, Yahoo! Mail and America Online.
A customer response to any NetSuite-generated email
a user sends – whether it's a marketing campaign,
sales follow-up, or service trouble ticket –
is automatically recorded into historical customer
notes in addition to being delivered into the Inbox
of the user's e-mail system. This includes the capture
of any file attachments in the e-mail reply. These
capabilities add unprecedented ease of use and eliminate
the time spent copying, pasting and toggling between
email and business applications. Communication records
are now more accurate, complete and effortless.
Pricing and Availability
NetSuite 9.5 is available now and there is no extra
fee associated with the new release for current subscribers.
For more information about NetSuite please visit our
Web site at www.netsuite.com.sg.
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