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NetSuite Launches NetSuite Software Company Edition, First Industry-Specific On-Demand Business Suite

Integrates Software Industry-Specific ERP and CRM Functionality with 15 Role-Based AJAX Dashboards

Hundreds of Software Companies Large and Small Announce Adoption of NetSuite

SAN MATEO, Calif.—March 14, 2006—NetSuite, Inc., NetSuite, Inc., the leader in on-demand business software suites, today launched NetSuite Software Company Edition. NetSuite Software Company Edition is specifically designed to manage a software business and the software customer life cycle — from the moment the lead is in the system through the sales process to purchase and on to subsequent renewals and repeat sales. In addition, NetSuite Software Company Edition adds new rich financial management functionality including revenue recognition and usage-based billing that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars when purchased from niche providers of inflexible applications. Finally, this edition of NetSuite includes new versions of NetSuite's renowned AJAX Dashboards that are specifically designed to give software company executives and frontline users real-time visibility into the key performance indicators that make or break their success. For more information on NetSuite Software Company Edition, please visit www.netsuite.com.sg/softwarecompany.

The new features of NetSuite Software Company Edition result from NetSuite's own use of the product, as well as feedback from its many software customers. As NetSuite has grown to be one of the fastest growing software companies in the world, it has built features into the NetSuite application that have both fueled that growth and helped the company manage it. The new NetSuite product offering literally enables a software company of any size to manage its entire business in a single business application suite. NetSuite Software Company Edition also has many new features specifically designed to manage a Software as a Service (SaaS) business.

"Running a software company is complex, especially in the new world of Software as a Service combined with the complexity of financial compliance," said Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite. "After years of using NetSuite to manage every aspect of our business, we are happy to extend our experience to other software companies. There is no question that if a software company is not using NetSuite to run its business, it is at a significant disadvantage to its competitors who are using NetSuite."

Kevin Thompson, former CFO of Red Hat and SAS Institute, recognised the power of NetSuite and chose it in his new role as CFO of Surgient, Inc. (www.surgient.com), based in Austin, Texas, and the leader in virtual lab applications for automating software demo, test and training labs. "NetSuite is much easier to use than the large-scale ERP systems I've used in the past and delivers functionality that many of these much more expensive systems struggle to provide," he said. "At Surgient, in addition to the typical complexity of managing finance, we have an additional critical business need to track the costs of complex professional services engagements. An important reason we chose NetSuite was because it integrated strong time and expense tracking, project management, revenue recognition, and CRM in a single package."

Most software companies buy multiple generic applications to run their business — one to manage the sales team, one to manage marketing, one to manage support, and several more to deal with the financial aspects of running a business. This fragmented approach adds enormous cost, introduces a high rate of financial errors, and results in a poor customer experience, especially at the time of support, renewal or up-sell. The NetSuite Software Company Edition is not a generic application, but one specifically designed for running a software business.

Manage complex back-office processes easily, while reducing cost and error rate. The new ERP capabilities of NetSuite Software Company Edition are impressive, accomplishing in one system what typically requires multiple software packages, hundreds of thousands of dollars and a plethora of spreadsheets. Software companies have incredibly complex financial processes, from complex billing requirements to revenue recognition to licensing and subscription management. NetSuite adds a host of new functionality to streamline all of these processes, reducing pain, error rate, and cost. New functionality includes:

  • Revenue Recognition that supports AICPA, FASB and SEC regulations (including SOP 81-1, SAB 101, and EITF 00-21). NetSuite also accommodates the requirements specified in SOP 97-2 & 98-9 relating to Vendor Specific Objective Evidence or VSOE, including the accommodation of the Residual Method and a separate VSOE price for every item. Percent Complete Revenue Recognition allows companies to recognise revenue in conjunction with the completion of a project. NetSuite also supports Sarbanes-Oxley compliance with Section 404. Software companies can even manage both GAAP revenues and billings separately — a critical operation for most software companies.
  • Advanced Billing that allows Finance departments to automate billing processes and eliminates the manual work typically associated with billing customers, reducing errors and saving the company time and money. Software companies can create highly customised billing schedules and templates easily and quickly to automate the creation of invoices based on the related license agreement and service contract to meet their exact needs. Milestone billing schedules let software companies bill as work is completed according to the service contract. Billing schedules can be applied to an entire sales order or to each specific item on an order and indicate what is to be invoiced and when, providing more granular visibility into cash flow from period to period. Powerful reporting capabilities provide accurate billing forecasts.
  • Renewals and Maintenance Sales Management that are built in for improved revenue management for the company and seamless service for customers. Start and end dates at the customer level as well as the sales order level trigger automatic reminders for contract renewal, while tailored billing schedules handle maintenance invoicing.

Gain complete visibility in the front-office from initial lead through closed sale.
Good customer relationship management (CRM) can make or break a software company. From the second a lead searches for information on the company Web site, to initial contact, through the sales process to final close, it is vital that personal, knowledgeable service is delivered. Unlike stand-alone applications that strive to automate CRM processes, NetSuite offers a complete lead-to-order functionality in-system, which gives companies the true "360° customer view" that is vital to delivering a high level of service, thereby increasing sales conversion, up-sell and retention. NetSuite Software Company Edition adds a number of new features specifically for software companies to streamline front-office operations:

  • Software sales forecasting includes the ability to manage multiple quotas and corresponding forecasts and commission plans. For example, for companies delivering Software as a Service, it is useful to give sales people one quota for gross billings and a separate one that measures the first-year value of deals.
  • Software commission management is tied tightly with new forecasting technology, allowing for complex, multi-tiered commission schemes around billings or other revenue measures — such as first-year deal value — as they relate to multiple quotas. In addition, mid-year accelerates and other sales kickers allow a software company to incent the desired focus from the sales team to align sales behavior with company goals.
  • Partner Relationship Management (PRM) removes the traditional arm's length partnership with reseller, referral and business development partners and makes them full allies. Now software companies can have the same level of visibility, transaction management and performance metrics with reseller, consulting or marketing partners that they have with their internal teams.
  • Software specific marketing provides rich, software-specific reports on lead generation, and more importantly, lead conversion to revenue. New keyword tracking and conversion reports have also been added. Web site analytics also provide visibility into specific search engine referrers and natural keyword metrics allowing a software company to intelligently leverage the ad-word marketing channel that is quickly becoming the most effective marketing spend for technology companies.
  • Self-service customer portals provide password protected self-service access to order history, outstanding invoices, and trouble tickets, providing greater service at lower cost.

The ultimate business Dashboard simplifies management of a Software business. NetSuite has long been the leader in dashboard technology and has now applied those innovations specifically to the needs of software companies. The AJAX-based dashboards deliver a great user experience, but more importantly, they give every user in a software company a custom dashboard that allows them to monitor everything in the business relevant to them — in real-time for the current period and as compared to past periods.

  • 15 pre-configured role-based dashboards address the specific needs and best practices for every major user in a software organization including CEO, CFO, Controller, Sales VP, Sales Manager, Renewals Manager, Support VP, Support Manager, Engineer, etc.
  • Software company-specific KPIs allow tracking of sales on billings, GAAP and cash basis; forecast on billings; GAAP revenue, quota bearing reps on board; pipeline weighted and un-weighted.

Pricing and Availability
NetSuite Software Company Edition is available immediately and is priced at $2,999 per month with each user priced at $99 per user per month.