As the pace of innovation continues to speed up, customer needs shift and industries converge. Finding a business system that can keep up with rapid change is presenting a huge challenge for startups. But it’s a critical decision. Even early on, startups need to consider how they will scale not only their business but also their infrastructure.
Read on to find out how to scale a business and build your transformation plans around cloud-based business systems that will take you from startup to IPO to global enterprise to acquisition, at speed.
Startup challenges and their impact
As a startup, you need a business system that can support innovation and growth. Whether adding new products and services, lines of business and pricing strategies or improving warehouse or supply chain capabilities adapting to these changing business functions requires the right system.
But it’s about more than just innovation. You also need to be able to complete all those essential financial and accounting activities such as streamlined billing and renewal processes, accurate financial reporting, and the ability to meet complex revenue recognition requirements. And if expanding to new countries and markets, your system will need to be able manage currency, legal and compliance requirements too.
The first step to accomplishing these growth goals involves implementing a flexible, agile business system able to support growth and scale.
Yet many startups are spinning their wheels, running operations with a basic system that once served them well but soon limits what they can achieve. Or they are operating an inflexible and dispersed legacy IT ecosystem that has become too unwieldy to manage.
It doesn’t have to be like this. For startups at any stage of growth, NetSuite is the first and last business system they will ever need.
What is NetSuite
For the unfamiliar, NetSuite is a cloud-based business management platform (or integrated ERP system) currently in use by over 26,000 fast-growing organisations. Deployed correctly, it gives companies the full-spectrum of capabilities to manage core functions across finance, supply chain, customer relationship management, human resources, professional services, eCommerce and more. Now let’s look at the characteristics of the modern startup and how NetSuite supports them as they grow.
Startups are driven by data
In order to quickly determine what works and discard what doesn’t, startups must not just have access to information, it needs to be real-time and accessible. This means they must have real-time visibility anytime, anywhere, across geographies and subsidiaries.
Because NetSuite acts as a central data source capturing information from across all business units, startups gain a true competitive advantage – a single source of truth that can instantly mined for insights and answers and enables all lines of business to work together to achieve the company’s objective. Having real-time data at their fingertips also gives startup leaders a right-now and complete snapshot of the business, helping to assist in the development and implementation of their growth strategy as they steer the company upwards.
Startups are growing without hindrance
With an integrated software system, growth-related initiatives such as expansion to multiple locations or moving into new sales channels can be accomplished without complex integrations or manual processes bogging them down. For example, if a startup is at the beginning of their journey, NetSuite’s SuiteSuccess implementation model lets them start with the basics and add functionality over time, or immediately if the market dictates. Then as the company expands into new territories, they can build out their NetSuite solution to include global capabilities such as multi-language, multi-currency and up-to-date multi-country compliance and reporting functions.
Startups are based in the cloud
For many startups battling inflexible legacy business systems, or the “hairball” of systems they have created to bring in functionality lacking in existing systems, NetSuite is a true enabler. Deploying a cloud ERP solution such as NetSuite eliminates the need to piece together a patchwork of solutions. And because it is automatically update, every team member is always working with the latest version of the suite. Unlike on-premises solutions, staff can also access all authorised company information anywhere, at any time. This is particularly critical as businesses move to more hybrid workstyles.
Startups are agile
Today’s startup learns from fast failures and hustles to attract wins, big and small. This approach requires agile technology able to support rapid business innovation. In short, technology choice is key shaping a startups future. If it’s taking too long for IT to be ready to support a new product launch, pricing model or to enter a new market, their systems are the roadblock. This is why leading startups adopt NetSuite – to realise the competitive advantage it offers as well as gain speed to pursue new growth opportunities.
Any truly successful startup will inevitably grow. An integrated ERP system like NetSuite can play a major role in simplifying and informing their growth strategies, enabling them to scale rapidly, be extremely responsive to market dynamics and customers, and drive a data-driven, innovative culture.
How NetSuite supports startup growth
- Rapid implementation – via NetSuite SuiteSuccess – will get you up and running fast
- Built with leading practices distilled from years of experience in cloud ERP implementations.
- Industry-honed functionality including built-in business process flows, value-driven dashboards and KPIs.
- Cloud-first to keep your team agile and flexible, anytime, anywhere.
- One unified business management suite that grows with you at every stage. In fact, many customers specifically choose NetSuite for its inherent scalability.
- Automatic updates with new features and functionality continuously added
To find out how NetSuite can help your startup level up, contact Annexa sales.
Annexa is a leading NetSuite partner with extensive experience designing and implementing comprehensive and customised business systems, including payroll solutions, financial management, warehouse management and ecommerce solutions.