Australian Agribusiness Elders Launched Agsure Using NetSuite SuiteCommerce

SYDNEY, Oct. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N), the industry's leading provider of cloud-based financials / ERP software suites, today announced that Australian agribusiness Elders has launched Agsure as the first nationwide B2B and B2C eCommerce store selling farm supplies, using NetSuite SuiteCommerce as its backbone. Agsure uses NetSuite SuiteCommerce as a complete end-to-end commerce solution for managing its entire business cycle, including eCommerce, financials, supply chain, inventory, distribution, order management, marketing and customer relationship management.  Through SuiteCommerce, Agsure now has real-time visibility of its entire business to support timely inventory refreshes and seamless interactions with customers using multiple touchpoints, including call centre, Internet and smartphone. Full supply chain integration also enables Agsure to easily run regular and regionally-specific supplier deals promoting seasonal or excess stock items at discount prices.

NetSuite's SuiteCommerce platform is at the heart of NetSuite Commerce as a Service (CaaS), and enables businesses to manage interactions with other businesses and directly with consumers via a cloud platform that delivers an enhanced customer experience, on multiple touchpoints (website, smart phone, tablet, in-store, social media site, etc.), directly on the core NetSuite ERP/CRM business management application. This technology transcends the limitations and complexity of first-generation eCommerce systems to deliver new efficiencies for merchants and a superior experience for customers.

Key to Agsure's business operation is the SuiteCommerce Order Management System (OMS). Among its many capabilities, this system offers unmatched billing capabilities such as payment capture, refunds, invoiced billing, usage-based, and recurring billing to support any type of desired customer interaction for B2B and B2C environments.  In addition, SuiteCommerce OMS provides a robust, rules-based workflow technology to manage the lifecycle of a transaction—order-to-fulfillment-to-payment capture-to-repurchase. It reduces fraudulent orders and the amount of time spent reviewing them by providing intelligent review and exception capabilities that will raise red flags and place a hold on orders.  It provides powerful back-office technology such as warehouse management capabilities including bin and lot tracking, pick/pack/ship fulfillment process, support for multiple warehouse locations, and the intelligence to select the appropriate warehouse based on each merchant's business logic. SuiteCommerce is integrated with most major and regional carriers such as Australia Post, DHL, Startrack, Toll, and TNT, to generate real-time rates, print shipping labels, and automatically send package tracking information to shoppers. And all of these capabilities are delivered with the multi-currency and multi-tax support for seamless global commerce, as required.

Founded in 1839, Elders is one of Australia's longest standing rural brands and operates a branch network across the country which will be complemented by the new Agsure business, enabling it to offer a complete retail experience for Australian farmers.

For the first time, Agsure will see Australian primary producers able to conduct their farm supplies transactions with a trusted agribusiness online and have the products delivered straight to their farm. This represents a significant and exciting shift in the Australian farm supplies market.

"Farmer buyer behavior is changing; they're shopping around, researching online and are looking to buy at a time, and price, that suits them," said Mark Geraghty, Elders general manager of strategy and marketing.

"Elders has always been in the business of offering solutions to help farmers get the most out of their operations and Agsure offers an alternative that hasn't existed in the Australian market until now."

Agsure offers a select range of competitively priced animal health and agricultural chemical products and via the Agsure website farmers can see what products are in stock and order and pay upfront, in real time.

After selecting NetSuite in February 2012, it took only six months to build the entire Agsure eCommerce business, including hiring staff, setting up a customer contact centre, building a nationwide supply chain with transport providers and key inventory suppliers, and creating a new online storefront.

"NetSuite has allowed us to build a national online retail business reliant on a complex supply chain, in a short period of time," said Mr. Geraghty. "NetSuite was the only provider that could get us up and running with an enterprise-grade eCommerce business in months, rather than years. Using a cloud-based solution means that from day one we will have very deep, up-to-the-minute visibility of how our business is performing."

"History will peg Agsure as a milestone in Australia's to multi-channel buying choices to all consumers, whether they're based in the city or on a cattle farm in the outback. It's exciting to see iconic rural brands like Elders moving off the blocks to give customers greater buying choice – it's a clear signal to other regional businesses that this is the way forward," said Mark Troselj, managing director for Asia Pacific at NetSuite.

NetSuite also integrates Contivio's contact centre technology to provide Agsure with a comprehensive eCommerce solution.

Today, more than 12,000 companies and subsidiaries depend on NetSuite to run complex, mission-critical business processes globally in the cloud. Since its inception in 1998, NetSuite has established itself as the leading provider of enterprise-class cloud ERP suites for divisions of large enterprises and mid-sized organisations seeking to upgrade outdated client/server ERP systems. NetSuite excels at streamlining business operations, as demonstrated in a recent Gartner study naming NetSuite as the fastest growing top ten financial management systems vendor in the world. NetSuite has continued its success in delivering the best cloud financials/ERP suites to businesses around the world, enabling them to lower IT costs significantly while increasing productivity, as the global adoption of cloud is accelerating.

For more information about SuiteCommerce please visit www.netsuite.com/suitecommerce.

For more information about NetSuite please visit www.netsuite.com.au.

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SOURCE NetSuite Inc.