NetSuite Reinforces Commitment to Excellence for Retail Apparel and Accessories Companies

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SAN JOSE, Calif., May 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- NETSUITE SUITEWORLD 2016 -- NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N), the industry's leading provider of cloud-based financials / ERP and omnichannel commerce software suites, today announced the release of the NetSuite Retail Apparel Edition – created to address the growing challenges of apparel and accessory retailers. Built on NetSuite's unified, cloud-based platform for ERP, planning, ecommerce and point-of-sale (POS) technologies, the new solution adds features and functionality designed specifically for retailers and is further enhanced by complimentary partner technologies. Apparel and accessory retailers can now accelerate time to value, streamline their operations and meet the ever-changing expectations of shoppers with a seamless, omnichannel customer experience.

Traditional ERP and retail management systems have historically failed to effectively serve apparel businesses as they expand from manufacturing and distribution, to selling direct to consumers, making their supply chain and customer relationships infinitely more complex. Purchasing one-off, disparate systems creates multiple data silos that are costly to maintain and actually degrade the customer experience.

"Apparel retailers require a platform that unifies their brand and their customers' experience. The multiple, back-office and front-end systems they struggle to keep in sync simply cannot keep up with their complex business models, selling channels and fast-paced trends," NetSuite's General Manager of Global Retail, Branden Jenkins said. "At the same time, shoppers demand an engaging, omnichannel experience that moves with them as they constantly redefine the digital and in-store shopping journeys, rewarding retailers with their loyalty and repeat purchases along the way. NetSuite's cloud-based platform and industry-specific solution can solve these challenges and ensure that retailers will never be left behind again with outdated technology."

Luxury accessories brand Hammitt replaced several on-premise systems with NetSuite to get a unified, operational foundation for its business. Hammitt currently relies on NetSuite for financials, inventory management, manufacturing, fulfillment, reporting, demand planning and reverse logistics. Unlike other companies that rely on legacy systems and commit to an entire season's order four to six months in advance, NetSuite's order management and forecasting capabilities enable Hammitt to replenish inventory with as little as three weeks lead time. Hammitt experiences more inventory turns per year than competitors, making more efficient use of capital and reducing its amount of unsold product.

"NetSuite's end-to-end solution provides the real-time visibility, reporting and planning capabilities needed to redefine our business and our industry," Hammitt CEO, Tony Drockton said. "With NetSuite's Retail Apparel Edition we can accelerate innovation, expand our footprint and better serve our customers."

The NetSuite Retail Apparel Edition builds on the functionality already in NetSuite's core platform with industry-specific features, including:

Unified Online and In-Store Shopping – Provide shoppers with seamless, omnichannel journeys that enhance a purchase, fulfill and return anywhere experience.

• Store Locator and Inventory by Item - Shoppers gain inventory transparency via the website to determine which store has an item in stock. Merchants can save online sales by catering to customers' hybrid shopping patterns.
• Store Pick-up Enhancements - Customers receive an email when the item they purchased online is ready for store pick-up. Merchants can reduce overhead and shoppers get a timely and convenient fulfillment experience.

Enriched Online Experience – Shoppers get a range of apparel- and accessory-specific website features that can enhance and advance the buying process.

• Instagram Hashtag Gallery – Manage and display galleries of related Instagram images from brand influencers and enthusiasts. Manage hashtags for specific product pages to convert sales and build brand loyalty.
• Lookbook – Marketers can create a specific look, enabling shoppers to easily purchase from that curated page to simplify and expedite the buying process.
• Size Chart – Provide shoppers with size charts relevant to each product on the website to help reduce returns and protect merchants' margins.

Optimized Inventory Allocation – Intelligently choose how to fulfill orders based inventory availability and pre-defined business rules.

• Inventory Allocation to Sales Orders – Sales representatives view real-time inventory availability to confidently take orders and promise inventory across all locations and the supply chain. Also allocate retail orders from the same inventory pool to streamline operations and consolidate systems.
• Auto Location Assignment – Help to optimize shipments with rules to automatically fulfill orders based on a retailer's preference. Merchants can compete with faster delivery times and reduce overhead with more efficient fulfillment processes.

Merchandise Management – Tools to streamline manual processes for entering sales, purchase, transfer and bulk orders.

• Grid Order Entry – Merchants can more quickly input transactions and view inventory data at a style-matrix level.
• Bulk Transfer Order – Eliminate manual entry of transfer and replenishment orders with quicker, bulk transfers of inventory across multiple warehouses and retail locations.

Retail Business Operations – Increase time to value with built-in roles and business intelligence tools, shifting effort from configuring the solution to gaining rapid insight into operations.

• Preconfigured Dashboards - Instant access to the dashboard needed for apparel- and accessory-specific roles such as inventory manager, store manager and warehouse manager.
• Predefined Reports, KPIs and Metrics – Data intelligence specific to retail apparel provides insight into top selling items, units per transaction, shrink reports, sales per hour, sell-through figures and retail stock-ledger.

To complement NetSuite's Retail Apparel Edition, key strategic partnerships between NetSuite and leading apparel solution providers offer merchants tightly-integrated, complimentary solutions to NetSuite. Some of the many partnerships include WFX (World Fashion Exchange) – a provider of cloud-based, customizable software solutions which efficiently manage apparel product life cycles. Customer marketing technology from Clutch consolidates and analyzes omnichannel customer and commerce activity, and allows consumers to manage their account and profile, and track their loyalty points, rewards and gift cards.

To learn more about NetSuite's Retail Apparel offering, please visit www.netsuite.com/fashion.

Today, more than 30,000 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 cloud-based financials/enterprise resource planning (ERP) and omnichannel commerce software applications for businesses of all sizes. Many FORTUNE 100 companies rely on NetSuite to accelerate innovation and business transformation. NetSuite continues its success in delivering the best cloud business management software to businesses around the world, enabling them to lower IT costs significantly while increasing productivity, as the global adoption of the cloud accelerates.

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

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SOURCE NetSuite Inc.

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