NetSuite and OpenAir Customers Take Top Honors in 2010 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark Report

SAN MATEO, Calif., Feb. 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N), a leading provider of cloud computing business management suites, today announced that new independent research conducted by SPI Research has found companies using NetSuite and NetSuite's OpenAir professional services automation (PSA) and services resource planning (SRP) software are among some of the highest performing when measured against peer organizations competing in the professional services market.  These results were revealed in SPI's 2010 Professional Services Maturity Model Benchmark Report, which surveyed over 225 professional services organizations (PSO) on a variety of operational best practices.  This year's study found that seven of the top 15 "Best-of-the-Best" professional services organizations relied on NetSuite and NetSuite OpenAir software to drive key business processes across finance, human resources and customer relationship management.

Since the first Professional Services Maturity Model Benchmark Report was published in 2008, more than 3,000 service and project-oriented organizations worldwide have used it to diagnose and improve their PSO performance.  For more information on the full report, visit www.openair.com/2010benchmark.  

The Best-of-the-Best honors go to the top 15 firms (5%) who have significantly outperformed the benchmark average by excelling in all five service performance dimensions in the SPI report – Vision, Finance and Operations, Human Capital Alignment and Client Relationships.  NetSuite and OpenAir customers receiving honors include Verint Systems and TOP Step Consulting.

"With more than 10 years of research on PSA and SRP, SPI's findings clearly illustrate the benefits of PSA systems, including increased project margins, resource utilization and overall revenue," said David Hofferberth, Managing Director  at SPI Research.  "The Best-of-the-Best results speak for themselves, and we congratulate NetSuite and OpenAir on helping their customers to garner 7 of the top 15 honors for 2010."

Key Findings

Core to SPI's benchmark report is the emergence of PSA as the status quo for effective services organizations.  PSA solutions improve efficiencies and boost profitability for services organizations through increased employee utilization rates, decreased manual data entry, reduced IT maintenance costs, and accelerated invoice and billing cycles. Other key findings in the SPI benchmark report include:

• NetSuite is the dominant PSA solution provider with 32% of survey participants leveraging one or more NetSuite or NetSuite OpenAir solutions
• Seven of the 15 SPI Research top performers are customers of the NetSuite family of products
• Organizations using a PSA solution experienced a 12.8% annual boost in project margins
• Integrating a PSA with a core financial package provided a 10% annual boost in billable utilization
• Forty percent of surveyed companies preferred Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions over traditional client-server solutions

"Benchmark and maturity reports like SPI's help organizations of all sizes learn from the best practices of leading PSOs," said Edward Marshall, NetSuite's SVP of Product Strategy for Professional Services Automation.  "We believe that services are the future of the world economy and we are thrilled to be at the forefront of the PSA space as it continues to grow and enable services organizations to do more with less."

About SPI Research

Service Performance Insight focuses on the global service economy. They provide a unique depth of operating experience combined with unsurpassed analytic capability. In their consulting engagements, they help service and project-oriented organizations ignite performance by objectively assessing strengths and weaknesses to develop a full-faceted improvement plan, with measurable time-bound objectives.

SPI Research provides an informed and actionable third-party perspective for service executives and technology providers. Their market research and reporting forms the context in which both buyers and sellers of information technology-based solutions maximize the effectiveness of solution selection, deployment and use.

For more information on SPI Research, please visit www.spiresearch.com.

About NetSuite

NetSuite Inc. is a leading vendor of cloud computing business management software suites. NetSuite enables companies to manage core key business operations in a single system, which includes accounting/ enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and Ecommerce. NetSuite's patent-pending "real-time dashboard" technology provides an easy-to-use view into up-to-date, role-specific business information. For more information about NetSuite, please visit www.netsuite.com.

About OpenAir

OpenAir, Inc., a NetSuite Inc. company, is a leading provider of Software as a Service (SaaS) services automation software. With offices in Boston, MA, Toronto, ON, London and Sydney, Australia, OpenAir offers both professional services automation (PSA) and services resource planning (SRP) solutions, providing project-based organizations and firms the tools they need to grow their businesses quickly and profitably. Providing enterprise-level functionality for businesses of all sizes, OpenAir helps world-class firms to better capture billable time, manage projects and resources and bill customers. Coupled with a team of highly experienced consultants from some of the world's leading services firms, OpenAir's services automation solutions drive higher profits through improved utilization, visibility and data collection. To learn more, please visit www.openair.com.

NOTE: OpenAir, NetSuite and the OpenAir and NetSuite logos are registered service marks of NetSuite Inc.

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SOURCE NetSuite Inc.