NetSuite Unveils SuiteBilling

Billing Moves from the Backroom to the Boardroom

Billing is often thought of as a mundane but necessary task, treated as a standardized process created solely to collect payment on a sales order. However, as technology is becoming a component of every business process and cloud adoption continues to grow, every company is being forced to rethink its business model. Product companies are adding services, while services companies are developing and selling products. In addition, hybrid business models are emerging with a mix of different offerings, packaging and pricing bundles.

As companies are innovating their business models, billing plays a key role. Can you price your products in new and innovative ways to maximize revenue? Can you bill your customers the way they want to buy from you without an army of accountants with spreadsheets? Can you provide customers with a transparent billing experience to reduce disputes, days sales outstanding and customer attrition? All of these questions are top of mind for businesses and their executives as they develop new business models.

Market Opportunity and Competitive Landscape

According to MGI Research, an independent research and strategic advisory firm focused on the needs of business and finance executives making technology-related decisions, the cloud billing market will grow from $1.1 Billion in 2016 to $5.5 billion in 2020, at an estimated compound annual growth rate of 49%. MGI Research also estimates that companies will spend over $194 billion on billing - an aggregated number that includes labor, deployment, technology services, upgrade costs and maintenance.

Traditionally, businesses have had to use multiple, disparate systems – one or more for billing, one for order and one for revenue recognition -- leaving customers to cobble together manual processes and complex integrations to manage business processes and accurately recognize revenue.

"Monetization – which is how efficiently and effectively demand is created and translated into revenue, profit and market differentiation – is essential to today's growth initiatives like IoT, digital business, and omnichannel.  The concept of an Agile Monetization Platform, which brings together nine functions such as financials, order management, billing, revenue recognition and commerce, is gaining traction among progressive companies.  With SuiteBilling, NetSuite is adding one of the key elements of AMP," said Igor Stenmark, Managing Director at MGI Research.

NetSuite Accelerates Innovation, Releases the Industry's Only Cloud-based Unified Order-to-Bill-to-Revenue Recognition solution for any Business Model

In recent years, dramatic shifts in the marketplace like the Internet of Things (IoT), the emergence of services attached to products and trends towards subscription-based pricing, have transformed the importance of the billing process. Many businesses have shifted from a transaction-focused relationship with the customer to a relationship that needs to be built and nurtured. Additionally, companies are facing pressures to launch, build and grow recurring revenue streams as a means to compete in the marketplace, build profitability and grow. That demands a solution that can account for the complexities of different and hybrid billing models. Meanwhile, different billing scenarios, whether it's delivering a product for product-based companies or milestones for project-based companies impact revenue differently, making the amount billed and the amount recognized different over time. At the same time, as these new billing models introduce additional complexities around how and when to recognize this revenue, the revenue recognition standards are changing quickly, introducing risks of noncompliance and added costs or lost revenue.

NetSuite SuiteBilling gives businesses unprecedented control and flexibility over products and pricing, while enhancing the customer experience by improving transparency and focusing on value delivered vs. the cost, all while supporting the new accounting standards. NetSuite provides a single system to manage orders from multiple sales channels, and to manage billing and revenue recognition that supports compliance with revenue recognition rules such as revenue arrangements with multiple elements (ASC 605-25) and percentage-of-completion accounting (ASC 605-35), while providing a foundation to prepare for adopting ASC 606 in the future. Additionally, NetSuite's cloud-based architecture, with the flexible and powerful SuiteCloud development platform, enables customizations that carry forward automatically with every upgrade and provides a robust ecosystem of complementary solutions.

NetSuite gives companies unprecedented control over their billing and revenue recognition processes. SuiteBilling provides:  

• A Core Framework, allowing for internal NetSuite subscription management, project and fulfillment modules to directly leverage core billing, revenue recognition and financial elements and processes via billing accounts and charge records.
• Enhanced Order to Revenue. NetSuite's superior and highly scalable order management functionality can process orders coming in from multiple channels and centralize them within one single system while advanced revenue management capabilities support multi-element arrangements.
• Role-Tailored User Experiences. Billing and Revenue Work-Centers designed specifically for billing specialists and revenue accountants, respectively, streamline key workflows and help users to complete their critical business activities more quickly and easily.
• Subscription Management, supporting subscription- and usage-based pricing models and rating (simple and advanced).
• Unified, but Independent Approach, allowing invoicing and revenue recognition processes to work seamlessly together while meeting the specific independent needs of each process.
• Rich, Customizable Customer Billing Portals, based on NetSuite's industry-leading ecommerce platform, enable companies to deepen and expand customer relationships.

"As the cloud pioneer, with more than 30,000 customers spread across diverse industries and innovative business models, NetSuite has a front-row seat to the impact of digital disruption on billing and revenue recognition," said NetSuite President and Chief Operating Officer Jim McGeever. "With SuiteBilling, we're giving our customers a next-generation solution to win in the marketplace today and future-proof their business for change tomorrow."

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.

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

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements relating to expectations, plans, and prospects including expectations relating to deployment of SuiteBilling. These forward-looking statements are based upon the current expectations and beliefs of NetSuite's management as of the date of this release, and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements including, without limitation, risks associated with material defects or errors in our software.  All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to the Company as of the date hereof, and NetSuite disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

NOTE: NetSuite and the NetSuite logo are service marks of NetSuite Inc. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

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SOURCE NetSuite Inc.

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