Attending NetSuite’s SuiteWorld in Las Vegas is a big thrill for at least two reasons. The first: Las Vegas! The second? NetSuite unveils what’s happening and what’s new, and also what’s coming. No surprises that this year the big focus is on AI; in the previous article, we discussed NetSuite Next and the Redwood Experience. In this one, we’ll go into a little more detail.
As a quick reminder, NetSuite Next is the future and brings with it practical AI capabilities such as embedded conversational intelligence, agentic workflows, and natural language searches. At the same time (and, we believe, very importantly) NetSuite offers the ability to bring your own BI, through the NetSuite AI Connector Service.
While this wasn’t a huge focus at SuiteWorld, it is nevertheless a big deal. In fact, the AI Connector Service was announced in August, just a month before SuiteWorld and the Ask Oracle AI functionality which can be expected within 12 months for North American customers.
Now, nearly everyone reading this article will appreciate the pace at which AI is moving. Let’s face it, all of us are using it every day. Most companies have formulated policies and many of you will have approved AI tools at work in your organisations right now. You don’t want to wait 12 or more months for Ask Oracle – and with the AI Connector Service, you don’t have to. ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, it’s up to you, and you can supercharge your NetSuite today.
That doesn’t diminish the Ask Oracle value proposition but instead enhances it. Your people can get to work with their (or, rather, your preferred and approved 😉) AI right now. When Ask Oracle is available, you’ll have folks already comfortable with responsible and productive AI use, ready to leverage the specific advantages in NetSuite Next.
(BTW, we asked about the upgrade process to NetSuite Next: as is always the case with NetSuite, development happens in the background. When you’re ready, it’s literally the flick of a switch, and all the Next features, including Ask Oracle, become available instantly).
OK, so on to the detail. Just what can you expect in NetSuite Next?
- Ask Oracle Conversational and analytical AI: This natural-language assistant, demonstrated on stage by Senior Vice President of NetSuite Application Development Gary Wiessenger (dressed as James Bond!) enables multiple functions across NetSuite using plain-language It provides context-aware answers, visual dashboards, and explanations for its reasoning. Impressive? Yes. Amazing? Most definitely. Nearly everyone we spoke to is excited at the possibilities Ask Oracle offers.
- Narrative summaries and insights: AI-driven analysis automatically generating explanations and visualisations from NetSuite data to help users spot trends, risks, and opportunities. It’s like BI on demand, and you literally ask the system for it.
- Automation and workflow enhancement: Proactive AI agents to automate complex tasks such as payment proposals, vendor selection, reconciliations, and supply chain operations. The key bit, sometimes called ‘the meat in the seat’ (ugh!) is that you choose to approve key decisions or allow the agents to act autonomously. We reckon this will take a bit of setup time, and experimentation, to get it right.
- Autonomous Close: You could literally feel the accountants in the ‘big tent’ loving this feature, which aims to automate much of the month-end financial close process by monitoring activity, proposing transactions, and flagging exceptions for review. Imagine the huge time savings! But again, expert supervision and human in the loop remains essential.
- Document and knowledge integration: AI agents that read, interpret, and act on information from documents such as invoices, contracts, and policy manuals, turning static information into actionable workflows.
- Planning and visualisation: AI Canvas is a new visual and collaborative workspace embedded in NetSuite where teams can analyse problems, brainstorm solutions, run "what if" scenarios, and trigger agentic workflows. This is exciting, and feeds into our comment above about the experimentation and testing that will be necessary to fully expose AI value, especially with agents.
As with every NetSuite SuiteWorld gathering, there’s a lot to take in and digest (including an excusive party with music legend Pitbull which was put on for delegates. Yes, NetSuite does Vegas big).
Our major takeaway is that NetSuite has been at the forefront of cloud ERP since the very beginning. And it’s going to stay there, as a flexible, innovative, and highly expansible system that should be the only ERP you’ll ever need.
