WEBVTT - The NetSuite Story 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:14.120 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:17.120 I'm Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at how Stuff 0:00:17.120 --> 0:00:19.720 Works and I love all things tech. And this is 0:00:19.720 --> 0:00:23.560 another bonus episode that I'm recording in Las Vegas, Nevada. 0:00:24.200 --> 0:00:27.520 As I attend Sweet World eighteen, you can probably hear 0:00:27.520 --> 0:00:31.479 from my voice that the dry desert air and the 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:34.479 long hours on the show floor are starting to take 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:38.080 its toll. Also, it's five in the morning here, but 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:42.400 that's no excuse. Let's get on with the show. So 0:00:42.840 --> 0:00:46.000 Sweet World eighteen is a big conference that's hosted by 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:50.159 net Sweet, which in turn is now a division of Oracle. 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:53.479 But net Sweet did not start out that way, and 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:56.040 so I want to give you the story of net Sweet. 0:00:56.080 --> 0:00:59.080 Also letting you know this bonus episodes a little shorter 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:05.280 than my normal episodes, largely because well, there are limitations 0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:08.000 to what I can do with hotel WiFi and getting 0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:11.600 these sound files out to my super producer, Tari. So 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:15.240 that's the reason for that. But let's talk all about 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:18.039 net Suite. What is this company? Was it due? Where 0:01:18.040 --> 0:01:20.759 did it come from? Well, it's a company that makes 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:25.080 products for other companies products and services, so it's a 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:29.280 business to business enterprise. Most of us would likely have 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:32.280 no real experience with net suite unless we work in 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:36.960 some company that is relying on net sweets products. Otherwise 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:39.120 we don't really have contact with it. It's one of 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:42.880 those companies that works behind the scenes, and these business 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:45.840 to business companies often when you start digging into it 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:49.600 on the service level, they seem really complicated and sometimes 0:01:49.600 --> 0:01:51.920 it seems like there's nothing there in relation to what 0:01:52.000 --> 0:01:54.080 we do in our normal lives. But then when you 0:01:54.160 --> 0:01:57.360 really look in you realize, wait a minute, these are 0:01:57.400 --> 0:02:00.720 the companies that do work that allow the other companies 0:02:00.960 --> 0:02:03.160 that I am familiar with, the ones that I do 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:06.960 interface with directly to do their work. So you can 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:09.400 think of net sweet as one of the companies that 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:14.240 creates those products that allow other companies like retail companies, 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:17.760 service companies to do what they do, and that's why 0:02:17.880 --> 0:02:21.040 you have the experience you do working with those companies, 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:23.720 at least on a on a grand level before you 0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:28.399 get really granular. So net sweets story begins with its founder, 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:32.960 Evan Goldberg. Goldberg was adopted at birth. He grew up 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:37.880 in Lexington, Massachusetts. As a young boy, he became interested 0:02:37.919 --> 0:02:41.240 in math and uh. By fifth grade he was already 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:44.959 into programming and he really took to it so much 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:49.120 so that that became his main focus. He attended Phillips 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:53.440 Academy and over, and later he attended Harvard. He had 0:02:53.639 --> 0:02:56.880 scholarships with both. He graduated from Harvard with a degree 0:02:56.880 --> 0:03:00.400 and applied mathematics. Very smart guy, and a lot of 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:05.200 people describe him as being extremely talented when it comes 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:09.080 to applied mathematics and coding. In fact, there are stories 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:12.600 about his days at net Suite, even as an executive, 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:15.119 where he was right there in the trenches with other 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:19.120 developers working on the code, and many people, many of 0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:22.600 the developers said, well, he codes faster than anyone else here. Uh. 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:26.560 And he served as chief technology officer for net Suite 0:03:26.600 --> 0:03:30.680 through much of its history. So right out of college 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:34.320 he got the nod to come and work for the 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:39.080 Oracle Corporation. And I'll talk about Oracle in a subsequent 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:42.120 podcast kind of give you the Oracle story because it's 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:45.760 also very interesting. But in general, Oracle is a computer 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:49.760 technology corporation that started back in nineteen seventy seven and 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:52.440 it's one of the largest software makers in the industry. 0:03:52.440 --> 0:03:56.080 It's kind of like right behind Microsoft. One of the 0:03:56.080 --> 0:04:00.320 founders of Oracle, Larry Ellison, played a very important role 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:05.280 when that suite, becoming its largest investor. Goldberg worked for 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:10.840 UH Oracle for UM in various capacities for several years 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:14.640 until he decided then to strike out on his own 0:04:15.240 --> 0:04:19.440 and he founded a web development firm called imbed Software 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:23.000 and that's m b E D no no uh E. 0:04:23.200 --> 0:04:27.560 At the beginning of that, Goldberg's operation was relatively small. 0:04:27.760 --> 0:04:29.720 He didn't have a whole lot of people working for him, 0:04:29.720 --> 0:04:32.000 maybe like fifteen or so. But even so, he found 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:35.840 it challenging to operate the business successfully. And one of 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:39.479 the things that frustrated him was that unlike big companies, 0:04:39.720 --> 0:04:44.320 which had access to very complex software kits that allowed 0:04:44.320 --> 0:04:48.040 them to do things like track customers and do pay 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:50.760 roll and all this kind of stuff, he found that 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:54.520 small business owners didn't really have those options there. There 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:57.480 weren't a whole lot of assets out there that they 0:04:57.480 --> 0:05:00.080 could use, especially ones that would be affordable to a 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:02.920 small business. Most of the solutions out there were meant 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:06.320 for big, big companies, and therefore they cost a lot 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:10.240 of money. So your typical small business couldn't really afford 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:13.280 to invest in those software kits. And so he thought, well, 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:16.640 wait a minute, there's actually an opportunity here. You could 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:21.360 create a solution for these small to mid sized companies 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:25.680 that is more cost effective for them. So he called 0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:29.720 up his buddy Larry Ellison in and he pitched the 0:05:29.760 --> 0:05:34.320 idea of creating a customer relationship management or CRM product 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:38.560 for small businesses. Now, Ellison reportedly told Goldberg that it 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:41.680 might be easier to start out with a financial based 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:46.960 solution for small businesses, so essentially accounting software, start with 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:50.720 that and then grow from there. And further, he made 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:54.680 the suggestion of making the product web accessible, meaning it 0:05:54.680 --> 0:05:57.400 would become a software as a service offering. And I 0:05:57.440 --> 0:06:01.760 talked about that in the cloud computing episodes. But software 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:03.800 as a service is this idea that you don't go 0:06:03.839 --> 0:06:08.040 out and buy a software package to live on your computer. Instead, 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:13.200 you pay a subscription to allow you access to software 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:17.120 that lives on another computer, the provider's computer, and you 0:06:17.160 --> 0:06:19.039 can take advantage of the software. You can use it 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:21.760 all you like, but you don't have it living on 0:06:21.839 --> 0:06:25.200 your computer. Now, this can bring the cost of the 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:28.719 software down on a per month basis. Like, if you 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:31.040 look at how much the software costs up front, it 0:06:31.120 --> 0:06:35.440 might be thousands of dollars for these enterprise solutions. But 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:38.000 if you can bring that down to a smaller amount 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:42.080 per month, while over the lifetime of your use of 0:06:42.120 --> 0:06:44.560 the software, you're likely to spend more money than if 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:48.440 you were just to buy it outright. Uh, the monthly 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:52.880 cost is much lower than the upfront one time cost 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:55.800 of buying the software. Plus you don't have to worry 0:06:55.960 --> 0:06:58.560 about the software going out of date and then having 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:01.280 to buy an upgrade because is the software is being 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:05.520 operated by the provider and they're making all the updates 0:07:05.520 --> 0:07:07.520 on the back end. You get to enjoy that without 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:11.440 having to do it yourself. So Ellison was really forward 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:15.800 thinking here. This is when software is a service really 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:19.880 hadn't become a thing yet. So Goldberg followed Ellison's advice 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:22.680 and he launched a company out of San Mateo, California, 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:25.760 towards the end of nine and he called it net Ledger, 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:28.640 And he also took some of Ellison's money, actually a 0:07:28.680 --> 0:07:32.320 lot of it, ultimately more than a hundred million dollars 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:35.600 of it. So Larry Ellison was a major stakeholder in 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:39.160 this private company. After making that large startup investment and 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:43.240 a couple of subsequent investments, Goldberg gathered a team and 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:47.800 built an accounting software solution that had a web based interface, 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:51.960 and it was ready to go in early nine. The 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:55.280 starting price for using it when it first launched was 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:58.760 four dollars and ninety five cents per month, So and 0:07:58.840 --> 0:08:01.600 you figure that out, that's you know, around sixty dollars 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:04.880 a year. For sixty dollars a year, you can have 0:08:04.920 --> 0:08:07.880 access to this accounting software. When the actual if you 0:08:07.920 --> 0:08:10.120 want to go out and buy like an enterprise level 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:13.880 accounting software kit, it might cost hundreds of dollars. So 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:17.280 for some companies this would make a whole lot of sense. Now, 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:22.560 the early net Ledger application started to leverage Oracles database technology. 0:08:22.680 --> 0:08:24.400 That was one of the parts of the deal that 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:27.480 was made early on. Another sign that the two companies 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:31.400 were rather tightly coupled. At that point. The company announced 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:34.080 it was working on additional features right out of the gate. 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:37.720 So even when they were launching this accounting software, they said, hey, 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:40.319 this is not the only thing that we're ever going 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:43.000 to offer. We're going to include other features, and they're 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:45.880 all going to be integrated together. So it's not just 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:49.000 that we're going to have a software kit for one 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:52.920 aspect of your business or another. We're gonna have an 0:08:52.960 --> 0:08:56.640 integrated approach of solutions so they all work with each other. 0:08:56.960 --> 0:08:59.680 This was looking at another problem that companies were having, 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:04.000 which is that you would typically get one type of 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:08.240 software to handle one part of your businesses operations like accounting, 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:11.120 and you might have a different software package to handle 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:13.960 something like payroll, and you might have a different one 0:09:14.080 --> 0:09:19.040 to track sales, and a different one for customer relationship management. 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:23.679 And many of these software packages they might be from 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:27.800 different providers, which means they're not necessarily uh compatible with 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:30.960 one another, that it's not easy to share information across them, 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:33.440 which means you have to generate reports out of all 0:09:33.440 --> 0:09:35.520 of them and then compare them and then figure out 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:38.240 what your best approaches and do a lot of data 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:44.120 analysis of your own. And so the promise net Ledger 0:09:44.240 --> 0:09:46.920 was trying to make was saying, what we're gonna do 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:51.000 has come out with a suite of programs, a suite 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:54.840 of features that all are designed from the beginning to 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:58.840 be interoperable so that you can easily share information across 0:09:58.960 --> 0:10:03.440 different functions of your business and make it easier for 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:05.600 you to be able to do what you need to do, 0:10:06.040 --> 0:10:09.480 especially as you get bigger. And again they're kind of 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:14.040 marketing this too small to midsize company, saying, why should 0:10:14.040 --> 0:10:18.560 you have to struggle when large companies have been solving 0:10:18.600 --> 0:10:22.000 these problems for years with very expensive software packages. Let's 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:25.680 set this up. So the company announced it was working 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:30.640 on UH features like linking e store transactions directly with 0:10:30.640 --> 0:10:33.440 accounting software, so, in other words, there'll be no need 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:36.320 to have two tracking systems, one for the sales that 0:10:36.360 --> 0:10:38.719 you're making an e stores and then a separate one 0:10:38.760 --> 0:10:41.600 for accounting where you'd have to port over the results 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:44.960 from one to the other. The whole approach would be integrated, 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:47.360 which sounds pretty standard today, but again at the time, 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:53.600 that was pretty revolutionary for these sized companies. Meanwhile, Mark Bennioff, 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:58.120 who was another former Oracle executive, got a similar idea 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:00.760 to Goldberg right around the same time. In fact, and 0:11:00.800 --> 0:11:05.360 about a month after net Ledger launched, he launched salesforce 0:11:05.440 --> 0:11:09.479 dot com, and salesforce dot com did have customer relationship 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:13.000 management as its primary focus. The thing that Goldberg had 0:11:13.000 --> 0:11:15.920 suggested when he called up Ellison, and you could argue 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:19.679 that net sweet was the first real cloud computing company, 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:22.160 the first real commercial cloud commuting company out there was 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:26.079 pretty much net suite, but salesforce dot Com ended up 0:11:26.080 --> 0:11:29.160 making the bigger impact. It grew faster, it got a 0:11:29.200 --> 0:11:32.360 lot more attention. If you look online for stories about 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:35.640 the history of cloud computing like I did, Salesforce dot 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:38.760 Com pops up way more frequently than net Suite does 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:42.400 for those stories. Oh and uh, Ellison also invested money 0:11:42.440 --> 0:11:45.600 in salesforce dot Com too, so spreading your bets back 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:50.160 to net Ledger. Gradually, Goldberg and his team began to 0:11:50.240 --> 0:11:53.840 add in other features in addition to accounting, and again 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:56.480 they were all meant to help those smaller businesses managed 0:11:56.559 --> 0:11:59.960 various operations through a more centralized approach, and it follows 0:12:00.160 --> 0:12:03.240 into a category of products eventually, at least one of 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:06.800 the offerings called Enterprise resource Planning or e r P, 0:12:07.440 --> 0:12:09.920 in which a system allows business operators the chance to 0:12:09.960 --> 0:12:12.120 get kind of a holistic view of what's going on 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:14.440 behind the scenes of their companies. I'll talk more about 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:17.280 the ARP a bit later and go into greater detail 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:21.360 about what that entails, but it's really big stuff. I mean, 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:24.120 it's stuff that's when you try to wrap your mind 0:12:24.160 --> 0:12:27.199 around it, When you just start to consider how complex 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:30.439 it is, you realize that a tool that automates this 0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:34.880 could be really, really useful if it's implemented properly. Now, 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:38.160 Oracle would end up licensing that Ledger's product under the 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:42.160 name Oracle Small Business Suite for a short while, but 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:46.079 that experiment didn't last terribly long, and eventually they kind 0:12:46.080 --> 0:12:49.640 of dropped that branding. In two thousand one, s Net 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:53.240 ran a review for Oracle Small Business Suite seven point oh, 0:12:53.280 --> 0:12:56.840 and at that time, net Ledger wasn't just accounting, it 0:12:56.880 --> 0:13:00.960 was also handling, sales tracking, customer inquiry, us saying, and more. 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:05.240 But the review concluded that the then price of nine 0:13:06.160 --> 0:13:09.720 per month was pretty steep for the small businesses that 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:12.560 the company was targeting, and that unless a business needed 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:15.400 all the features that were offered in the suite, it 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:18.960 would make more sense to stick with smaller software packages 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:22.560 like quick books. So essentially, what sen was saying was, sure, 0:13:22.800 --> 0:13:26.160 if you need all these features, then maybe a month 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:29.400 makes sense. But if all you're looking for is the 0:13:29.440 --> 0:13:32.560 accounting side, then just go out and get accounting software. 0:13:32.640 --> 0:13:35.760 Don't bother with going with a sweet approach. The review 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:39.280 also criticized the speed of the application, saying that desktop 0:13:39.360 --> 0:13:42.599 based software was generally faster. Not a big surprise that 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:47.880 a web based UH offering was slower than a desktop one, 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:52.280 especially when you start considering things like internet speed and 0:13:52.960 --> 0:13:56.000 bandwidth and things of that nature. So seen Ne gave 0:13:56.080 --> 0:13:58.679 the product seven out of ten, so it wasn't exactly 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:02.199 a disastrous review, but it didn't really do net Ledger 0:14:02.200 --> 0:14:04.959 any favors in those early days. But the team kept 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:08.520 working on improving features and later reviews were a little 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:11.240 more positive. They had a lot going against them at 0:14:11.240 --> 0:14:14.920 that time. The cloud computing business strategy was largely unproven, 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:19.720 and to make matters worse, they launched right at the 0:14:19.800 --> 0:14:22.920 very beginning of the period we call the dot com crash, 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:26.440 in which multiple web based startups had launched and then 0:14:26.440 --> 0:14:29.680 fizzled away, mostly after failing to prove they could operate 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:33.000 as a revenue generating business, in other words, that they 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:36.240 could actually make up profit. There were so many startups 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:40.120 that people were excited about in those early days that 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:43.240 had not a come up with an effective business plan. 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:46.360 They had big ideas of what they wanted to do, 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:49.280 but they didn't really have a way of managing it, 0:14:49.520 --> 0:14:53.040 and certainly not growing and scaling the business in a 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:56.920 way that was managed that that was sustainable. And so 0:14:57.040 --> 0:14:58.760 as a result, you had a lot of these companies 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:03.280 flash on the get a huge amount of investment money 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:07.040 poured into them, burn through that investment money in ridiculous 0:15:07.080 --> 0:15:10.200 amounts of time, and then collapse in on themselves. So 0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:13.560 a lot of companies failed. Two of them that didn't 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:16.880 wear net Ledger and its rivals Salesforce dot Com. They 0:15:16.880 --> 0:15:19.280 were both able to survive that era, but lots of 0:15:19.280 --> 0:15:21.480 other companies weren't so fortunate. Now you can listen to 0:15:21.560 --> 0:15:24.880 some of my older episodes about the dot com crash 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:27.400 and the companies that did not make it if you like. 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:29.960 There are tons of them in the Tech Stuff archives, 0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:33.360 and they are interesting stories, filled with useful warnings about 0:15:33.400 --> 0:15:36.320 startup behavior in general. In fact, a lot of analysts 0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:38.280 like the point to the dot com crash and say, 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:40.920 do you remember when this happened? Maybe we should be 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:44.120 a little more cautious with these unicorns they're popping up 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:46.320 in Silicon Valley. Now I've got a little bit more 0:15:46.360 --> 0:15:48.760 to say about net Suite, actually a lot more, but 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:51.520 first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:01.920 In July two thousand two, Zack Nelson joined the net 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:05.360 Ledger team as the CEO of the company. Nelson had 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:08.360 also worked with Oracle in the past, so continuing the 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:12.200 Oracle association with net sweet but he had worked at 0:16:12.200 --> 0:16:17.520 other places too, including McAfee, Sun Microsystems, and Motorola. Interestingly, 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:21.920 Nelson's degrees aren't in business. He attended Stanford and earned 0:16:21.960 --> 0:16:26.440 degrees in biological sciences and anthropology, and then became a 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:32.320 CEO of a cloud based tech company. Wow, I'm just 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:34.520 saying I've got an English let degree if you want 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:37.560 to make me CEO of a multibillion dollar company, although 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:39.680 I doubt I could do nearly as good a job 0:16:39.720 --> 0:16:43.200 as Zach Nelson did. In September two thousand three, net 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:47.000 Ledger officially would change its name to net Suite and 0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:49.480 would become the company that we now know, although now, 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:52.680 of course it's a division within Oracle. The company had 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:56.360 been offering a product called net Suite already. Uh that 0:16:56.480 --> 0:16:59.040 was essentially the same sort of offering that was the 0:16:59.080 --> 0:17:03.280 Oracle small busy in a suite, and this indicated that 0:17:03.880 --> 0:17:08.160 they were really going with software as a service beyond 0:17:08.280 --> 0:17:11.359 just accounting. That they didn't want to have net Ledger 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:15.000 indicate that they only were interested in accounting, that they 0:17:15.000 --> 0:17:17.600 were doing other things. So at this point the company 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:20.760 services could also handle marketing department needs in addition to 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:23.520 the other ones that already talked about, and gradually net 0:17:23.600 --> 0:17:27.000 Suite was adding in all the standard processes and departments 0:17:27.040 --> 0:17:30.760 you would find in mid sized businesses. Now that sweets 0:17:30.840 --> 0:17:33.439 value proposition was that it could offer up all the 0:17:33.480 --> 0:17:36.879 services that a company might need, eliminating the necessity of 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:41.160 investing in those different products for various functions. So again 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:45.639 they were saying, here's a holistic, integrated approach that you 0:17:45.680 --> 0:17:48.480 can use that will make everything much more streamline. That 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:51.280 was what they were trying to sell to customers, and 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:54.440 that you could easily share stuff across departments. You could 0:17:54.480 --> 0:17:59.760 increase the interdepartmental communication within your business so that you 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:04.960 have someone in one department saying, well where are the 0:18:05.040 --> 0:18:08.919 numbers of UH sales, so that we can plan our 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:12.280 our our strategies, like if it's marketing and sales. All 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:14.120 of this would be integrated so that if you were 0:18:14.200 --> 0:18:17.440 using the net suite tools, you could call up the 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:20.440 reports you needed and make your decisions there. You didn't 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:23.680 have to worry about waiting on somebody else to send 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:25.720 you the information you needed. At least that was the 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:29.679 again sales pitch. As the suite of features grew, so 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:32.520 did the fee to access them, which led some other 0:18:32.560 --> 0:18:35.119 analysts to echo what c net had said in two 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:38.640 thousand one, and namely that the company was pricing themselves 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:41.800 out of their target customer base of those small to 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:45.480 mid sized companies. By the mid two thousand's, cloud computing 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:48.040 was starting to come into its own in the business world. 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:51.479 Net Suite continued to grow, though not as quickly as 0:18:51.480 --> 0:18:54.600 its rivals salesforce dot com. The company eventually began to 0:18:54.640 --> 0:18:58.119 add more services and features. Uh, they fall into some 0:18:58.200 --> 0:19:01.120 really big categories. So I'm gonna talk about those categories now, 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:03.439 and I'm gonna give a little more detail about some 0:19:03.440 --> 0:19:06.760 stuff I've already mentioned. So first, let's start with customer 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:09.679 relationship management, because that was the one Evan Goldberg had 0:19:09.680 --> 0:19:11.960 in mind originally when he pitched his idea to Larry 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:15.360 Ellison back in It was the idea that Salesforce dot 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:20.120 Com went with in and we frequently initialize this category 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:22.920 to c r M. It's all about how a company 0:19:23.000 --> 0:19:26.359 interacts with its customers, so the name is pretty self 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:32.600 explanatory Customer relationship management. So those customers might be other businesses, 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:35.200 or you know, they might be real life human being 0:19:35.280 --> 0:19:37.920 type people like me and you or you and me, 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:41.400 or you and I or or all of us Google 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:45.359 che we are the Walrus CRM is about learning what 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:49.359 your customers like and don't like about your products and services. 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:54.480 It's about improving customer satisfaction and therefore customer retention, and 0:19:54.640 --> 0:19:58.719 ultimately it's about driving more sales to customers. Not keep 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:02.560 in mind we are talking about businesses here, so at 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:04.720 the end of the day, the purpose of a business 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:06.639 is to make money doing whatever it is that the 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:12.120 business does. So while customer satisfaction is very important, it's 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:15.440 typically done with the view of how can I sell 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:18.239 more to this person? Just so that you don't get 0:20:18.280 --> 0:20:22.000 too any warm, fuzzy feelings about customer service. Uh, but 0:20:22.080 --> 0:20:25.240 it is important and obviously companies that have great customer 0:20:25.320 --> 0:20:28.760 service are more likely to retain a customer and to 0:20:28.920 --> 0:20:32.399 encourage that customer to purchase more and more than a 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:35.320 company that has really crappy customer service. I'm sure you've 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:38.520 all had good and bad experiences with customer service with 0:20:38.600 --> 0:20:42.360 various companies, and I'm sure in many cases that has 0:20:42.440 --> 0:20:46.399 led to changes in your behavior, whether it meant stepping 0:20:46.440 --> 0:20:48.800 away from a company because you didn't like the way 0:20:48.840 --> 0:20:51.960 you were treated, or sticking with a company becoming a 0:20:51.960 --> 0:20:54.560 loyal customer because the way that they did treat you. 0:20:55.280 --> 0:20:58.720 That sweets product has lots of features to track customer 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:01.200 behaviors to give analyst the chance to figure out what's 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:04.760 going on nearly in real time. So ideally this would 0:21:04.760 --> 0:21:07.359 give a company the chance to address any problems quickly 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:11.199 or capitalize on working strategies to maximize their impact. Now, 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:13.720 this is more complicated than it sounds because there's so 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:17.600 many potential points of contact between a company and its customers. 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:21.120 So they're the obvious points, like a company's website. So 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:24.439 if there are feedback forms on the website, that's a 0:21:24.480 --> 0:21:28.000 clear case where you're getting communications from your customers. But 0:21:28.040 --> 0:21:30.399 there could also be phone lines, which means you have 0:21:30.480 --> 0:21:35.199 representatives and you have to incorporate their reports into your information. 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:38.199 There could be an email contact, there could be social 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:41.159 media accounts, so it all starts to add up with 0:21:41.240 --> 0:21:44.680 a really good CRM solution. Ideally, you would be able 0:21:44.720 --> 0:21:46.960 to get a pretty big, high level view of what 0:21:47.080 --> 0:21:50.280 the overall customer perception is of your company's business, like 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:52.600 what does the average person think about what you do? 0:21:52.960 --> 0:21:55.240 And if it's great, then you know you're doing well 0:21:55.280 --> 0:21:59.080 and that you should really concentrate on those strategies. And 0:21:59.119 --> 0:22:01.199 if it's not, so, you know that you have an 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:03.280 image problem and you need to fix it. And that 0:22:03.400 --> 0:22:05.439 image problem might be on the surface or it might 0:22:05.480 --> 0:22:09.679 be indicative of a very serious brutial problem at the 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:12.520 core of your business. Either way, this is one of 0:22:12.520 --> 0:22:15.840 those methods where you can actually get that indication and 0:22:15.880 --> 0:22:19.560 then respond to it so you can blame your strategies 0:22:19.600 --> 0:22:24.000 accordingly based upon what your customers think about you. Then 0:22:24.080 --> 0:22:27.960 there's the e commerce side of net suite. These are 0:22:28.000 --> 0:22:31.040 tools that are meant to help integrate online sales with 0:22:31.119 --> 0:22:34.240 traditional point of sale tools to help a business keep 0:22:34.280 --> 0:22:37.640 an accurate tally of all sales across all platforms. So 0:22:38.160 --> 0:22:41.560 let's say that you own a business that sells I 0:22:41.600 --> 0:22:46.080 don't know, fidget spinners that that trend is almost over, 0:22:46.160 --> 0:22:48.200 so let's go ahead and talk about that. You've got 0:22:48.200 --> 0:22:50.679 in on the tail end of the fidget spinner craze, 0:22:50.720 --> 0:22:54.000 but you're you're really hoping that it comes back, kind 0:22:54.000 --> 0:22:56.439 of like Yo Yo's do every few years. So you 0:22:56.440 --> 0:23:00.400 have a big storefront in um Times Square, New York, 0:23:00.760 --> 0:23:02.880 and you also have your online store, and you want 0:23:02.880 --> 0:23:04.800 to be able to see how sales are doing both 0:23:04.800 --> 0:23:07.879 at the physical retail spot and online. So if you 0:23:07.960 --> 0:23:14.040 have a software kit that can integrate all that information, 0:23:14.240 --> 0:23:18.600 you can actually see the total sales both online and 0:23:18.680 --> 0:23:22.120