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New NetSuite Small Business Targets Companies Outgrowing QuickBooks

NetSuite Small Business Provides One System To Run a Business

Seamless Migration and Familiar Usability Enable Growing Businesses to Graduate from Limited, Incompatible Accounting, Ecommerce, Contact Management and Sales Force Automation Solutions

SAN MATEO, CA—August 18, 2004—NetSuite, Inc. today announced the launch of NetSuite Small Business, a new on-demand suite of applications that allows small businesses to manage sales, contacts, financials, and ecommerce in one system. The new NetSuite Small Business replaces Oracle Small Business Suite and adds familiar usability features and data migration tools that speed the transition from limited applications such as QuickBooks. In addition, NetSuite Small Business users can grow into NetSuite's mid-market products whenever they need to with no data migration at all. NetSuite's award-winning products include NetSuite, NetSuite Small Business, NetERP, NetCRM and NetCommerce. For the new NetSuite Small Business product information please go to www.netsuite.co.uk/qbdefectors.

Small business is the backbone of the world economy, and in the US alone there are more than 5 million small businesses. While these businesses can be simple to manage at the outset, as they grow they can quickly increase in complexity. Growing small businesses often face the same challenges of large enterprises—conducting business via the Internet, providing great customer service, managing complex product inventory and logistics, tracking sales efforts, and scaling IT resources for increased transaction load. However, small businesses do not have the financial or human resources to throw at solving these problems the way a large company can.

While easy to use, the software used to manage small businesses has not successfully addressed the needs of growing companies, particularly in addressing new opportunities and concerns raised by the Internet. In particular, the accounting system is the key repository for small business data, and when it limits a company, the company is badly crippled. QuickBooks is widely used by US small businesses, but it is extremely limiting to a company as it grows.

  • QuickBooks Enterprise (Intuit's most powerful QuickBooks product) at most can support only 10 users and can only track 29,000 customers, vendors and inventory items (source: Intuit Corp.)—incredible constraints on a growing business.
  • Since QuickBooks is not built on a robust database, when transaction volume grows the application's performance slows markedly.
  • QuickBooks Enterprise is built on old, non-Internet ready technology, making it impossible to access remotely unless a host of additional technology is purchased and managed.
  • QuickBooks Enterprise is primarily an accounting package, requiring a small business to buy and try to integrate separate applications for sales force management, ecommerce operations, and customer support.

NetSuite Small Business addresses the growing needs of small businesses with big plans. With nearly $100 million invested in the development and delivery of its products, NetSuite brings the power of big business software with the ease of use expected by small business.

  • NetSuite Small Business provides one system to run a business, eliminating redundant data entry; and eliminating the time, cost and error associated with multiple systems for finance, sales, warehouse management, customer support and ecommerce.
  • NetSuite is a far more powerful and secure solution than small businesses could hope to piece together on their own. Built on an Oracle database, and secured in a 24x7 remote hosting facility with redundant power supply and Internet bandwidth, NetSuite Small Business can support an unlimited number of users and transactions.
  • NetSuite includes customer and user dashboards which give them real-time information and application functionality at their fingertips.
  • NetSuite is an on-demand solution, allowing the application to be accessed anytime, anywhere, while eliminating the cost of managing, maintaining and upgrading business applications.

While NetSuite Small Business adds hundreds of capabilities not available in QuickBooks, it also incorporates specific features designed to ease the transition from QuickBooks. In many of its common accounting procedures, such as tracking customers and vendors, invoicing customers, and paying bills, NetSuite Small Business behaves in much the same way as QuickBooks. In addition, common usability terminology, navigation and drop-down menus are QuickBooks-like. NetSuite Small Business is designed to print on most QuickBooks check forms and deposit slips, so users can also use existing QuickBooks forms.

NetSuite Small Business also includes a data migration wizard that allows companies outgrowing QuickBooks to quickly move important data. And unlike QuickBooks Enterprise, NetSuite is completely Internet-ready. From anytime, anywhere via the Internet, to its ability to enable instant ecommerce, to allowing customers and vendors to log-in and transact business directly with a company via self-service, NetSuite Small Business brings customers to the Internet Age painlessly.

"We switched from QuickBooks to NetSuite for an integrated front and back office solution that provides all the extensive accounting functionality we needed today for expansion together with features like customer relationship management we could tap in the future," said Hossein Pourmand, CFO of Home America Lending (www.homeamericaloans.com), a Santa Ana, Calif.-based mortgage lending company. "The mortgage banking business is very number intensive. From a financial reporting perspective, the whole banking industry is highly regulated. We need to maintain accurate records and books, and we have to have audited financials very frequently to submit to various state and federal regulatory agencies. We need to have very accurate and updated financials. We don't want to branch out without knowing we are going to have very strong financial controls in place. Our viability as a company could be at stake. NetSuite provides us with those capabilities."

"Running a small business can be as complex as running a billion-dollar company," said Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite. "NetSuite Small Business gives small business owners an application as powerful as those used by enterprises, but designed and priced with them in mind."

Pricing and Availability:
NetSuite Small Business is available immediately. It starts at $99 per month for the first user, then $49 for each additional user per month.