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NetSuite adds Advanced CRM Features For Billing, Purchase Intelligence and e-Mail Integration

New Functionality Furthers NetSuite Lead in Order Management

SAN MATEO, CA—March 3, 2004—NetSuite, Inc., today announced the release of NetSuite 9.5, adding advanced Customer Relationship Management (CRM) features including line-item billing capabilities, customer mining and segmentation tools, and no-click e-mail integration for popular e-mail systems such as Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, Yahoo! Mail and America Online. Continuing the commitment to customer satisfaction, NetSuite 9.5 also includes the fulfillment of over 250 customer requested enhancements in addition to previously announced advancements to NetSuite's industry leading real-time Dashboards. The company's products include NetSuite, NetCRM, NetERP and Oracle Small Business Suite. To find more information about NetSuite 9.5, please go to www.netsuite.co.uk/advancedcrm. The Oracle Small Business Suite name is used under license from Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL).

The challenge with stand-alone CRM systems is that they do not natively track customer purchase history. In traditional CRM systems, when an order is placed, the user leaves the CRM system and enters the actual order elsewhere. This disconnect greatly decreases the effectiveness of sales people who need to know customer purchase history; of marketing users who want to create up-sell campaigns; and of service personnel trying to determine the best way to support customers. It also adds to the cost of the system as this order information often has to be re-imported into the CRM system, driving up IT integration, maintenance and data cleansing expenses.

NetSuite, as the only on-demand CRM solution with integrated order management, eliminates this major limitation of traditional CRM systems. And the new features in NetSuite 9.5 extend this advanced capability by allowing contract terms to be reflected automatically in billing and by allowing customer purchase data to be mined and acted upon.

"NetSuite 9.5 delivers next generation billing capabilities for handling contract terms and subscription business while other CRM vendors have yet to deliver on promises of basic order management," said Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite. "The 'C' in CRM stands for customer, and knowing your customers means knowing their purchases and service history and being able to handle their billing correctly. NetSuite 9.5 does that and more."

Highlights of NetSuite 9.5 include:

  • Automatic Term-Based Billing Tied To Quotes, Invoices and Commissions
    For companies offering service contract terms or recurring subscriptions, keeping track of billing schedules can be an extremely labor intensive process. For example, a customer might commit to a one-year membership billed monthly, or a three-year service contract with quarterly invoices. Keeping track of invoicing schedules, managing the billing process (knowing when it is time to invoice, how much to invoice) and handling incentive compensation on billings (knowing when and how much to pay reps for sales commission) can be a major challenge for such companies, and doing so effectively is critical to successfully managing revenue systems. NetSuite 9.5’s Advanced Billing capabilities automate these billing schedules and commission payments so they are processed faster, more conveniently, and at a lower cost to the business. In addition, revenue forecasting of these scheduled payments is projected accurately rather than in one lump sum at the time of order placement.
  • Customer Mining and Segmentation Tools
    Customer information is of no use unless it can be searched, analysed and used to drive business decisions and revenue-generating activities. To that end, NetSuite 9.5 includes several powerful data mining tools.
    Advanced Expression Builder – allows for creating complex criteria using search expressions of And, Or, and Not across any combination of fields. Parenthetical groupings are also included, enabling the ability to perform cross-analysis of customer purchase history, service patterns and current pipeline activity for segmentation analysis.
    Target Group Creation Tools – enables users to mine customer purchase, case, opportunity and transaction histories to create target groups, which can then be used to run up-sell and cross-sell campaigns. These campaigns can be tailored to contain focused messaging that resonates with the segmented group since it is based on rich knowledge of the customer relationship.
    Analytics Via Search – provides an easy to use interface for quick, on-the-fly analysis of customer profiles, purchase histories and service logs using Saved Searches. Group, Count, Sum, Average, Minimum and Maximum values of a search result set can be configured by the most novice users with a few point and clicks of the mouse. These mini-reports can then be placed on real-time Dashboards for visibility across the entire business.
  • Patent Pending, No-Click E-Mail Integration
    To coordinate communication between an email system and a CRM system, users have had to manually move e-mails from one system to the other. NetSuite has a breakthrough that eliminates this tedious process, and ensures all correspondences are automatically tracked both in the e-mail system and the CRM system. This patent pending no-click e-mail integration works seamlessly with popular e-mail systems such as Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, Yahoo! Mail and America Online. A customer response to any NetSuite-generated email a user sends – whether it's a marketing campaign, sales follow-up, or service trouble ticket – is automatically recorded into historical customer notes in addition to being delivered into the Inbox of the user's e-mail system. This includes the capture of any file attachments in the e-mail reply. These capabilities add unprecedented ease of use and eliminate the time spent copying, pasting and toggling between email and business applications. Communication records are now more accurate, complete and effortless.

Pricing and Availability
NetSuite 9.5 is available now and there is no extra fee associated with the new release for current subscribers.

For more information about NetSuite please visit our Web site at www.netsuite.co.uk.

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