What sets Applejack apart from everyone else? Why should people spend the time to talk to you?

I am proud of the Applejack journey with NetSuite and our learnings over the last 18 years. I am proud of our team and what they have been able to achieve for our customers over that time. I stand behind everything that we do as a business and as importantly, how we do it.

Applejack are a full service NetSuite partner. This means we can provide sales, services and assistance across the entire NetSuite ecosystem from product sales and provisioning, to implementation delivery, to deep customisation to get that extra functionality necessary for our customers. It is important to us that our customers can ask for virtually anything and we can accommodate within the NetSuite platform.

At Applejack we’ve been working with NetSuite for over 18 years, and we’ve seen the changes from a strong core system uniquely designed and built specifically for the cloud, through the evolution of internet technology, and acceptance that cloud systems are now the primary choice for software, to what we have today as an unbelievably strong business platform covering any conceivable industry.

We now have the ability to take the learnings, and leading practises from NetSuite and our past 18 years across many different industries, and use this to underpin the delivery of real value and process optimisation into our customers businesses.

As a company that has always provided support and implementation services, our team has always included designing and implementing bespoke solutions for our customers.  We understand that one size doesn’t always fit all, so we’ll never try to force a specific way of doing something when we can clearly see their business has an important process that is key to what they do. In addition to our core consulting services, we also provide simple or complex customisations to our customers to enhance the NetSuite product and capabilities when it is needed as well as being able to provide our suite apps for a range of Applejack extensions that we have developed.

We have got the expertise across our team to make sure that we are always implementing a solution that makes sense, and encompasses the bigger picture, not just kicking the problem down the road for a different team to deal with in the future.

At Applejack, we value the relationships we have with our clients, and we set out to be the trusted advisors across all aspects of their business solution. We make sure we are always doing the right thing by our clients, because we intend to be there with them in 5, 10, 15 years time, and we know that we’ll always take responsibility for the solutions and work we’ve put in place.

We have a cohesive and collaborative team and we work together out of the same office which means that we can have direct discussions with each other across all aspects of our business, from our consulting, development, commerce, finance and accounting and sales team.

Our major focus has always been on collaboration, and working with your team, understanding your business and getting a feel for how you operate, and putting in place practical solutions, not just running off a script. This has always been the way we’ve operated, and has always worked best for us.

Where do you see the future of Oracle and NetSuite heading?

Once Oracle had acquired NetSuite, we could see that they were paying for an organisation that had experienced massive growth and were obviously doing something right, and really just wanted to leave it running the way it was.

The thing we’ve really noticed since the Oracle acquisition, is the huge amount of additional investment in the NetSuite product and database development. We are seeing an acceleration of new features and modules being  added into each NetSuite release, and that depth of the new features is delivered directly to every customer.

I think NetSuite customers, both existing and new, are on a great platform that’s only getting better and better with each release. It’s clear that the NetSuite platform will always exist as part of Oracle’s go to market strategy, and it’s the product for Oracle to sell to small and medium business customers, with 1000 employees or less.

A recent example is the latest release of NetSuite’s E-Commerce platform Called SuiteCommerce Advanced. This latest version saw the implementation of a completely new development framework which has massively reduced the amount of time required for our team to set up new ECommerce sites, and added a development layer capability that puts a lot more of the control and customisation of the sites back in the customer’s hands.

What do you see as the major strengths of the NetSuite solution compared to others on the market?

With its depth of functionality, NetSuite is able to consolidate all vital metrics and business information into a single place. We often refer to this as the single source of truth. With its depth in functionality we can record all information within the same database and while many other systems suggest that they can provide comparable functionality, the truth is that only NetSuite has all within the same database. This means we can have some incredible dashboards to give business owners and process managers the ability to see what is happening in their business in real time.

The dashboard and analysis capabilities in NetSuite are truly world class. With other systems, it doesn’t matter how strong you make integrations, they still don’t have the benefit of a single database being able to report on all aspects of the business, from Financials, CRM, product and inventory, service, and whatever else you happen to be using NetSuite for in your business, in a single unified way the way that NetSuite does.

One of the other huge advantages is that being a multi-tenant cloud based system, you are always on the latest version, taking advantage of the latest features and improvements to be added to the product, without having to re-install new versions, or re-implement any customisations or configurations you have performed. We often go into clients’ businesses who are using old and outdated versions of software because the process to implement the latest version is just way too much of a task.

NetSuite has strong capabilities in all business verticals, but there are some areas that may require enhancement. We have an entire ecosystem of applications that we can leverage which work inside NetSuite to augment its capabilities where our clients have some more advanced or specific requirements. This still means that we can still eliminate the multiple interfaces and applications to get a single task performed and recorded.

Why did you choose to be a NetSuite Exclusive partners?

Over the last 18 years, we have worked with, supported and examined a number of other business software applications, but we really believe that NetSuite is at the cutting edge of software and business management systems. NetSuite was the first cloud ERP even before the term cloud was even termed and it remains the number 1 cloud ERP globally. NetSuite is true cloud and is still unique to it’s competitors because it was designed specifically for the cloud. Most other business software in the market today are trying to adapt their old technology to deliver on the cloud but they are still pretty much the same as when they were sold on-premises just with some web interfaces.

At Applejack we have a unique perspective of being able to watch NetSuite evolve over 30 upgrades, each scheduled and delivered on time, each version applying to every customer twice every year. We are excited to see what the next 30 upgrades will provide our current and future customers.

We made the decision a number of years ago to drop all the other platforms we supported and focus solely on NetSuite. We see it as the future of business management software globally.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to anyone currently looking for a new system to run their business?

You absolutely need to select the right software. One that will grow and change as your business grows. You also need to find a partner that is going to take the time to understand what your business is about, and what your unique requirements and goals are, and won’t just see you as a number. You want to find a partner who is interested in a long-term relationship and has the team in place that will enable your business growth. Finally, you want them to understand and align themselves into your goals and your culture.

Where do you see Applejack heading over the next 5 years?

We look forward to bringing more dedicated NetSuite resources to our team to support our customers and grow our client base. We will continue to invest heavily in training and certifications across all aspects of the NetSuite platform to better assist our customers across Australia and internationally to continue to unlock the power of NetSuite.

I believe that in the future, all successful businesses will need to be Ecommerce businesses, at least in part. It is essential that they enable a strong online presence to meet their client’s expectations by communicating increasingly through digital platforms. With this in mind we expect to deliver NetSuite’s SuiteCommerce Advanced product as one of very few organisations around the world with certifications to sell and implement this deep functioned Ecommerce solution. It is the only product available where the digital platform is built within the same database as the business software. This means that all system data including inventory availability, pricing, sales campaigns that recorded in the business software are also available directly to the online website. There are no questions where system integration requires requests for information between systems and that request fails. The single database view continues NetSuite’s “one point of truth” advantage over all competitors.

What does SuiteSuccess mean for your customers, and why do you always lead with this methodology today?

We’ve noticed lately that our clients are coming to us and asking us “How do other companies deal with this?” and “Surely other businesses have the same requirements?”.  They no longer want to tell us what they need but rather they want us to advise them how they can adopt more global leading standards and adapt their processes to align to the way their business management software is designed to work. They do realise that custom processes do take additional time to deliver and accept that often these processes are a result of previous system restrictions or have just evolved over time. Although every business has unique aspects, they really are looking to realign their business to take advantage of all the shared processes in their particular industry.

This is why SuiteSuccess was created.

It’s a prescriptive methodology which allows us to far more rapidly deliver an industry based solution by capitalising on global leading practises for that industry and take advantage of all those learnings from 1000’s of previous successful implementations.

Out of the box, you’ll have access to pre-built dashboards, reports, roles and metrics which are all relevant to your industry and that you’ll be able to use immediately.

Applejack are using this methodology as our starting point for all new customers but where we stand out from others is that we understand that every business has its secret sauce, its point of difference that make them unique. We have the expertise and the background to be able to accommodate these exceptions to leading practises where it makes sense to do so, regardless of if they are minor procedural adjustments, or major system customisations.