NetSuite Announces Biking Industry Customer Wins, Bringing Bike Industry to the Cloud
NetSuite’s SuiteCommerce and Cloud ERP Enables Next Generation Omnichannel Commerce Across B2B, B2C, and Marketplaces Such As Amazon and eBay
SAN MATEO, Calif. (September 19, 2012) – NetSuite Inc. ( NYSE: N), the industry’s leading provider of cloud-based financials / ERP software suites, today announced a number of new customer wins across the bicycle industry. These new customer wins include Terry Bicycles, Sidi America and Nuun who adopted NetSuite cloud business management software to better manage financials, inventory, warehousing and third-party logistics (3PL), order management, CRM and multichannel sales across in-store, B2B and B2C. These companies join the ranks of existing NetSuite customers in the bicycle industry that have been able to streamline their operations and continue to innovate within their respective markets.
Competing successfully in the bicycle business requires passion and innovation as well as the right combination of product and effort to be successful. The increasing expansion of bicycle products available through a broad range of retail outlets and direct consumer sales channels means that small companies can find themselves competing with multi-national giants for retail space, mindshare and customer loyalty. The biggest brands have vertical and horizontal integration advantages that were nearly impossible for contenders to match. Far too often, smaller companies are forced to sacrifice critical headcount to handle IT and manage multiple disparate systems instead of driving business strategies forward to maintain a competitive edge. Couple that with a lack of visibility across a far-flung supply chain and innovative bike companies struggle to compete effectively.
NetSuite’s cloud solution has a proven track record of enabling the rapid scaling of biking brands by eliminating many of the growing pains associated with fast-growing businesses and significantly improving efficiency. Leveraging NetSuite frees bike companies from the overhead and distraction of creating costly and complicated IT departments and allows them to focus on developing superior products, values, and customer experiences. NetSuite’s recently launched SuiteCommerce platform is a clear choice for these companies enabling them to manage interactions with other businesses and directly with consumers via a cloud platform that delivers an enhanced customer experience, through multiple touchpoints, directly on the core NetSuite ERP/CRM business management application. This technology transcends the limitations and complexity of first-generation eCommerce systems to deliver new efficiencies for merchants and a superior experience for customers. For more information about SuiteCommerce please visit www.netsuite.com/suitecommerce.
NetSuite cloud solutions enable these fast-growing bike companies to streamline business processes, gain agility and flexibility and achieve operational efficiencies in the following ways:
- Improving supply chain operations in the cloud with integrated capabilities for inventory and order management, with demand forecasts built from real-time data, reducing excess inventory or risk of stock outs.
- Rapidly growing omni-channel, international supply and distribution networks including direct-to-consumer eCommerce sales, marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay, and large retailers.
- Providing a real-time, 360-degree view of the business by seamlessly integrating financials / ERP, CRM and eCommerce, empowering businesses to manage their interactions directly with consumers, other businesses and trading partners.
- Allowing data to flow seamlessly for wholesale distributors and their trading partners, to ensure communication in lockstep with the same data, audit trails and real-time accuracy at every stage.
- Stakeholders can share container, pallet, location, forecasting, scheduling and unit-level data while collaborating on a common cloud platform.
- Managing all transactions and associated customer interactions regardless of touchpoint.
- Reducing IT costs and being free from version lock with automatic upgrades, ensuring customers the latest and greatest features of NetSuite’s industry-leading cloud ERP, CRM and eCommerce software suite.
“Bicycle companies running NetSuite can focus on their core mission of delivering innovative bicycles and accessories and building customer loyalty and brand awareness without the overhead of an in-house IT shop,” said Roman Bukary, NetSuite AVP of Manufacturing and Wholesale Distribution. “It’s extremely gratifying to see so many of our customers rapidly grow their businesses atop the NetSuite platform and underscores how cloud technology can be a critical differentiator that drives competitive advantage.”
Some of the successful bike industry brands leveraging NetSuite include:
Terry Bicycles (www.terrybicycles.com), a merchant of bicycles, saddles, apparel and accessories focusing on the women’s market, has grown its B2B revenue by 10 percent while repurposing three FTEs from unproductive manual work since implementing NetSuite in January 2011 to replace spreadsheets, proprietary back-office software and a problematic homegrown web storefront. The Burlington, Vt.-based company has more then doubled the speed of its financial close, using a single accounting FTE compared to three FTEs who previously labored to consolidate financial information; it has also saved an IT FTE previously needed to maintain on-premise software and servers. Greater management control and visibility into inventory, and seamless interoperability between the back office and the NetSuite SuiteCommerce-based storefront, has helped Terry Bicycles improve sales and satisfaction among both B2C and B2B customers, while such features as CSV exports and saved searches have tremendously improved business efficiency and data management. “NetSuite enables us to eliminate server investments and gives us the confidence that data is going to flow correctly from end to end so that orders and transactions are processed correctly,” said Terry Bicycles CEO Elisabeth Robert. “NetSuite is a robust solution for dealing with the complexities of a small business with an affordable cloud pricing model that really works.”
SIDI America (www.sidiamerica.com), the U.S. subsidiary of Italian cycle shoe manufacturer SIDI Sport, uses NetSuite for core financials, inventory and distribution, including NetSuite multi-location warehouse functionality to optimize shipments from its two U.S. warehouses in Reno, Nev., and Memphis, Tenn., for the greatest speed at the lowest cost. Replacing QuickBooks and Excel, NetSuite has given SIDI America newfound visibility and management with its network of thousands of U.S. retail distribution partners that has built market share for its innovative, high-quality cycling footwear. Besides managing its own financials with NetSuite, SIDI America can enable its parent company to report on subsidiary performance and profitability through the NetSuite cloud. “NetSuite gives us a one-stop shop to manage all of our business processes in an integrated manner without the inefficiencies and data silos we had with QuickBooks and Excel,” said Matt Ryan, SIDI America lead customer sales and service manager. “We’ve been able to reduce our shipping costs and speed deliveries with NetSuite, and we’re confident we have the platform we need to expand our eCommerce channel into direct-to-consumer sales.”
Niner Bikes (www.ninerbikes.com), a fast-growing manufacturer of high-end mountain bikes based in Torrance, Calif., has saved about $200,000 a year in administrative and IT costs since implementing NetSuite in 2008 over the competing solutions of Microsoft Dynamics GP, Salesforce.com and QuickBooks Enterprise. At the same time, the company has grown 70 percent a year, doubled its product SKUs, and expanded to 300 U.S. dealerships as well as international distributors in 38 countries. NetSuite’s inventory optimization feature automatically predicts inventory needs based on sales-pipeline analysis and information from remote suppliers, helping Niner Bikes increase inventory turn rates to 3.8 percent, compared to the industry average of 2 percent. Niner Bikes was cited on the Forbes “America’s Most Promising Companies” list in December 2011—something the company says would not have been possible without NetSuite. “I can be in a café in Italy and use my iPhone to see how sales are going, what shipments are on the water, which POs have been paid—and then go back to the trade show and talk about new composites for bicycle frames,” said Chris Sugai, Niner Bikes CEO. “NetSuite is easy to use, but it also can take us to a $100 million company without missing a beat.”
Nuun (www.nuun.com), the top-selling sports drink in run, bike, and outdoor specialty stores enlisted NetSuite in 2008 to manage the needs of its category-leading business. Nuun has built its business by focusing on better health and performance through hydration, and because of their continued, accelerated growth, Nuun needed a flexible and scalable solution to coordinate with manufacturing, warehousing and distribution partners. With a lean operating model that emphasizes third-party outsourcing for non-core tasks, Nuun did not want to hire IT staff to maintain complex on-premise systems. Because NetSuite is designed for easy deployment to any number of worldwide locations, Nuun can easily audit inventory and product assembly status at 3PL partner sites, right down to the stage of production. Switching from a stand-alone shopping cart to NetSuite’s SuiteCommerce solution provides a more user-friendly experience for shoppers, and gives Nuun detailed reporting and analytical data that helps the company refine its offerings. “The integrated nature of NetSuite gives us all the visibility and data we need in order to run our business and focus on our core competency of developing optimal hydration products,” said Casey Otley, Nuun CFO. “And we realize cost savings through NetSuite because we don’t need to maintain an IT department or spend money integrating systems.”
Business agility and efficiency in the cloud is leveling the playing field in the bike industry helping small and well established brands to achieve significant sales growth and compete effectively. As a sponsor of Interbike, NetSuite is proud to support the growth of its customers across this industry.
About NetSuite Today, more than 12,000 companies and subsidiaries depend on NetSuite to run complex, mission-critical business processes globally in the cloud. Since its inception in 1998, NetSuite has established itself as the leading provider of enterprise-class cloud business management suites for divisions of large enterprises and mid-sized organizations seeking to upgrade their antiquated client/server ERP systems. NetSuite excels at streamlining business operations as demonstrated in a recent Gartner study naming NetSuite as the fastest growing top 10 financial management systems vendor in the world. NetSuite continues its success in delivering the best cloud ERP/financials suites to businesses around the world, enabling them to lower IT costs significantly while increasing productivity, as the global adoption of the cloud is accelerating.
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For more information about NetSuite, please visit www.netsuite.com.
Source: NetSuite Inc.
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