NetSuite slowing down new releases as it focuses on existing tech

Vendor announced number of new features at London event but said new releases will take longer as they are 'much more complex'

NetSuite is planning to slow down the number of new products it releases as it focuses more deeply on its existing portfolio, vice president for ERP product management, Rob McKelligan, announced at its SuiteConnect event in London.

McKelligan said it was in an attempt to make sure the ERP vendor did not become a legacy software vendor.

He explained: "We don't want to become a legacy software vendor. We are slowing down that 300 features every six months," he explained. "A lot of the stuff we are working on right now, instead of a feature a release, there is a feature that takes three releases to build. A lot of the stuff we are doing now is much more complex. It is harder to do, so there are fewer features and they are going to roll out less frequently."

McKelligan also spoke about the vendor's main focus. "The key thing we will be doing is investing in the refresh of our technology," he said. "Whether that is a reporting and analytics overhaul, how we define records in the system, or security and performance work.

"All of those things try to keep us from becoming a legacy vendor and keep us up to date with what the product can do. NetSuite has a huge amount of functionality and we are trying to go deeper in certain areas and not go as wide."

He announced the release of some new features, however, including an analytics suite which features a supply chain control tower which provides the end user with visibility of what they have and what it is doing. There will also be a supply chain portal for suppliers to look into the NetSuite system directly. The new suite is expected to be available by the end of next year.

The vendor also announced cross-subsidiary fulfilment features, where end users can complete a single sales order across multiple subsidiaries.

McKelligan explained: "You can do that today, but it takes a little extra work, which is something we don't want to force you to do. We are also doing more with our pricing on the system. We are making it so that you can have dimensions for your pricing. [You] may have the same product that [you] price differently in one geography versus another, and [you] want to be able to support that in a more elegant way."

Ian Irwin, managing director of solutions provider NoBlue - an exclusive partner with NetSuite for seven years - said that among the new releases announced today, he is most looking forward to the analytics suite being available on the market.

"The analytics suite is possibly the thing I'm looking forward to most," he said. "It is a huge thing. One of the problems they are solving is when something is labelled one thing in one place and something else elsewhere, which from an adoption point of view can make it quite tricky. That is something we are extremely excited to get our hands on. The end of next year sounds a long time away."