NetSuite Inc., in an effort to win more business-to-business clients for its e-commerce and business management software suites, launched this week “cloud-based” e-procurement software that it describes as being as easy to use as a retail e-commerce site.
But the promised ease of use doesn’t mean the software lacks the online features corporate buyers and their managers rely on to place online orders and manage spending policies and purchasing records, Evan Goldberg, founder of chief technology officer, said during NetSuite’s annual SuiteWorld conference this week in San Jose, Calif.
The “procure-to-pay” software—which enables users to maintain records of each procurement step from requesting a quote from a supplier to making a payment on the delivered order—is built into NetSuite’s cloud-based enterprise resource planning, or ERP, software for running financial accounting and other business operations. The cloud-based infrastructure hosts the software on Internet servers maintained by NetSuite, and customers rent and access the software via a web browser under a software-as-a-service model.
The e-procurement software provides several features, including:
Online access to Dun & Bradstreet records of companies to help buyers and procurement managers, while deciding whether to purchase from particular companies, get financial records and other information from more than 240 million business records related to companies worldwide;
The ability of buying companies to set business rules regarding product categories and spending limits authorized for individual buyers;
The ability of buyers to check among multiple vendors for the lowest bids on requested products;
Online dashboards that display ongoing updates of purchase orders and information on the products and materials a company needs to purchase;
A self-service vendor section that enables suppliers to respond to a buyer’s request for quotes, view the status of quotes and purchases, and monitor accounts-payable records.
In addition, NetSuite clients that use the procurement software “can design their own interface, how it looks to users,”
Goldberg said at the conference. Designed and built using the same SuiteCommerce e-commerce platform NetSuite uses to build B2B and retail e-commerce sites, the procurement software comes with a toolset for customizing how users can interact with it.
A sampling of the software Goldberg displayed on overhead screens showed, for example, how buyers can browse among images of apparel products as if shopping on a retail e-commerce site. Other procurement software often requires uses to search for products using item numbers without the option of searching and browsing among product images.
Michael Guay, research director at technology research and advisory firm Gartner Inc., who attended the SuiteWorld conference, says NetSuite’s new procurement software is likely to appeal to larger companies that rely on procurement software to manage large spending budgets and large numbers of employees.
Guay cautioned, however, that it remains to be seen how much NetSuite’s new procurement software will differ from other procurement software applications, including those from companies like SAP AG and Oracle Corp. that integrate their procurement software with their ERP systems.
NetSuite says its software starts at about $1,600 per month and is adjusted upward based on the type of installation and the number of users.
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