November saw various announcements occur in the Oracle NetSuite space touching on the increasing need for Salesforce integration by end users.
Virginia, US business advisory firm CrossCountry Consulting last month announced the acquisition of SCS Cloud. In addition to being a certified NetSuite solution provider, SCS Cloud provides consulting and implementation services for Salesforce. Over in the UK – at almost the exact same time – accountancy firm Cooper Parry completed the acquisition of fast-growing NetSuite consultancy, MacroFin, to complement its May acquisition of Salesforce consultancy Cloud Orca.
A twist on the above comes from a recent investment in Canadian advisory firm Lane Four Consulting, which appears on the surface to be an SDFC-centric story. Lane Four, which specializes in Salesforce, is reported by The Deal to have received a possible $20-50m investment from New York’s VSS Capital Partners. A significant number of Lane Four’s clients use NetSuite, upon which VSS managing director Trent Hickman commented to The Deal: “Historically, it has been a pain point for companies to properly integrate their Salesforce and their NetSuite instances, because by and large you have Salesforce consultants and you have NetSuite consultants, but they don’t really get to know each other. Having this expertise on both sides, and the connective tissue between the two, is the real opportunity.”
What this means for ERP Insiders
Add in the summer acquisition by Dallas-based business advisory firm Riveron of Californian NetSuite, Salesforce and Oracle specialists Yantra, and it’s clear to see a strong response to an equally strong market need by the SMB users of Oracle’s ERP offering for Salesforce integration.
NetSuite itself has noticed, announcing a new integration tool for Salesforce in September: The NetSuite Connector for Salesforce, which enables customers to synchronize data between NetSuite ERP and Salesforce’s Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud offerings. Powered by Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC), the service enables customers to setup, manage, and monitor data flows via a self-serve interface in NetSuite, enhancing:
- Financial management: The NetSuite Connector for Salesforce helps expand financial insights and accelerate decision-making by delivering real-time access to NetSuite financial data, such as invoices, payments, credit limits, and due amounts, directly within Salesforce.
- Customer management: Also aids enhance customer insights and improve profile accuracy by automating updates between Salesforce and NetSuite customer records.
- Item management: Assists to prevent customer issues and improve the quality and consistency of product information by syncing inventory, non-inventory, and service items, as well as item pricing, between NetSuite and Salesforce.
- Order management: Helps improve the accuracy of order records and expand visibility into sales opportunities by automatically syncing sales orders in both NetSuite and Salesforce.
But with Oracle and SDFC obvious rivals in the same space, it seems the solution is just one small step rather than the bigger leap being demanded by end users of both platforms. Also worth noting is the Connector is only available in North America with a vague deployment happening sometime across the next year. SCS Cloud, Cooper Parry, Riveron, Lane Four will likely already be ahead of the curve come Q4 2025.
