In this engaging episode, we're joined by Tom Kelly, the Director of Product Marketing at NetSuite. The conversation starts with an overview of Tom’s career and his blending of experiences across finance, technology, and marketing at companies big and small. The theme throughout his experiences has been leading teams through technological leaps in search of greater process efficiency. The conversation then shifts to Tom’s role, priorities, and roadmap at NetSuite given where he sees the ERP and broader finance ecosystem headed.
In this engaging episode, we're joined by Tom Kelly, the Director of Product Marketing at NetSuite. The conversation starts with an overview of Tom’s career and his blending of experiences across finance, technology, and marketing at companies big and small. The theme throughout his experiences has been leading teams through technological leaps in search of greater process efficiency.
The conversation then shifts to Tom’s priorities at NetSuite. His role encompasses product marketing, product management, and analyst relations - and all of it pulls from his past experiences as a finance leader and his deep understanding of the problems that NetSuite’s products need to solve. He shares how he has influenced the NetSuite roadmap to date, and his high level goals for the years to come given where he sees the ERP and broader finance ecosystem headed. AI and automation of course feature heavily as finance leaders look to reduce manual work and free up time for strategic thinking.
This episode is jam packed with invaluable wisdom from Tom amassed over the years. Above all else, Tom passionately advocates for the embrace of technology by finance leaders, noting that they need to become “astute technologists”, especially if they are at companies with ambitious growth projections where scalability will be key.
The episode closes with Tom’s favorite joke that highlights a truth around making sure finance teams and senior leadership have a shared language of success.
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CON007 - Tom Kelly - v2
Tom: [00:00:00] I'm going to build a process that maybe it is run on a Google sheet right now, but I'm also going to be able to take that process and bake it into an ERP or procurement application. And so that's the type of thing that I've done, but what's interesting about that is when I have done that, I almost find it It's easier for me to get process in place and people to adhere to the process when I'm a bigger company versus the smaller company.
Announcer: Welcome to Controllers Classified, the podcast where we take a deep dive into the dynamic world of controllers, accountants, and finance leaders, and hear how their ever evolving roles are redefining accounting and the future of business. And now, here's your host, Eric Zhou.
Erik: Welcome to Controllers Classified.I'm your host, Eric Zhou, Chief Accounting Officer at Brex. Today, we have a bit of a change of pace. We have the Director of Product Marketing at NetSuite, Tom [00:01:00] Kelly. Very happy to have you here. Now, just for the folks, you know, the title, don't let it confuse you. Tom has had a long career serving in many different finance executive positions in industry, as well as founding his own business consultancy firm.
So very happy to have you here, Tom. Thanks or being here
Tom: f. Well, thanks for having me, Eric. And feeling old, but go ahead.
Erik: I mean, you know, with age comes a lot of experience and a wealth of wisdom in my opinion.
Tom: Oh, you should tell it to my kids. That'd be great.
Erik: Maybe just to start off, tell us a little bit about your career.
I know you started off in auditing just as I did. I was at Pricewaterhouse. I did auditing for a long time. You know, you went from there to industry. Now you're in this role in NetSuite on the marketing side. And I think you call it the dark side. In a previous meeting that we had, and tell us a little bit about that.
Tom:So, I mean, just about my career, went to school down South, like to call it the Harvard of the South, NC State, sure you've all heard about that, but any event, I played baseball down there and [00:02:00] I thought that was going to be my career and ended up as a pitcher with arm problems and luckily they had a pretty decent accounting program there.
So I, I enrolled in accounting and got my degree in accounting and had spent a long time in Raleigh from New York originally, so. Went to work for you know, you say Pricewaterhouse, that's okay, okay, firm. But I worked at KPMG in New York city for several years. And, you know, it's interesting. I probably, this is really a little date myself, but.
The reason why I chose KPMG over the other accounting firms at the time is they were the first ones to embrace what's called portable computing, mobile computing. And if you remember, or maybe you don't remember, you can look it up on Google, when Apple came out with the Macintosh, that big, you know, lunchbox, that was considered mobile computing back in the day.
And all I, all I can say to you is I kid with my friends sometimes. I say, you know, can you imagine, because this is what I used to do. I'd be on the subways in New York and I'd have this one thing that was a, you know, had the Macintosh. So it's like this big. [00:03:00] And because we were accountants, we had to have this 15 inch carriage printer.
So it was almost like the size of a small piano keyboard
Erik:I have heard these stories because when I started the firm, you know, the partners that I work with, they would say stories about basically carrying around a dolly. That had a big machine on it, maybe with another printer machine on top of that.
And I was in New York too. They were carried around from client to client, you know, office to office, and that was just part of the, part of the, part of the job of an associate, or whatever the staff might have been on a particular engagement
Tom:. A friend of mine worked for the Teamsters, I don't remember, he was Electrical or whatever.
And he, he was joking with me. He said, you know, I think you're gonna, you're gonna get in trouble because I think you have to have a union member, you know, carting that stuff around for you because it was, it was pretty daunting walking around, I mean, walking. And it was anyway, we've come a long way, thank God.
But from there I went to Pepsi, PepsiCo, worked there for about 10 years. Moved out [00:04:00] to the great state of Minnesota. It's great. Came out with Pepsi. Ended up going to work for. Actually back to KPMG, ironically, in, in, in consulting capacity worked at a company called Deluxe Corporation, the company that did checks and all these roles were finance, CFO, CAO type roles.
And then around 2000 did the you know, small to mid sized dot com stuff. And I've pretty much been there ever since. Various companies, starting my own organization. Started out as a, you know, CXO for hire. But very quickly morphed into just putting companies in the cloud, and that's really what I did.
And then I was, I did a lot of work with NetSuite, and they had a gentleman who's still based here, he's my boss, and he was looking for somebody to fill product marketing management, and I said, sure. So not really probably, I have some stories along the way, but, you know, kind of an interesting career journey, if you will.
Erik:You've had a long career working in a lot of different companies, I'm sure working in a lot of different ERPs, right? And both on prem, from [00:05:00] before the cloud came to be, and now, and I'm sure with implementations of NetSuite. You know, what were some of the more memorable projects that you did during that time, maybe involving a cloud implementation and the benefits of that or something else?
Tom:When we talk about, you know, stories and, and, and, you know, examples, when I started my own company, I remember talking to organizations and they would always Come across as I'm we're different or different than this company. I'm different than that company in different industries and probably the best example I can give you is I had clients that came out of the Mayo Clinic and I had a client that used technology to feed pigs and pig barns and I would always say, you know, you're very different, right?
And ironically, the company that was feeding pigs in pig barns and the various companies out of the Mayo Clinic, they were very similar. 80 20 is probably the correct, you know, politically correct thing to say. My experience is it's more like 90 10. I think it's that 10 percent of the secret [00:06:00] sauce, you know, if you need annuity billing or whatever it might be.
It seems that sometimes you get so wrapped around that axle that you're so different that you lose perspective on, I mean, look at any business. You gotta You have employees, you're going to pay them. You have vendors, you're going to buy and pay them. You have customers, you're going to bill and collect from them.
And you have accounting, you're going to, you know, close your books. It's really not all that different. And so I think when people get beyond that, they can focus on getting this stuff in place that, frankly, I think people tend to spend 80 percent of their time on and then focus on that 10 percent of the business that has a unique, you know, need for what you do in the marketplace or how you have to account for something.
So I don't know if I have any like slick experiences that I can share because I don't want to, I want to protect the innocent here, but it's, it's been quite an interesting journey, especially when, you know, trying to get people to understand this. You shouldn't be that scared about doing this. It's not that complicated.
You're not that different. Stop, stop fighting it, you [00:07:00] know, kind of embrace this and move along. And once Organizations do that. I just see them, you know, it's almost like the light goes on and the efficiency and the momentum gains significant speed.
Erik: Let me dig into that a little bit because I think, I 100 percent agree with you.Like, accounts payable, whether it's my company, Abrex, whether it's a manufacturing company, whether it's a medical company, right? Process is typically pretty similar. There's procurement, there's the actual payment. Once the invoice gets matched to the PO, et cetera, you know, and what, what I've experienced in discussing with other colleagues or like just looking at other companies or even at Breck, sometimes, you know, the folks are so married to their current process and how they want to do things.
They want to just lift and shift it into a different system. Like what, what's a rec, what have you seen that? Are there any strategies that you've seen to help get those folks that are running the process today over the hump to get [00:08:00] used to like a new system? You know what I mean? Like, cause there will be some changes when learning a new technology.
Tom: So, I'll use one story and then I'll talk about how it applies to ERP, but remember when Gmail first came out, and Google Apps, right, is Google Apps, now it's G Suite, I don't know what they're calling it, but when it first came out, I remember it was a Hedium Plumbing, an HVAC company, and there was about 300 employees, and So, they were using They were using Outlook, and at the time, you know, it was much pricier than Google Apps.
And so management wanted to go to Google Apps, yet there was this, you know, you know, revolt, so to speak, on behalf of the workers, you know, like, I love my Outlook, I'm not moving. And so, What we did is we said, listen, we're, we, we hear you. We understand that, but in order to do this right, we first have to go on Google apps.
So we got to be on them for about four weeks and then we'll put, you know, everybody wants to go back to Outlook, we'll pitch back on Outlook. So everybody's okay. I'll, I'll deal with it. So we did this. And when we got to, you [00:09:00] know, week four in the end of the week, 300 people, guess about, again, how many people do you think wanted to go back to Outlook?
I'm assuming very few. And so there's an example of it's as with anything in life, right? You're, you're changing, you're changing for me. Well, you know, especially these days, that was probably like the mid 2000s where, you know, like in that Oracle NetSuite, we come out with a new version every six months, pretty much, you know?
Yeah, it's relatively same, but there might be new, you know, features, functionality, whatever. So when you think about these ERP systems and companies, you know, trying to embrace them, This is another thing that I say where there are very good you know, bolt on applications. And in terms of, you know, do you play nice in the ecosystem?
Absolutely. But I also think there's this You know, again, it's human nature. I've, I've got this real, you know, need and it has to be solved and I'm going to go get another solution and maybe it doesn't integrate well but I'm going to use it because that's going to solve my problem. And the, what I always tell people is [00:10:00] I, I tell them to think about a, you know, a variable equation.
And when you have two variables, three variables, You know, it's not that difficult to solve, but the truth is, every time you add a variable, it becomes exponentially that more difficult to solve. And I think when you end up having, you know, the main system and the stuff around the periphery, be very careful about how you choose them, and make sure that the interactions work well, right?
Because ultimately what you want to be As a business is you don't have to worry about the connectivity. You don't want to have to worry about, well, the data in that system has to be massaged to put it into this system so it makes sense. So make sure that works. And then the whole, you know, the proverbial everybody's on the same sheet of paper that is so profound.
I think people need to really think about that as there any type of, you know, system change that is ultimately what you're going for.
Erik: So 300 folks switch from Outlook to Gmail. It is a different interface. People have to get used to it. Totally. Did you supplement the experience with [00:11:00] services, office hours, like other marketing, or did you kind of just let the folks figure it out on their own across the four weeks?
Tom: You know, so we didn't really do any like, Oh, we had this incredible, other than the, what Google provided and the help files and all, we were around, you know, technically during business hours, I'm having a real problem. And even then it wasn't, you know, it's the type of thing where there were three of us and there's 300 of them.
So we were trying to do the best we could, we might have some lunch and learns or whatever, but for the most part, people were solving the problems on their own. So they were understanding how the system worked, understanding the application work setting it up on their mobile phones. So, you know, the ability to do that, I think, was within them, you know.
And frankly, you, it's like being the coach of a sports team. I coach baseball. It's encouraging the player, encouraging the employee. You can do this, you know. You got this. Let's work through this. And, you know, it just It just seemed to work, and I use that as an example because that's one [00:12:00] application. I've seen the same thing with NetSuite too, though, right, where you can do so many things with NetSuite.
But as we talked about earlier, when you talk about how, you know, similar companies are, I always encourage organizations to focus on the similarity because that's kind of the, you know, that's the foundation. Get it right. Everything else is going to flow after that. So that That to me is like the key thing and outside of just the human nature of, you know, something's changed You know, nobody likes change.
Erik: That's a great transition point. Actually, let's talk about Nestle a little bit more in your current role. So now that you're a product marketer, right? Like what, what does that mean for, for you giving your experience and And what you do for Netsmith
Tom: Day. So I'm doing marketing now and, you know, if I look at my career, when I spent time at Pepsi, you know, PepsiCo, I mean, you, it didn't matter what role you were in, you had to become a PowerPoint wizard and master and, you know, presenting and telling stories.
[00:13:00] So that was very helpful. But then when I got into this role here at Oracle NetSuite, so it's kind of a, there's kind of three things I do, right? So there's product marketing, which is kind of what we're doing here. There's product management, which means, you know, back in the day, I could say, boy, you know, what's the problem with NetSuite?
They should have this functionality in the system. Well, guess who's on the hook for that now? So I, you know, I got to do that. And so to some degree, you can call it karma. And then I do what's called analyst relations. Not with the street, but with the analyst houses, Gartner, IDC, etc. And when you think about that, so what is my role?
Well, my role is to, you know, make sure we're doing the right things, enhance the things that we have, come up with the new things, because this is what the marketplace wants. And then I need to demonstrate and prove to the analyst houses that we got great stuff and it works, and we should be ranked higher than any of the competitors.
So it's kind of, I look at the role as kind of it. It feeds off of one another, but what I really do enjoy is I do enjoy speaking about the product. I do enjoy it because of what I've personally been able to do with [00:14:00] it, not for my company, but running organizations on it and just seeing how they can take off because now they get insight.
It's insight that doesn't require, I've got this database and that database. I'm pulling stuff together and I've got 20 people over here and they're just generating a report and they're interpreting it for me. It's like, my God, I can get it out of the system now. So, you know, when you talk about that, that's kind of the, you know, for me in the role right now, it's, it's a role I, I feel like I thrive in because it's, it's pulling upon my experience, you know, being in the trenches and there's got to be a better way.
It also pushes me to say, Hey, I got to still. Walk in the trenches with my brethren because I want to hear what they want. I want to hear what's working well, what's not working well, what we have to focus on, and then talk about being held accountable. It's a vicious cycle. Every year we go through with like six or eight analyst houses explaining everything our software does from how you log in to how you're gonna, you know, do a CPQ quote [00:15:00] for software and equipment.
So it's, It may be like three disciplines, but it almost feels like it's really, it's really connected. I mean,
Erik: I feel like it would be a great privilege to be on the product side now that you've had all these experiences. And yeah, you know, I think the same thing. Why doesn't NetSuite do this yet? Like, what, where is this feature that I need in NetSuite?
Well, now you're there, Tom. So what, what have you tried to get into the roadmap? Or like, what's maybe on the roadmap that you've had influence on out of curiosity?
Tom: We have customers that are very small. We have billion dollar, you know, multi thousand employee companies in our market space. And so, for the most part, we wanted to make sure that on the small end of the market, we can get people up and running.
What does that mean? Solid connectivity. Templated, you know, sweet success approach to getting it put in place and you're up and running and budgeting very quickly. Conversely, we also want to have the functionality for those people that, you know, want to really test the envelope. [00:16:00] They're not going to bring the system to its knees.
It's going to satisfy whatever, you know, type of analysis they want to do. So there was that aspect of it. But what really was you know, annoying at me is being a CFO. I have this The system, which is NetSuite's great transactions, that's doing, you know, doing all the crunching, bringing things together, helping me close, do all stuff.
But when you think about the EPM offerings, account reconciliation, narrative reporting, tax management, profitability and cost perspective, all in there's, I know I'm leaving something out, but I really wanted to get that into the market. And so we just announced, you know, now we don't just have planning and budgeting, we have all the other offerings.
So financial closing, consolidation for unique situations. But the, you know, that, what I'm telling you there is being in the shoes of a CFO, you know, yeah, I closed the books, which is good. I got to do that. These tools can help me do it better. But even more so these days, if you read, I mean, I've, I've, I saw this stuff back when I even [00:17:00] started my career.
The CFO needs to be a strategic business partner. You know, that's been going on for 30 years, but it's really starting to gain steam now. And you you look at what the high level recruiting companies are looking for and their clients are saying, I want a CFO who can win the hearts and minds of others.
I want a CFO who's got data analytics skills. I want a CFO who understands technology. And you start to think about this, and I talk about this persona Da Vinci's drawing of the Vitruvian Man, part art, it's a math, it's part mathematical diagram, his con, concept was everything's connected to everything else, so, you know, maybe Leonardo actually was the precursor to NetSuite, but having everything connected front to back office, but putting that CFO there, and you've got to do everything from front You know, IT skills and making sure you get the right type of, you know, ransomware protection to, I got to put board decks together, I got to close the books.
I use the, the term, you know, companies want bean counters, but they also want those bean counters to help them grow the beans. [00:18:00] And so that, you know, to me, that's, that's the thing where this all comes together and why I'm trying to look for things like EPM offerings, and there's other ones if you want to talk about, but that was, that's probably the most recent one.
Erik: And what does EPM stand for?
Tom: Sorry. Enterprise performance management. And it technically encompasses budgeting and planning, account reconciliation narrative reporting, both internal and external. So, XBRL language, you know, your SEC reports. And then there's a few other ones. Tax management, if you have complicated tax structures, financial closing consolidation.
I think in our world, you know, one world does a good job of consolidating, but in some unique situations. So, I don't want to be hip critical. But when I look at the alternative energy industries, they can have hundreds, if not thousands, of subsidiaries because of these NOL, you know, structures that they have.
Well, instead of bogging down an ERP system, and it doesn't matter what's NetSuite or anyone, you could use the financial closing consolidation tool to get it done and be compliant on a consolidated level with all these [00:19:00] NOLs, so.
Erik: You know, what I've experienced at NetSuite is two sides. There's the side of NetSuite where you can have your procurative pay in the system.
You can have your budgets. Actually, and this is, there's a module for that. You can have your reconciliations. There's also other automations that you can do in system, but you also have a lot of integrations. And so like Brex, my company integrates with you guys on spend management. Right? You have, you have integrations with other procurement software.
I know there's one for Coupa. I know there's one for some of our competitors like Expensify, Bill. com, etc. You know, so you've kind of played it from different angles. Does that create some tension in the product side? Or you guys have consciously said, well, we can be whatever our customers need us to be, depending on what they need from the market
Tom: When it comes to the functionality and really making it, you know, much more, I don't know, crisper for the user or whatever, I think your product's great. I think if you're okay with, you know, not having [00:20:00] perhaps the Hollywood UI or whatever for the mobile app or whatever, You can get by with NetSuite. One of the things with NetSuite right now, we only on the T& E side, the travel and expense side, we only integrate with Amex, right?
That's, that's the main flow we have. Some companies are like, I don't want to use Amex. It's not accepted in places that we, you know, we frequent. So we want to be using Visa or whatever it is. So, you know, there are, there's unique circumstances that they do crop up. The other thing I would tell you is, you know, it's, it's kind of like, know, you know, know your place. So the other example I bring up is sales tax and how that happens. And within NetSuite, there's a thing called suite tax and you can do your sales tax. Most companies don't necessarily have all the resources that take it to, you know, the goal line, so to speak, or across the goal line, which means, you know, filing the taxes, paying the taxes.
So there's, Avalara has an option out there called AvaTax, which works very, very well. And this is kind of what I'm getting at in terms of that [00:21:00] ecosystem. What it's doing is it's It's basically bi directional flow between NetSuite and Avitax. What that's doing is it's keeping my financial house in order, it's keeping my compliance house in order, but then it takes it to the next two steps, which is I'm going to file all the returns for you.
And oh, by the way, 300, 000 in your bank account because we're going to now pay 27 different states for you. So, you know what I'm saying? It kind of, it takes things to the nth degree. And so there, to some degree, why I say all companies are the same. There's a, there's a book out there called Growing Pains.
Every company is at a different stage. There's like seven stages. So depending upon where you're at, you may want all that functionality that's going to take the taxes to the nth degree. And all I have to do is do the sales order and invoice them. Or if you have an organization where you have a tax department and they can do a lot of that, you probably don't need to spend that extra money.
You probably don't need to have the integration because all you need is the data and you're going to take care of preparing the returns. Filing and paying the taxes. So, you know, it's, [00:22:00] it's kind of the unique circumstance and then it's also combined with kind of where are you on that, you know, stage of growth, if you will that your company's at that, you know, a product like Brex or others would make sense to integrate with NetSuite and leverage it.
No, that totally resonates with me. I have almost found, and this is my experience, when I'm at the smaller companies, it's almost, you, you gotta how would I want to phrase this? You got to hold yourself, you got to be honest with yourself, which means, like you say, I could just put this on Google Sheet, I'd get this done in two seconds.
And that's true, you can. But if you have growth projections, if you see where the company is going to be going, you should probably think up front, okay, you know, I'm going to build a process that maybe it is run on a Google Sheet right now, but I'm also going to be able to take that process and bake it into Any ERP or procurement application.
And so that's the type of thing that I've done. But what's interesting about that is when I have done [00:23:00] that, I almost find it easier for me to get process in place and people to adhere to the process when I'm a bigger company versus the smaller company, right? Because I know everybody and like, I'll talk, you know, just do this.
Okay, you know, no problem, Eric. Yeah, I'll take that, you know. And then Eric says, Oh, hey, you know, Tom, he'll just, you don't have to just. Give him this, he'll do it. And then Tom has like a sack of stuff on his desk because he's trying to be a good person. And, you know, so the, the thing I would suggest or, or recommend to people is always have an eye on when you're looking at what I would call the rudimentary business processes, like we're talking about, paying a vendor, paying an employee, collecting cash or billing a customer and collecting cash.
I would absolutely encourage organizations to really scrutinize it and keep it as simple as possible and as straightforward as possible. I've
Erik: heard this from others because we consulted with some folks in my network before we implemented our revenue recognition process and the billing process, but you know, 80 20.
So the vast majority of our revenue contracts are [00:24:00] plain vanilla, default template, RevRec terms are the same pretty easy to do the accounting process, but there's always going to be some customized contracts. And let's just say it could be anywhere from 10 percent of the contracts, maybe even 25 percent of the contracts.
And I think what we've made a decision on is that we need to see a critical mass of a certain type of contract before building out the automation for it. That, you know, that, and that, and that comes down to what I was talking about with the procurement stuff. Right, once you see a significant amount of volume, that's when implementing a technological improvement or a way to automate or do things in bulk really adds a lot of value.
But we've always tried to balance like, okay, let's automate this now that it's in bulk. But if these are one off contracts that we only see once a quarter, once a month, you know, my team can probably handle it in one off, like that's still appropriate. I think it's a reasonable. Conclusion to have based on an ROI assessment, right?
At the end of the day, [00:25:00] use your technology to give yourself efficiency, but if you're going to implement a technology for like a one off thing that's once every quarter, it may not give you the returns that you expected, if that makes any sense. I would have Spend the resource, those resources somewhere else where I do have critical mass
Tom:. Exactly. It can, it can suck up resources. It actually can slow down the overall process, can slow down your close. I mean, you know, human nature is, you know, why should I do that? You know, that's where I would just say, you know, going back to my comment about organizations wanting CFOs and accounting folks to be able to win the hearts and minds of others.
That's, you know, it's a human thing. And why not? You know, selfishly think about, I don't want to have more than one type of contract. That's great. But, you know, like you say, it's 80 20 or 75 25, but actually work with the folks that are dealing with the actual contract itself, you know, at the, you know, whatever the forefront of the organization with [00:26:00] the customer, but also understand it and try to, you know, To me, salespeople want to get paid.
I mean, that's what they care about. So what I want to do is I want to trigger, figure out a way that I can get you paid as quickly as possible. But in order to do that, you have to help me. You know, so you try to build that relationship, that rapport, but there's, you know, there's tangible reasons as to why, you know, why you're doing this, as opposed to just, you know, comes down from accounting, you know, attach every receipt from one cent to, you know, a million dollars.
Erik: Ultimately, we're running a business, right? It's not just to support bookkeeping. So I want to go back to the features topic on NetSuite. Is there anything that you can share about your goals for the next year? Maybe what your roadmap looks like for 24?
Tom: Yeah, I mean, there's this thing starts with an A.
A, OAI, yes, that's it. So, that is, that is a big deal. So I'm not at liberty to say specifically what things are, but as you can imagine, [00:27:00] you talked about automation. We're talking about some of the rudimentary fundamental things you got to do to kind of run the business. A lot of that stuff is very ripe for AI, but the one thing I would just say is with AI, you know, the way AI technically works is it makes, it builds its stuff off of what?
Information. And so the, the thing we have to be careful about is you can't just go and unleash AI on a database that has no data in it, right? And if you are going to unleash it on that, and people are going to bring data in, you've got to make sure you have ways and means to ensure that the data is going to come in, be interpreted consistently, so it can, it can do the right thing.
It can you know, provide the, you know, the outputs you're looking for, or the transaction automation you desire. So, it's, it's a simple thing to say, yeah, we're doing AI, it's going to solve world hunger. It's a whole different thing when you get into the tactical aspect of it. It's like, okay, you know, how do I do something like accounts payable, make it lights out, where the, you know, the invoice will come in, [00:28:00] it'll OCR it into the system, it goes into the system, the system's configured, it basically just makes a determination as to what should happen, if it needs to go an extra approval, or does it go right to the EFT transactions, EFT just happen.
And all the auditing and all the controls are all built within that so you can make the auditors happy and your shareholders happy that we're under control here. It's great to talk about it and it's cool to say, hey, this is great. I would just, you know, let people know it's not like magic just happens because it's going to put AI in this and we're done.
No, it's not that simple. But there is a lot of effort around, you know, those areas with NetSuite that were, you know, Working at very hard right now. And it's not to say, you know, we do have AI and machine learning and a lot of the, you know, components of the system, whether it's matching an account reconciliation, supply chain control tower.
So it's not as if we haven't been doing this stuff all along. It's just like, as you can imagine with anything, it's building momentum. So what we're going to see is we'll see things coming out much [00:29:00] quicker, much more readily than we have in the past. And it'll really impact a lot of the, you know, transaction level stuff that happens.
Erik:Just diving in a little more deeply into your answer and tying it back to some other topics we talked about. You know, again, NetSuite, right? You guys have the ERP, the transaction ledger we use that, you guys for the GL, obviously, that's like one of the main ways our finance team uses you. And then we do have third party service providers for different processes like procurement et cetera.
How are you guys picking and choosing which process to focus an AI initiative on? When you might have a third party that's pretty dominant in a particular cycle or like, like, you know, it's the kind of Hollywood, you said Hollywood level type of UX versus what you want to focus on internally.
Tom: I would say the focus is more on the traditional aspects of what's happening.
You know, so payroll, [00:30:00] invoicing paying vendors closing the books recording, you know, journal entries, you know, more of the, I guess I would say the things that, you know, we went back as we started the conversation, that 80 percent of what You know, any businesses, whether I'm using technology to feed pigs and pig borns, or I'm, I'm a company that's coming out of the Mayo Clinic.
So if I had to give insight, that's, you know, that's the focus. I don't want to imply that that's it. We're not thinking about some of the more, you know, incredible things. I guess what I would say is, you know, this is me talking, but when I look at what we're trying to accomplish it's almost like what we've seen with smart TVs.
I can remember many, not many years ago, maybe 10 years ago, I was at the Vegas you know, electronics show, and there were these guys that had this I don't even know how to describe it. A unit that you would attach to your TV and it would, you know, cut out the curse words or, you know, it's like, oh, okay.
Well, these days now [00:31:00] when you get a TV, you just go right in settings and, you know, you click that off or, you know, we don't want that to happen. And so it's a smart TV. So me as a user, a user of the TV, I get everything there. And if I want to watch, you know, a network show, I want to stream something I want, you know, I have all that at my fingertips
Erik: Yeah, you used to need a Roku or an Apple TV or a Fire Stick, etc. Right. You need to add up an attachment. Now when you buy a TV, the smart TV is already there. It's all the apps are in the TV itself.
Tom: So conceptually speaking, that's what we're trying to accomplish at NetSuite is. You know, you're gonna.
That's a big deal. Yeah. And so I don't want to imply that we're all the way there yet, but if I had to give you a conceptual idea of what we're trying to accomplish and I, you know, I think we're well down the road of accomplishing that, but by no means do I feel like we're all the way to bright. Now, that does not mean to say I'm not trying to imply that we're going to do away with all our partners, like Brex and others, because no, that's not the case.
But I, I really think, you know, if. If you look at NetSuite, then we do a lot of things, right? We can do financials, we have e commerce, we have [00:32:00] CRM, and a whole bunch of other things, right? And then we have a manufacturing version, service, you know, so it depends. You know, there's all these different offerings that you have.
But one of the things that I can say that every single customer in NetSuite, every single of our 37, 000 plus customers uses, and that is the financials. And so what I would tell you is that is a major focus for us, and that's what we're striving for, and that's what we're going forward and to make sure that we can make it as, you know, smart TV like as possible, I guess.
Erik: I mean, I really like that example, actually, because those, those add ons for more traditional TVs came out, and then the smart TVs were out with the apps, et cetera. I mean, both are selling today. You can buy an Apple TV today and then you buy attach it to your smart TV that also has the apps, right? So to your point, you know, I think both both worlds can exist and I agree like it doesn't mean Partnerships, etc, right?
Tom: That was the other thing is, you know, finally I was able to get rid of the little Apple TV block. We bought a new [00:33:00] TV and it's all in there It's like this is great You know, so,
Erik: Maybe just one more question on the ERP trends, you know, you're mentioning kind of NetSuite's plans, what you're focusing on, and I know it's a long journey.
Do you see that? in the industry across your competitive landscape as well with other ERPs?
Tom: Yeah, well, yeah, I guess I can say from the experience of when we have to go and talk to the analyst houses about us, they also ask for our perspective, or it's a two way street here, they'll ask for our perspective, you know, how do you compare to, you know, ERPX or Y?
In the same sense, we have them come and provide Insight and information on the competitive landscape. So what this ERP vendor is doing versus the other. And so, you know, from that standpoint, we don't get complacent, I'll tell you that much. So we're very well aware of what's happening. And in fairness to, you know, Eric Brex, we're, you know, we keep an eye on you guys.
We owe [00:34:00] companies that, you know, we're very, because I'm sure you guys aren't standing still. And we want to make sure that we're in concert and we're working together. And I know we collaborate, but we make sure that, you know, we're staying on top of whether it's our partners. And that could be, you know, application partners versus implementation partners and our competitors.
So it's it's a full drop.
Erik: Well, we appreciate that. You know, I was at SweetWorld and I know we were one of the partners of the year. So we greatly appreciate the business partnership that we have with you guys. Over at NetSuite.
Tom: Yeah, and, and we appreciate with you too. Maybe just
Erik: to finish off this particular episode, we have this segment, which is called finance leaders are fun too.
And I, I mean, you seem like it's so much fun. So, and, and you're not even in finance anymore. So that means you're even more fun. Yeah. But I don't know if you have like any fun accounting jokes or finance stories to share with our
Tom: audience. [00:35:00] I have a few that I can't tell because I'll get fired, but I do, I do have this one kind of joke, if you will.
I tell it a lot. And the reason why I tell it is it has a lot of applicability in it. It goes like this. There's a man in a balloon. He's at this fair. And this brisk wind picks up and blows him way, way out into the countryside. And he is he's above this cornfield and he looks off in the distance. He sees this man walking down the road.
So he lowers the balloon about 30 feet above the cornfield. He calls out to me and says, excuse me, sir, can you tell me where I am? The man on the ground kind of looks up at the balloon, looks down at the cornfield, looks back at me and says, why, yes, you're in a balloon about 30 feet above the cornfield.
The balloonist shakes his head and goes, you, sir, must be an accountant. The man on the ground says, why, yes, I am. How do you, how do you possibly know that? And the balloonist says, well, what you've told me is technically correct, but it's of no use to anyone. Now I've, cause I'm from New York originally, I'm very cynical and I have been an accountant, I [00:36:00] said, I'm not, that's not satisfactory.
I'm going to take this a step further. And so I added to this joke the accountant on the ground calls up to the man on the balloon and says, excuse me, sir, you must be a manager. And the balloonist says, why, yes, I am. How do you know that? And the accountant says, well, you don't know where you are. You don't know how you've gotten here.
You're in the same place you were before we met. Yet now somehow it's my fault. And, you know, I use the joke. I think I tell it way too much. I think I've saturated the market. But to me, the first part of that joke is so true. And where we get the bad, you know, my estimation, the unfair tag of your being counter, you know, or you're boring, you know, hence, hence you have a section that finance and accounting people are fun.
You know, so, and I think I remarked that's an oxymoron, but and the second piece of it is probably more from my experience, you know, and say, wait a minute, you know. You don't, you have no idea what's going on, yet I'm, I'm responsible. How is this my fault? You know, so, that's one joke I use probably way too often, but I like it.[00:37:00]
Erik:Yeah, I think it resonates with me. I mean, you even mentioned it before, and maybe it's not a play on the joke, but companies are looking for finance professionals that have business acumen that can be strategic, right? And so those situations probably still do exist today. Between a manager and accountant because they're like talking past each other in some ways.
But when you have a strong finance executive or just any finance professional that can like bridge the gap and help both sides understand each other, that can be really valuable for the business. Just collaboration wise getting things done, you know, mutual understanding, alignment, et cetera,
Tom: Yeah, the only other thing I just want to add to that is that, you know, we talked about, you have the bean counter, and then you have, you know, help me grow the beans. Those two things in and of themselves are really full time jobs. And so as we've talked here today about, You know, technology and automation and leveraging technology.
You have to do that if you're going to be able to accomplish this [00:38:00] role. But what's unfortunate in my mind is that first part, you know, the counting the beans, making sure you're compliant and everything's under control. It's one of those jobs that nobody cares about unless something goes wrong. You know, and then, you know, it's like, you're, you're horrible, you know, you're fired.
Yeah, it's, wait a minute, I do 99 other things, but oh, I'm sorry, you know, I didn't check something and now we have ransomware, whatever it is. You know, to some degree, it's, it's a real challenging job with a very compelling or a very challenging dynamic. And You know, but I, and again, I'm not just saying that because I work with Oracle NetSuite, but, you know, especially in this day and age, if you're not an astute technologist on some level you're probably not going to have a very successful career in this in this area of business.
Erik: Well, I appreciate the wise words and the time you've spent today. Thank you very much for being on the show, Tom.
Tom: Hey, thanks for having me, Eric, appreciate it.
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