NetSuite Inc. has acquired IQity’s cloud business. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
This acquisition extends NetSuite’s cloud ERP leadership and for the first time creates a single cloud software system that meets the needs of both discrete and batch process manufacturers of all sizes with the ERP power to run their core business operations along with the deep industry functionality required to meet ever-changing market needs and customer expectations. The combined strengths of NetSuite and IQity’s deep domain experience can enable manufacturers to manage their business more profitably from order-to-cash through build-to-ship, helping them to achieve overall operational excellence, take control of supply chain processes and improve business value, while reducing operating costs and IT overhead.
Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pa., IQity Solutions joined NetSuite’s SuiteCloud Developer Network (SDN) in 2012 as a key solution partner. Leveraging the NetSuite SDN Platform, IQity created the IQity Advanced Manufacturing SuiteApp—natively built on the NetSuite platform—providing NetSuite customers with shop floor, resource capacity planning, finite production scheduling, batch work order management, integrated quality management and advanced data collection capabilities to track actual production results, equipment utilization, labor productivity, downtime, rework and more; culminating in lower operating costs and improving profitability. The IQity Advanced Manufacturing SuiteApp achieved “Built for NetSuite” certification from the Built for NetSuite (BFN) program, which is designed to give NetSuite customers additional confidence in the quality of SuiteApps.
“As today’s manufacturers face increased global competition, rising customer expectations and digital transformation, they need modern technology solutions to enable them to adapt,” said NetSuite President Jim McGeever. “The combination of NetSuite and IQity arms these companies with a unified, cloud-based system that extends across manufacturing, financial and commerce processes to help transform their business operations.”
“Market pressures on manufacturers have never been greater and legacy, on-premise systems are not sufficient to manage the growing complexity of the business environment,” said IQity Solutions founder Dave Gustovich. “With the acquisition of the IQity cloud business, NetSuite is offering the opportunity to power the next level of business results with a unified system that lets manufacturers focus on product innovation, efficiency and profit margins; not managing a patchwork of disconnected point solutions.”
Today’s manufacturers confront significant challenges in the marketplace, including global competitive pressures, high operating costs, and evolving customer expectations. They also face the challenges associated with aging on-premise software and managing multiple, disparate software systems; version lock; no real-time visibility into the business; and data silos that create huge disconnect between shop floor and top level operations. The traditional, on-premise software approach used by manufacturers—typified in legacy deployments and costly customizations—creates barriers to product innovation and business growth by increasing IT costs, driving up the cost of production, and decreasing business efficiency and accuracy.
By combining the strengths of NetSuite and IQity, manufacturers gain access to a modern cloud solution that can transform their business, bringing them to the forefront of modern manufacturing and helping to position them for the industrial Internet-of-Things (IoT).
This new offering delivers a single integrated cloud solution that replaces the disconnected systems that manufacturers typically used and offers the following key features and benefits:
- A single cloud system covering such manufacturing-specific needs as shop floor and project control, multi-site and multi-division operations and warehousing, demand planning, production engineering, lot and serial control, standard costing, bill of materials and assembly builds.
- Comprehensive capabilities for inventory and fulfillment including demand planning, integrated supply chain management, purchasing and vendor management, as well as procure-to-pay processes.
- Accounting functionality that accelerates financial close, provides strong invoicing and expense management, and streamlines order and revenue management.
- Advanced MES, quality and compliance, shop floor, bar coding, batch control and inspection management.
- Deep manufacturing functionality that provides finite production scheduling with constraints by available resources, capacity and utilization targets.
- Mobile capability to access real-time business information quickly and securely from the warehouse, shop floor workstation or production line; and for data capture from barcode scanning devices and wireless tablets feeding into NetSuite in real-time.
- Speed of implementation measured in weeks and months, not years.
- Through NetSuite SuiteCommerce, the ability to easily open new direct-to-consumer sales channels while growing the traditional direct-to-distributors business; to operate secure self-service portals for B2B partners and customers; and to leverage machine-generated data to efficiently automate replenishment with machine-to-machine commerce.
- Through the NetSuite OneWorld global business solution, the ability to manage overseas factories and subsidiaries, execute global financial consolidation, transact business in more than 190 currencies, communicate in nearly 20 languages and comply with local tax regulations in over 100 countries.
- Complete, real-time visibility into sales, inventory, customers and more to enable manufacturers to gain a single version of truth and make data-driven business decisions and adapt swiftly to opportunities and threats.
- Rich customization capability provided by the NetSuite SuiteCloud platform that enables manufacturers to customize the solution to meet unique business needs. All customizations seamlessly carrying over with each periodic NetSuite upgrade, eliminating concerns that plague users of on-premise systems that customizations will be lost with an upgrade.
- Integrated shipping and order fulfillment to tackle the challenges of multiple channels, partial ship and drop-shipping requirements, and dynamic order volumes.
Today, more than 30,000 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-ready cloud business management suites of enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and ecommerce applications for businesses of all sizes. Many FORTUNE 100 companies rely on NetSuite to accelerate innovation and business transformation. NetSuite continues its success in delivering the best cloud business management suites to businesses around the world, enabling them to lower IT costs significantly while increasing productivity, as the global adoption of the cloud accelerates.