NetSuite (N, Financial) has been a terrific performer in the past with sustained growth. For its exceptional products, NetSuite has received accolades from Forbes, and it claims to be one of the 100 most trustworthy companies in America, while Gartner rates it as the fastest growing financial management software company. The company's financial credentials are strong with phenomenal growth. Let's take a look at them and see how NetSuite is positioned for the future.
Growth opportunities
NetSuite is looking to continue its good run. The company is confident about achieving this target with its marketing strategies and revenue from global channel partners. It is expecting acceleration in revenue from the EMEA region as cloud implementation gains strength and in-house hosting solutions, which are costly, go out of vogue.
Smart business moves
NetSuite took over Retail Anywhere last year, which provides point of sale (POS) retail software and software solutions to multi-channel retail stores. This acquisition enabled NetSuite to grow its presence in stores. The cloud capabilities of Retail Anywhere will compile transactions from across stores, and integrate them with back-end support systems of businesses and offer customers a complete solution.
In addition, the Oracle-NetSuite partnership for providing ERP solutions as SaaS on cloud to the mid-sized industry segment should also bring in more customers in the future.
The company is also in partnership with Capgemini, and benefited from growth in sales courtesy the existence of the marketing network of Capgemini in 44 countries. These partnerships have helped NetSuite expand its customer base rapidly and its revenue along with. In the future, the growth of cloud computing and SaaS should lead to more growth. The SaaS market is expected to be worth $22.1 billion by 2015, according to Gartner, and the firm believes that this growth will also be driven by cloud computing.
Competitors' strategies
Salesforce.com is another major player in the industry for providing business solutions. The company mainly provides solutions in Customer Resource Management software.
Also, it had struck a deal worth $2.5 billion to acquire ExactTarget, which has a client base of 6,000 customers for its cloud marketing platform with some iconic names like Coca-Cola (KO, Financial), Nike (NKE, Financial), Gap etc. Salesforce.com (CRM, Financial) expects to have a stronger marketing platform with the expertise and skills of ExactTarget. This deal has certainly raised eyebrows because Salesforce had to take a loan of $300 million to acquire ExactTarget.
Investors have been losing confidence in Salesforce.com since it has a history of posting losses and overpaying for acquisitions. The acquisition of ExactTarget can further add to the injury and result in a cash crunch and an increased debt load. But Salesforce recently hit an all-time high after stellar second-quarter results which were accompanied by a terrific outlook.
Intuit is known for its financial software and supplies its software services to mid-sized businesses. Some of its financial and accounting products, like "QuickBooks," are among the most popular business accounting software packages in U.S. mid-sized businesses.
Intuit is following a different approach to grow, as it announced that it will be divesting its Intuit Financial Services business and announced plans to sell Intuit Health Group. The company will now focus on small businesses and consumer tax to grow in the future as it looks to capture these two segments.
Conclusion
NetSuite has shown exceptional growth in its top line and bottom lines. It has a lot of room to grow as the era of cloud-based applications is here. The company has some strong partnerships and it has a wide customer base. As a result, it is still good enough for your portfolio.
