Kendall Fisher: Hello NetSuite listeners! Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the NetSuite podcast. I'm your host Kendall Fisher and on this episode we sat down with the head of vertical initiatives here at Oracle NetSuite Brandon Jenkins.
Now this episode is super interesting because Brandon breaks down some of the ways in which were accelerating our investments into different verticals and micro verticals. He explains how we package our software with the right sets of functionalities offerings and partners for specific businesses and specific industries and how all of these strategies benefit our customers allowing us to expand our support and expertise across more businesses with the hope of continuing to help more entrepreneurs grow their companies.
You're listening to the NetSuite podcast where we discuss what's happening within NetSuite, why we're doing it and where we're heading in the future. We'll dive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts. We’ll also feature customer growth stories discussing the ups and downs of running a company and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale.
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Kendall Fisher: Hi Brandon.
Brandon Jenkins: It’s nice to be here.
Kendall Fisher: I'm so glad you're here. It's super warm. We're in Santa Monica in the Santa Monica studio currently and it's a little warm in here. We walked into a room that was set to what 94 degrees?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah it's a sweat shop.
Kendall Fisher: Yeah and before this he caught me I'm actually promoting the NetSuite podcast. We were doing some shoots outside and I what did I have a hat on or a drink.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, yeah it was great.
Kendall Fisher: That’s the one. So always nice when the person I'm about to interview is watching me doing all those embarrassing things. So okay so I like to start off these podcasts by allowing our listeners to get to know our guests a little better: where you're from, where you went to school and how you got into NetSuite.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah sure. So I live in a beautiful area in California. Central Coast San Luis Obispo area. Grew up there, pretty much lived there my whole life. Lived in Vegas with my family for a couple years. I got three young kids. We decided we didn't want to raise you know raise our kids in Vegas. One of them seemed to be a good dancer so we got out of there pretty quick.
Kendall Fisher: Got it.
Brandon Jenkins: So went to school in the area and you know came to NetSuite through an acquisition. I sold my company to NetSuite in 2012 and that's how I got here.
Kendall Fisher: Wait, what company?
Brandon Jenkins: Retail Anywhere. So it was a software technology company focused on the retail space.
Kendall Fisher: Okay so before we get to that, so what school did you go to again?
Brandon Jenkins: So actually I didn't go to college all the way. I got out of school early. I got out of high school a couple years early; I went to a college for two years but went straight into technology.
Kendall Fisher: That is such an interesting point that I actually like to ask usually any guests that we have on especially when we're doing like talking to you. You know NetSuite customers because college is a big topic of conversation right now. I personally am in quite a bit of debt from college. Do you think that going or not going to college has an impact on whether or not you can get a job and be successful at it.
Brandon Jenkins: You know so I struggle with this a lot, again having three kids. And I see the awesome programs that NetSuite and Oracle has and you know we bring a lot of college students in and they have great opportunities here at Oracle because of that. So I look at my kids and go well it really depends on the field you want to be in. In college, it is kind of cost entry to some of these fields. It's all about what do you want to do. I knew from a being young that I wanted to run a business and I was fortunate enough to get into technology, run a business, and I wanted to go to college. It just didn't work out. I think it is so individualized. I think they both you know college and no know college…
Kendall Fisher: Depends on the personality…
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah personality, the drive and the skills you need. And honestly I did take college courses throughout the time that I was running a company. I took accounting classes. You know, I took law classes but it was never to get a degree. It was to round out my skills.
Kendall Fisher: Yeah that makes total sense. Well so there you have it because again. These are all… this is a conversation that it's not even controversial at this point. It's whether or not you're the type of person that needs to go to college. Yeah you know and I'm still debating that in my head and you know I've been graduated now for five years and I'm still wondering was that something I really needed to do?
Brandon Jenkins: Don’t regret it.
Kendall Fisher: I know, I know and to be fair. Jason Maynard. I'm a USC graduate and Jason
Maynard looked for a USC graduate. That's how I landed here. So, all right, so bring me back. Let's talk about before we get into Retail Anywhere. Let's talk about was Ground Controlled before or after that?
Brandon Jenkins: You know Ground Control actually was in the middle of that. I had an opportunity to… sat on the board of Ground Control technology company manufacturing satellite equipment for internet emergency responders. That was in between me running Retail Anywhere. I found an opportunity with that company to come and restructure it and then I basically hired a CEO and they run that company now and I just am a shareholder.
Kendall Fisher: Wow.
Brandon Jenkins: So that was in between. Retail Anywhere is really the company that I you know ran.
Kendall Fisher: Your baby.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah exactly.
Kendall Fisher: Got it. So tell me a little bit about Retail Anywhere and what you did there what, where did the idea come from.
Brandon Jenkins: For sure, you know again coming out of coming out of high school, a little bit of college I knew I wanted to be in technology. I found an opportunity at a local company you know. San Luis Obispo is a small community but there's a good amount of technology companies and there was a company there that did software development for retail. And I came into that company. It was very small at the time, came into it in a technical role, quickly became you know their lead sales person, sold the biggest accounts they ever had and it was right around the dot-com boom. And the leadership at the time was growing that company in the pace that was not appropriate and I found an opportunity to buy it out when the bottom fell out. So I bought it out and restructured the company and grew it organically you know over the course of ten years essentially. Wrote the software, hired a bunch people, expanded it, and you know created a great business profitable every year after I took it over and sold it NetSuite.
Kendall Fisher: Wow, so can you drive us into a little bit of a deeper dive into why NetSuite was interested in Retail Anywhere. What they were doing that you know made us want to you know acquire you.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, yeah. So you know I think this goes a lot into my current role but NetSuite is organized around a lot of industries.
Kendall Fisher: Right.
Brandon Jenkins: Um you know wholesale, software companies, manufacturers. At the time you know 2012 or so when this all came about they weren't focused on retail. And being
a software company that was solely focused on retail we were looking at who do we partner with, what solutions do we need to integrate to create a great offering for the retail industry and I had experience with NetSuite through Ground Control. Ground Control ran NetSuite. I was familiar with it and I looked at that offering and I went back to my development team I said I want to rebuild our retail management system to look like NetSuite and quickly we found out that like okay that's going to take hundreds of millions of dollars and not practical. So we integrated our point-of-sale to NetSuite and voila we had a retail offering that was really you know what retailers are looking for. Omni-channel in a box, very robust.
Kendall Fisher: Wow.
Brandon Jenkins: And NetSuite wasn't focused on retail so we found a niche where we were we were the ones focused on retail. We brought a lot of new business to NetSuite. Yeah and shortly after that it was like clearly you know this is a match made. Let's bring this together and I was more than excited from running a, you know, smaller software company. Being part of something big and fulfilling the vision of what we can do in retail. I mean it's been an awesome ride the last five years driving NetSuite into retailers.
Kendall Fisher: Okay it boggles my mind to think that NetSuite wasn't focused on retail five years ago.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah.
Kendall Fisher: Does it bother you too?
Brandon Jenkins: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Kendall Fisher: When you… when you… how did you even find out that they weren't like focus on retail is what
Brandon Jenkins: They mean it's obvious you go to the website. They don't spell retail at the time. I mean it was serviced through our general business group and yeah and I think it's just a it's a natural progression of you know you got to get started somewhere, roll out and you know industry by industry and get your competencies and happy customers. And I think they just didn't realize at the time what they really had for retail. Yeah nor the domain expertise yeah and that's what you know Retail Anywhere brought to the table. And you know it's on the books now.
Kendall Fisher: Wow, okay. So how many before we get into the rest of this how many retail companies do you know offhand that we service now here at NetSuite.
Brandon Jenkins: Oh well if it's thousands and thousands.
Kendall Fisher: That’s wild! But why five years ago just five years ago we weren't even thinking about it yet. Good for you, that's awesome. Okay so what is your current role now?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah so today I actually run our vertical strategies so it's a newer focus for the company. I mean we have large industry teams that service these industries in a very material way but with the Oracle acquisition one of the key investments is going deeper and deeper into verticals and micro verticals. And we've you know we have a playbook for that. We have over the last couple years before the Oracle acquisition, we were already going down that path but now we're accelerating their investments into verticals.
Kendall Fisher: Why are vertical initiatives and strategies important to NetSuite?
Brandon Jenkins: Well you know it really comes down to faster time to value to customers like if we can go into a specific type of business like an apparel store and show them what good looks like, show them how quickly they can get there. That just makes a happier customer, it makes the implementation faster. They get more value out of it and obviously what is it, why is it important to NetSuite… Well we're able to get more customers yeah faster customers, we're able to provide more value to our customers which end of the day is what our business is about. Well getting them on our services and then continue to subscribe to them here after year so.
Kendall Fisher: So let's talk about that a little bit more how do customers… can you give us some examples of how customers really benefit from you know these various verticals and the strategies around them.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah so I think this stepping back you know NetSuite is a very wide large application. It does so much from ERP, CRM, and commerce. We serve so many industries so I commonly refer to it as it's like a mile wide inch deep and when if you do not position the product appropriately to our customers they might get lost and all the functionality or where the value is. Yeah so we're all about packaging the right sets of functionality roles, dashboards, workflows, everything that's important to that segment. That you know that type of business so they can visualize it so they can see the value and get the value from day one and not you know figure it out as they go.
Kendall Fisher: Right because why would you want if you're in retail for example why would you want a package that's for a warehouse development or whatever.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, yeah. You know exactly and you know the interesting thing like with retail specifically is they have a lot of business models. They're doing direct consumer, they're all they might be manufacturing some stuff or they might even be doing subscriptions of their products so us having a thoughtful package. But it's not just our functionality, our software, the partners that we connect into the application. You know we want to be very thoughtful about every segment that we sell into and create the offerings, the whole offer that makes sense for each segment.
Kendall Fisher: Can you give me an example of one of these offerings or vertical strategies?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah so you know we look at all the various segments and we try to organize them in a way where we get the most leverage, leverage with product and functionality. We get leverage with the domain expertise that we have in the teams, we get leverage with the customers referring other customers. So you got to start somewhere but where you start you want to be able to accelerate into other segments at you know at a rapid pace. So we commonly refer to it as like a bowling alley. You look at like the kingpin of you know of the bowling alley that's the pin we start with. That's the segment the kingpin that we start with and once we knock that down it's much easier to get into additional segments.
So one of the kind of key strategies that we've been executing on is around branded manufacturers so these are businesses that go direct to consumer, they wholesale and they do manufacturing very complex multiple business models. So one of the first segments that we selected was apparel.
Hmm okay so apparel is going through quite a disruption you know. They're going direct to consumer or they're controlling more of their brand. The messaging that you're dealing with, all the omni-channel challenges, they're in consumer sets on them. So we picked that segment. It's very visible. We all know these brands, we wear these brands, we follow these brands and we have a great offer because of the fact that we can service all these business models.
So that's an example of a segment but the strategy is now that we have apparel. We’ve moved into footwear. We've moved into accessories, right? And we're able to accelerate into those other segments at a much faster pace because of all the leverage that we have with customer functionality, marketing, everything you do to enter these segments.
Kendall Fisher: Got it.
Brandon Jenkins: Health and beauty is one that we just launched.
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Kendall Fisher: So say we have somebody who is tuning in right now and they really know nothing about NetSuite and really maybe don't know a whole lot about running a business. They are knitting beanies in Colorado. Can NetSuite get them out of knitting beanies in Colorado to other things?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah you know, that that's exactly what we're solving for when we look at a segment like apparel where a lot of times you know you have a designer maybe subcontracting out some of this work down here in LA, coming up with one product, one line, one style and their wholesaling it.
Kendall Fisher: I got it.
Brandon Jenkins: Now what we've sorted out is how do you land and expand from there. And how do you go from wholesale to direct consumer or and back and forth and deal with all the complexities of inventory and allocation. In many scenarios that you know, that entrepreneur knitting beanies would end up with multiple systems that they would be trying to manage this.
Right exactly and you know Quickbooks, Excel. No one's talking together.
Kendall Fisher: Got it.
Brandon Jenkins: And then when they look to go from you know manufacturing these beanies to doing B2B they're get another system. And then even more complex is when they look to launch new lines, new product categories things like that it just it falls apart so this can take them you know from one product one idea to multiple products multiplied as multiple channels multiple business models.
Kendall Fisher: So coming from your background in retail you saw this quite a bit?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah yeah the the retailers are like saddled with these systems that don't allow them to take advantage of these different business models. This whole like you know digital physical blending and being able to do you know B2B B2Cyou know they they just can't react fast enough.
Kendall Fisher: Yeah.
Brandon Jenkins: And then you throw global into the mix games over.
Kendall Fisher: Yeah we talked with Craig Sullivan quite a bit about that and yeah he has a lot to say about the global growth factor. So okay going back, you mentioned you know AFA which is apparel footwear and accessories. You mentioned health about health and beauty. How do you pick and categorize these segments?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah yeah it's it's a lot and then I know I dealt what I dealt with this you know running businesses trying to understand like you know where do we focus. What actually moves the needle and a lot of times unfortunately businesses make decisions just based off of where the wind blew last or you know areas of the business has a louder voice than others.
Kendall Jenkins: Well that's dangerous considering the world that we live in today.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah.
Kendall Jenkins: The wind could be blowing east today, west tomorrow.
Brandon Jenkins: The same moment exactly so we've we subscribed to a little more science in our approach and looking at some kind of key criteria. Some of the obvious ones that we really dig into is you know we look at the they call NAICS codes but they're essentially the way you know the government organizes every business down to an ID. We look at all the segments and we look at every single segment and how many businesses are in each segment.
Kendall Fisher: Okay.
Brandon Jenkins: So that that gives us an addressable market. So that's a little bit of the science to it. Like this segment has you know a thousand people we can sell to or a hundred thousand people and then we also look at well okay that's great but how about is there a compelling reason to buy that segment? Might have a lot of people but do they have a problem that needs to be fixed right you know? Is there is there something happen in industry that would actually warrant you know replacing a critical system like ERP or Commerce? So that's a heavy waiting.
We look at what's the compelling reason to buy segment by segment then we look at what's a competition. I mean if we go in there is there is the competition entrenched right or is it you know dinosaurs? Can we displace it?
Yeah that's a bit a big component.
And then you know some of the other things that are really important is if we go into this segment how does it help us get into the next segment? The whole leveraged approach right? It's a functionality, gives us entry to other segments. Do the customers give us entry to other segments so you know all of that gets packaged up into a formula. Then we look at the segments, we look at the full market and we say how does this fit with our overall product roadmap or domain expertise, our partners and how do we round it out into a nice offer by segment.
Kendall Fisher: Got it. Can you work that it through that equation with health and beauty since we just launched with that?
Brandon Jenkins: Yep.
Kendall Fisher: Can you explain to our listeners a little bit how that worked so that it's more tangible?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, yeah absolutely so you look at health and beauty. It’s exploding. That market is exploding because of the the various trends that are happening you know the natural trends, the organic, the sustainable.
Kendall Fisher: What about the Kardashians?
Brandon Jenkins: The Kardashians absolutely. Celebrity endorsements. So, these are hot right? I mean they feel like software companies. They're just like starting up fast. They're getting funding yeah. They are starting a business expecting to be you know large enterprises so that screams for a modern platform that you know solves a lot of these problems. So compelling reason to buy okay check.
How big is this market you know? It's this very sizable market. Yeah when you look at the size of health and beauty compared to like an apparel and footwear they're somewhat equals. A lot of folks to sell to solve problems it can move the needle for NetSuite right yeah. Then you look at the competition you know it looks like a lot of things like QuickBooks and you know a Magento or Shopify just various applications. They're all good by themselves but they have to pull it all together right and that's where it breaks down. You know NetSuite solves that problem.
I think most importantly though health and beauty is very complex. They manufacture it, they distribute it, they sell direct to consumer so those are very complex business models. They have to have control of their products. They have to know where it's at, they have to know lots traceability you know so they have to understand the whole supply chain they have to have great experiences for their consumers, control their brand and they have to be innovative. I mean that's NetSuite.
Kendall Fisher: Yeah well on the other thing that I think of among all this is not only they have to you know do all of that and but maintaining their relationship with their customer. They have to also know what's you know what skin colors are trending more, what lip color is better during summer versus during winter, what you know I mean and it's a whole another set of…
Brandon Jenkins: Yes, yeah you know to keep track of yeah and their customer is the height of demanding right? I mean they you know I you are one of those but it's you know they expect that transaction to be quick, seamless. They expect you know all the data to be at every place yeah you know it's in if you want it, and they have it you should be able to get it like that right?
Kendall Fisher: Well looks like I expect when… it's you know when that first day of summer hit so I want ruby-red but when that first day of you know of winter hits I want that darker more. Yeah so if they don't have it, I'm not gonna be happy.
Brandon Jenkins: But so you know that all comes down to having all your data in one place real-time, online, in-store with your with your partners. That's very complex especially for these brands that are starting small in exploding. You know I mean like you said the Kardashians could you know Instagram a pic of something and all sudden their site goes down because they got so many hits.
Kendall Fisher: Oh I guarantee and I mean those sugar bear gummies that they're constantly holding up that I don't think work because I am one of the suckers that bottom. That can go up you know in two seconds. So you know what I want to know is does this approach work with new segments or can it work with existing you know segments?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah you know like I said the new NetSuite segments, a lot of industries and a great way I mean this is all about doubling down in a segment. It could be new segments. You know getting into a segment that we haven't been in yet and being you know very thoughtful about how we approach that segment, how health and beauty…
Well actually health and beauty we have hundreds of customers already.
Kendall Fisher: Well there you go.
Brandon Jenkins: But what we realized is we could have way more by you know coming to that space with more functionality and more leading practices, really getting deep into their requirements. That's what it's all about so it works for both. Absolutely and you know I think you'll see more of that from NetSuite.
Kendall Fisher: Do you see this approach working for other companies? Like for example you know people a lot of the people that I hope are listening in to the NetSuite podcast are people that want to grow their company.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah.
Kendall Fisher: Do you see this approach working for them? Who are focused more on growth and they are you know on the nitty-gritty like you just talked about.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, I mean being an entrepreneur for most of my adult life, I I struggled with this plenty of times and I honestly, I think you know NetSuite probably struggled with it over the years too. Is like where to focus?
Kendall Fisher: Well and that's why it's great that we help companies because we've been there. We were a startup.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, yeah. So, I think absolutely I mean any business if it's if they're providing services, if they're selling products you know putting a little more science behind their go to market strategy and how they are targeting segments and how it's actually going to move the needle absolutely could work. When you look at the data that's available about your customer there's so much to leverage and organize it in a way that you can make intelligent decisions and then hold your teams accountable on this. Is what we're doing, this is why we're doing it and this is how it's gonna actually move the needle.
Kendall Fisher: So what are some of the ways that they can see that movement? That they can measure that growth?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, so it's two sides of the coin. They have to have their data in order.
Kendall Fisher: Are you listening to this? Coming from a true entrepreneur?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, I mean you can't have your data about your customer right you know fragmented in multiple systems I mean, or it takes a month to pull it together and then it's out of date, right? So, you need to have your data on your customers, your business tidied up real-time accessible. Okay and then you the other side of the coin is marrying it up with just the public data like you know back to the NAICS codes like you know who are all the businesses, how many are there, you know are they buying? You need to make the investment on actually researching those segments and being pretty thoughtful about how you approach on so it takes both sides.
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Kendall Fisher: I want to kind of talk a little bit more about you touched on it before, but this is something that a lot of retail you know companies are looking at which is I mean the wind blowing east and west at the same time in social media in the customer area and celebrity promotion. Given your experience in retail and seeing the you know transformation in the industry, where do you see it going in the next five years so the people that are listening you know are like thinking about it now even if they're starting that beanie company out of Colorado you know just yesterday.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, so I hate the word omni-channel because it's so overused I mean shoppers just want to shop right? They don't think they don't think omni-channel they just shop. They wanted it to work so I mean that, so it really does come down to you know businesses, retailers, distributors, and manufacturers.
You know they're all selling products and it gets to the consumers hands okay. They need to think about that customer experience in blending the best of a physical experience with a digital experience and those two together need to be consistent, they need to be seamless and that journey can't you know have too many you know stops in between. So that's the biggest thing that's happening you know the retail industry is going through this this major disruption because of the likes of Amazon like you walk into a store many stores today and your experience in that store is like a 180 from the digital experience.
You know you have a great experience online, you can get all information of the product, availability, things like that, reviews. In the store it's like Back to the Future so what's happening is folks come into the stores and if they don't get the right service they pop out their phone and they order from competitor, they order from Amazon because it automatically shows up in two days for free. And you know I'm out the door.
So, retailers actually have one of the biggest advantages they have physical stores. They have you know customers that want to come in and experience something or you know touch and feel these products, but they have to match the digital experience physically.
Kendall Fisher: So, brick-and-mortar, it's not going anywhere?
Brandon Jenkins: No, no actually you see you see a lot of the digital players going physical now.
Kendall Fisher: Right, pop-ups.
Brandon Jenkins: And well absolutely it's a different it's a different model. It doesn't look like a big department store like a mall. It looks like a boutique. I use the example like bonobos it was a guide shop approach you walk into a store. They have one of everything in every color, so you can try it on and see it right but then they ship it to you. So, you can see everything in the store, but they don't carry the inventory so that means great experience, lower overhead but you also have a tight supply chain you know to service that.
So, it looks different, but it is a lot of out with the old and in with the new.
So, what are you seeing some companies do if you have any examples do to match their in-store experience to a digital spirit experience the ones that are looking at unified commerce offerings not thinking point a cell or e-commerce but just commerce and having those touch points be basically one of the same. Of course, you to have different functionality in the store to take you know cash and physical payments and things like that. And then but really it should be the same imagery, the same descriptions, you should have the reviews in both places you should have the related items.
It should be like the same information in both places. The consumer should not have more information in their pocket or their purse. So that's what it really comes down to is matching up the in-store and physical systems with the e-commerce systems, should look identical.
Kendall Fisher: So when we're talking about all of it this and the stress of all of this and somebody's looking at NetSuite, what is going to make them say okay I can take the dive. There's gonna be minimal risk and this is going to help my company continue to you know give my customers, to solve any channel experience and give them you know and help me and in at the same time. Yeah how can they trust that?
Brandon Jenkins: Well, so NetSuite made some significant investments in a whole customer engagement model where we encourage customers to bite small and chew fast. The days of you know big complex rip and replace big boom implementations are like beyond over. There's too much risk, budgets always go over, you know it doesn't always go over that well. So we have a whole philosophy where we encourage customers to take steps. We call it a stairway you know start with getting the basics in place and many times it might feel like you're stepping backwards a tad to get a single view of your data. Get things consolidated but once you get a
solid foundation in place you could rapidly roll out these other pieces of your business and drive value so each of those steps unlock more and more value and ultimately you know depending on a fast the business wants to go, it could be months, it could be years. They can solve a problem that honestly, they've been struggling with for like a decade. That's like omni-channel.
I mean retailers have been struggling with omni-channel for a decade and that's because they keep thinking omni-channel is like oh I just put a new website up I solve this. It's like no you got to step back, you got to get your order management in line, you have to get a single view of your customer, you got to tidy up your back in, and put systems on the front end that used that single source of data.
So how do they trust us? That was the question. We've done it thousands of thousands of times and we have a process where they can go live on these types of solutions you know in a hundred days, where the systems that they implemented in the past would have took years.
Kendall Fisher: Wow. Wow. Can you talk a little bit to the stairway and just for the listeners that don't know much about that suite you know and honestly and the ones that are on that suite just to explain that a little bit more?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah so, we start with like you know the top of the stairway is like you know nirvana. It's like we're there, we are there. But starting with step one and it looks different for every industry. We're like, we're thoughtful with every industry like what is their first step and we actually call it kind of a remediation phase. Like you know you have multiple systems doing these things, let's consolidate it down to one system. But still leverage things like maybe you have a you know a good ecommerce experience today keep using that. But let's get your back office in order so that looks like you know standardizing your financials onto NetSuite, standardizing order management and CRM on to NetSuite. All that's single and single view real-time. And then things like your current ecommerce system can leverage much you know better data from that relation or in store. But that you don't stop there you know.
The next phase would be like well let's unify onto NetSuite Commerce or NetSuite Point of Sale. Like the goal is to go from dozens of systems that these businesses run down to one and chunk by chunk.
Kendall Fisher: Do we have different stairways for different verticals?
Brandon Jenkins: Absolutely, yep I mean you know with retail we start with order management, customer like I mean that's the heart of your business right you know the quickest way to lose a consumer in a retail store is not getting the order. So, you have to have a single view of your order, to be able to commit to that order, and get it out the door. And then the next step looks like unifying commerce things like that. When you go into like a WD, it might look like getting distribution more organized versus you know item and inventory things like that. Software companies obviously you know getting revenue recognition sorted out earlier in the process. And you know it's not, it's not you know all or nothing, but it is a fairly you know we want to lead our customers. Like this is a very thoughtful approach to get the most value every step.
But your business might be a little different and we can personalize it for you.
Kendall Fisher: And we have experts in these different.
Brandon Jenkins: But it's all about like why not have them start at the 30-yard line. Like they don't need to reinvent the wheel…
Kendall Fisher: Why fix what isn’t broke. So what about these bigger companies? I mean people companies like you just talked about, companies that have been around for decades and they've you know stayed above water. Do we also… can we help them or is NetSuite just catered to smaller companies?
Brandon Jenkins: No, no. I mean II know that that's the whole dream with NetSuite. You can go from working in a garage couple employees to you know a multi-billion-dollar business running on that suite from day one. So that is an amazing value prop that we can offer to our customers.
When you look at larger businesses and it varies by every industry. Let's stick with retail firm as an example. You know larger retailers have a lot of big investments in certain you know aspects of their businesses relates to IT. So, we go with the same premise of if it's not broken let's not focus there right now.
What's gonna move the needle for your business? In many cases, it's going international. So, a large retailer, we could say you know you have these domestic on-premise systems you've had for the last couple decades. In some cases, you know they're kind of working but let's focus where we can move the needle.
And provide you with an omni-channel out-of-the-box offering for your you know a new venture in a new region… you know you're going to APAC, going to EMEA. Now we can offer that solution.
The other a good example is they launch new brands, and this is just how crazy it is retailers with these current systems. If they want to launch a new concept or new brand, many times it means they have to launch all new systems or a duplicate of their systems to support the other brand or the other concept. So like pop-up stores, outlet malls, you know going from apparel to cosmetics store or something like that. New systems.
So we can come in and say well let's take your new emerging concepts, your brands run it on NetSuite and then we backfill. Then start as there. Other systems aged out or you know become a higher priority. They can consolidate onto NetSuite. and
Kendall Fisher: Got it. Got it. So, you know to wrap things up here, what advice would you give to an entrepreneur, retail or not. It doesn't have to be retail but just an entrepreneur in general. When they're starting their company off and they feel a little let's say down with just the current climate of the world technology how fast everything is moving.
Brandon Jenkins: I mean living this firsthand do not underestimate the power of getting everyone lined on the same data. I mean when you have employees you might think they know what you're focused on, you might think that they understand the plan but when everyone's looking at the same data in real-time on their on their dashboards, on their views you're able to get a lot of stuff done. You're able to get things aligned and when you have data in multiple systems that's just not always a reality and I mean it shows with your customer service. It shows with your employees’ you know productivity. It shows with the decisions these entrepreneurs make you know not actually based off data. So it's tempting for you know companies that are small or growing companies that haven't made investments you know some of these more modern applications to just go with the cheap the easy but there's a cost right?
There's a constant or not in the end but in a couple years from now yeah. Letting a business like
NetSuite you know take care of all the technology and you just run your business I mean that that's what it should be right?
Kendall Fisher: Well thank you so much Brandon for coming on with us and and diving into all of this. It was super helpful for me so I can only imagine how that is for our listeners. So thank you so much. We're excited to have you back on again.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah I'm looking forward to it
Kendall Fisher: Talk about a bunch of stuff in the future.
Brandon Jenkins: All right thanks a lot.
Kendall Fisher: All right you heard him. Do not underestimate the power of getting everyone in your company no matter your size aligned on the same data and having a single platform on which to track that data only makes it that much easier.
Thank you so much to Brandon Jenkins for joining us on this episode of the NetSuite podcast. This was all made possible by our sponsors at Hint, Ring and Steiner Sports. We'd also like to say thank you to our editors.
Thank all you listeners for tuning in as always don't forget to rate review and subscribe.
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Kendall Fisher: Hello NetSuite listeners! Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the NetSuite podcast. I'm your host Kendall Fisher and on this episode we sat down with the head of vertical initiatives here at Oracle NetSuite Brandon Jenkins.
Now this episode is super interesting because Brandon breaks down some of the ways in which were accelerating our investments into different verticals and micro verticals. He explains how we package our software with the right sets of functionalities offerings and partners for specific businesses and specific industries and how all of these strategies benefit our customers allowing us to expand our support and expertise across more businesses with the hope of continuing to help more entrepreneurs grow their companies.
You're listening to the NetSuite podcast where we discuss what's happening within NetSuite, why we're doing it and where we're heading in the future. We'll dive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts. We’ll also feature customer growth stories discussing the ups and downs of running a company and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale.
Kendall Fisher: Before we get into this episode with Brandon I want to thank our sponsor Hint. If you don't know about Hint yet their brand is all about making everyday chores more enjoyable. It started with Karen Golden, Hint’s founder who needed a way to drink more water but wanted flavor without sugar and sweeteners that come in most drinks. She created Hint water and I have to tell you this is my go-to drink when we're recording podcast. It kind of keeps me hydrated and also has that just hint of sweetness that comes from real fruit essences and doesn't have any sugar or sweeteners. You can go to hint.co/welcome to get thirty percent off your purchase. Go check them out right now.
Kendall Fisher: Hi Brandon.
Brandon Jenkins: It’s nice to be here.
Kendall Fisher: I'm so glad you're here. It's super warm. We're in Santa Monica in the Santa Monica studio currently and it's a little warm in here. We walked into a room that was set to what 94 degrees?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah it's a sweat shop.
Kendall Fisher: Yeah and before this he caught me I'm actually promoting the NetSuite podcast. We were doing some shoots outside and I what did I have a hat on or a drink.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, yeah it was great.
Kendall Fisher: That’s the one. So always nice when the person I'm about to interview is watching me doing all those embarrassing things. So okay so I like to start off these podcasts by allowing our listeners to get to know our guests a little better: where you're from, where you went to school and how you got into NetSuite.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah sure. So I live in a beautiful area in California. Central Coast San Luis Obispo area. Grew up there, pretty much lived there my whole life. Lived in Vegas with my family for a couple years. I got three young kids. We decided we didn't want to raise you know raise our kids in Vegas. One of them seemed to be a good dancer so we got out of there pretty quick.
Kendall Fisher: Got it.
Brandon Jenkins: So went to school in the area and you know came to NetSuite through an acquisition. I sold my company to NetSuite in 2012 and that's how I got here.
Kendall Fisher: Wait, what company?
Brandon Jenkins: Retail Anywhere. So it was a software technology company focused on the retail space.
Kendall Fisher: Okay so before we get to that, so what school did you go to again?
Brandon Jenkins: So actually I didn't go to college all the way. I got out of school early. I got out of high school a couple years early; I went to a college for two years but went straight into technology.
Kendall Fisher: That is such an interesting point that I actually like to ask usually any guests that we have on especially when we're doing like talking to you. You know NetSuite customers because college is a big topic of conversation right now. I personally am in quite a bit of debt from college. Do you think that going or not going to college has an impact on whether or not you can get a job and be successful at it.
Brandon Jenkins: You know so I struggle with this a lot, again having three kids. And I see the awesome programs that NetSuite and Oracle has and you know we bring a lot of college students in and they have great opportunities here at Oracle because of that. So I look at my kids and go well it really depends on the field you want to be in. In college, it is kind of cost entry to some of these fields. It's all about what do you want to do. I knew from a being young that I wanted to run a business and I was fortunate enough to get into technology, run a business, and I wanted to go to college. It just didn't work out. I think it is so individualized. I think they both you know college and no know college…
Kendall Fisher: Depends on the personality…
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah personality, the drive and the skills you need. And honestly I did take college courses throughout the time that I was running a company. I took accounting classes. You know, I took law classes but it was never to get a degree. It was to round out my skills.
Kendall Fisher: Yeah that makes total sense. Well so there you have it because again. These are all… this is a conversation that it's not even controversial at this point. It's whether or not you're the type of person that needs to go to college. Yeah you know and I'm still debating that in my head and you know I've been graduated now for five years and I'm still wondering was that something I really needed to do?
Brandon Jenkins: Don’t regret it.
Kendall Fisher: I know, I know and to be fair. Jason Maynard. I'm a USC graduate and Jason
Maynard looked for a USC graduate. That's how I landed here. So, all right, so bring me back. Let's talk about before we get into Retail Anywhere. Let's talk about was Ground Controlled before or after that?
Brandon Jenkins: You know Ground Control actually was in the middle of that. I had an opportunity to… sat on the board of Ground Control technology company manufacturing satellite equipment for internet emergency responders. That was in between me running Retail Anywhere. I found an opportunity with that company to come and restructure it and then I basically hired a CEO and they run that company now and I just am a shareholder.
Kendall Fisher: Wow.
Brandon Jenkins: So that was in between. Retail Anywhere is really the company that I you know ran.
Kendall Fisher: Your baby.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah exactly.
Kendall Fisher: Got it. So tell me a little bit about Retail Anywhere and what you did there what, where did the idea come from.
Brandon Jenkins: For sure, you know again coming out of coming out of high school, a little bit of college I knew I wanted to be in technology. I found an opportunity at a local company you know. San Luis Obispo is a small community but there's a good amount of technology companies and there was a company there that did software development for retail. And I came into that company. It was very small at the time, came into it in a technical role, quickly became you know their lead sales person, sold the biggest accounts they ever had and it was right around the dot-com boom. And the leadership at the time was growing that company in the pace that was not appropriate and I found an opportunity to buy it out when the bottom fell out. So I bought it out and restructured the company and grew it organically you know over the course of ten years essentially. Wrote the software, hired a bunch people, expanded it, and you know created a great business profitable every year after I took it over and sold it NetSuite.
Kendall Fisher: Wow, so can you drive us into a little bit of a deeper dive into why NetSuite was interested in Retail Anywhere. What they were doing that you know made us want to you know acquire you.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, yeah. So you know I think this goes a lot into my current role but NetSuite is organized around a lot of industries.
Kendall Fisher: Right.
Brandon Jenkins: Um you know wholesale, software companies, manufacturers. At the time you know 2012 or so when this all came about they weren't focused on retail. And being
a software company that was solely focused on retail we were looking at who do we partner with, what solutions do we need to integrate to create a great offering for the retail industry and I had experience with NetSuite through Ground Control. Ground Control ran NetSuite. I was familiar with it and I looked at that offering and I went back to my development team I said I want to rebuild our retail management system to look like NetSuite and quickly we found out that like okay that's going to take hundreds of millions of dollars and not practical. So we integrated our point-of-sale to NetSuite and voila we had a retail offering that was really you know what retailers are looking for. Omni-channel in a box, very robust.
Kendall Fisher: Wow.
Brandon Jenkins: And NetSuite wasn't focused on retail so we found a niche where we were we were the ones focused on retail. We brought a lot of new business to NetSuite. Yeah and shortly after that it was like clearly you know this is a match made. Let's bring this together and I was more than excited from running a, you know, smaller software company. Being part of something big and fulfilling the vision of what we can do in retail. I mean it's been an awesome ride the last five years driving NetSuite into retailers.
Kendall Fisher: Okay it boggles my mind to think that NetSuite wasn't focused on retail five years ago.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah.
Kendall Fisher: Does it bother you too?
Brandon Jenkins: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Kendall Fisher: When you… when you… how did you even find out that they weren't like focus on retail is what
Brandon Jenkins: They mean it's obvious you go to the website. They don't spell retail at the time. I mean it was serviced through our general business group and yeah and I think it's just a it's a natural progression of you know you got to get started somewhere, roll out and you know industry by industry and get your competencies and happy customers. And I think they just didn't realize at the time what they really had for retail. Yeah nor the domain expertise yeah and that's what you know Retail Anywhere brought to the table. And you know it's on the books now.
Kendall Fisher: Wow, okay. So how many before we get into the rest of this how many retail companies do you know offhand that we service now here at NetSuite.
Brandon Jenkins: Oh well if it's thousands and thousands.
Kendall Fisher: That’s wild! But why five years ago just five years ago we weren't even thinking about it yet. Good for you, that's awesome. Okay so what is your current role now?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah so today I actually run our vertical strategies so it's a newer focus for the company. I mean we have large industry teams that service these industries in a very material way but with the Oracle acquisition one of the key investments is going deeper and deeper into verticals and micro verticals. And we've you know we have a playbook for that. We have over the last couple years before the Oracle acquisition, we were already going down that path but now we're accelerating their investments into verticals.
Kendall Fisher: Why are vertical initiatives and strategies important to NetSuite?
Brandon Jenkins: Well you know it really comes down to faster time to value to customers like if we can go into a specific type of business like an apparel store and show them what good looks like, show them how quickly they can get there. That just makes a happier customer, it makes the implementation faster. They get more value out of it and obviously what is it, why is it important to NetSuite… Well we're able to get more customers yeah faster customers, we're able to provide more value to our customers which end of the day is what our business is about. Well getting them on our services and then continue to subscribe to them here after year so.
Kendall Fisher: So let's talk about that a little bit more how do customers… can you give us some examples of how customers really benefit from you know these various verticals and the strategies around them.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah so I think this stepping back you know NetSuite is a very wide large application. It does so much from ERP, CRM, and commerce. We serve so many industries so I commonly refer to it as it's like a mile wide inch deep and when if you do not position the product appropriately to our customers they might get lost and all the functionality or where the value is. Yeah so we're all about packaging the right sets of functionality roles, dashboards, workflows, everything that's important to that segment. That you know that type of business so they can visualize it so they can see the value and get the value from day one and not you know figure it out as they go.
Kendall Fisher: Right because why would you want if you're in retail for example why would you want a package that's for a warehouse development or whatever.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, yeah. You know exactly and you know the interesting thing like with retail specifically is they have a lot of business models. They're doing direct consumer, they're all they might be manufacturing some stuff or they might even be doing subscriptions of their products so us having a thoughtful package. But it's not just our functionality, our software, the partners that we connect into the application. You know we want to be very thoughtful about every segment that we sell into and create the offerings, the whole offer that makes sense for each segment.
Kendall Fisher: Can you give me an example of one of these offerings or vertical strategies?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah so you know we look at all the various segments and we try to organize them in a way where we get the most leverage, leverage with product and functionality. We get leverage with the domain expertise that we have in the teams, we get leverage with the customers referring other customers. So you got to start somewhere but where you start you want to be able to accelerate into other segments at you know at a rapid pace. So we commonly refer to it as like a bowling alley. You look at like the kingpin of you know of the bowling alley that's the pin we start with. That's the segment the kingpin that we start with and once we knock that down it's much easier to get into additional segments.
So one of the kind of key strategies that we've been executing on is around branded manufacturers so these are businesses that go direct to consumer, they wholesale and they do manufacturing very complex multiple business models. So one of the first segments that we selected was apparel.
Hmm okay so apparel is going through quite a disruption you know. They're going direct to consumer or they're controlling more of their brand. The messaging that you're dealing with, all the omni-channel challenges, they're in consumer sets on them. So we picked that segment. It's very visible. We all know these brands, we wear these brands, we follow these brands and we have a great offer because of the fact that we can service all these business models.
So that's an example of a segment but the strategy is now that we have apparel. We’ve moved into footwear. We've moved into accessories, right? And we're able to accelerate into those other segments at a much faster pace because of all the leverage that we have with customer functionality, marketing, everything you do to enter these segments.
Kendall Fisher: Got it.
Brandon Jenkins: Health and beauty is one that we just launched.
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Kendall Fisher: So say we have somebody who is tuning in right now and they really know nothing about NetSuite and really maybe don't know a whole lot about running a business. They are knitting beanies in Colorado. Can NetSuite get them out of knitting beanies in Colorado to other things?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah you know, that that's exactly what we're solving for when we look at a segment like apparel where a lot of times you know you have a designer maybe subcontracting out some of this work down here in LA, coming up with one product, one line, one style and their wholesaling it.
Kendall Fisher: I got it.
Brandon Jenkins: Now what we've sorted out is how do you land and expand from there. And how do you go from wholesale to direct consumer or and back and forth and deal with all the complexities of inventory and allocation. In many scenarios that you know, that entrepreneur knitting beanies would end up with multiple systems that they would be trying to manage this.
Right exactly and you know Quickbooks, Excel. No one's talking together.
Kendall Fisher: Got it.
Brandon Jenkins: And then when they look to go from you know manufacturing these beanies to doing B2B they're get another system. And then even more complex is when they look to launch new lines, new product categories things like that it just it falls apart so this can take them you know from one product one idea to multiple products multiplied as multiple channels multiple business models.
Kendall Fisher: So coming from your background in retail you saw this quite a bit?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah yeah the the retailers are like saddled with these systems that don't allow them to take advantage of these different business models. This whole like you know digital physical blending and being able to do you know B2B B2Cyou know they they just can't react fast enough.
Kendall Fisher: Yeah.
Brandon Jenkins: And then you throw global into the mix games over.
Kendall Fisher: Yeah we talked with Craig Sullivan quite a bit about that and yeah he has a lot to say about the global growth factor. So okay going back, you mentioned you know AFA which is apparel footwear and accessories. You mentioned health about health and beauty. How do you pick and categorize these segments?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah yeah it's it's a lot and then I know I dealt what I dealt with this you know running businesses trying to understand like you know where do we focus. What actually moves the needle and a lot of times unfortunately businesses make decisions just based off of where the wind blew last or you know areas of the business has a louder voice than others.
Kendall Jenkins: Well that's dangerous considering the world that we live in today.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah.
Kendall Jenkins: The wind could be blowing east today, west tomorrow.
Brandon Jenkins: The same moment exactly so we've we subscribed to a little more science in our approach and looking at some kind of key criteria. Some of the obvious ones that we really dig into is you know we look at the they call NAICS codes but they're essentially the way you know the government organizes every business down to an ID. We look at all the segments and we look at every single segment and how many businesses are in each segment.
Kendall Fisher: Okay.
Brandon Jenkins: So that that gives us an addressable market. So that's a little bit of the science to it. Like this segment has you know a thousand people we can sell to or a hundred thousand people and then we also look at well okay that's great but how about is there a compelling reason to buy that segment? Might have a lot of people but do they have a problem that needs to be fixed right you know? Is there is there something happen in industry that would actually warrant you know replacing a critical system like ERP or Commerce? So that's a heavy waiting.
We look at what's the compelling reason to buy segment by segment then we look at what's a competition. I mean if we go in there is there is the competition entrenched right or is it you know dinosaurs? Can we displace it?
Yeah that's a bit a big component.
And then you know some of the other things that are really important is if we go into this segment how does it help us get into the next segment? The whole leveraged approach right? It's a functionality, gives us entry to other segments. Do the customers give us entry to other segments so you know all of that gets packaged up into a formula. Then we look at the segments, we look at the full market and we say how does this fit with our overall product roadmap or domain expertise, our partners and how do we round it out into a nice offer by segment.
Kendall Fisher: Got it. Can you work that it through that equation with health and beauty since we just launched with that?
Brandon Jenkins: Yep.
Kendall Fisher: Can you explain to our listeners a little bit how that worked so that it's more tangible?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, yeah absolutely so you look at health and beauty. It’s exploding. That market is exploding because of the the various trends that are happening you know the natural trends, the organic, the sustainable.
Kendall Fisher: What about the Kardashians?
Brandon Jenkins: The Kardashians absolutely. Celebrity endorsements. So, these are hot right? I mean they feel like software companies. They're just like starting up fast. They're getting funding yeah. They are starting a business expecting to be you know large enterprises so that screams for a modern platform that you know solves a lot of these problems. So compelling reason to buy okay check.
How big is this market you know? It's this very sizable market. Yeah when you look at the size of health and beauty compared to like an apparel and footwear they're somewhat equals. A lot of folks to sell to solve problems it can move the needle for NetSuite right yeah. Then you look at the competition you know it looks like a lot of things like QuickBooks and you know a Magento or Shopify just various applications. They're all good by themselves but they have to pull it all together right and that's where it breaks down. You know NetSuite solves that problem.
I think most importantly though health and beauty is very complex. They manufacture it, they distribute it, they sell direct to consumer so those are very complex business models. They have to have control of their products. They have to know where it's at, they have to know lots traceability you know so they have to understand the whole supply chain they have to have great experiences for their consumers, control their brand and they have to be innovative. I mean that's NetSuite.
Kendall Fisher: Yeah well on the other thing that I think of among all this is not only they have to you know do all of that and but maintaining their relationship with their customer. They have to also know what's you know what skin colors are trending more, what lip color is better during summer versus during winter, what you know I mean and it's a whole another set of…
Brandon Jenkins: Yes, yeah you know to keep track of yeah and their customer is the height of demanding right? I mean they you know I you are one of those but it's you know they expect that transaction to be quick, seamless. They expect you know all the data to be at every place yeah you know it's in if you want it, and they have it you should be able to get it like that right?
Kendall Fisher: Well looks like I expect when… it's you know when that first day of summer hit so I want ruby-red but when that first day of you know of winter hits I want that darker more. Yeah so if they don't have it, I'm not gonna be happy.
Brandon Jenkins: But so you know that all comes down to having all your data in one place real-time, online, in-store with your with your partners. That's very complex especially for these brands that are starting small in exploding. You know I mean like you said the Kardashians could you know Instagram a pic of something and all sudden their site goes down because they got so many hits.
Kendall Fisher: Oh I guarantee and I mean those sugar bear gummies that they're constantly holding up that I don't think work because I am one of the suckers that bottom. That can go up you know in two seconds. So you know what I want to know is does this approach work with new segments or can it work with existing you know segments?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah you know like I said the new NetSuite segments, a lot of industries and a great way I mean this is all about doubling down in a segment. It could be new segments. You know getting into a segment that we haven't been in yet and being you know very thoughtful about how we approach that segment, how health and beauty…
Well actually health and beauty we have hundreds of customers already.
Kendall Fisher: Well there you go.
Brandon Jenkins: But what we realized is we could have way more by you know coming to that space with more functionality and more leading practices, really getting deep into their requirements. That's what it's all about so it works for both. Absolutely and you know I think you'll see more of that from NetSuite.
Kendall Fisher: Do you see this approach working for other companies? Like for example you know people a lot of the people that I hope are listening in to the NetSuite podcast are people that want to grow their company.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah.
Kendall Fisher: Do you see this approach working for them? Who are focused more on growth and they are you know on the nitty-gritty like you just talked about.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, I mean being an entrepreneur for most of my adult life, I I struggled with this plenty of times and I honestly, I think you know NetSuite probably struggled with it over the years too. Is like where to focus?
Kendall Fisher: Well and that's why it's great that we help companies because we've been there. We were a startup.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, yeah. So, I think absolutely I mean any business if it's if they're providing services, if they're selling products you know putting a little more science behind their go to market strategy and how they are targeting segments and how it's actually going to move the needle absolutely could work. When you look at the data that's available about your customer there's so much to leverage and organize it in a way that you can make intelligent decisions and then hold your teams accountable on this. Is what we're doing, this is why we're doing it and this is how it's gonna actually move the needle.
Kendall Fisher: So what are some of the ways that they can see that movement? That they can measure that growth?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, so it's two sides of the coin. They have to have their data in order.
Kendall Fisher: Are you listening to this? Coming from a true entrepreneur?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, I mean you can't have your data about your customer right you know fragmented in multiple systems I mean, or it takes a month to pull it together and then it's out of date, right? So, you need to have your data on your customers, your business tidied up real-time accessible. Okay and then you the other side of the coin is marrying it up with just the public data like you know back to the NAICS codes like you know who are all the businesses, how many are there, you know are they buying? You need to make the investment on actually researching those segments and being pretty thoughtful about how you approach on so it takes both sides.
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Go to NetSuite.com/ring to see how Jamie scaled his business. You'll also get our free guide titled Overcoming Your 5 Obstacles to Growth. That's NetSuite.com/ring for your free guide and the story of a great American company. NetSuite.com/ring
Kendall Fisher: I want to kind of talk a little bit more about you touched on it before, but this is something that a lot of retail you know companies are looking at which is I mean the wind blowing east and west at the same time in social media in the customer area and celebrity promotion. Given your experience in retail and seeing the you know transformation in the industry, where do you see it going in the next five years so the people that are listening you know are like thinking about it now even if they're starting that beanie company out of Colorado you know just yesterday.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah, so I hate the word omni-channel because it's so overused I mean shoppers just want to shop right? They don't think they don't think omni-channel they just shop. They wanted it to work so I mean that, so it really does come down to you know businesses, retailers, distributors, and manufacturers.
You know they're all selling products and it gets to the consumers hands okay. They need to think about that customer experience in blending the best of a physical experience with a digital experience and those two together need to be consistent, they need to be seamless and that journey can't you know have too many you know stops in between. So that's the biggest thing that's happening you know the retail industry is going through this this major disruption because of the likes of Amazon like you walk into a store many stores today and your experience in that store is like a 180 from the digital experience.
You know you have a great experience online, you can get all information of the product, availability, things like that, reviews. In the store it's like Back to the Future so what's happening is folks come into the stores and if they don't get the right service they pop out their phone and they order from competitor, they order from Amazon because it automatically shows up in two days for free. And you know I'm out the door.
So, retailers actually have one of the biggest advantages they have physical stores. They have you know customers that want to come in and experience something or you know touch and feel these products, but they have to match the digital experience physically.
Kendall Fisher: So, brick-and-mortar, it's not going anywhere?
Brandon Jenkins: No, no actually you see you see a lot of the digital players going physical now.
Kendall Fisher: Right, pop-ups.
Brandon Jenkins: And well absolutely it's a different it's a different model. It doesn't look like a big department store like a mall. It looks like a boutique. I use the example like bonobos it was a guide shop approach you walk into a store. They have one of everything in every color, so you can try it on and see it right but then they ship it to you. So, you can see everything in the store, but they don't carry the inventory so that means great experience, lower overhead but you also have a tight supply chain you know to service that.
So, it looks different, but it is a lot of out with the old and in with the new.
So, what are you seeing some companies do if you have any examples do to match their in-store experience to a digital spirit experience the ones that are looking at unified commerce offerings not thinking point a cell or e-commerce but just commerce and having those touch points be basically one of the same. Of course, you to have different functionality in the store to take you know cash and physical payments and things like that. And then but really it should be the same imagery, the same descriptions, you should have the reviews in both places you should have the related items.
It should be like the same information in both places. The consumer should not have more information in their pocket or their purse. So that's what it really comes down to is matching up the in-store and physical systems with the e-commerce systems, should look identical.
Kendall Fisher: So when we're talking about all of it this and the stress of all of this and somebody's looking at NetSuite, what is going to make them say okay I can take the dive. There's gonna be minimal risk and this is going to help my company continue to you know give my customers, to solve any channel experience and give them you know and help me and in at the same time. Yeah how can they trust that?
Brandon Jenkins: Well, so NetSuite made some significant investments in a whole customer engagement model where we encourage customers to bite small and chew fast. The days of you know big complex rip and replace big boom implementations are like beyond over. There's too much risk, budgets always go over, you know it doesn't always go over that well. So we have a whole philosophy where we encourage customers to take steps. We call it a stairway you know start with getting the basics in place and many times it might feel like you're stepping backwards a tad to get a single view of your data. Get things consolidated but once you get a
solid foundation in place you could rapidly roll out these other pieces of your business and drive value so each of those steps unlock more and more value and ultimately you know depending on a fast the business wants to go, it could be months, it could be years. They can solve a problem that honestly, they've been struggling with for like a decade. That's like omni-channel.
I mean retailers have been struggling with omni-channel for a decade and that's because they keep thinking omni-channel is like oh I just put a new website up I solve this. It's like no you got to step back, you got to get your order management in line, you have to get a single view of your customer, you got to tidy up your back in, and put systems on the front end that used that single source of data.
So how do they trust us? That was the question. We've done it thousands of thousands of times and we have a process where they can go live on these types of solutions you know in a hundred days, where the systems that they implemented in the past would have took years.
Kendall Fisher: Wow. Wow. Can you talk a little bit to the stairway and just for the listeners that don't know much about that suite you know and honestly and the ones that are on that suite just to explain that a little bit more?
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah so, we start with like you know the top of the stairway is like you know nirvana. It's like we're there, we are there. But starting with step one and it looks different for every industry. We're like, we're thoughtful with every industry like what is their first step and we actually call it kind of a remediation phase. Like you know you have multiple systems doing these things, let's consolidate it down to one system. But still leverage things like maybe you have a you know a good ecommerce experience today keep using that. But let's get your back office in order so that looks like you know standardizing your financials onto NetSuite, standardizing order management and CRM on to NetSuite. All that's single and single view real-time. And then things like your current ecommerce system can leverage much you know better data from that relation or in store. But that you don't stop there you know.
The next phase would be like well let's unify onto NetSuite Commerce or NetSuite Point of Sale. Like the goal is to go from dozens of systems that these businesses run down to one and chunk by chunk.
Kendall Fisher: Do we have different stairways for different verticals?
Brandon Jenkins: Absolutely, yep I mean you know with retail we start with order management, customer like I mean that's the heart of your business right you know the quickest way to lose a consumer in a retail store is not getting the order. So, you have to have a single view of your order, to be able to commit to that order, and get it out the door. And then the next step looks like unifying commerce things like that. When you go into like a WD, it might look like getting distribution more organized versus you know item and inventory things like that. Software companies obviously you know getting revenue recognition sorted out earlier in the process. And you know it's not, it's not you know all or nothing, but it is a fairly you know we want to lead our customers. Like this is a very thoughtful approach to get the most value every step.
But your business might be a little different and we can personalize it for you.
Kendall Fisher: And we have experts in these different.
Brandon Jenkins: But it's all about like why not have them start at the 30-yard line. Like they don't need to reinvent the wheel…
Kendall Fisher: Why fix what isn’t broke. So what about these bigger companies? I mean people companies like you just talked about, companies that have been around for decades and they've you know stayed above water. Do we also… can we help them or is NetSuite just catered to smaller companies?
Brandon Jenkins: No, no. I mean II know that that's the whole dream with NetSuite. You can go from working in a garage couple employees to you know a multi-billion-dollar business running on that suite from day one. So that is an amazing value prop that we can offer to our customers.
When you look at larger businesses and it varies by every industry. Let's stick with retail firm as an example. You know larger retailers have a lot of big investments in certain you know aspects of their businesses relates to IT. So, we go with the same premise of if it's not broken let's not focus there right now.
What's gonna move the needle for your business? In many cases, it's going international. So, a large retailer, we could say you know you have these domestic on-premise systems you've had for the last couple decades. In some cases, you know they're kind of working but let's focus where we can move the needle.
And provide you with an omni-channel out-of-the-box offering for your you know a new venture in a new region… you know you're going to APAC, going to EMEA. Now we can offer that solution.
The other a good example is they launch new brands, and this is just how crazy it is retailers with these current systems. If they want to launch a new concept or new brand, many times it means they have to launch all new systems or a duplicate of their systems to support the other brand or the other concept. So like pop-up stores, outlet malls, you know going from apparel to cosmetics store or something like that. New systems.
So we can come in and say well let's take your new emerging concepts, your brands run it on NetSuite and then we backfill. Then start as there. Other systems aged out or you know become a higher priority. They can consolidate onto NetSuite. and
Kendall Fisher: Got it. Got it. So, you know to wrap things up here, what advice would you give to an entrepreneur, retail or not. It doesn't have to be retail but just an entrepreneur in general. When they're starting their company off and they feel a little let's say down with just the current climate of the world technology how fast everything is moving.
Brandon Jenkins: I mean living this firsthand do not underestimate the power of getting everyone lined on the same data. I mean when you have employees you might think they know what you're focused on, you might think that they understand the plan but when everyone's looking at the same data in real-time on their on their dashboards, on their views you're able to get a lot of stuff done. You're able to get things aligned and when you have data in multiple systems that's just not always a reality and I mean it shows with your customer service. It shows with your employees’ you know productivity. It shows with the decisions these entrepreneurs make you know not actually based off data. So it's tempting for you know companies that are small or growing companies that haven't made investments you know some of these more modern applications to just go with the cheap the easy but there's a cost right?
There's a constant or not in the end but in a couple years from now yeah. Letting a business like
NetSuite you know take care of all the technology and you just run your business I mean that that's what it should be right?
Kendall Fisher: Well thank you so much Brandon for coming on with us and and diving into all of this. It was super helpful for me so I can only imagine how that is for our listeners. So thank you so much. We're excited to have you back on again.
Brandon Jenkins: Yeah I'm looking forward to it
Kendall Fisher: Talk about a bunch of stuff in the future.
Brandon Jenkins: All right thanks a lot.
Kendall Fisher: All right you heard him. Do not underestimate the power of getting everyone in your company no matter your size aligned on the same data and having a single platform on which to track that data only makes it that much easier.
Thank you so much to Brandon Jenkins for joining us on this episode of the NetSuite podcast. This was all made possible by our sponsors at Hint, Ring and Steiner Sports. We'd also like to say thank you to our editors.
Thank all you listeners for tuning in as always don't forget to rate review and subscribe.
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