Recently, we’ve taken some time to talk about how much Netsuite is evolving in recent times. One of the things that’s held it on the back burner in recent times was Salesforce’s exposed API and diverse app exchange. Committing to Netsuite meant committing to limited integration with other solutions, and to limited extendibility of features and functionality. Well, another bit of proof that this is a thing of the past is Netsuite Oneworld.
Now, Netsuite has always been an excellent set of services, with a number of plans to meet basic business, retail business, service industry businesses and everything in between. The commitment to a limited set of pre-planned service interconnections wasn’t too big of a deal, as the SaaS revolution was very young, and the need for interoperability with third party SaaS wasn’t as strong.
But, services like Netsuite Oneworld show that Netsuite is taking Salesforce’s flexible modular mindset for augmented functionality very, very seriously, and are taking steps to match them on that regard. This isn’t the only example, either.
But, this one’s pretty impressive. Oneworld is a global business management super suite, which can augment Netsuite’s inherent CRM, ERP and SRP functionalities in a global, unified manner that’s vastly easier to manage, access and cross-link for integration with yet more services.
Of course, this is all well and good, but does it work? Well, it does exactly what it says it does, and it does it to an adequate level. The problem is that this one’s only so significant because of its implications, not so much this package itself.
Honestly, it doesn’t really augment things enough to justify the trouble, because all it does is harmonize and slightly tweak existing functionality, and adds very little that’s truly new.
It’s kind of a form of layerware, and while it does boost efficiency, and does provide that unified interface to track everything, it’s just not that much by itself. It needs more cross tracking and cross formulation of metrics before it’s really the kind of absolutely needed glue to hold Netsuite together, which it really wants to be.
It works fine, but it’s not very ambitious is all. Still, the implications of this are fantastic, because it’s a sign that Netsuite will soon have a variety of apps and plug in services, so that it can integrate with and grow alongside other services just like Salesforce does. Force.com had better get in gear, because Netsuite is catching up with them.
This is worth keeping an eye on though, because if it gets a little stronger, and brings a little more unity and additional capacity, it’ll be a splendid plugin worth its weight in gold. It needs only time to mature.
But, for now, Netsuite Oneworld is a good idea that’s not yet fully realized. We’re only now seeing the beginning of Netsuite’s nascent extension functionality, for the most part. Remember that when other extension-supporting SaaS first came around, their libraries, too, were somewhat limited and simple at the beginning, but look at them now. This is sure to be another case of that, once enough time is allowed to pass. Hmm, this review was a little less enthusiastic than I’d planned.