NetSuite targets services companies with vertical app

Walking the vertical applications path, NetSuite on Thursday added a new service to its fleet: NetCRM-Services Edition.

The ASP's latest application, as the name implies, was designed for customers who offer services, be those medical, accounting, or any variety of professional services, according to NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson.

NetCRM-Services Edition is aimed squarely at companies such as GuildQuality, which, in its own words, provides third-party performance and customer satisfaction surveying for builders, remodelers, and developers.

GuildQuality's whole business grew up around the ASP model, said CEO Gregory J. Hanson, who explained that he opted for NetSuite over competitors such as salesforce.com and Siebel Systems because of NetSuite's accounting capabilities.

"You can't just build accounting in after the fact," Hanson said.

NetSuite's Nelson explained that the sum of NetCRM-Services Edition's features add up to a product that takes a customer-centric approach to CRM, rather than a one-off opportunity-centric slant.

"The relationship between a company and its customers has huge implications among services companies," he said.

To that end, NetSuite built the NetCRM-Services Edition application to manage long-standing client relationships. The software can track projects through activity and time management, involving various service-delivery personnel. NetCRM-Services Edition also features service item management, project tracking, self-service center, and document management. Other new features include services sales management, advanced calendaring and dashboards for service personnel with key performance indicators and report snapshots.

"We're a service so we don't have inventory," GuildQuality's Hanson said. "But I like the metrics."

Hanson, a self-proclaimed fan of the ASP model, said that for the time being NetSuite meets his company's needs.

"That's not to say that in a year I won't have dreamed up new things I need," Hanson added.

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