The company that makes Oracle's Small Business Suite is adding core functionality—in areas such as purchasing, order management, fulfillment and revenue recognition—to its enterprise resource planning software for SMBs.NetSuite, the company that makes Oracles Small Business Suite and offers its own package of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for the small and midmarket sector, is moving upstream by adding core functionality.
NetSuite Inc. on Thursday will announce version 10 of its namesake suite, which offers upgrades to its core ERP products in areas such as purchasing, order management, fulfillment and revenue recognition.
In the past, NetSuites hosted applications were the next step for small and midmarket companies looking for more capabilities than off-the-shelf accounting packages could provide.
But with added functionality in recent releases, company CEO Zach Nelson said hes seeing increased competition in the middle and upper levels of the market.
About half of the time, NetSuite is in direct competition with Microsoft Corp.s Great Plains, he said, and in about two deals a month, its competing against PeopleSoft Inc. and SAP AG.
Nelson said he attributes the shift in competition to increased functionality as well as the complexity of dealing with tier-one ERP applications, versus the relative ease of NetSuite applications.
Click here to read about ERP vendors battling it out.
The new features in NetSuite 10.0 give companies the ability to recognize revenue according to customer contracts and to comply with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and other reporting standards.
With a new Allocations functionality users can allocate costs by general ledger account, class, department or allocation, and choose to weigh by dollar or by percentage. Other new capabilities support multicurrency bank accounts and expense reporting.
For the wholesale and distribution markets—NetSuites key verticals—lot tracking, enhanced inventory commitment, inventory reordering and a special orders module have been added.
On a related note, Oracle Corp., of Redwood Shores, Calif., is also adding to its core functionality through a partnership with MasterCard International Inc.
Oracle and MasterCard announced earlier this week a partnership to help companies simplify transaction data reconciliation. New York-based MasterCard will integrate transaction data from Oracles E-Business Suite into its Oracle-based global data repository.
The agreement, called Purchase, will provide improved travel, expense and purchasing-card transaction data from MasterCards hub into Oracles E-Business Suite. The integration also will enable users to review, approve and share purchase transactions and enable online submissions and approvals of business expenses, officials said.
San Mateo, Calif.-based NetSuites new ERP features will be available in the third quarter.
Check out eWEEK.coms Enterprise Applications Center at http://enterpriseapps.eweek.com for the latest news, reviews and analysis about productivity and business solutions.
Be sure to add our eWEEK.com enterprise applications news feed to your RSS newsreader or My Yahoo page
Enterprise Applications 
