LONDON and SAN MATEO, California, December 10 /PRNewswire/ --

- With NetSuite OneWorld, Leading International Electronics Distributor Runs European Operations in Multiple Subsidiaries with One Consolidated Sales View

NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N), a leading vendor of on-demand, integrated business management software suites, today announced that the Electronics Division of ACAL plc (ACAL), a worldwide electronics distributor, has successfully deployed NetSuite OneWorld. With NetSuite OneWorld, which provides global customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and Ecommerce for mid-market enterprises and divisions of large companies, ACAL can now manage multiple subsidiaries and multi-currency operations in one consolidated sales view that unifies, for the first time, previously separate sales and customer systems across its European operations. ACAL has rolled out NetSuite OneWorld to more than 300 users across the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Iberia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Italy.

With NetSuite OneWorld, ACAL has enhanced information sharing between its regional subsidiaries and has created consistent processes and a single, consolidated view of customers' interactions with the company. NetSuite OneWorld has also helped ACAL establish a unified view of the sales pipeline across the entire business and has allowed for regional and global business consolidation with multi-currency management conversion and has improved workflow through email and calendar integration. As a result, NetSuite is helping to increase company revenue and overall sales team efficiency. For more information about this story, visit http://www.netsuite.com/ukcustomers.

NetSuite is now the front end for all our sales activities, said Simon Rush, Divisional Sales and Marketing Information Manager at ACAL. All of our customer-facing teams -- telesales, customer service, direct field sales engineers and application engineers -- use NetSuite to do their daily jobs. We were able to easily customise NetSuite to fit our specific business processes, building on NetSuite's extensive experience in on-demand business management software.

The NetSuite project was initially driven by ACAL's need to consolidate four separate UK operations resulting from a series of acquisitions. This left a number of business subsidiaries operating independently, leading to massive duplication of effort. These inefficiencies prevented the sales staff and other employees from obtaining critical information, which led to prolonged delays in company reporting. With approximately 10,000 customers across Europe to manage in the midst of a difficult economic environment, ACAL identified a need to change its IT and global CRM systems in order to leverage the maximum opportunity from this base of customers as well as the additional 50,000 contacts retained in its marketing database of prospects.

ACAL needed a system that would provide a single, easily accessible view of customer data in their global CRM system. ACAL management considered using a combination of their incumbent systems combined with off-the-shelf proprietary packages. But with subsidiaries in multiple geographic locations and sales teams on the road, the company needed a Web-based system that could be accessed from anywhere and at any time, but it didn't want to add resources to maintain the system internally. The team chose NetSuite because it could not only meet theses requirements but could also could pull ACAL's 11 European subsidiaries into one consolidated system.

In preparation for the consolidation of operations into the central company, ACAL first rolled out NetSuite OneWorld to 100 users at the company's primary UK location in Wokingham in early 2006. The business management software was extended to more users in the company's other UK operations and to those in Germany. Once Germany went live, the team completed a rapid release across its remaining European operations, finishing with Italy, and bringing the total number of NetSuite users to nearly 300.

Now that they share information more easily thanks to NetSuite OneWorld, the ACAL sales team has improved performance and increased efficiency considerably, which has resulted in greater success in winning new business. NetSuite is integrated via a Web service with ACAL's J.D. Edwards (Oracle) system which manages the company's ERP activities. The NetSuite system is updated nightly, reflecting the previous day's trading and giving the sales teams a consolidated view of all customer transactions. ACAL is also using NetSuite's Advanced Analytics module which makes it much easier to view reports that reflect the status of the entire business.

ACAL operates in a market that is experiencing tough economic conditions but we are outperforming the market and that, in part, is due to NetSuite, said Nick Rudge, CIO of ACAL. NetSuite has also helped ACAL Technology execute its business re-engineering strategy and now places us well to compete successfully in today's tough market.

What we have now goes beyond anything we could do before, continued Rudge. It allows our sales teams to see what's selling well, or if they've lost business. It is wonderful for the management team to have access to a consolidated view of the business from wherever they are.

ACAL plans to leverage NetSuite even more in the future. The company expects that it will soon be automating its lead generation process into NetSuite's business management software, and it has plans to better integrate its email marketing campaigns, enhance its analytical capabilities, and share quotations and the opportunity pipeline with its franchise partners to monitor future sales performance.

For more information about NetSuite Inc., please visit http://www.netsuite.com.

NOTE: NetSuite and the NetSuite logo are service-marks of NetSuite Inc. Other marks are the property of their respective owners.

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Mei Li of NetSuite Inc., +1-650-627-1063, meili@netsuite.com / Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20021024/SFTH024LOGO