Financial operations must go beyond accuracy – they should be insightful, agile, and growth-oriented. This is the vision behind NetSuite Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), launched at SuiteWorld 2023 in Las Vegas. Its introduction represents a major enhancement in NetSuite’s offerings, combining Oracle’s powerful Fusion Cloud EPM capabilities with NetSuite’s cloud-based ERP platform.
Users and industry experts have highlighted the suite’s potential to significantly reduce the time spent on financial close processes, improve accuracy in financial reporting, and provide deeper insights through advanced analytics and AI capabilities.
In fact, we would take it a step further and say NetSuite EPM is a game-changer, particularly for finance teams that need to move from reactive to proactive financial management. By integrating with the broader Oracle ecosystem, NetSuite EPM benefits from Oracle’s proven technology, ensuring that users have access to the latest innovations in financial management.
What is NetSuite Enterprise Performance Management (EPM)?
NetSuite Enterprise Performance Management is a robust suite of integrated financial management tools designed to enhance decision-making, improve the speed and accuracy of financial processes, and drive business growth. Built on the Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM foundation, NetSuite EPM offers a seamless experience within the broader NetSuite ecosystem, ensuring you’re always working with the most up-to-date information.
The difference between NetSuite ERP and NetSuite EPM
NetSuite ERP and NetSuite EPM serve complementary but distinct functions within a business. While NetSuite ERP focuses on automating and optimising daily operational activities – such as finance, accounting, sales, and inventory management – NetSuite EPM is designed to manage business performance at a strategic level. EPM modules handle critical tasks like budgeting, forecasting, and reporting, providing deep performance insights based on data from the ERP system. Together, NetSuite ERP and NetSuite EPM create a powerful synergy, aligning finance with operations for integrated business planning and driving more informed, strategic decision-making.
Right now, Australian and New Zealand customers have access to the three of the EPM modules (the first three listed below). We expect the remaining modules to be released in these regions over the next year or so.
NetSuite Account Reconciliation
An all-in-one cloud account reconciliation, transaction matching, and flux analysis solution. This module automates and standardises the reconciliation process for various accounts, reducing manual errors and speeding up the financial close process. It enhances internal controls by ensuring that all reconciliations are securely stored and easily auditable.
Learn more about NetSuite Account Reconciliation, including its features and use cases >
NetSuite Planning & Budgeting
The Planning & Budgeting module automates the creation of budgets and forecasts, allowing finance teams to model various scenarios and make data-driven decisions. It integrates financial and operational data, providing a real-time view that enhances accuracy and agility in financial planning.
Explore how NetSuite Planning and Budgeting transforms financial forecasting >
NetSuite Analytics Warehouse
NetSuite Analytics Warehouse leverages Oracle’s powerful data warehousing and analytics technology to provide NetSuite users with advanced data analysis, reporting, and business intelligence capabilities. This enables businesses to consolidate data from various sources (including third-party platforms), perform sophisticated analysis, and gain deeper insights into their operations, which is a critical component of effective performance management within the EPM suite.
Key features of NetSuite Analytics Warehouse include:
- Consolidate data from multiple sources, including non-NetSuite systems, to provide a comprehensive view of the business.
- Access powerful analytics tools to identify trends, opportunities, and risks, supporting data-driven decision-making.
- Make use of a library of pre-built key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics tailored to various industries and business functions.
Learn how you can unlock business insights with NetSuite Analytics Warehouse >
NetSuite Corporate Tax Reporting
NetSuite’s Corporate Tax Reporting module simplifies tax processes by automating tax calculations and generating compliant reports for various jurisdictions. It ensures that businesses stay compliant with local and international tax regulations, improving accuracy and reducing the time spent on tax-related tasks.
NetSuite Profitability & Cost Management Reporting
This module provides deep insights into profitability by analysing data across customers, products, and business segments. It helps businesses make informed decisions on resource allocation by identifying which areas are most and least profitable.
NetSuite Close Management & Consolidation
Close Management & Consolidation automates the end-to-end financial close process, ensuring data integrity and compliance with regulatory standards. It allows finance teams to manage tasks and workflows effectively, speeding up the close process and providing a clear audit trail.
NetSuite Narrative Reporting
Narrative Reporting combines financial data with contextual narrative in a single report, making it easier for stakeholders to understand and interpret financial statements. It supports collaboration across teams, streamlining the creation, review, and publication of management and regulatory reports.
Five things to know about EPM
Oracle-powered foundation
NetSuite EPM is built on the robust Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM platform, which brings advanced capabilities like AI-driven analytics, automated financial processes, and global compliance features. This connection ensures that NetSuite EPM users benefit from the same enterprise-grade technology that powers some of the world’s largest organisations.
Comprehensive financial suite
NetSuite EPM unifies all critical financial processes, including planning, budgeting, forecasting, account reconciliation, financial close, profitability analysis, and tax reporting. This integration allows businesses to manage their entire financial ecosystem from a single platform, improving efficiency and decision-making across the board.
Tailored for global operations
With its strong focus on compliance and reporting, NetSuite EPM is designed to meet the needs of multinational corporations. The Corporate Tax Reporting module, for instance, supports compliance with global tax regulations, including new OECD country-by-country reporting obligations, ensuring businesses can operate seamlessly across multiple regions.
Scalable for growing mid-market businesses
NetSuite EPM is scalable to meet the needs of growing mid-market and upper mid-market companies. The platform offers various modules that can be activated as a business grows, allowing companies to start with essential financial management tools and expand into more advanced features as their complexity increases.
AI and machine learning integration
The most important aspect of NetSuite EPM is its AI integration, offering transformative advancements for the finance function. AI-driven EPM systems can enhance financial planning, forecasting, and analysis by leveraging large datasets to identify patterns, predict future outcomes, and optimise decision-making in real-time. This allows finance teams to ditch traditional methods, which often rely heavily on historical data and manual inputs, and move towards more predictive and prescriptive analytics that can adapt to changing business environments and market conditions.
By adopting AI-driven EPM solutions, organisations can ensure that their financial strategies are not solely based on current data but are also forward-looking, enabling them to anticipate challenges and capitalise on opportunities. As AI continues to evolve, its role in finance is expected to expand further, offering even greater potential for innovation and value creation for NetSuite customers.
How does NetSuite EPM improve financial management?
For finance teams, the burden of disconnected processes and manual tasks is the biggest barrier to productivity and decision-making. NetSuite EPM addresses these challenges by providing a unified platform that automates core financial processes, from planning and budgeting to reconciliation and reporting. Here’s how:
Enhanced decision-making
NetSuite EPM integrates financial and operational data, allowing you to connect budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes seamlessly. This integration ensures that your decisions are based on accurate, up-to-date information, driving better business outcomes.
Increased efficiency and productivity
By automating tasks such as account reconciliation and financial close, NetSuite EPM frees up your finance team to focus on high-value analysis and strategic activities rather than manual data entry and reconciliation.
Stronger internal controls and compliance
With built-in features for secure document management, audit trails, and automated workflows, NetSuite EPM strengthens internal controls and ensures compliance with regulatory requirements, reducing the risk of errors and fraud.
The finance roles that benefit most from EPM
NetSuite EPM is designed to support several key finance roles within an organisation, including:
Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
NetSuite EPM offers CFOs a comprehensive view of financial health, supporting strategic decision-making with advanced analytics for forecasting, risk management, and aligning financial strategies with company goals.
Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) Manager
EPM’s Planning and Budgeting module automates data collection and analysis, enabling FP&A managers to create accurate forecasts, adjust plans dynamically, and enhance the agility of the planning process.
Financial Controller
Controllers benefit from automated account reconciliation and close processes, ensuring timely and accurate financial statements while maintaining compliance with secure document management and audit trails.
Tax Manager
EPM simplifies tax reporting with real-time data access, automated calculations, and report generation, reducing the administrative burden and enabling a focus on strategic tax planning.
Treasurer
EPM provides treasurers with detailed cash flow analysis and real-time insights into liquidity, supporting informed decisions on investments, debt management, and risk mitigation.
Internal Auditor
Internal auditors can efficiently monitor compliance with automated reconciliations, secure documentation, and comprehensive audit trails, improving audit accuracy and identifying issues early.
Accounting Manager
EPM reduces the manual workload for accounting managers, allowing a focus on analysis and decision-making. Real-time reporting and reconciliation tools enhance the accuracy and efficiency of financial operations.
NetSuite Enterprise Performance Management use cases
Here are five scenarios that demonstrate the depth of functionality within NetSuite EPM:
Use case NSAR: Accelerating financial close with automated reconciliation
A mid-sized manufacturing company is struggling with lengthy financial close processes. The finance team spends countless hours manually reconciling accounts, which often leads to delays in closing the books and creates a significant risk of errors. This inefficiency also prevents the team from focusing on strategic tasks like analysis and planning.
Solution with NetSuite Account Reconciliation: The company is able to automate its reconciliation processes across various accounts. This reduces the time spent on reconciliations, allowing the company to close its books faster and with greater accuracy.
Outcome: The company reduces its financial close time from weeks to days, allowing the finance team to redirect their efforts towards value-added activities.
Use case NSPB: Enhancing decision-making through real-time scenario planning
A fast-growing retail chain is looking to expand into new markets but is uncertain about the financial implications of different expansion strategies. The company needs to understand the potential impact on cash flow, profitability, and overall financial health under various scenarios.
Solution with NetSuite Planning and Budgeting: Using NetSuite’s Planning and Budgeting module, the company performs detailed scenario planning by creating multiple what-if scenarios. This allows them to model the financial outcomes of opening stores in different locations, adjusting pricing strategies, and changing supplier agreements.
Outcome: The retail chain makes data-driven decisions, selecting the expansion strategy that maximises profitability while maintaining healthy cash flow.
Use case NSPCM: Achieving comprehensive profitability analysis across business segments
A technology services company is facing challenges in understanding which of its services and customer segments are the most profitable. This lack of insight limits their ability to allocate resources effectively and make informed decisions about where to focus growth efforts.
Solution with NetSuite Profitability and Cost Management: NetSuite Profitability and Cost Management provides the company with a detailed analysis of profitability by service line, customer segment, and other dimensions. The finance team can then drill down into the data to identify specific services or customers that are driving or eroding profits.
Outcome: Armed with these insights, the company reallocates resources to focus on high-margin services and profitable customer segments.
Use case NSCTR: Streamlining tax reporting for a multinational corporation
A multinational corporation is struggling to comply with varying tax regulations and reporting requirements. The complexity of managing tax reporting across different jurisdictions leads to inefficiencies, potential errors, and increased compliance risks.
Solution with NetSuite Corporate Tax Reporting: The corporation implements NetSuite’s Corporate Tax Reporting module, which automates tax calculations and generates necessary reports for each jurisdiction.
Outcome: The corporation significantly reduces the time and effort required for tax reporting, minimises the risk of errors, and ensures compliance across all jurisdictions.
Use case NSAW: Leveraging data for strategic decision-making across multiple business units
A multinational manufacturing company is struggling to consolidate data from multiple subsidiaries, each using different systems for sales, inventory, and financial reporting. This fragmentation leads to a lack of visibility into overall business performance, making it difficult for leadership to make informed strategic decisions.
Solution with NetSuite Analytics Warehouse: The company implements NetSuite Analytics Warehouse to consolidate data from various sources. This enables leadership to access real-time dashboards that provide a comprehensive view of key metrics.
Outcome: With a unified view of its data, leadership gains the insights needed to make strategic decisions quickly and confidently.
Implementation considerations for NetSuite EPM
Implementing NetSuite EPM is a significant step toward transforming your financial operations. However, to maximise its benefits, careful planning and execution are crucial.
Success hinges on understanding the specific needs of your organisation and accessing the expertise and capabilities that come with deep product knowledge.
If you’re considering adopting any of the NetSuite EPM modules, Annexa can help. Our deep knowledge of the NetSuite product family and our experience with a wide array of implementations allow us to guide you through every stage of the process. From initial assessments and planning to deployment and post-implementation support, our team ensures that the solution aligns perfectly with your business goals.
Leveraging the power of Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM
NetSuite EPM brings several distinct advantages to businesses using Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM.
Proven Oracle technology | Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM is recognised as one of the most robust and scalable performance management platforms available today. By leveraging this technology, NetSuite EPM inherits advanced capabilities in financial planning, reporting, and analytics, ensuring that your business operates with the highest level of precision and reliability.
Seamless integration within the Oracle ecosystem | For businesses already using Oracle solutions, NetSuite EPM offers seamless integration, allowing for unified data management and smoother workflows across different systems.
Advanced analytics and AI capabilities |Oracle’s commitment to innovation is evident in the advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) features embedded in NetSuite EPM. These capabilities enable businesses to perform predictive analytics, uncover hidden trends, and make data-driven decisions with greater confidence.
Consistent updates and enhancements | As part of the Oracle family, NetSuite EPM benefits from continuous updates and enhancements, ensuring that your financial management tools evolve with your business needs and the latest industry standards.
Global compliance and security | Oracle’s global presence and commitment to security ensure that NetSuite EPM meets the highest standards of compliance and data protection.
FAQs about NetSuite Enterprise Performance Management
What is NetSuite EPM?
NetSuite EPM is an integrated suite of financial management tools that streamline planning, budgeting, forecasting, account reconciliation, financial close, and reporting processes.
How does NetSuite EPM improve financial management?
NetSuite EPM enhances financial management by automating manual processes, providing real-time data for decision-making, and ensuring compliance through strong internal controls.
What are the benefits of using NetSuite EPM?
The key benefits of NetSuite EPM include improved decision-making, increased efficiency and productivity, enhanced compliance, and greater visibility into financial performance.
How does NetSuite EPM integrate with other business systems?
NetSuite EPM integrates seamlessly with NetSuite ERP and other business systems, ensuring that all your financial data is accurate and up-to-date across all processes.
