Oracle NetSuite and Hitpoint: Behind the scenes from pioneering to leading the way, companionship is the longest confession of love

In March 2023, Ye Tianlu, general manager of Oracle NetSuite Greater China, and Deng Xianfei, president and founder of Hitpoint Cloud, were invited to participate in a special interview organized by technology media person-Shenyao Technology. During the period, Mr. Deng Xianfei and Mr. Ye Tianlu jointly unveiled the 14-year cooperation process between Hitpoint Cloud and Oracle NetSuite. Companionship is the greatest trust and confidence it gives to the other party.

Interview text:

At the end of March this year, at Oracle's Shanghai branch, I met Ye Tianlu, vice president of Oracle and general manager of Oracle NetSuite Greater China, and Deng Xianfei, founder and president of Shanghai NetSuite Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Hitpoint), and had a wonderful conversation with them.

As one of China's earliest SaaS entrepreneurs, Deng Xianfei said that when he first came into contact with Oracle's NetSuite solution in 2009, he thought it was the SaaS software he had been looking for. "

Founded in 2005, Hitpoint is one of the earliest consulting companies in China to provide enterprise cloud computing solutions. Salesforce was introduced and represented. This company launched its first SaaS application CRM in 2001 and became popular all over the world. However, the appearance of NetSuite completely changed Deng Xianfei's thinking.

"The functions of NetSuite are so rich that it can meet all the needs of enterprises in a 'one-stop' manner. Since then, I have made a bold decision. In the future, the company will no longer represent Salesforce business, but put all business in NetSuite It runs on the Internet and became one of its customers first. It also started the 14-year cooperation journey between hitpoint and NetSuite." Deng Xianfei told me the impression he left when he first met NetSuite.

Taking a time machine back to 2009, Hitpoint "by chance" participated in the implementation of the client-Yonghe King's NetSuite project. It was the first time that I fully realized the power of NetSuite software, so I made up my mind to bring NetSuite to more Chinese enterprises to help them better carry out digital transformation. So Deng Xianfei then flew to the United States to pay a special visit to NetSuite headquarters. After several efforts, finally signed a contract with Oracle NetSuite in 2012. After a series of training and guidance from NetSuite headquarters, hitpoint officially became NetSuite's authorized partner in the Chinese market.

Talking about the "charm" of NetSuite, Ye Tianlu, who has spent nearly "half his life" in the software field, also vividly compared: "NetSuite is like the skin of the human body, while the products of other companies are more like clothes. What is the difference? Clothes are what you grow up and need to be replaced constantly, while skin can grow with you. This is the embodiment of Oracle NetSuite's powerful scalability and flexibility. This is an important reason why customers from thousands of industries have never given up on us.”

Although the original NetSuite manufacturer had not really entered the Chinese market at that time, Hitpoint decided to continue to increase investment in NetSuite. Not only has it replaced the company's previous software management system with NetSuite, but it has also established a professional sales team, hoping that more Chinese companies will discover the power of NetSuite. After Oracle officially acquired NetSuite in November 2016, Hitpoint remained steadfast in its cooperation with NetSuite. As a result, hitpoint has become Oracle NetSuite's longest-lasting cooperation partner in the Chinese market and the deepest business development.

So, what is the reason that Hitpoint and Oracle NetSuite have been together for fourteen years?
[Fourteen years of staying together through thick and thin]

In Deng Xianfei's view, the cooperation process between Hitpoint and Oracle NetSuite can be divided into two stages. That is, before and after Oracle NetSuite officially entered China in June 2017. Previously, although Hitpoint was a "pioneer" in deploying and implementing Oracle NetSuite in the Chinese market, after all, the company's team size was not large at that time. In addition, the SaaS market was still in the "cultivation" stage, and its customer base was mainly foreign-funded enterprises.

However, after June 2017, the cooperation between Hitpoint and NetSuite entered a stage of equal emphasis on "quality" and "quantity". On the one hand, Oracle has entered the Chinese market for more than 30 years, not only has a strong sales network, but also has a relatively large brand influence. At the same time, there are also many local customers in China, which opens up new market space. On the other hand, after NetSuite entered the Chinese market, Hitpoint was also able to deal directly with NetSuite's technical experts face-to-face. It can learn the innovation and advantages of the product immediately. In addition, the product itself has strong scalability and flexibility, which also provides Hitpoint with strong technical support to quickly open the market.

Ye Tianlu refined several significant advantages of Oracle NetSuite: "First, the platform and integration advantages of the software can provide enterprises with a 'accompanying' service to meet the needs of enterprises from growth to large-scale expansion. This is also where Oracle NetSuite can lead domestic competitors and even other foreign partners in terms of technical capabilities.”

Second, the functions and modules of this system are not only "complete" but also "customizable". That is to say, whether it is ERP, CRM, finance, e-commerce, project management and other modules, they have been verified and practiced by customers around the world. Small and medium-sized enterprises can completely use it "out of the box", and personalized needs can also be realized through customization.

Third, the NetSuite system was designed for "international business", which means that many aspects of this system fully take into account the needs of enterprises' global layout and expansion. In particular, it can support more than 190 currencies that users can use, more than 20 languages for conducting business, and more than 200 countries and regions that can be traded. It is very friendly to users with cross-border business and avoids the limitations caused by a single currency in the past. However, there is still a long way to go to explore and practice the “internationalization” of domestic software. "

Deng Xianfei added: "I call this capability the tension of Oracle NetSuite. The best manifestation is that this system can cover the needs of "from three people to three thousand people." It can be used out of the box with three people. , or only use a few of the modules. When an enterprise's business gradually expands, more modules can be used, or more functions can be expanded. This is the power of Oracle NetSuite's completeness and flexible scalability."

Not only that, Oracle NetSuite is also a real "pure SaaS" cloud ERP software. At present, although many softwares on the market advertise the slogan of cloud ERP, in fact, many softwares are not thorough. For example, the local deployment mode is also paid according to SaaS; or it can help customers realize "SaaS". But its essence is to replace a completely different set of software, which can be said to "replace" the customer's business system. And NetSuite is a real cloud ERP software based on the "SaaS" model, which is the proof of its leading technology. It is also the reason why Hitpoint and Oracle NetSuite have maintained in-depth cooperation for fourteen years.

Ye Tianlu also said, "Compared with other companies' products, the biggest feature of NetSuite is the "strong scalability" of the system. We have some friends who usually tell customers that their ERP will be divided into several different levels. If If you are a small customer, you use this version. Then when you become a medium-sized customer, use another version. If you want to go public, change to another version. If you want to internationalize and globalize, then replace another version. This means that a fast-growing company may have to change four different versions in less than 10 years, and the complexity and implementation costs in the middle are immeasurable."

In fact, "extensibility and flexibility" is actually just one of the functions of Oracle NetSuite, and its strong technical innovation ability is its core feature.

In June 2017, NetSuite officially entered the Chinese market. Ye Tianlu led the team to expand the territory and achieved remarkable results in the past six years. The most important reason behind these achievements, Ye Tianlu believes that the construction of the "underlying logic" of the Oracle NetSuite software is essentially different from that of domestic software companies. In short, it is "platform first, application later", while many domestic software are "application first, platform later".

Specifically, the underlying data of the NetSuite application module is all connected. The data "penetration" of the system itself is very strong, and the complexity and even cost of new application modules added by customers are controllable. In layman's terms, the infrastructure of "water, electricity, and network" has been built in advance. Industry customers can build any type of house they want on top of this infrastructure. More importantly, the PaaS native to this platform (SuiteCloud platform development) can also be opened to ecological partners, allowing everyone to make localized products and applications based on the platform to better serve the personalized needs of local customers.

In this regard, Hitpoint has once again set an example. At present, the company has not only created a variety of Hitpoint+NetSuite solutions (SuiteApps), including Hitpoint China Finance SuiteApp, Hitpoint China Tax SuiteApp, Hitpoint MRP SuiteApp, Hitpoint China GAAP COGS APP, Hitpoint manufacturing cost sharing SuiteApp, etc. Comprehensively support the increasingly complex management needs of Chinese enterprises. At the same time, its cooperation with NetSuite has also strengthened its capabilities in software research and development. It has also independently developed a variety of localized expansion solutions, such as Hitpoint eCommerce Bridges, Hitpoint We-WMS for NetSuite, Hitpoint Expense for NetSuite, Hitpoint CRM for NetSuite.

The value benefits are endless. On the one hand, NetSuite can better display the resources, knowledge and experience accumulated by partners over the years, allowing more growing enterprises with distinctive industry characteristics to continuously increase their applications in vertical fields. On the other hand, by aggregating the power of different ecological partners, NetSuite can also provide more abundant and diversified application services to enterprises in China and around the world, promoting enterprises to achieve comprehensive business innovation.

“For example, we have created the Hitpoint MRP SuiteApp, which is a solution created by Hitpoint combining its business experience in the production industry and NetSuite’s technical experience. This product package is now not only sold to Chinese customers, but also sold through NetSuite’s channels. We have entered markets such as the United States and Israel, which I value very much. In other words, our cooperation with NetSuite not only helps manufacturers provide implementation services, but we can also use the platform provided by NetSuite to generate a steady stream of subscription revenue. And this It is the essence of the sustainability of the SaaS business." Deng Xianfei said.

With the support of Hitpoint and other partners, Oracle NetSuite has also completed the breakthrough and transformation from "0 to 1", since it officially entered the Chinese market in 2017. It has grown from a "pioneer" in China's SaaS software industry to a "leader" in the entire market. Data shows that Oracle NetSuite has more than a thousand customers in China so far, and has achieved a customer renewal rate of more than 80% and maintained a customer purchase rate of more than 70%.

Ye Tianlu told me that since entering the Chinese market, Oracle NetSuite has also actively built a "partner ecosystem." Currently it has brought together three types of partners. Alliance partners mainly provide enterprises with business transformation consulting services, integration and implementation services. Solution provider partners mainly provide Oracle NetSuite from product sales to implementation and support services to help enterprises of all sizes better realize their business vision. SDN development partners can develop and optimize their own products based on Oracle NetSuite according to customers' business needs, and sell them through the Oracle NetSuite platform.

From this perspective, this in-depth cooperation between the two parties is undoubtedly the logic and confidence behind Oracle NetSuite's courage to propose "ecological cooperation as the core" in the Chinese market. It is also the fundamental reason why NetSuite leads the Chinese cloud ERP market.

It can be seen that with the strong technical strength of Oracle NetSuite and the support of Hitpoint, more and more enterprises have also felt the new value brought by NetSuite.

For example, Domino's Pizza partnered with Oracle NetSuite in 2019. With the support of Oracle NetSuite's powerful system platform, Domino's Pizza has opened more than 500 stores across the country, and was successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in March this year.

Beijing Huaqing is a cross-border e-commerce company mainly engaged in furniture, outdoor products, fishing gear and other supplies. At present, the main sales channels include global sites such as Amazon in the United States, Europe and Japan, Aliexpress and independent malls. In order to better realize the company's development, Beijing Huaqing implemented Oracle NetSuite through Hitpoint, and successfully replaced the original ERP system, thus completing the company's digital management upgrade. At the same time, it used NetSuite's platform to accumulate business and financial data, laying a key foundation for the company's future data-driven supply chain management.

And these successful cases are just the "miniature" of Oracle NetSuite serving the digital transformation of thousands of industries in China. In this regard, Ye Tianlu said that since Oracle NetSuite entered the Chinese market six years ago, by focusing on large multinational groups, high-tech companies, cross-border e-commerce and biomedical technology companies, it hopes to maximize the help of Chinese companies to achieve global development and empower High-growth companies achieve rapid IPOs.

"After three years of the epidemic, many Chinese companies have entered a new stage of development. At the same time, they also hope that the company's business can become bigger and stronger as soon as possible. NetSuite hopes to help more Chinese companies to be more effective in this process. This is something we will go all out to do in the Chinese market in the future." Ye Tianlu said.

Deng Xianfei finally said: "Oracle NetSuite has given Hitpoint a bigger growth stage, and now NetSuite is the core business of our company. In the next three years, I still firmly believe that NetSuite will still be the core business of the company. Therefore In addition to continuing to do a good job in the implementation and delivery services of Chinese customers, we also hope to enter the overseas market of NetSuite in the future and provide offshore delivery services. After all, NetSuite has nearly 40,000 customers worldwide, which is a very rich customer resources. We believe that we will be able to do better in overseas markets with the experience and capabilities we have accumulated over ten years of cooperation with NetSuite.”

Through in-depth communication with two senior industry practitioners, we can feel that China is entering a new stage of high-quality development. Innovative enterprises and growth enterprises have become the most active forces in the entire society. Oracle NetSuite and partners represented by Hitpoint have worked together in depth to actively empower Chinese companies to achieve globalization based on the concept of "strategizing locally and winning globally". This kind of "side by side" exploration and practice of the two parties is believed to be able to accelerate the continuous development of China's SaaS industry.