Software AG Customer Success Story (Video)
Software AG’s global professional services organization manages more than 2,000 employees across 59 countries with NetSuite OpenAir. Before NetSuite OpenAir, Software AG used a collection of spreadsheets and various point solutions to manage its international services organization and no comprehensive view into their global services organization, minimal understanding of the interaction between utilization rates and budget requirements and At a global level, Software AG was unable to understand the big picture of its worldwide services operation in real-time, leading to costly inefficiencies.
With NetSuite OpenAir, Software AG decreased their administrative overhead by 8% and gained real-time insights into professional services activities without the constraints that usually accompany the on-the-go nature of modern services professionals. By operating in the cloud, NetSuite OpenAir gives managers and professionals in the field access to the same tools and data, no matter where they are.
Better yet, by integrating OpenAir with SAP, Software AG was able to eliminate the manual re-key of data for invoices and processes timesheets and expenses more effectively and efficiently.
Want to learn more? Watch this video success story and hear Markus Kupper, Senior Director of Global Consulting Services at Software AG, tell the story in his own words. This video is taken directly from a panel discussion with OpenAir customers in London. Moderated by NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson, Markus discusses the his organization and the selection and rollout of and success with OpenAir.
Siemens Customer Success Story (Video)
Siemens Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) division leverages NetSuite OpenAir to manage their global services organization. Before OpenAir, Siemens had more than 15 disparate applications running their services organization. This decentralized approach meant that processes were extremely complicated and they were not automated or standardized. Scalability was limited and the systems were dependent on a few key people. There was no visibility at a global level or into regions of the Siemens services organization.
With OpenAir, Siemens aligned processes global across more than 3,000 projects in more than 15 countries. By managing 2,700 resources with more than 1,500 unique sets of product knowledge and skills, Siemens gained enterprise visibility in forecasting and predicting revenue flow. Best of all, they went from more than 15 disparate systems to a small number of integrated systems, including OpenAir Siemens' own PLM solution, SAP, Salesforce.com and eRealm.
Want to learn more? Watch this video success story and hear Beat Neuhaus, VP Global Services Operations at Siemens, tell the story in his own words. This video is taken directly from a panel discussion with OpenAir customers in London. Moderated by NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson, Beat discusses the history of his organization and the selection and rollout of and success with OpenAir.
infrastructureWorks Case Study
Results
• infrastructureWORKS saving 1.5 back-office FTEs due to superior process automation through NetSuite and OpenAir
• Key operations such as quote-to-billing now take mere minutes, cutting hours or days out of customer lifecycle transactions
• Rapid, zero-overhead cloud computing deployment enabled infrastructureWORKS to be live on its new enterprise systems when the company launched
• Streamlined prospect-to-customer processes enable infrastructureWORKS to begin billable work sooner, boosting performance and customer satisfaction
• Unified solution creates greater visibility into the success of lead-generating activities, enabling infrastructureWORKS to properly account for the strength of its channel-building and marketing investments
• Responsiveness to customers and partners greatly improved due to single point of access for all relevant corporate data, improving turnaround time for quotes, orders, and accounts payable/receivable activity.
Empathy Lab Case Study
Empathy Lab, a technology marketing firm based out of Pennsylvania gained complete visibility across their entire company with NetSuite OpenAIr. From completely data integration across the enterprise, to invoicing, revenue recognition, and project management, Empathy Lab has streamlined their entire business with NetSuite OpenAir. Results include:
- Internal support questions regarding PSA system were reduced 75%
- Company’s month end close cycle was cut 50%
- Transition to OpenAir time tracking, expense reporting, and projects was completed in 2 weeks
Magnetic Customer Success Story
Since 2000, Magnetic, a website design firm in Tampa, FL, has reaped the benefits of OpenAir for Professional Services Automation (PSA). “OpenAir has become such an integral part of Magnetic that I cannot imagine running our business without it,” said Sabrina Herring, Director of Administration at Magnetic.
The visibility that the system provides, coupled with a minimal cost of ownership, has significantly increased profits at Magnetic. With robust, accurate profitability and budget reporting, the organization guarantees that they are paid fairly for their services. “After nine years with OpenAir we have an extremely rich backlog of profitability and budget performance metrics from past projects,” said Herring. “This information has been invaluable when quoting and billing similar projects.”
With OpenAir, Magnetic has the ability to review how similar projects performed in the past and use the billing scenarios as a baseline when quoting new work. As a result, unprofitable projects are avoided or fixed before a statement of work (SOW) is signed. The system’s extremely flexible billing rules engine has eliminated countless hours of overhead when initially configuring projects.
“We have yet to run into a billing scenario that OpenAir has not been able to handle. The ability to mix fixed fee and time and material (T&M) billing on the same project is critical to our business model and OpenAir clearly delivers on that need," said Herring.
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Duo Consulting Customer Success Story
OpenAir has streamlined processes, automated workflows, and saved both time and money for Duo Consulting, a web design agency in Chicago, IL. Since being brought in to the company in 2006, OpenAir has enabled Duo Consulting to grow rapidly with minimal cost of ownership.
“Prior to OpenAir, we operated with two project managers,” said Shari Spraker, Office Manager at Duo Consulting. “Now, with the system in place, our business has grown to require six project managers.” Since OpenAir is a hosted, web-based system, Duo Consulting saves on costs that would have otherwise been earmarked for server maintenance and IT infrastructure. OpenAir’s per user subscription terms enable the organization to pay according to their present needs with the ability to quickly add users as growth occurs.
OpenAir’s robust integration capabilities have eliminated redundancies in processes and saved significant revenue in overhead costs. Duo Consulting utilizes both salesforce.com and QuickBooks integration to enable a seamless flow from sales to financials. “OpenAir’s ability to integrate with our CRM and G/L tools was a huge draw for us,” said Spraker. “We no longer have to spend time and effort on double entry of data in multiple systems.” This has saved the company countless dollars on manual, overhead tasks.
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SoluSoft Customer Success Story
Since 2003, Solusoft, a regional IT consulting firm servicing northern Latin American and Caribbean countries, has been relying on NetSuite’s suite of accounting and CRM software to manage the critical operations of its growing business. More recently, the company added NetSuite OpenAir's professional services automation software to its IT infrastructure to enable end-to-end SaaS-based client management, gaining the full power of NetSuite SRP.
“What NetSuite SRP delivers,” says Glenn Tjon, Solusoft’s Managing Director, “is full dashboard visibility into every pre-sales opportunity, every customer project, the time commitments of every one of our consultants, and all accounting-related activities. As a result, we can ensure that consultants are not over-booked or under-utilized, that project managers always have access to the resources they need to be successful, and that our revenues streams are always recognized, realized, and recorded.”
All lead generation, and client commitments are tracked with NetSuite SRP—including contracts and sales orders. In addition, the solution is used to generate accounts receivables aging reports, perform profit analyses by customer, track performance milestones by project consultant and client, and even to generate invoices.
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ICS Customer Success Story
“As a technology solution provider ourselves, we had high expectations when selecting our PSA system. OpenAir met and exceeded our expectations: bottom line cash flow benefits, process automation and performance metrics all add up to a fast ROI,” explained John Carr, Vice President of Operations. “I have one core mission—to boost the performance and profitability of our professional services organization. Implementing OpenAir was one of the best decisions I made in 2003.”
“Prior to OpenAir we did not have much insight into our projects. OpenAir caused us to t ake some proactive steps we should have done before. For example, we now enable project managers not only to focus on delivering timely, high-quality services, but also to deliver those services profitably,” said Carr. “One of OpenAir’s greatest strengths is its capability to integrate seamlessly with our JD Edwards A/P and A/R application,” said Carr. “Combined with the automation of time and expense approvals, OpenAir Connect reduced our invoice cycle time to two days from 10 days. The finance team is seeing some excellent benefits from this.”
ICS wanted a solution that did not take up a lot of its internal IT staff’s time. ICS’ IT folks were spending three or four days per monthly billing cycle on the IT support for their old operations systems. With OpenAir, they took that burden off of their IT group. The SaaS model removes the headache of hardware support and ICS consultants no longer have the issues associated with other systems such as inability to dial into the network. They just use the Web or use OpenAir’s offline access options and then synch up when they have a connection. ICS now has the opportunity to bill some of their internal IT staff out to billable client jobs.
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NetScout Customer Success Story
Return on investment is the most effective measure of the success or failure of any business investment. With OpenAir, NetScout has eliminated overhead costs associated with maintaining its legacy spreadsheet system of tracking projects and revenue.
“With OpenAir, we are saving the cost of one headcount with no additional IT infrastructure or support overhead,” said Bryan Clancey, Delivery Operations Manager, at NetScout. Additionally, NetScout now has the ability to accurately forecast revenue which is paramount to any services business.
With timely revenue projection reports, OpenAir provides NetScout with the visibility to track annual revenue patterns. With this historical information, the company can now more effectively plan its go-to-market strategy for future fiscal quarters. After experiencing the automation provided by its PSA solution, NetScout plans to integrate OpenAir with its Oracle ERP solution to further streamline its quote-to-cash cycle. By linking OpenAir with its core financials, the Consulting Services team at NetScout will be able to more effectively process orders and communicate with its finance team, leading to greater insight into the health of its business.
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Software AG Customer Success Story
Software AG’s US-based Professional Services group went into production with OpenAir in November 2005 and experienced significant results in regard to adoption rate and productivity level. This progress was noticed by other groups within the PS organization and, as a result, OpenAir was recommended and verified as the tool of choice for all international offices.
“One 40-employee office is expecting an 8% reduction in administration overhead,” said Jodi Cicci, Director of US Project Management Office at Software AG. “Another office gained immediate visibility into its project data after previously needing to go back and forth with Finance to reconcile information.”
To test the viability of OpenAir at a corporate level, Software AG performed a gap analysis to measure the success or failure of OpenAir across six focus countries. “In some cases an office had developed home-grown systems and in other cases they had installed a vendor product,” said Cicci. “With some customization, in every single case OpenAir met everyone’s needs.”
OpenAir was proven by the analysis to be a sufficient tool for every office to use and would also be of benefit from a corporate perspective as it would enable the organization to pull company-wide data from a single system.
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