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Evan Goldberg, founder and executive vice president of Oracle NetSuite, said during the keynote that the company’s work on AI was done with an eye toward functionality and efficiency to free up time users would rather spend on higher-value activities.
“We’re introducing so much more powerful functionality, and that powerful functionality is not AI for AI’s sake,” he said. “It delivers real value to your business in three clear ways. First off, automation to eliminate those repetitive, time-consuming tasks and give you time back; insight to service the information that matters and lets you use that time to focus on what’s important; and finally, agility to help you adapt and be prepared for anything that’s coming down the pike.”
One example he pointed out was the new NetSuite Autonomous Close, which he described not as a singular AI system but as a collection of agents continually working together in the background to keep financial data up to date and, ultimately, achieve a zero-day monthly and quarterly close. The solution features an exception management agent that continually scans data and proactively flags anomalies, a close management agent that offers users visibility into task completion status and how the task will affect net income, a business process optimization monitor that observes how certain tasks are done and recommends changes, an exception monitor that proactively flags anomalies and recommends corrective actions, and a flux analysis monitor that relies on data from other agents like exceptions, projections and insight explanations to provide root cause diagnosis and a complete view of what’s to come. The solution also proactively identifies missing or expected transactions such as commissions and dynamically accrues them as pro forma entries, which helps with reporting projected financials before those transactions are posted. Users can also create their own accruals.
“It’s not a single AI feature working in isolation,” said Goldberg. “Autonomous Close uses a network of agents that operate together inside their one system, sharing the same data context. This connected intelligence is going to eliminate a ton of manual work. It means your finance teams can focus on that long list of important things rather than just the urgent. Now, the system doesn’t just speed up close. It removes friction and manual processes along the way.”
The agents in Autonomous Close interact with a new AI-powered bank transaction matching solution, also announced today, which uses generative AI to pull transaction details from bank activity and match them with the right records in the general ledger.
“Instead of forcing teams to hunt for context, the system understands it for them,” said Goldberg. “You get higher auto match rates [so] your teams can close cash and bank accounts faster in real time, give you better information about your business with less effort and more trust in the results.”
He also discussed new NetSuite capacities for bill pay and pricing. NetSuite now allows users to turn bill payments into a strategic asset by using plain English commands to prioritize bills for key suppliers and focus on early payment discounts. The AI automatically creates an optimized payment batch along the user’s specifications. This feature, he said, is powered via an integration with payment solutions provider Bill.
Meanwhile, the new AI-assisted advanced pricing feature lets users create pricing rules that respond to costs, customers, promotions and competitive changes, instead of using spreadsheets or manual overrides. These rules can be dynamic and data effective, as well as aligned with customer segments or pricing methods like cost plus. For instance, if a user wants to monitor competitor prices and be alerted if any competitor drops its prices below their own, the AI can create an agent that regularly scans public websites for price changes. Then, if the competitor dropped prices 10%, the user can not only set a temporary price match rule, but also be kept informed as to its effectiveness.
“That’s really what AI is about, like this incredible co worker that never sleeps,” said Goldberg. “This automation is really like magic.”
Goldberg said that once the busywork is automated, people will want to find ways to optimize and improve their business processes. To that end, he also announced the release of the new NetSuite Enterprise Performance Management Planning Agent. Touted as a NetSuite add-on for users with “sophisticated enterprise needs,” it allows organizations to run real-time FP&A trend and variance analysis via natural language, plus explore what-if scenarios and simulations on data from across the business. It also explains exactly how predictions and forecasts are generated, which is meant to give users more trust in the outputs.
The solution features a Profitability and Cost Management Reporting solution that uses agents to construct cost allocation models from user inputs and explain allocation flows in natural language to answer ad hoc questions and improve transparency. There’s also an AI assistant for setting up account reconciliations that lets users automatically clear transactions with an AI-driven matching engine trained on historical data, as well as an AI flux analysis agent that detects material changes in the general ledger balance and drafts plain language narratives to explain them.
“These EPM enhancements not only allow finance teams to work faster, but also gives them a more informed foundation, with clearer explanations, stronger transparency, giving you more confidence in the insights to drive your business forward,” said Goldberg.
NetSuite also released advanced subscription metrics that help organizations assess growth momentum and provide early indicators of churn risk by viewing Committed Monthly Recurring Revenue metrics and drillable cohort heatmaps by acquisition month. In addition, the company announced NetSuite Inventory Management, which lets users gain precise tracking and full transparency and pay only when goods are sold.
Integrations and connections
While NetSuite has its own agents, there is also a need for them to sometimes interact with another company’s agents. To enable this, NetSuite announced its new AI Connector service centered around its new Model Context Protocol (effectively a portal through which different AI agents can communicate with each other in ways they can all understand), which Goldberg said “creates a structured bridge between AI models and enterprise applications.”
For example, from the Claude AI platform, a NetSuite user can have the bot directly query NetSuite account data and provide an analysis of, say, past due invoices over the last month. Goldberg added that, if the user wanted, they could then ask Claude to further analyze the customer and invoice details and generate a dashboard with risk assessment and payment patterns.
NetSuite also announced the launch of the NetSuite Integration Platform, which enables customers to connect NetSuite to third-party customer relationship management, e-commerce, HR, supply chain, industry and other systems using natural language and prebuilt AI integrations.
Unified within the NetSuite platform, these AI solutions are meant to help businesses overcome repetitive tasks and scale up, according to Goldberg.
“Taken together, automation, insight and agility represent more than product capabilities,” he said. “They form the foundation of how modern businesses can scale. Automation gives you time back. Insight tells you where to focus that extra time and agility keeps you prepared for anything. Companies that thrive combine all three with creativity and conviction and a deep understanding of their customers.”
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