Oracle Corp.’s NetSuite subsidiary today announced a major overhaul of its cloud enterprise resource planning suite at its SuiteWorld conference, introducing NetSuite Next, a new version of the platform that embeds conversational artificial intelligence, agentic workflows, and natural language search.

The company also announced additions to its SuiteCloud platform, new subscription metrics for finance professionals, and a strategic partnership with financial operations provider Bill.com LLC.

The company said NetSuite Next is the most significant user experience change in the product’s history. It’s based on Oracle’s Redwood Design System, a common approach to user interface design that Oracle uses across its applications and cloud services. The upgrade also integrates Ask Oracle, a natural language assistant, into the core interface.

“Ask Oracle isn’t just a chatbot; it’s actually your navigational tool,” Craig Sullivan, group vice president of product management for NetSuite, said in a briefing. “It helps you find anything inside the application, anything within your dataset, and to navigate to where you need to be to get the information you want.”

Ask Oracle provides contextual responses, explanations and reasoning steps behind its outputs. “We’re always making sure that you understand where the data is coming from and how the AI has reached its conclusions,” Sullivan said.

Smarter analysis

The new version also introduces narrative insights, which translate data into plain language explanations. Narrative summaries identify correlations and trends from NetSuite’s unified data model to help users more easily spot opportunities and risks “These aren’t just regurgitating numbers,” Sullivan said. “It’s actually using AI to interpret data in the context of the business and make these recommendations for what you might choose to do.”

Another addition is the AI Canvas, a collaborative workspace for scenario exploration. “We’re providing AI as a collaborator that not just surfacing insights, but interacting with you,” Sullivan said.

NetSuite Next also incorporates agent-based workflows, which deploy AI agents to automate tasks such as reconciliations and period-close processes. “We’re providing the ability for you to be on top of the status of your books constantly,” Sullivan explained. Autonomous Close can display both actual and projected outcomes from NetSuite records, reducing closing schedules to as little as a few days.

Customers can transition to NetSuite Next without needing to migrate existing customizations. The rollout is expected to begin in North America within 12 months.

Oracle also announced new AI capabilities for its SuiteCloud platform, which enables developers and partners to extend the ERP system and integrate their own AI models, build agents and compose AI-driven workflows.

The update introduces the AI Connector Service, which utilizes open standards, such as the Model Context Protocol, to link external AI assistants and models with NetSuite data. New SuiteAgent frameworks allow customers and partners to build custom AI agents. “With the SuiteAgent framework and toolset, customers can create their own agents and tailor the behaviors just as they have done with other aspects of NetSuite,” Sullivan said. Complementary toolkits and AI Studios give administrators direct control over prompts, narrative generation, and workflow automation.

SaaS subscription metrics

For subscription-based companies such as software-as-a-service firms, Oracle introduced NetSuite Subscription Metrics, a module designed to enable chief financial and revenue officers to monitor recurring revenue, retention and growth.

The dashboard reports on metrics such as monthly recurring revenue, annual recurring revenue, lifetime value and churn. Features include roll-forward reporting, cohort analysis heatmaps and AI-generated narrative summaries.

The feature is intended to address the need for SaaS executives to monitor performance in real time, Evan Goldberg, founder and executive vice president of Oracle NetSuite, said in a statement. “With Subscription Metrics, we’re giving CFOs and CROs out-of-the-box metrics, actionable AI-generated narratives, multinational reporting and insightful visualizations in a unified dashboard,” he said.

The feature is available immediately to NetSuite customers at no additional cost, with AI narrative features to follow in the next 12 months.

A partnership with Bill.com, a provider of accounts payable and receivable automation software, will integrate Bill’s payment processing network into NetSuite Intelligent Payment Automation. That means customers can make vendor payments directly within NetSuite, supported by network of more than customers and suppliers. The platform will support instant activation and all U.S. banks.

NetSuite, which Oracle acquired in 2016, has more than 42,000 customers in 219 countries. The new announcements come at a time when ERP providers are under pressure to modernize systems with embedded AI.

Sullivan emphasized that NetSuite’s approach to agents is intended to combine autonomy with oversight. “It’s about putting the system to work for you while ensuring that you remain in control, have visibility into what they’re doing, govern their behavior, give them constraints, approve limits and access limitations,” Sullivan said. “It’s all of the same things that you would give to your end users.”

Sullivan said the addition of agentic workflows should help NetSuite customers further accelerate closing cycles. “We’re seeing that four-day close is quite a common timeframe,” he said. “With autonomous close, we believe we can increase confidence in the numbers.”

NetSuite’s AI models are drawn from Oracle Cloud Infrastructure partners including Cohere Inc. “Other large language models that are also part of the OCI stack will be talked about next week,” he said.

Partner goodies

Finally, NetSuite announced updates to the SuiteCloud Developer Network partner program aimed at helping partners build and deliver AI-powered applications more quickly and securely.

The centerpiece is the new SuiteApp.AI Marketplace, a dedicated channel for showcasing AI-enabled SuiteApps and planned to launch within 12 months. NetSuite also introduced new AI-specific SuiteApp badges that verify compliance with privacy, security, performance and design standards.

For example, the “AI Elite” badge is designated for applications that run entirely on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Generative AI services, while the “AI” badge applies to those leveraging SuiteCloud application programming interfaces or third-party LLMs.

Partners will also gain access to expanded AI development resources, including tools for integrating external models through OCI, with data governance and security controls built in.

NetSuite said several partners are already piloting AI applications. Avalara Inc. is embedding its tax compliance agent into NetSuite, while Contivio.com Corp. has launched an AI-powered interaction layer. Legion Intelligence Inc. has built finance-focused agents and Cauzzy Inc. is developing workflow automation bots.

Photo: NetSuite