Oracle NetSuite has announced a slew of new AI connectors to help customers integrate AI tools within their NetSuite environments more easily.

The ERP giant is expanding NetSuite AI Connector Service, its protocol-driven AI integration platform that provides customers with support connecting their own AI assistants to NetSuite via the model context protocol (MCP).

Unveiled at its regional SuiteConnect London event, NetSuite MCP Apps will allow users to access NetSuite data through their chosen AI assistant, with familiar user interfaces including filters, forms, and selectors.

In a demo, a user was shown asking Anthropic’s Claude to pull up data on all accounts that are overdue by 30 days or more and turn this data into a comprehensive dashboard.

During the process, the user can see the NetSuite tools that Claude is calling, as well as the code being generated for the dashboard.

NetSuite noted that MCP Apps will also work with AI services including Gemini and ChatGPT, as well as a range of other compliant AI assistants.

“Nothing exemplifies agility more than the ability to connect the AI tool you choose directly to NetSuite,” said Evan Goldberg, founder and EVP at Oracle NetSuite, in the event’s opening keynote.

“This solution allows leading AI assistants to interact directly with your NetSuite environment in a secure and governed way. It's powered by the model context protocol or MCP, which creates a structure bridge between AI models and enterprise applications, and the same capability works across multiple AI assistants so you're not locked into a single model or vendor.”

The circular economy non-profit, EAL Green, which repurposes corporate excess inventory and uses the returns for college scholarships, is using the AI Connector to log inventory through multimodal input.

EAL Green workers can upload images to Claude, which identifies the photographed product, logs it in NetSuite, and updates the inventory.

NetSuite touts AI Connector Service Companion

Another new feature is the NetSuite AI Connector Service Companion, a package of instructions and context that helps users deploy AI without prompt engineering experience and ensures connected large language models (LLMs) understand NetSuite and finance workflows.

This includes NetSuite AI Connector Service Companion Skills, which equip connected AI models with instructions and context specific to NetSuite, as well as Prompt Library, a collection of over 100 prompt templates for easily accessing financial data.

Using the new MCP Apps, users can access the Prompt Library through a graphical interface rather than text prompts. For example, a business user can ask Claude to create a new sales order, and be shown a NetSuite graphical interface directly within the Claude client.

Additionally, users can now apply pre-configured MCP rules to connected AI assistants, including existing NetSuite security profiles or ‘roles’ such as CFO, Accounts Receivable Analyst, or Treasury Analyst.

“This Companion helps deliver a world-class AI experience, and helps these assistant

“With the companion, teams can use AI more reliably and consistently across finance operations,” said Goldberg, adding that the Prompt Library sits at the very core of the service.

In another demo, focused on NetSuite AI Connector Service for Analytics Warehouse, a user was shown asking Claude to discover trends in their accounts receivable data within NetSuite. They could then ask Claude to help them generate a dashboard within the Analytics Warehouse.

“So with this AI connected service for Analytics Warehouse, you can scale your analytics use cases across more teams, you can bring in

NetSuite AI Connector Service Companion and the NetSuite AI Connector Service for NetSuite Analytics Warehouse are currently available in English and the firm is targeting further languages in a later release.

MCP Apps are planned for the next release of MCP Standard Tools SuiteApp.

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There can't be many 40-year-old programs still in widespread use, but Microsoft Excel is one of them. Nearly nine-in-ten companies, indeed, use it to run their financial processes.

According to new research, it's not the old stagers that are the biggest fans of the spreadsheet package – it's Gen Z and Millennial workers.

Analysis from Datarails found 40% of finance professionals across the US and UK prefer the spreadsheet software to other options, even ranking it higher than ERP systems at 26% for financial planning.

Accountants were particularly keen, with 57% of respondents citing Excel as their go-to platform.

Enthusiasm for the software varies across generations, however. More than half (54%) of 22-32-year-olds in the CFO’s office said they love Excel, yet that fell to just 39% for both 33-50-year-olds and those older than 51.

"That love comes from experience,” Datarails noted. “83% of younger users spend more than five hours each day in the spreadsheet, falling to only around 70% for older cohorts.”

"In fact, more than one in four (27%) of 22-32-year-olds spend more than seven hours a day in Excel. It essentially occupies their entire workday."

Indeed, 78% of younger pros said they would either decline a job that banned Excel or accept it only grudgingly.

Excel’s importance will live on

Looking ahead, 84% believe Excel will stay just as important or become more important over the next decade, with only 15% predicting a decline.

Among Gen Z and Millennials, however, this figure rises, with 89% of respondents touting the platform’s continued popularity and importance.

"When we asked finance professionals to describe their relationship with Excel, 82% reported high or moderate emotional attachment,” Datarails said.

“But here’s where it gets interesting: 43% describe the relationship as 'love/hate', calling it essential and reliable yet also frustrating and manual," said Datarails.

Notably, only 12% said they outright hate Excel.

What makes Excel so popular?

According to Datarails, Excel has several key plus points. These include its flexibility in building exactly what finance professionals need, and the fact that it’s more or less a ‘universal language’ across finance teams.

There are downsides, however. More than one-quarter (28%) cited data consolidation as their biggest frustration, 23% said they struggle with data entry and updates, 22% pointed to version control and tracking changes, and 14% said they face collaboration challenges.

Elsewhere, Datarails found the biggest downside identified by finance professionals was error management. Almost every respondent noted they’d discovered a material Excel error in their team’s work before it was shared internally.

With regard to improvements, finance professionals said they would like more automated data consolidation while maintaining Excel’s existing interface. Similarly, respondents said they want more version control and collaboration – without losing spreadsheet flexibility.

Naturally, a significant number of respondents said they’d like to see better error protection and prevention features.

Excel is evolving

As with most of Microsoft’s core software products, Excel is evolving amidst an influx of generative and agentic AI features.

Users can now generate formulas using Copilot, for example, automating tasks to avoid filling out large numbers of cells and fiddling around with formulas.

Yet this transformation of the platform has prompted some criticism in recent months, largely due to accuracy concerns. As ITPro reported in September this year, Microsoft itself urged caution when using new AI features.

Advice on the company’s support page warned users against relying on the software’s AI capabilities for financial reporting, legal documents, or other “high-stakes” scenarios.

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After running SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) for more than 13 years, marketing company Vistaprint found limitations with its legacy system. The firm wanted to improve access to data and analytics, enhance the user experience, increase agility, and reduce infrastructure costs. So it embarked on a transition to S/4HANA across key business functions including finance, supply chain, sales, and analytics.

"We had challenges with just data volume management in ECC with lower average order value and high order count. The number of transactions is high,” says Mukul Agrawal, director of technology at Vistaprint.

“In ECC if I was going to run a report on any action just for one month, it would crap out. I would not be able to run the report, because the volume is so high."

Overcoming the challenges of legacy tech

Agrawal says the implementation project began in September 2019 with a scheduled go-live of April 2020. Within this seven-month timeframe, the team completed conversions and testing in sandbox, development, and QA environments.

Just as the go-live was approaching in March 2020, COVID-19 forced the entire team to work remotely. "We had a decision to make. Are we going to go live or are we going to pause this implementation?" says Agrawal. "We were ready. So, we met with our CIO and CFO we decided we’re going to go and implement the system completely."

On 25 April 2020, Vistaprint went live on S/4HANA with over 250 people working remotely across the globe. According to Agrawal, careful planning, testing, and practice enabled a smooth transition despite the fully remote cutover.

The implementation team faced some specific technical challenges during the migration, however. "There are specific conversions that happen on fixed assets when you're moving from ECC to S/4. Even though the GUI looks very similar between the two systems, the back end, the database structure, the capabilities are very different."

Proactively identifying and cleansing stale legacy data was critical to avoid issues during cutover. Agrawal also highlighted the importance of optimizing downtime during the transition. "We cannot be without our system for 24 or 40 hours. There was a lot of TLC given to that process. SAP told us it was going to take ten business days of downtime. We were able to reduce our downtime to about 21 hours."

What moving away from on-prem means

The implementation of S/4HANA has delivered major transformational benefits across Vistaprint's business operations and processes. One area where Vistaprint has seen dramatic improvements is in data access and reporting. 

With S/4HANA's embedded analytics and real-time data capabilities, month-end closing processes that previously took teams eight to ten hours to run can now be completed in just three minutes for some reports. This massive acceleration in reporting speed enables much faster financial closes each period. 

In addition, Vistaprint has been able to eliminate the reconciliation needs between its legacy ECC system and separate analytics systems previously required. Now all reporting and analytics run directly and natively from the single source of truth in S/4HANA.

On the user experience side, adopting SAP Fiori apps on mobile and desktop has enabled Vistaprint's employees and executives to interact with the SAP system more easily and efficiently across various tasks. For example, executives can quickly approve purchase requisitions, marketing spend requests, and other transactions directly through apps rather than relying on cumbersome offline processes. 

Vistaprint has also been able to leverage S/4HANA's automation to realize process efficiencies. Tasks that previously required three to four days per month of manual efforts from the finance team for regulatory reporting, tax filings, VAT reporting across geographies, and other filings can now be completed automatically.

Finally, moving to S/4HANA has enabled Vistaprint to retire legacy systems and reduce its infrastructure footprint by migrating to SAP's cloud. This cloud transition along with decommissioning of ancillary systems has reduced Vistaprint's annual infrastructure costs by over $250,000.

How to transition to the cloud without a hitch

For any organization considering S/4HANA migration, Agrawal recommends maximizing preparatory work in the ECC environment beforehand. "Anything that you can do in your pre-planning phases, any work that you can do on ECC to de-risk your actual implementation from ECC to S4 – you should sign up and do. Because that's much less work for you to do during the implementation.

“When you are running an implementation. You have a consulting team and implementation partner; you're paying for two systems at the same time, so you need to reduce that duration.”

He also advises investing in tools to automate and accelerate the process. Vistaprint uses solutions like ActiveControl from Basis Technologies for transport management and risk mitigation. "Definitely look at these ancillary tools. These are your de-risking tools, help your change management, help it speed time to market as well.”

He continues: “Even now we use it. It's not only used for upgrade, but we also use it on daily production releases, and these tools help us to do from a weekly or monthly to production release to a daily production release because these things are automated right now for us.”

Acumatica has announced the arrival of its new Services Partner Program, which expands the cloud ERP specialist’s customer support and engagement ecosystem.

The initiative has been designed to enable service partners to help Acumatica customers implement and apply their ERP software by providing expert configuration, development, and technical consultations and customisations.

The provider’s implementation specialists will work with VARs and ISVs, as well as be able to refer new leads back to authorised VARs through Acumatica’s partner referral program.

Services will have their capabilities authenticated and will be considered “industry authorised” after two successful implementations of an Acumatica Cloud ERP industry edition.

Announcing the move, Acumatica's vice president of partner strategy and programs CJ Boguszewski said industry-authorised partners will “play a vital role in supporting the rapid growth of Acumatica’s customer base”.

“This program evolution allows customers to focus on business benefits and access a broader range of partners that deliver specialised, high-quality services in their areas of expertise,” he said.

Founded in 2008, Acumatica develops and specialises in cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for SMBs. Headquartered in Kirkland, Washington, the provider has been driving its global presence over the last couple of years.

Back in July 2021, the firm bolstered its presence in the UK & Ireland, opening a new London office to lead its regional drive to bring new customers to the ERP platform. In 2020, the company also achieved first in growth status in IDC’s Worldwide ERP Software Market Shares Report.

Now, with its new Services Partner Program, Acumatica is expanding its customer support and engagement ecosystem to help drive uptake of ERP software.

“By creating the Services Partner Program, Acumatica again demonstrates its commitment to unlocking better, faster customer time to value," Boguszewski added.

Vijay Ural, president of Tayana Solutions, an industry-authorised Acumatica Service Partner, praised the customer acquisition and management of Acumatica’s VARs, as well as the new partner initiative.

"As an industry-authorised Acumatica Services Partner, Tayana Solutions has the credentials to provide consulting services to all Acumatica customers," he said. "The Services Partner Program allows us to avoid channel conflict and work in concert with Acumatica VARs to deliver timely, complementary value to the ecosystem."