NetSuite – Next-gen Influencer Relations

SuiteWorld was NetSuite’s first major user conference in its 12 years of existence. Kicking it off, CEO Zach Nelson joked he was so scarred by his experience with Oracle (his previous employer) events that he had avoided thinking for this long about a major one for NetSuite.

I thought they did a very nice job and you have probably read the reporting from many of us. And I mean MANY of us.

What was striking was the media room had industry analysts, US media, bloggers, advisers right next to each other. OK, so did Workday last year in a session that I thought broke traditional boundaries of compartmentalized influencer relations.

In addition, NetSuite had Wall Street analysts and international media (I spoke to several from the Philippines and the UK) in the room. And Zach handled questions from all of them openly and with humor (he called on other panelists but he handled the bulk of the questions) knowing well he was being live-tweeted.

As I wrote after the Workday session “many of us have competitive business models, others honestly cannot stand each other” but the exchange is so much richer when you have all the varied perspectives.

So kudos to NetSuite for breaking the walls even further. The world certainly has moved on in the last 12 years though many vendors do not seem to accept it has.