Software firm Netsuite to invest more in PHL

MANILA, Dec 02 (PNA) — Netsuite Inc. plans to infuse substantial investments to expand its Philippine operations, in a bid to become the largest software company in the country next year.

The firm also intends to grow their workforce from 500 to 700 at the Makati City office, its largest location outside the United States.

“Just last year, we doubled a lot of our businesses in the Philippines in terms of number of customers and revenues that we generated. The customers range from small companies to largest businesses moving to cloud computing. So we’re very excited about the business side of our operations here,” said Netsuite president and chief executive officer Zach Nelson.

Nelson said the company targets to generate $ 300 million in revenues in 2012 from this year’s estimated $ 235 million from its offices located worldwide.

“I think the Philippines is our third or fourth largest country outside the US in terms of business. Testament to that is, we have such large business presence in Manila,” he said in an interview.

Netsuite opened its office in the country in 2007. Philippine operations include software architecture and integration, finance and back office support, professional services and client management and technical support.

Nelson attributed the firm’s success in business here mainly to the availability of high quality pool of talent, the topnotch education system in the Philippines that places a high emphasis on accounting and CPA professions and a favorable business environment.

“The talent base really stands in every functional area we required. It has been incredible success. We would not be as successful without the Manila office,” he said.

He added: “We want to invest in one location, not locations all over Asia.”

Likewise, Nelson said more companies, both the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and large enterprises, are utilizing cloud computing to reduce cost and raise productivity.

“The cloud will able you to sell anywhere in the world. So I think the big opportunity for all companies is how you leverage the cloud to reach customers globally not just regionally,” he said.

Nelson believed that government offices also need to move to cloud computing in order to better serve their constituents.

Last year, Netsuite launched OneWorld PH for Philippine local and global business environment. It was designed for creditable withholding tax, value-added tax (VAT) reporting and Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) requirements.

The company also designed an educational program meant to bring cloud-based business management solutions to university classrooms worldwide.

Three of 16 schools worldwide that adopted Netsuite as a key component of their accounting degree curricula are located in the Philippines. These are the Mapua Institute of Technology, De La Salle University and University of San Carlos. (PNA)
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