NetSuite rolls out AI suite tools in Australia & NZ

NetSuite has outlined its Autonomous Suite strategy and new artificial intelligence features for its ERP platform, with some tools now rolling out to customers in Australia and New Zealand.

The announcements focus on deeper AI use across finance and operations, including a library of more than 45 prebuilt AI skills, specialised industry agents, and new workflow tools in NetSuite Next, its AI-led user interface.

Autonomous Suite is designed to let users describe tasks in natural language and receive recommendations, analysis and actions within existing approval and permission settings. The approach relies on NetSuite's existing data model and links between business objects across the platform.

During keynote demonstrations, NetSuite showed AI being used for financial analysis, workforce onboarding, inventory management and project delivery. It also demonstrated a finance dashboard generated through Claude, ChatGPT and NetSuite Next, with each drawing on the same NetSuite data.

AI tools

A central part of the update is SuiteSkills, a library of prebuilt AI functions spanning finance, cash flow, billing, inventory, projects, customer operations and workforce management. Examples included tools to analyse financial variances, identify overdue invoices, detect revenue leakage and suggest project staffing decisions.

NetSuite also introduced Industry SuiteAgents for sectors including software, products, services, healthcare, construction and non-profit organisations. Demonstrations included agents that identified projects needing intervention, reviewed margin performance and generated contract information from project documents.

More than 13,000 customers are using NetSuite's AI Connector platform. The company also reported more than 159 million Model Context Protocol calls to date, including a peak of 8,207 customers and 2.7 million calls in a single day.

User interface

Another focus was NetSuite Next, which launched earlier in North America and has started rolling out in Australia and New Zealand. The updated interface includes AI Portlets, allowing users to ask questions in plain language and receive dashboards, charts or analysis based on their role and business data.

NetSuite also highlighted AI Workspaces, which group people, AI agents, information and approvals around a business process. In one demonstration, a request about opening a new site produced an onboarding plan, coordinated several AI agents and flagged issues for review. In another, an inventory workspace recommended stock transfers and identified an opportunity to release about US$130,000 in working capital.

Ask Oracle, the company's AI assistant, has also been expanded with forecasting tools. New Model Context Protocol functions will allow the assistant to access information and take follow-up actions across connected business systems.

Implementation and analytics

Beyond the user-facing tools, NetSuite outlined changes to implementation and analytics. SuiteExpress is an AI-assisted implementation framework that combines customer information with NetSuite product and implementation knowledge for requirements gathering, configuration, testing and deployment.

The initial version of SuiteExpress is limited to software customers in the United States and Canada. NetSuite has not set out a timeline for availability in Australia and New Zealand.

NetSuite Data Intelligence, which succeeds NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, also received updates. New features include broader data transformation, conversion of saved searches into datasets, and a conversational data agent that investigates changes in the business and explains the findings.

For construction companies, NetSuite introduced an industry-specific offering covering import automation, payment application processing, change order management, progress billing and work-in-progress accounting.

Regional impact

The announcements are likely to be watched closely by finance and operations leaders in Australia and New Zealand as ERP suppliers build more AI functions into core systems. For customers in the region, the immediate question will be which tools are ready for use now and which remain part of a longer rollout.

Annexa, a NetSuite partner in Australia and New Zealand, said the latest releases suggest NetSuite's AI plans are moving from roadmap to practical use inside business processes. It argued that the next step for customers is to identify a process with heavy manual work or bottlenecks and test the new tools in a controlled way.

Matthew Owens, Director, Annexa, said the shift could make deep industry expertise even more valuable for customers and partners in the region.

"Deep industry expertise becomes even more valuable. It's about asking the right questions, understanding the nuances of an industry and helping customers rethink how their businesses operate," Owens said.