Roku aims to go global with Netsuite OneWorld

Business agility, especially when dealing with a fast-moving retail business, is a vital attribute for any business these days. Achieving it, however, does mean that the individual elements of the business must be able to collaborate with each other both reliably and fast, which means that the closer they are together, logically, the better the performance will. A mixed bag of different applications may work, but it is unlikely. An integrated suite of tools is likely to be a better bet.

This is what Roku, US-based maker of the one of the popular streaming platforms for delivering video, music and games to consumer TVs found with its collection of QuickBooks, Smart Turn and numerous Excel spreadsheets that were used to run the business. It has now taken the plunge and dispensed with these tools.

The replacement is the OneWorld SaaS service from Netsuite, which provides Roku with a unified cloud business management system that allows it to now focus on product innovation, scale into new markets, and challenge larger rivals in the fast-growing market for on-demand entertainment.

It provides the company with end-to-end business operations including revenue recognition, financials, customer relationship management (CRM), inventory management and order management capabilities. In addition, OneWorld gives Roku the ability to manage items and pricing, as well as APIs to support the company’s transactions from multiple channels.

It has already saved Roku countless hours in manual work previously required to process orders and provide speedy delivery. It has also reduced the company’s monthly financial close time by 500 percent, while gaining the financial visibility and control that was not attainable with QuickBooks.

“NetSuite has allowed us to focus on delivering products and services instead of worrying about the IT side of things,” said Neil Collins, NetSuite Business Systems Analyst, Administrator and Project Manager at Roku. “With NetSuite, we’re able to scale the business very quickly and our visibility is tremendously improved. We now have strong financial controls and a solid infrastructure with great agility to respond rapidly to changing market conditions.”

The company states that it has gained speed and cost-efficiencies across core financials, inventory management, order management, distribution and procurement processes that are critical to bottom-line business success. Roku has been able to streamline transactions with more than 100 retailers, including Costco, Walmart, Target, Amazon and Best Buy, supported by an electronic data interchange (EDI) solution from NetSuite SuiteCloud Developer Partner, SPS Commerce.

Multi-location inventory management helps Roku optimise stock levels and accelerate distribution from a northern California warehouse and a third-party logistics provider, while having strong control over purchasing from dozens of suppliers and contract manufacturers.

Real-time visibility into key customer, sales, inventory and other data then make it able to pinpoint growth opportunities, identify areas for improvement and make better business decisions. Roku also plans to use the capabilities of OneWorld to expand beyond the U.S. market into Canada and the United Kingdom.

It has also been instrumental in the launch of the Roku TV, a smart TV designed to give consumers a simple entertainment experience in a complex connected world, which was announced at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The business agility that Roku has gained with NetSuite provides an important edge in delivering the Roku TV and competing with larger rivals in the smart TV market such as Samsung, LG, Sony and Google.