Episode 140: Jackie Joelson of Oracle NetSuite on
Data and Technology as Growth Levers in Private Equity

Episode Transcript   

Shiv

All right, Jackie, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Jackie Joelson

Good. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Shiv

Yeah, excited to have you on. So why don't we start with your background and your role at Oracle NetSuite and then let's take it from there.

Jackie Joelson

Yeah, absolutely. So won't go too far back to birth, but I'll start a little bit after that. So my background is in hospitality and then I made the move over to selling software for mergers and acquisitions. Naturally that's the that's the progression from housekeeping to selling MA software. I then parlayed my experience working with investment banks and private equity firms at that former employer over to NetSuite, which I've been at NetSuite for eight and a half years. I joined as an individual contributor on our private equity team, moved into a manager role and then moved into a role leading the team a little over three years ago, that I sit here in Chicago, and all that we do is that we work on supporting our private equity community. we work with about 750 firms within North America around NetSuite strategy.

Shiv 

I'd been the CMO of a business that exited to private equity. And through that I learned how much capital was being deployed in the private equity markets against these B2B companies or all these other sectors. and I saw marketing as one of those levers that could have been pulled. That they weren't pulling as much. And so the primary way we've gone to market is partnering with those private equity groups because they have this mandate to lead transformation initiatives inside these companies. And the flow of capital kind of almost makes it a forcing function to go after those value creation levers, whereas like 25 years ago, that didn't exist. So that forcing function really changes the opportunity. And as I've learned about that, it's really surprised me that more firms and more companies don't have this practice. Like in our world, like there are large consulting firms like McKinsey and Bain and those kinds of types of folks that do have a PE practice, but we don't really see competition in the marketing space as much because people haven't figured out what private equity really cares about. And so I'm curious, like for you guys as Oracle NetSuite, when you're coming in, you're almost like this technology partner. So what are the value creation vectors or angles that you're taking with the GPs or the operating partners is a way to help them understand like, hey, here's how we can help you create more enterprise value for your companies and how we can be a partner for you in these transformations.

Jackie Joelson

Yeah, I think it's always I look at it from like we're not we don't wanna be overly prescriptive and we wanna be really dynamic in how we work with our PE firms because how they work with their portfolio companies is really gonna differ. And each of their portfolio companies could have a different dynamic in terms of the cap table. Do they is it a traditional buyout? Do they own majority of the this business? Or is this more of a growth equity play. That plays into the dynamic as well, too. So when we're we're working with PE firms, we're always asking them what is their dynamics with their portfolio companies, because we really take the lead from them first and foremost. But traditionally, it's thinking about okay, what is what is the growth? What are you expecting to do from a growth capacity with this business? And it's it's pretty simple because there's kind of couple playbooks that you can run in terms of growth, whether it's thinking through okay, this is gonna the obviously carve outs can be one component. Is this gonna be an is this going to be really high growth through MA? are we gonna really think about new international markets? are we really trying to create just like automation and efficiency that was never in the business and the business is running on 30 year old systems and paper. Or is this other areas like for a just kind of like a functional recap from a management perspective? So we always try to understand like what are you doing, what is the what is the growth strategy for the business? And then from there, the technology will kind of come through with how we can support them. And I think that's one thing that my team does a really good job of is we try to meet the company where they're at. We know that. Any type of large digital transformation project is gonna have some is gonna have go through extensive change management. The the business has probably gone through some other big transformations from maybe getting new management in seat to maybe have already gone through some acquisitions and you you're dealing with some of the pain from that. And then really understanding what is gonna kind of accelerate the business from there. So

Jackie Joelson

If it is gonna be, we're gonna do a massive like HVAC roll-up, okay. Well, are we thinking about how have you thought about your front-end field services application? Is that gonna be NetSuite? Is that gonna be like we we did what we did a great case study with ServiceTitan and with Creative Multicare? Like they they're using them for the front end. What is that gonna look like? And then how are we gonna put the right technology on the back end from a finance perspective in that case? Versus there's other cases where it's like Therabody, they grew tremendously and they run basically their entire system through NetSuite. So we really try to figure out what's core to the business, what's gonna what's the growth strategy, and then what makes sense to sit where, all while dealing with human capital elements, which are like probably even more important where you're dealing with people that either have to that are stepping into being a CFO maybe for the first time or the replacing people. And so we're we're always trying to work with the PE firms to figure out where risk factors as well as they're rolling out their, their, their playbook.

Shiv

Yeah, that that's really insightful. I guess it's a very bespoke approach. Can you help me understand or and even for the audience, like what are some of those big buckets in which Oracle NetSuite does play a role and where you guys are able to create enterprise value and like help us understand the technology side and you alluded to a couple of examples there, but maybe expand on that further.

Jackie Joelson

Yeah, absolutely. So one key area, and I think like we've seen it even in my time or even prior to my other role, I would think about just the function of buy and build as being so core to private equity. And I would say the the biggest piece of that is you never these companies are oftentimes in running on QuickBooks. That's a huge portion of the business that Is coming over to NetSuite. And so if you're doing an extensive roll up, whether we've done so many veterinarian clinic practices, now a lot in the commercial services space, you don't want to be the largest buyer of QuickBooks. Like when we get in there and it's like you've already bought 20, 20 clinics of some sort, you're now dealing with the pain points of not having consolidated financials. not being able to report effectively to the board. So we really try to start from day one in those roll ups where it's gonna be like an exact an aggressive platform play by putting in NetSuite from day one to do consolidations, do multi-entity reporting if there's an international piece. A lot of them are domestic if you think about like the the the I always I called it the optim the ology phase when ophthalmology, dermatology, radiology, when there was all those roll ups in that space. So they're traditionally domestic, but we're really trying to support the ability to ingest the data from QuickBooks, stand them up as a subsidiary on NetSuite, and then they can have reporting capabilities. And then if they are working with the front end, like I just mentioned a lot of like clinics, front end electronic medical record system. How is that going to play with NetSuite? How are you going to go? how's your order to cash going to flow through and things like that? Or if it is more of a commercial services business and you have a different field services application set on the front end, or if you're using NetSuite's field service, what is that going to look like? How are you going to maybe do project accounting if it's longer term projects in that case? Like maybe it's you're servicing an HVAC versus you're working at doing a big construction project and actually putting in the HVACs in the business. So we talk a lot about just kind of the ability to do easy integration as companies, as you buy companies at aggressive scale for MA, that are like-minded companies, really easy to do data extraction from QuickBooks into NetSuite, and then being able to report very effectively to the board on was this a successful. Acquisition? Did we make the right choice here? segmentation, location, all of those things. So that's like that, what I would say is like a very straight down the fairway as we think about like NetSuite and what we do from like a PE playbook. MA is really is is is very prevalent. as you think about some of our other use cases, like carve outs, those are really stressful situations for the business, for the PE firm, for everyone involved, because it's standing up all new technology in short order to adhere to certain TSAs. a lot of the time, because of our methodology, how we've gone to market with our implementation approach, we're able to stand up the systems very quickly. a lot of those companies are coming off of their parents' system, which is SAP or Workday. And we're also having to think through the the different considerations for this standalone business could be very different than what they were using at the parent. So a lot, a lot of things need to be thought about. Like we I just did two where the core business was actually a software company.

Shiv

Mm-hmm.

Jackie Joelson

But the parent literally was not at all in the software game. And so having to think through, okay, well, you're now going to be accelerating as a software business, thinking about billing, thinking about RevRec, thinking about your core customer base. And then also doing this at the same time that you have to stand up all other pieces of technology as it relates to every aspect from HRIS to your CRM, you're doing all that at once, really, really fast with a team that might be brand new. If you're lucky, you may have inherited a few folks. but we've done some really notable carve-outs like Dollar Shave Club, Bose, their carve-out as well too. many, many big complex carve outs are in tons of different countries and have a lot of complexity.

Shiv 

Yeah.

Jackie Joelson 

because of NetSuite's architecture and our strategy for deployment have been very successful.

Shiv

I guess the question that comes to mind as you're describing all of that is a lot of these projects are massive infrastructure projects. And for a company to take this on or a firm to take this on, there's almost like this you have to acknowledge that, hey, we're gonna invest three months or six months to kind of get through this. And some of that work is involved in like changing systems or moving data over, and there's a lot of complexity with that versus the actual work that drives value creation. So I'm just curious like how you guys position Oracle NetSuite in that situation or how you're actually ensuring that this work is actually driving enterprise value for these businesses so that the infrastructure work, you're not just stuck there, if you will, because a lot of we've seen a lot of companies struggle with that.

Jackie Joelson

Yeah, you obviously wanna get ROI out of putting in a system and going through this transformation. I think and I think the ROI varies by value creation strategy. So I think as you think about the ROI for a for someone that's doing aggressive growth through MA is gonna be very different than the ROI for putting an ERP for an exact an aggressive platform play by putting in for autumn just for automation and efficiencies and process where you may have just a ton of like legacy tech debt tech excuse me tech debt is gonna vary. So like for for an for high growth through MA, the the ROI and how you can kind of like I say coach people to be like it's okay to go through an ERP implementation is around just the efficiencies gained through consolidations and not having to put more people into into a business, into a company on the back end where you don't you probably only need a couple of people on the accounting side versus as you grow, you don't want to say, okay, I have five people now in every acquisition, I'm gonna add a headcount. Like that's an easy thing to say because we've gained efficiencies through putting NetSuite in, through having these, Direct integrations with our other third party applications like ServiceTitan. We we don't need to add headcount. And that's something that is like an easy one to think about. But if you're thinking about, okay, hey, we've we're going, we have this business, we have a great business, but we just have a ton of tech debt, we have a ton of inefficient processes. That's where it's like, okay, but we're gonna we need to grow the business and maybe we're gonna add a bunch of salespeople. And that's like And so we're gonna but start pushing through more sales orders and more, and it just highlights those inefficiencies. So by putting in an ERP, you can start to say, Hey, we can probably reallocate and repurpose people into other roles than we've ever had, than we've ever been able to do before. And I think that that's something where it gets really exciting where you have to.

Jackie Joelson

I think we talked a little bit about the implementation process. You have to be very diligent and have to say to yourself, we're not going to take a 30-year-old system and put it inside of NetSuite. This is our time to think through what works, what doesn't work, and lean on NetSuite to tell you what good looks like. We have 44,000 customers. We put we we go to market by industry. We probably already have a customer that's very similar to yours. That is running or similar to you that's running at NetSuite, and we know what good looks like. We have pre-built KPIs, reports, metrics, dashboards for those businesses. So we try to kind of say, hey, we know that we can help g gain you a lot of operational efficiencies by removing legacy tech debt using NetSuite instead of using Excel. and then that's where the fun starts to happen is once you start using the system. you it becomes your system of record, your source of truth. And that word AI that we that we all want to talk about all the time, that's where the excitement happens, where the things that you can actually do transformations from a business perspective, you can now do that. You could not do that before when you're on a 30 year old system living also maybe in some instances of QuickBooks, Excel, are doing expense management in Excel as well or whatever it may be, you don't have a a true nucleus of data. But now being on NetSuite, that's that's what you always talk about. The best AI comes from the best data. And that's where by putting in an ERP, you're actually able to get that. So that's sometimes that's a little bit of the carrot now that we have versus a couple years ago is like, we know it's going to create automation efficiencies. We're gonna be able to get your days of sales orders outstanding, close your books faster. those types of metrics, but now we even have the bigger nugget, which is you're gonna be able to garner in insights that you've never had before because your data is gonna be in one in one space.

Shiv 

Yeah, I think what's interesting to hear you talk that is that it we see this in a lot of companies, even ourselves. Like a lot of companies' data lives in so many different systems, and there are manual spreadsheets to track everything. And a lot of systems even are disjointed from the financial metrics. We see this on the marketing side where people are unable to kind of help us see the data on, like, okay, we're spending X amount of dollars on marketing, and here's the financial impact of that in terms of revenue and profitability. And I think the same is true across the board and the complexity increases as you expand regions or have like several different products or roll-ups in a particular market. What about on the data side? Help me understand that because I would imagine that with the migrations and these transformations, there's all kinds of data that needs to be integrated. So talk about that as a potential value creation lever because I would imagine inside boards, like One of the main value props of doing something like this is to have this universal source of truth, if you will. But I I'm curious how you guys look at the data side.

Jackie Joelson 

Yeah, it's interesting. I know it's it's it's always a fun conversation. And I'm sure as with PE firms, like, what's your true cost your customer attribution cost? Because the data sets are all living in different places and you're having to and it's like we'll get back to you in four days when once we use Excel and reconcile our data sets. NetSuite's always been kind of We've always had this idea of the NetSuite platform, where we have tons of our partners that have built either on or integrations directly to NetSuite. So many of our customers, as we think through like where data's coming from all different sources. You it's if you think about like you could even just do like an order to cash process and data's coming from different places or technology data. what is that going to look like your tech stack? And so it's understanding, well, how can you have an integrated data set where the NetSuite's kind of at that nucleus and I'm putting my fist up and then everything kind of sits around it. So we've been very fortunate to have what we call suite development network where you we have direct APIs and integrations with many of the top software companies that our PE community is utilizing. And we've been very fortunate where then the data is then very easy to be extracted into NetSuite, where then you can start thinking about what do you do with that data? And I think that's where it becomes really exciting now with NetSuite. We now have something called the NetSuite AI Connector, where you can actually plug it into Claude or ChatGPT and start getting real insights. but then also building agentic workflows. So you've really opened up the span of that data and the way that NetSuite's architectured, it's really easy to pull that data. So think about okay, I'll give you a few examples. One example could be I'm building a board deck. Traditionally that would be pretty hard. You you're gonna go and you're gonna go to all these different sources to get this board information. Because NetSuite has the ability with our partner network and our partner ecosystem, which is so strong, and so many of our technology partners have that integration, you can actually build a prompt through our connector and build a board deck directly through data extraction with NetSuite, which is really, really powerful. But then if you want to think about okay, that's just kind of more on the data visualization side. If you want to think, how can I start thinking and opening the door for workflows that may normally not have existed. Now all of a sudden you're opening up all these different applications. So before maybe your NetSuite and your Gmail never would have been connected. But now you have the ability where you could run a collection a collections prompt and say, hey, give me give me who's been delinquent on collections in the past 30 days. Very easy NetSuite, you could pull that in a saved search. But with NetSuite with the connector with Claude and ChatGPT, really easy to pull. But the part that gets exciting is you can actually create a workflow from there and say, hey, now Claude, make me an email collections email and send it to every and send it to these customers that have been delinquent. And it can get sent from your Gmail. So you can now make a workflow. That opens up these data sets and the possibility of how you can connect in a way that you've never been able to do so before. But again, it all starts with the nucleus of NetSuite because NetSuite's so powerful and how it's structured. And then from there. And that's where we're starting to see real life examples, where we're starting to see PE firms really lean into working with us on AI. And I think AI is that lever as we talk about. There's the traditional levers with private equity we talked about at the beginning, whether you're doing carve-outs, whether it's MA, whether you're doing automation inefficiencies. There's there's those, or it's a financial lever, but AI is this new untapped lever that is new to PE in the past couple of years that's never been done before. And that's where we're starting to see these additional gains. Where we just had a company speak about.

Jackie Joelson

how they built out a workflow with this connector and it saved them three headcounts. So that's where it becomes really exciting, but it all starts with the core of NetSuite.

Shiv

Yeah, I I think this idea of and you touched on it earlier, is having the integrated systems and the data working off of each other, acting as an enabler for AI, I think that is a huge value proposition. And you mentioned it earlier as well that you didn't have that vector to have these conversations with investors, let's say a year ago, but now you actually can. Can you talk about that piece a little bit more, like in terms of how PE investors should be thinking about leveraging this data or what are some of the cases in which they can deploy AI with a system in place like this.

Jackie Joelson 

Yeah, I think it's interesting. So the there's obviously different functions of the C suite. So you kind of think about your function more on the CMO side. You're like, I'm gonna put in this widget, and if I can get five more leads from a CRO for from a C a head of sales or CMO, they're like, Great, let's go do it. Let's go put that AI in there. But obviously the finance function is really different in the capacity that your numbers have to be right. Like that's not like that's not a there's no if, ands, or buts. And so I think, and we're still so early in companies utilizing AI. Like it's still it we've grown so much, even think about where we were six, 12 months ago is just like in totality, like of where we've grown. So a lot of it is assessing the company's kind of the data first and foremost, because that's if you if your data's not clean, if it's not ready to take on this any type of AI, whether you like I said, whether it's any C-suite function, it that's like the first place that we're certainly speaking with PE firms to get their CFOs comfortable. From there, it's really the office of the the finance function It's a little bit different in terms of ROI. I think we talked about some of the automation and the efficiencies that can be gained just through natural ERP transformations. At when I was saying, hey, if they have a legacy system and they were on paper, automatically they're gonna start to see gains with putting in a system. And I think you have to go back to that mindset of efficiency first. when you're thinking about AI from the office of the CFO, where it's gonna be great for helping with the close and things like that. But we it's it's where as the business scales, that's where the continued automation efficiency from AI, that's how you need to think about it first and foremost. As AI continues to evolve, obviously ROI use cases will change. And deployment strategies will change, but you have to start thinking about it first and foremost from from creating automations, efficiencies, and in better just overall visualizations. And then once you've kind of started at that level, that's where you can expand and where you can start to think about agentic workflows and you can start to think about these other things. But the office of the CFO is very different than some other functions where We're not we're not saying, Hey, there's a call center and we're we're we're moving it all to AI. That's the thousands of people. What we're trying to do is whether using NetSuite from like an operational perspective or financial perspective, obviously visualizations first and foremost.

Shiv 

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Have you seen PE firms leverage all this data from let's say one platform and then also do it for other platforms and then almost create this benchmarking or internal benchmarking across their companies as they deploy some of these technology solutions to kind of figure out best practices or share between their companies? Because I know, especially from speaking with operating partners, that's just like an ongoing challenge where they're trying to always benchmark against the industry standard in their particular market or vertical for all of these companies.

Jackie Joelson 

Yeah, I don't know if there's like it's so obviously like you think about and I'll talk about SaaS because that's where we are. There's always like everyone can evaluate churn in 19 different ways. And you ask everyone to say what's what what is their definition of churn. And so when we're talking to PE firms that just invest in software companies, it's always fun to have that conversation about how they benchmark their their companies against each other. I think That it would be interesting to see if there's like an AI benchmarking. I don't think we're there yet in terms of who's using what. We're we're starting to see obviously who's adopting the technology that sits inside of NetSuite for companies that run NetSuite. And you can certainly kind of garner that. But I think I think we're too early to start saying here's a set of KPIs if you're across the companies. And if you're a generalist firm, it's gonna be really, really hard. To do that for a long time just because adoption within each industry is going to be so different. Like if you're an industrials business versus like a certain professional services company, it's just going to be very different about the AI use cases. I think there's some areas where you can say, hey, this high-level everyone on NetSuite, we should be using our AI connector, their use cases, their prompts around. just core financial should be similar. But then once you start thinking business wise, that's where it's gonna bifurcate. and then I would say I think ever naturally the PE community is is competitive with each other. So I think over time, once there's more established kind of business use cases in all totality, I think they'll they'll they'll be able to be some benchmarking or some, I think AI readiness is probably the easiest thing to benchmark because it's based on data. So if your data is sitting in 95 different places and your data's super dirty, that's probably the easiest thing for PE firms to kind of stack rank all of their portfolio companies. and maybe even a product usage of certain products and features. And that could be something that could be easier to stack rank. But then once we start getting into like specific use cases. I just think we're too early.

Shiv 

Yeah, it definitely feels a little bit early. on the on the operational side, I'm curious, like, especially as a technology partner, I'm interested in your vantage point on this. Is what do you see as like best in class operations? Like what do the market leaders, what are they doing as they're scaling these businesses or if they're going global or as they're building and buying and integrating these businesses, like what is world class really look like as on the technology front so that you can enable value creation and growth the way you'd want to.

Jackie Joelson

In NetSuite, just kidding. I had to say I had to say that. But I think a lot of it is also just like I would say it really it's not all it's not so much about the technology it's around the deployment. Like I think that that's something that we the operators know just as well as I know is like best in class is starting with not frankensteining solutions and leaning into

Shiv 

You can say that.

Jackie Joelson 

what the software can do for you. The software is software out there is so amazing and is we have so many softwares that are either pre-built for industry, like NetSuite goes to market very industry focused. So leaning into if you're a manufacturer, a distributor versus if you are a pure software business, leaning into the core practices that the businesses that these software companies do and not say, I think The biggest thing is saying not we're not saying that we're not this special kind of s snowflake. I think leaning into best in class offerings, I think is really, really important. I think that a lot of companies get in there and say, okay, well, we're gonna the technology is gonna solve our problems. It will only solve your problems if you lead with that what best in class for what they say good should look like. Like I've seen cases where companies will say, no, we want to basically use our old green screen process inside of NetSuite. And that's not going to lead to a scalability approach versus if you really lean into what the software is telling you, that's where you're going to ultimately see success. So it's not, hey, if you have Salesforce, Ramp, NetSuite, all of a sudden you're going to get an extra multiple or you're going to. it it it's you have to still deploy the technology appropriately. And I think AI is doing amazing things on implementation fronts as well too, where never before we're able to get information faster, better, quicker. but also, but you have to still allow for the technology to be a part of that process.

Shiv

Yeah, I think I think that's a really big point, which is that there as as you grow, there has to be an ongoing set of projects related to transformations from 10 to 50, 50 to 100, 100 to 500, right? And sometimes it's so easy to say, like, well, how we have things set up can actually help us scale. But as you layer on more acquisitions or you exp you expand geographically, there's all kinds of complexities related to compliance and legal and marketing and sales and people that are really hard to scale without doing some of the technological transformations. And I think that sometimes gets lost in the shuffle, especially when we talk about value creation, even on this podcast, we focus a lot on the the plays that actually drive more revenue. And I think that the technology side is is just as important. Jackie, we're coming up on time here, but just in the interest of the audience, if they want to learn more about Oracle NetSuite or get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Jackie Joelson 

I think they can email me. Love to hear from anyone that's interested. Also drop me a line on LinkedIn. my email is Jackie.Joelson at Oracle, or you can drop me a line on LinkedIn and find me there. we're always looking for ways that we can help support and basically help your businesses scale through technology solutions. So that's where they can find me. I this was so fantastic. I loved kind of being able to share our journey with you from the evolution of really kind of the increase in the value creation practice to where we are today is AI is now kind of that new lever that we we never expected and really helping companies grow and scale.

Shiv

Totally. And I appreciate you coming on and sharing all your insights, especially because we mostly interview operating partners and GPs. I really enjoyed your perspective as a technology partner in the ecosystem and how you're helping private equity firms navigate some of these challenges. So Jackie, appreciate you coming on and sharing your wisdom.

Jackie Joelson

Thank you. Thank you so much. Have a great rest of the day.

Shiv

You too.