This is very much about using the latest technology and the latest AI solutions embedded across this platform to drive more automation, to absolutely supercharge your automation. So it’s a big change from where we are today. It’s not that we’re not doing that in the NetSuite addition that everyone runs on, but this is a huge upgrade for our customers.

– Scott Wiltshire, VP & GM of Oracle NetSuite ANZ.

Today I’m speaking with Scott Wiltshire, VP & GM of Oracle NetSuite ANZ. Scott unpacks key SuiteWorld 2025 announcements, highlighting AI-driven tools, productivity and automation boosts, and why NetSuite is a game-changer for growing businesses.

In this episode, we talk about . . .

• Event recap: SuiteWorld 2025 highlights relevant to ANZ
• Key tools: AI Connect Services, Prompt Studio, Autonomous Close, Subscription Metrics
• NetSuite Next: Major platform upgrade promising zero-day close
• Emphasis on AI for automation, reporting, and decision support
• Discussion on value of attending SuiteWorld for ANZ professionals
• Growing importance of NetSuite’s partner ecosystem
• Comparison between “automated” vs “autonomous” workflows
• Advice on bridging the knowledge gap with dedicated support
• NetSuite as a scalable “single source of truth” for growth-focused businesses

🧰 Apps & Tools Mentioned

NetSuite, AI Connect Services, ChatGPT, Prompt Studio, Subscription Metrics SuiteApp, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, Safe Search, and Advanced Customer Support.

⏱️ Timelines

00:00 – Welcome & Introduction: Heather sets the stage for the SuiteWorld 2025 recap
01:15 – NetSuite AI Connect Services: Plug in your AI assistant for real-time action
02:50 – Prompt Studio Explained: Build & deploy GenAI prompts in workflows
04:35 – Subscription Metrics SuiteApp: Real-time visibility into recurring revenue
06:10 – Interview with Scott Wiltshire Begins: First impressions from Las Vegas
08:05 – The AI Buzz at SuiteWorld: Surge in demand for AI-powered accounting
10:00 – Why ANZ Pros Should Attend: Learning, networking, and discovering tools
12:00 – NetSuite as a Growth Platform: From MYOB/Xero to scalable ERP
13:45 – NetSuite Next Preview: Major AI-powered platform upgrade incoming
15:30 – Autonomous Close Feature: Moving towards zero-day book closing
17:20 – Natural Language Reporting: Talk to NetSuite using plain English
19:00 – Prompt Studio in Practice: Real examples from product-based businesses
21:00 – Most Underused New Feature: AI model integration & free querying tools
22:40 – NetSuite’s Partner Ecosystem: Extending NetSuite through collaboration

Scroll down for a full transcript (This transcript has been generated and transcribed by AI)

Today, we welcome back Scott Wiltshire, Vice President and General Manager of Oracle NetSuite in Australia and New Zealand. Scott spent over 25 years working in technology, with a strong focus on enterprise and mid-market business applications. 

Over that time, he’s led a high-performing sales team, worked with businesses of all sizes, and helped shape how organisations use cloud solutions to grow and scale. At NetSuite, Scott is passionate about empowering accountants, bookkeepers and their clients with greater visibility, automation and smarter decision-making. 

Scott, how’s your time been in Las Vegas so far?

Scott Wiltshire  

Thank you for having me again on your podcast, Heather. It’s been amazing. It’s that great combination of completely exhausting and completely energising, all in one. I think, yeah, for those of you have been on these sorts of events, you know what I’m talking about.

Heather Smith  

Yeah, absolutely. It kind of breaks you down and exposes you to everything, doesn’t it?

Scott Wiltshire  

It does. A bit of breaking down, definitely. Trying to work, you know, at short notice on the other side of the world. Then, you know, the amount we’re drinking from the fire hydrant with, you know, all the announcements and the amount of work we’re doing in a time.

It’s such an exciting time for us, for our business, to make all these announcements and host all our customers, and yeah, trying to do all of that in the space of a few days is great. 

Heather Smith  

Sensational.

Scott Wiltshire  

Actually, it’s really good.

Heather Smith  

You’ve attended a fair few SuiteWorlds over the years. 

What’s the vibe that you’re getting from the conversations, from partners, from accountants and bookkeepers at SuiteWorld ’25?

Scott Wiltshire  

Look, I have been lucky enough to come over yearly, almost. I think we didn’t have one in Covid, and that’s about the only one I’ve missed that sort of time. The vibe I’m getting is very, what’s the word? Very…

Heather Smith  

No Limits?

Scott Wiltshire  

Yeah, no limits. But, you know, we’re solving business challenges on a daily basis. But obviously, with AI and all the announcements there, there’s this huge thirst over the scene. All of the people pour out of that AI session for banking and reconciliation. It was like swimming against the tide to make our way up to this room. 

There’s just a huge demand, a huge thirst or appetite for how we’re using AI to power, supercharge, you know, the next phase of productivity. Obviously, that’s been a lot of our announcements this week. 

Heather Smith  

Yeah, absolutely has been. 

For people listening back home in Australia and New Zealand, why should they carve out time and budget to attend SuiteWorld? So, accountants and CFOs, why should they carve out that time?

Scott Wiltshire  

Look, it is mostly a customer event but it’s not exclusively a customer event. So predominantly our customers attend here because they have made an investment in NetSuite. NetSuite is this core system of record. It’s a single source of truth. It’s used across their business to provide them insights and visibility and control for their business. 

They have a lot invested already. Now, particularly at the moment with AI (but this has always been the case), it’s ‘How can I get more value out of that investment that I’ve already made’? Well, it’s a fantastic place to come and learn about all the possibilities. 

Sometimes you don’t know the right question to ask, because you’re not sure. You know, there can be a scenario where you’ve got a challenge in your business, and you just didn’t know that NetSuite, or a business inside our ecosystem solves that challenge. So you never ask. 

We say, come along. You know, you learn so much. You go home to a business with tips and tricks. There’s learning and education on site. So not only do you get practical use of how to use NetSuite better, you can take back a lot of that knowledge and bring it to drive productivity in your business.

But then you learn about all the solutions in our ecosystem and all the latest announcements from NetSuite, and those are really about building on what we’re already doing for you, which is providing insights, visibility, control, productivity, so your business can compete in a marketplace that is absolutely being disrupted by AI at the moment. 

AI in particular is a force multiplier, but it’s a leveller as well. So small, medium-sized enterprises through NetSuite are getting the power of these big, big enterprise-grade systems. Particularly, because we’re part of the Oracle family, and NetSuite run on OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) services. It’s got AI services embedded in there at the database level, the application level. We’re bringing all these AI solutions and embedding them in the system. That’s going to help you do more with less, and it’s going to help you compete with the big players in your industry, in your market.

Yeah, absolutely. 

Heather Smith  

I think for Australians coming over here, Australian New Zealanders coming over here, exposure to customers and exposure to people who look normal, the size of the businesses that they’re actually running off it, and it really exposes you to the ‘No Limits’. We can go so much bigger than we currently have been.

Scott Wiltshire  

Absolutely I mean, we cater to businesses outgrowing accounting. If you think about small accounting solutions in our marketplace, MYOB and Xero. Once you’ve got a few of those running, or you’re looking to grow rapidly, and you’re thinking, This isn’t going to help me, or it’s not going to enable that growth, or it’s going to be a hindrance, because I’m currently pulling together, I’m using manual data, spreadsheets to pull together and consolidate these different systems. Sometimes when I do that, I don’t get the same answer twice.

It can be a real challenge. So we cater to that. That’s why people decide to look at an ERP solution. They want that single source of truth. NetSuite allows them this platform to growth. We can start you very small as a very small business, and we can be there for some of, you know, we’ve got fortune 500 companies. We have a very large portion of the IPOs, particularly in the tech sector, that go public every year. A vast majority of them do that running NetSuite. 

It’s not uncommon that our customers say, you know, NetSuite is the last ERP I’ll ever need. You know, we do two major releases, a year of huge updates, and we’re doing a lot more of the AI updates in between now. And so the system gets newer and newer as you grow.

Heather Smith  

Gets newer and newer. 

Scott Wiltshire  

Instead of older, right? 

Heather Smith  

Fresher and fresher. Yes, absolutely. 

What are the product announcements that Australian and New Zealanders need to know that are coming out in the next few months that are going to impact them positively?

Scott Wiltshire  

Yeah. Well, look, we’re announcing NetSuite Next, which is an absolutely game-changer for us. So NetSuite Next is a new you know, the biggest upgrade to NetSuite that we’ve ever released. It is coming down North America. It’s going to be inside 12 months. We’re looking to solidify the roadmap for Australia and New Zealand. So watch this space. 

Heather Smith  

Can’t you convince your team to test it in Australia first? 

Scott Wiltshire  

The pilot. That’s what I’ve been saying all year.

Heather Smith  

Yeah. We should be the pilot.

Scott Wiltshire  

Exactly. 

Heather Smith  

Try the simpler countries.

Scott Wiltshire  

Of course. 

This is very much about using the latest technology and the latest AI solutions embedded across this platform to drive more automation, to absolutely supercharge your automation. So it’s a big change from where we are today. It’s not that we’re not doing that in the NetSuite addition that everyone runs on, but this is a huge upgrade for our customers. 

We’re really excited about that announcement. My job here is to win the the investment, the focus, the attention and resources for our region. I can tell you, that’s what I’ve been very focused on this week, about how we can bring this to our customers, because it is so exciting. 

It is going to be massive productivity gain. So for example, there are people probably wondering, you know, what does this mean? Give me an example of what’s going on. Well, you know, one of the announcements within NetSuite Next is the Autonomous Close period. 

So it’s really about the system closing your books for you. You do a couple of checks, and we’re trying to get to a zero day close for their accounting periods, which is, you know, we just spoke to Dee from Kieser, who was before NetSuite running took her 25 days to close her books at the end of the period. Now, with NetSuite, it’s taking three days. So there’s already an 88% productivity gain there, a massive improvement. But with NetSuite Next, we’ll get that down to a zero day close. 

Heather Smith  

Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll highlight for listeners, there something you just said was that we’re actually moving from using the word automated to an autonomous flow.

Scott Wiltshire  

Yeah, in some cases, absolutely. That’s the case. 

You know, we want the system to take away all those mundane processes that need to happen. They’re very important, but they’re repetitive, and there’s a lot of checking and validation, and we want to look at exceptions. If it can be, if you say to the system, hey, look, this is something I want you to take care of, it’ll take care of it, and it’ll produce you those exceptions which you need someone to look at. Validate.

Heather Smith  

Yeah. Human in the loop.

Scott Wiltshire  

There’s always a human in the loop. 

Have you seen any improvements in reporting?

Scott Wiltshire  

Across the board. I mean, AI in combination with many of our products, whether it’s SuiteAnalytics Workbook Overview or NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, our normal Reporting, our Saved Search, AI is making this not only more productive through just the interaction it can understand natural language. You can speak to it. 

You don’t have to be an expert in database and tables and models. You don’t have to know the exact way the table header is spelt. You can say, give me my sales reports and compare them year on year. Show me some anomalies. You can have this natural language conversation. 

One, it’s doing that, but then. One, it’s providing you that easy- to-use, almost zero change management approach to adopting a new system and getting the most out of it, particularly in the reporting area. But then those reports will come up with interactive AI assistants and advisors saying, hey, actually, here’s some insights to that. This is where we see an opportunity or an issue. 

Then, because it understands the context of what records you’re looking at, it’ll give you intelligent actions to take. It’ll say, I’m just going to suggest you do X, Y, Z, would you like to?, and you can do that in the same screen that you’re already in. So it’s going to drive much more kind of intelligent decision making, much better insights into your business, much better understanding of your business, and then the productivity of getting on with it and making those changes or taking that action.

Heather Smith  

Thank you. 

So in the last 18 months, there’s been a number of solutions that come into the market that have said, we will offer you multi-entity consolidation, and you can stay on Xero, move to us, and it delays you needing to move to NetSuite. 

Recently, solutions for multi-entity consolidation have emerged, allowing users to stay on Xero and bypass NetSuite. Have you seen how that impacts the number of businesses transitioning to NetSuite? 

Scott Wiltshire  

In short, no. I mean, Xero has already has a great ecosystem of products that can extend the capabilities. But people keep coming to us for the same reason. They want a single source of truth. They don’t want to manage integrations. They don’t want to manage multiple systems that can cause disparate silos of information where you get this situation, two reports over two you know different days may produce a different result. 

They’re looking to come to NetSuite for today and for the future, and they know if they have growth ambitions or they’re struggling meeting the productivity requirements of tightening, you know, employment market or a more competitive landscape. They’re coming to us and saying, you know, now’s the time, because I’m just struggling, you know, doing month on month, doing these mundane processes that are, you know, can be error ridden. It invites manual error into the situation.

Even with automated solutions or third-party solutions, those integrations I don’t want to manage. I would prefer just to have that single source of truth that NetSuite offers, a unified platform. And you know these things I want when I go to the board and present my results, I want to be absolutely confident with them, and that’s what NetSuite does for our customers.

Heather Smith  

Thank you for that. 

Financial Exception Management, Prompt Studio, SuiteAnalytics Assistant, SuiteScript AI API, and Code Assist; which one has gained the most traction in Australia and New Zealand so far, and which one do you think has not been getting much attention?

Scott Wiltshire  

Okay, that’s a tough one. 

You know, with the amount of change and development in the AI space, it’s been a huge attention grabber for all of us. But I can tell you, because I am lucky enough to speak to a lot of customers, particularly, you know, I’m hearing a lot about Prompt Studio per product. Companies that want to, you know, that were writing a lot of generating a lot of content. It wasn’t consistent, because some you know, it would be spread. The load would be spread across multiple people. 

So consider, I guess we’ll explain to the listeners out there what we’re talking about. Consider a product-based business, whether that’s a reseller or a wholesale distributor or a manufacturer. They have a website, or they have somewhere with a catalogue that they want to have product descriptions, you know, from around the world in different languages. 

They want those product descriptions to be very consistent across the board. It takes a lot of time and energy from a lot of people to put those together and adhere to the standards that they’re setting, which may be, you know, I want the colours highlighted or the size highlighted. I want a certain number of adjectives, or I want these ones included and these ones excluded. 

Prompt Studio is the front end of these large language model generative-AI solutions that are embedded in NetSuite or connected with NetSuite. The Prompt Studio allows you to say, well, I’m going to produce a standard type of output. I want it to be, you know, one-two sentences long. I want these sorts of activities, these sorts of items highlighted. I want this word first and these two words last. In just enough space to fit in my product position on my website and my catalogue, and I want it across all these different languages. 

So you’re prompting, you’re designing what the output will be. You hit the generate button, and it takes the context from within NetSuite, because we often have all of those descriptives within NetSuite for the product already and puts them into a fantastic product description and pushes it out. What was taking, you know, multiple people, long time to do, you know, months or weeks to update it can be done automatically and just, you know, have someone review it before they press go live. I mean, that one’s that one in particular, has been caught a lot of attention. It’s produced a lot of productivity gains and improvements overall in the customer experience that they’re trying to improve. 

In terms of, like, which one is an upgrade, or haven’t? I mean, it’s a hard one to survey that one, you know, which one aren’t you using? But I can tell you right now, the hot thing for us is Model Context Protocol. So this is NetSuite. It’s a new solution we’ve just released in the last few weeks, which allows you to connect your NetSuite with your choice of generative AI, large language, you know all the normal ones, like Claude and ChatGPT and Grok and the others. You can use the front end of those generative AI solutions, connect it to NetSuite, and you can start interrogating your NetSuite data, which is your core data. It’s like the best data you can have for your business, right? So, and we’re doing that at no charge. That’s free. So our customers are loving that. And if anything, that one is like, absolutely on fire at the moment.

Heather Smith  

Yeah. As someone who sort of deals with a lot of accountants and bookkeepers, I do find that sometimes they’ll go, ah, but it doesn’t have x. I’m like, it does have x, but there’s so much product release and product announcements, they just missed that one. 

Scott Wiltshire  

That’s a real challenge.

I mean, with NetSuite being around for 27 years, we have done a hell of a lot of development. I mean, NetSuite is a huge solution, and no one person kind of has that full scope of I mean, maybe Evan, our founder, and Craig and Gary have a great understanding of it all. But it’s very difficult as a customer to even know, you know, what’s the right question to ask. 

So we have solutions like Advanced Customer Support, where we can give you a dedicated team that do understand the breadth of NetSuite solutions, and they’re there. They’ll also be an industry expert. And then they’ll learn your business by interacting with you and understanding your goals and what you’re looking to achieve over time and what your current challenges are, and anticipate some of those that are coming up. 

They’re there to basically guide you on Hey, did you know? You know you’re looking to achieve this? Maybe you’re looking to expand into a different country. We have a partner solution over there that’s going to help you manage your tax obligations in that area. And you may not have anticipated that challenge at the time when you’re building that plan. These people are really good at closing that value gap. 

They’ll understand what’s coming down the pipeline for NetSuite, what the releases have provided in terms of additional features and functionalities between now and the time that you’ve gone live. As I said before, NetSuite gets newer and newer, and then they’ll understand your business and your objectives, and they’re constantly looking to optimise the solution for you.

Heather Smith  

Yeah, absolutely.

So we’re coming towards the end of the interview, and you know, a Pitbull question is coming up. One thing I’d like to highlight about Pitbull, which I actually haven’t seen highlighted yet at the conference, is he does a really, really good job of working with other artists and featuring other artists alongside him. So I’m going to throw that back to you. 

NetSuite does a really good job of partnering with partner solutions. How important are the partner solutions for the company?

Scott Wiltshire  

Oh, they’re critically important for us. 

You know, we have such a thriving ecosystem, not just in Australia, in terms of our partners. And we have solution partners that deliver NetSuite. We have alliance partners that just do implementations and work alongside our sales teams. 

We have SuiteCloud developer partners. They extend NetSuite capability through their own technology IP. So think about ISVs in another language, absolutely thriving ecosystem. It’s a great comparison.

Heather Smith  

Analogy. 

Scott Wiltshire  

Analogy, you’re better with English than I am. It’s a great analogy. Um, we are very focused on growing our ecosystem for all the reasons of extending the reach and bringing NetSuite to more customers, but for also generating better outcomes and value for our customers. I mean, that’s where it ends.

Heather Smith  

Thank you so much, Scott, for joining us on the Accounting Apps Podcast. I really appreciate your time today. 

Scott Wiltshire  

My pleasure. Thank you, Heather.