E-Commerce and LAN Solutions

I remember the first time I heard this phrase – I was in fourth grade and one of the older classes in my school put on a play that in retrospect was completely ridiculous and silly, but I wasn’t quite as critical when I was 9. It was a series of scenes designed to exemplify the law of GIGO: garbage in / garbage out. The scenes got more obvious until they finally explained the whole thing in a terrible song & dance number at the end so even the slow kids could get it (I didn’t get it myself until I heard the song).

So what have I learned since then? Well I found it’s like gravity – once you notice it, you see it working everywhere. It’s easy to think of computers as magic; a big nebulous black box that does stuff way too complicated to explain. That’s only partially true, of course… yes it’s too much to explain quickly, but computers are nowhere near smart enough to correct sloppiness, muddy thinking or poor planning. This to me is the big lesson if GIGO.

Organization is what it comes down to for me. Programmers and database guys learn real early on that there’s a big difference between throwing your ideas together and a carefully planned approach. More average users are starting to discover the same laws – people with years of emails are starting to notice that old messages are getting harder to find. Anyone who’s been online for long will know the frustration of trying to find that bookmark they know they have, only it’s lost in the mish-mash of poorly organized folders.

So what’s my point? As we trundle on towards an increasingly digital world, the laws of GIGO will eventually catch up to everyone. I could have titled this ‘gigo – not just for nerds anymore’. More and more companies are storing all their critical information in databases large and small, but how many users are being taught how to cultivate the data? Every database administrator knows of the prevalence of junk data in systems as they age, and it’s a real problem. Everyone who uses a computer should learn how to clean up after themselves and ensure they are conscientious about their information.

Think of your computer or database as a finicky car, and the data is the fuel. Make sure it’s pure, and you’ll get great performance and avoid a lot of breakdowns.

As a Netsuite customer and consultant, I’m surprised that I’ve never heard talk of Netsuite’s IPO plans. In all the usergroup posts and official Netsuite notifications, nothing has ever been mentioned, which strikes me as strange. Maybe it’s not, who knows.

At any rate, it seems like more than a possibility at this point. A few quotes from some articles I found:

The San Mateo hosted software firm plans to file IPO papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the second half of 2006, when the company expects to reach profitability.

The company’s head count grew from 300 to 450 in the last year, including adding a new worldwide marketing director and product marketing director. Nelson hopes to employ 500 by year’s end. CFO McGeever said the company’s biggest hurdle to growth is hiring and training enough professional services staffers to help Netsuite’s 7,000 customers implement its software.
Full article

We’ll all know a lot more when NetSuite actually files its registration statement. Clearly, if they are on pace to double revenues and reach profitability, the company seems well positioned to have a successful IPO particularly given the rabid appetite for SaaS plays. However, expecting NetSuite to be afforded a valuation similar to that of salesforce.com may be a tad aggressive.
An interesting take on Netsuite’s prospects

And another article about it for good measure.

I think for a while there was some debate about whether Oracle would snap up Netsuite, but I think it stands to do pretty well on its own in the market, especially considering how hot SaaS (Software as a service) is for investors. Netsuite is rumored to be expecting twice its 40M in sales from 2005 in this year, and to become profitable. Add in an IPO and a near doubling in headcount, and that’s a big year for a young company.

As a customer I’m mostly concerned about how they handle their growth – I’ve worked with a lot of businesses as a consultant and seen many that couldn’t handle the transition from one order of magnitude to the next. I’ve always believed that it was the talent of the employees that makes the biggest difference to a company, and hiring great people is a big challenge. I love reading about the hiring practices about the world’s most progressive companys – first it was Microsoft and their famous day-long interviews, and now Google has gleaned a rep for picking talent.

I think the only safe bet is that it’ll be an interesting year for anyone following Netsuite’s story.

One of the best features of having a database-driven e-commerce site is that there is one centralized place to store all your product information. You can then manipulate the data in all sorts of ways, and all of these applications can be updated in more or less automated fashions, integrating all the changes you’ve made to your one central source. Some examples:

• Build a print catalog
• Create an offline browsable catalog
• Create data feeds for shopping sites like Froogle, Amazon.com, shopping.com, shopzilla.com, and many more. These sites (except Froogle) charge you to either directly sell your product on their site or send you highly qualified traffic.

It’s always a good idea to grab the low hanging fruit (i.e. taking opportunities that are relatively easy to implement and have a large potential upside). Froogle, Google’s shopping search engine, is my pick for shopping sites. Not only is it completely free, but it gets a good deal of traffic and isn’t likely to dry up anytime soon. Since it costs nothing but some time (and this guide) to implement, I would recommend it to any e-commerce vendor on Netsuite. Froogle really likes a fresh data feed – you will want to set up a recurring reminder for yourself so you can submit a new feed every two weeks or so (it’s really easy after it’s all set up).

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