Oracle Academy Fireside Chat: Why Should I Learn ERP in This Changing Technology Landscape? Part 2

Oracle Academy Tech Chat

Join NetSuite experts Chris Hering, Director of Global Channels, Suite Life, and Aaron Rosenberg, CEO, NetSuite Partner Oasis Solutions, for a fireside chat moderated by Oracle Academy North America Senior Director Denise Hobbs. In this chat, Denise talks with Chris and Aaron about some of the technology trends that are impacting ERP systems today and what students should learn of those key aspects as they prepare for professional career roles. In addition, they discuss best practice tactics on how Oracle NetSuite Partners can leverage their expertise and knowledge and get involved in helping the next generation learn the latest technology.

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Episode Transcript:

00;00;09;03 - 00;00;34;08 Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders. Of the Future. Let's get started. Welcome to Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare our next generation's workforce. 00;00;34;18 - 00;01;04;25 I'm your host, Tyra Crockett Peirce. In the second part of our special two part episode, Oracle Academy, North America senior director Denise Hobbs continues her conversation with Chris Herring, director of Global Channel SuiteLife, and Aaron Rosenberg, CEO of NetSuite partner Oasis Solutions. Denise continues the conversation about some of the technology trends that are impacting ERP systems today and what students should learn of these key aspects as they prepare for their professional careers. 00;01;05;17 - 00;01;35;16 I want to zero in on a little bit on the human interaction piece. Aaron, earlier you talked about Oasis and how Oasis Solutions is considered a corporate partner. Can you help me understand and help the audience understand the role that a net suite partner can potentially play with academic faculty as they then prepare students to step, you know, for careers as ERP implementers or users? 00;01;36;08 - 00;02;10;17 Absolutely. Yeah. So I'm very lucky to have met you about a year and a half ago, I think. Right. And we had this initial conversation around what Oracle Academy had and could provide help to the academic ecosystem, and the partners want to be a piece of that. We're hiring talented people, ambitious people that want to work in and around these systems because this is the way that you can interact with a ton of different types of businesses and get exposure to how these operational functions work and that really assist and get creative and innovatively solve problems with customers. 00;02;10;29 - 00;02;32;23 When Oasis looks at our clients, most of them again are in this small and mid-sized market. Our sweet spots probably around 100, 150 employees, 20 to $30 million in revenue, of which there are tens of thousands of businesses out there in the United States around that size. And a lot of them don't have dedicated net suite or system admin staff. 00;02;33;03 - 00;03;01;00 We're not working with one person whose sole responsibility it is to make this application run that business. Usually it's a controller or CFO, an accounting team or two and a half to three people that we're supporting on the initial implementation that they can go out to sales and operations and other functions to sell. As far as us trying to supplement our role with client, that is what we're intending to do and it is soup to nuts. 00;03;01;00 - 00;03;31;02 You want to get in there, help solve the business problem, show how the application provides value, so the licensing alongside our Oracle sales team and then help with everything from client management to additional integrated solutions that will enhance our experience. We facilitate user groups. So all of that is a part of the experience that Oasis provides. So do you have an example of how you might be able to share those experiences with the academic classroom? 00;03;31;10 - 00;04;09;13 Yeah, absolutely. The University of Louisville here in my hometown is where I also graduated from. I do not like to say I got to be a and NBS Communications major did not know about these systems, maybe could have taken a different career track. And I'm glad the one that I did take work out. But the Oracle curriculum and that's connected to the faculty that I was introduced to, was bring together the syllabus for their semester, and I was able to sit down with that professor and her team and our team and discussed what would we expect and how would we train a new hire? 00;04;09;23 - 00;04;35;05 What type of system exposure would help them get a leg up on an internship or a career? Paths with Oasis, which would translate to other partners like myself for next week? Direct's team as well. And we talked about how you could leverage test scenarios as well. So perhaps building this kind of seek and find for students to figure out a way of how one transaction on the ledger can tie back correctly. 00;04;35;13 - 00;05;01;24 And this goes back to kind of that trust but verify like so what what happened was in that transactional flow, where was the mistake made? Talked about this workflow engine and the power there that is actually called suite flow and net sweep. And that's a tool that is a no code tool, but it's a way to alter different types of workflows within the application by adding those different kinds of purchasing limits to the example that I already mentioned. 00;05;01;27 - 00;05;31;23 So how would you alter those business processes and help them kind of come out of there understanding not only how the application works, but trying to translate that to a real world scenario that happens a lot of times. Yeah. Yeah. I love the opportunity to kind of bring in literally the, real-world use case scenarios into the classroom for, you know, faculty to position within the right point of the curriculum and let students really dig in and roll up their sleeves and dig in to that. 00;05;32;04 - 00;05;55;04 Chris, do you have anything to add? . I think Aaron covered it so well. I mean, one of the things that I see coming from Oracle is just how exciting it is to see a company that's mid-sized come into the classroom where someone like Aaron, who's the CEO of the company, has to deal with a large vendor like that suite has to deal with customers as employees. 00;05;55;04 - 00;06;19;18 And it's a a mid-sized company culture where, I mean, I think back to my beginnings in my own career, where I jumped in and I was taking up the helpdesk phone and also helping on client deployments and also doing a little selling and that sort of multifaceted approach. I think it helped me sort of figure out what I enjoyed within the business and also where my comparative advantage was. 00;06;20;00 - 00;06;37;27 I think one of the things I've heard is that, you know, you can go charging passion, but you can also go towards what you're just naturally good at or naturally kind of cling to. And some folks find, you know, consulting more comfortable and more powerful. Some people like sales presales and people like management. Sometimes that evolves during your career. 00;06;38;12 - 00;07;14;03 So I think one of the things that I think is so exciting about the partner community is that there are many different flavors of partners. Some that are focused on particular industries like manufacturing and others that are focused on sectors like nonprofit, others that are focused on specific geographies. So across all of them, you have entrepreneurs, others that have either started the firm or joined the firm and have a lot of bags of tricks that they have to pull out to to deal with multiple vendors, you know, customers along their full lifecycle and have that personal relationship. 00;07;14;28 - 00;07;52;24 So having that brought into the classroom is extremely valuable. And one thing I've found is that while Aaron and you got coordinated to meet with University of Louisville, you know, that's not the only time that we've had this happen. We've had a number of partners that I know reached out to their either local university or university that they happened to have attended and had a relationship with that finance professional and were able to do a half hour guest lecturer as to what it is to be a finance professional in the world and how to solve problems in the in the field. 00;07;53;07 - 00;08;35;16 I tend to think that the fact that our partners are out there and ecosystem have that multifaceted aspect of their business and then are able to kind of have a close relationship with someone local is extremely powerful. I think just from a from a recruiting perspective, often universities have recruiting days and we've had a number of partners go ahead and on the request, or the suggestion of the finance professor, go ahead and attend the career day to maybe get a summer internship with a local partner where they can shadow the business and learn a lot more or get a full-time job for it for next week. 00;08;35;17 - 00;08;58;02 I mean, we look very fondly on individuals that have taken that internship and worked with or right out of the gate. I agree. I think the opportunity for students to meet face to face and, you know, kind of start the conversation about here's where I think my interest is. Here's what I think I'm good at. Have that collaborative conversation. 00;08;58;03 - 00;09;25;21 Maybe even have the opportunity to show, not just tell. I think those experiences are hugely you know, it's a great opportunity for students to have that. Again, if I pull on that thread a little bit more and Erin, I'm going to go to you on this question first. What do you think are the important skills that a recent graduate or a rising senior should think about to highlight to a future employer and why? 00;09;26;04 - 00;09;47;17 Yeah, So there's a lot of skills that are important and I think that go across horizontally all the different types of types of roles that Chris mentioned. Right. So we're focusing a lot of our conversation in a lot of the curriculum discussions around our professional services folks, the people that you saw, the customers, once they purchase the application. 00;09;47;17 - 00;10;10;08 But you know, we hire salespeople, we've got people working on client success. There's a technical aspect and whole different domain and track that somebody could get involved with, which be the outside of maybe the business school and work with computer science side. So there's so many different types of functional roles that you can play almost cross disciplinary. 00;10;10;18 - 00;10;45;23 Yeah, absolutely. But important skills are going to be across all of those is communication being problem solvers, humility, having high emotional intelligence is something that we look for across all of those different disciplines. So that can bring a stronger work ethic that will keep on plugging away right until they come to the right solution for their client. They're also like humble enough for us to ask for help drive down a rabbit hole that takes them the whole day to figure out something that they could have just knocked on their more experienced neighbor store to find out in the consulting professional services role. 00;10;45;26 - 00;11;18;15 Accounting knowledge is key though, so just having that basic understanding of accounting is something that is almost a nonstarter for somebody to come in to do a consulting role because that's really where these ERP systems begin and they can work out in so many different functions. Chris mentioned a really cool acquisition that we've made for a field service app, but that's still those transactions, those invoices that are happening in the field of fixing, in fact system in your or my house that has to tie back into a ledger somehow. 00;11;18;15 - 00;11;39;26 And understanding how that ties back into accounting is really important. Chris, I have anything to add on that. Well, I love I have love what Aaron described. I had some of the same notes for my own description of folks. I mean, I love the humility. I love the ability to continue to listen and have that empathy, that it is huge. 00;11;40;16 - 00;12;06;19 I tend to think like one of the things that I have noticed about successful folks is this notion of continuing to be a student of your job and not being too overconfident. One thing that sometimes I've seen is that because students today work so hard and they've learned so much, they can sometimes of sometimes get a little ahead of their skis and sort of be overconfident or come across overconfident. 00;12;07;21 - 00;12;28;15 And that can that can hurt them, honestly. You need to balance that a little. And as I like to say to some of the people that I mentor, it's better to be interested and then to be interesting. You should be interested in others and interested in how their business works and be a good listener and the foundational accounting. 00;12;28;15 - 00;12;57;02 I was talking to a colleague the other day. We're talking through one candidate and they didn't understand revenue recognition either, the billings versus revenue recognition as the obligations performed. And you can really lose a lot of credibility with a customer if you don't understand some of those foundational concepts. Yeah, I agree. I have to tell both of you my favorite part, I think, of what you both have described is really good listening. 00;12;57;18 - 00;13;22;10 I mean, I think that is so key and asking really good questions. I think that is also really, really significant. I think both of you touched on that. Absolutely. Good listening. Right. That's important at the accounting piece, too. It's important that most of our successful consultants, they didn't want to be accountants. There's a there's a role for an accountant that's critical to a company. 00;13;22;10 - 00;13;49;14 But a lot of those like month closed, month, close quarter closed, month closed. Much of those write those repetitive kind of situational things that they like about that job would be potentially mind numbing. Right. And then person ask for somebody that want to do consulting because they want to get involved in all these different types of customers and different problems, job support to get into a training, right? 00;13;49;15 - 00;14;11;06 So that's really an important distinction that we use some personnel to assessments to help to define how much of a stretch that's going to be for someone to kind of guide those students that either are self aware or faculty or trying to advise them on if that's the right kind of path or if a more traditional accounting tax audit type of path is good for them. 00;14;11;07 - 00;14;34;04 Yeah, that's great guidance. Thank you for that. One of the things that we always like to ask everybody who comes on to our fireside chat is if you had one piece of advice that you want to give to faculty and students, what would it be? And Erin, I'd like to go to you on this one first. So for students, I am a huge proponent of internships before graduation and getting a mix of experience. 00;14;34;15 - 00;14;52;13 Right. So small company, large company, different roles. If you can stretch yourself to try a sales role, make sure like a Christmas and Early are some of the best things you do in your career. Early, hopefully, is to learn what you don't want to do, which propels you to what you do want to do and where you can focus your energies later in life. 00;14;52;21 - 00;15;20;05 And then for faculty, I would reach out to whoever locally provides partnership and services like Oasis in your community. I guarantee you there's somebody that's probably not more than an hour away that does something similar to what we do right and try to build a relationship there that will help you enhance, hopefully, the information and ability for your students to then propel them into future endeavors. 00;15;20;14 - 00;15;42;06 Chris, what are your thoughts on the I'm a student side. I think presentation and ability to explain a problem in different ways is something that I think a lot of students struggle with. And what I mean by that is there's so many different ways that people learn today, whether it be visual listening, people come to different problems or different perspectives. 00;15;43;03 - 00;16;10;23 So if students can practice the notion of how to convey a business idea, how to convey a risk and how to have a confidence, but also a an openness to being criticized for openness to being questioned, that isn't isn't off putting. So you can go ahead and present an idea, show that you're confident in the idea, but also be open to discussion and open to constructive criticism. 00;16;10;23 - 00;16;31;21 I tend to think that that's such a huge skill to be able to articulate a problem. I completely agree with Erin on the internship as well, but I've just noticed on the communication side that it really separates a student in my view, as to how they can contribute to the business, that they're able to articulate their ideas clearly succinctly. 00;16;32;14 - 00;17;00;17 Now I'm on the faculty side. I mean, I tend to think and again, it's been a while since I've been in the students shoes, but I just always loved having practitioners in the classroom telling me how an academic concept can be applied to the real world and sometimes have those ideas, you know, succeed or fail in terms of a small entrepreneur, you know, blowing the doors off the businesses and growing, I just find that very exciting. 00;17;00;24 - 00;17;30;20 And as a as a student, I would think that the students would be really interested in seeing how those businesses react and perform. And that's what is really trying to, you know, grease the skids to allow those introductions and facilitate those introductions so that faculty can be supported from a technology perspective. Obviously we have a lot of training and learning, but also from a relationship perspective, just bringing that content alive in use cases. 00;17;30;20 - 00;17;49;29 Case studies is super interesting. We've got great customers, you know, working with Spotify with super, super fun. That's one that I'm sure all of you're familiar with. So those are some thoughts. All right, guys, are you ready for our Q&A section of this? So this is going to go to but I'm going to give this one to both of you. 00;17;51;05 - 00;18;24;09 In what ways do you see users ability to write high quality command prompts influencing the efficacy of ERP? So I think this is going to go back to our initial technology is changing at a rapid pace. Aaron, you want to start us off? Yeah, I think it's going to be very important and critical if you think that again, the inputs are going to be as valuable as the outputs, they're correlated to be able to communicate effectively and quickly will give that person an edge. 00;18;24;21 - 00;18;49;07 But I do think that a lot of the business analyst type of roles that we're seeing will move in to some kind of technology translation opportunity. Do either of you have any concerns about user over reliance on assistive technology to operate within an ERP? And if so, what are they? I think, you know, I can jump in here. 00;18;49;13 - 00;19;16;25 I think this is a mix of policy mixed with technology. I mean, expense reporting is a great example in my view. When I was a consultant, we would have business roles that could auto expense, approve certain amounts below a certain levels. But then you had behavior adjusting issues. So, for example, if all of the consultants knew that everything below $50 was going to be automatically approved, we had a influx of 49.5 cent expenses. 00;19;16;25 - 00;19;40;22 So I think, you know, you have these assistive technologies that could potentially create overreliance if the current construction of the business roles is overly simplistic. So a lot of what goes into AI so far as I understand it, and I'm no expert on this, is is the content that feeds the AI engine to make those intelligent recommendations has a lot of different signals. 00;19;40;22 - 00;19;58;26 And if the signals aren't as complete as they need to be, there could be blind spots to it. So I do think that you can't overly reliant on that, especially as you adopt it. I think it's got to get training wheels for a little while and then as it becomes smarter and learns from it, that's that's where it's going to be more reliable. 00;19;58;27 - 00;20;19;21 I agree. I mean, there's a reason why you learn how to do long division on paper before you use a calculator so you can get those concepts in place. And I have this picture of Chris and his colleagues making waitresses this frustrated, asking, don't they put $49 on my tab and split it up six different ways so they can get the margaritas paid for? 00;20;20;02 - 00;20;58;10 Yes. Okay. So this next questionnaire and this kind of goes back to a moment ago. You talked about data and data out. Right. So in terms of reporting, how important is it to clean your data to make sure that you're have accurate reporting? And what are some of the pitfalls that you see and absolutely critical to have the data be accurate if you want the reports to be accurate, Probably the most pervasive, inaccurate or semi accurate for different types of data is what we see in going into a CRM system. 00;20;58;10 - 00;21;28;27 So it's a client relationship management system by salespeople, right? So that is the one of the easiest concepts to kind of comprehend, but one of the hardest to organize and then lead effectively a consistent data input for the sales organization so that you can see and evaluate as forecast accurately is very important for organizations that we work with to have those inputs be accurate in order to see what's coming down the pipeline. 00;21;28;27 - 00;21;47;06 So I know how to make business decisions, projects. I'm going to have so much more raw materials I need to buy, right? All of those how many engineers I need to staff regardless of what industry vertical it is. Chris Anything to add on that? No, no, I think that that covers it. One last question and then I promise we can wrap this up. 00;21;47;09 - 00;22;12;27 And this is really for both of you. I'm very interested to know what are some of the job roles or PACs, you know, so if a student studies or gets exposure to builds that foundational knowledge of net suite during their academic tenure and they are they step into talent pipeline, but they've got that foundational level knowledge. So what do you think some of the job roles or paths are for them? 00;22;13;09 - 00;22;51;10 I tend to think from a selling perspective, people often talk about solutions selling, which is a concept to sort of selling an outcome to a given business leader and in order to have credibility as to pointing out a future state for a circumstance like you're buying a convertible, you want to experience what the wind feels like in your hair, and the sun feels like as you drive down the road, you need to effectively have driven a convertible and understand what that feels like to be able to have that communication and be authentic about it. 00;22;52;17 - 00;23;21;00 You need to have that that track record. And so where I'm going with this is that I tend to find consulting where you're sitting across a boardroom table talking about sort of the dirty laundry of how a business does things well and does things poorly, and how a given individual may run a series of papers over to this person or to that person to have them manually sign it off. 00;23;21;08 - 00;23;55;26 Or you just see sort of that process where people get comfortable with what happens in a given company, because that's the way it's been. And then you, you as a consultant are able to see, oh, I can see how these two different lines can be short circuited by a different process or I can see how this creates inefficiencies, having that ability to go down to that level of detail and then also sit back and listen to some of the senior consultants and the sales people talk about these things not in the minutia, but talk about them in broader concepts, I think is very helpful. 00;23;55;26 - 00;24;16;19 So quickly from this is that if you start with a consulting role where you're able to do some of the groundwork, foundational elements and then move into a pre sales role, are you able to demonstrate how things could happen and then move into a sales role if you want or move into other roles? Maybe you're more comfortable in the technology side of programing, maybe give it that way. 00;24;16;20 - 00;24;49;26 But I tend to think some of those journeys, so to speak, are very typical within the technology world. I think there's also I'll just add on, there's opportunities just out there in business that are investing in these applications, right. That have invested in that suite that if someone has on their resume next suite exposure and that suite experience, even do a reverse search for organizations will post out on indeed and job boards like or someone that has experience with this type of application. 00;24;50;00 - 00;25;22;25 This would be very attractive. As NetSuite continues to really increase market presence, it's going to be more ubiquitous for those types of just if you are someone that's going to be a great accountant and wants to rise from a staff accountant to a senior accountant to a controller to potentially like a CFO type of role, having that exposure is going to give you a leg up over the other folks that are applying for that job, even people that might be more experienced accountants but don't have that exposure to the system that the company uses your ability to plug and play, there is going to be so much faster. 00;25;23;16 - 00;25;49;19 All right. Well, this is going to bring us to a close of our fireside chat. I'd really like to thank both of you for speaking with me today about how changing technology is affecting ERP systems and that the impact that faculty and students can expose themselves and to really engage with a couple of calls to action. 00;25;50;05 - 00;26;13;23 If you are interested in learning more about that suite and this is for our audience, please, if you're interested in learning more about NetSuite Cloud Solution, please visit Newsweek.com. If you are a post-secondary faculty and you are interested in adding NetSuite cloud solution to your daily teaching via Oracle Academy, don't hesitate to visit us at Academy.oracle.com to learn more. 00;26;14;06 - 00;26;39;13 And then if you are interested in partnering with Oracle Academy or providing your expertise to classrooms, contact us at Oracle Academy. North America. Underscore us at Oracle dot com. Thanks, Cassandra, and I truly appreciate your time and your energy today. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.