Cloudy ERP and CRM provider NetSuite has snapped up London-based e-commerce provider Venda in a move which signals a concerted effort by both companies for omnichannel commerce in the cloud.
The two companies told CloudTech they had first met about four years ago, with the deal – the terms of which were not disclosed – coming about as both firms “share the same DNA”, according to Venda CTO and co-founder James Cronin.
Pete Daffern, president EMEA at NetSuite, told CloudTech: “We’ve been talking to Venda for a number of years because if somebody doesn’t want our backend capabilities, and they’re using one of the competitive ERP solutions, it’s really giving them another solution to plug in to that as they might evolve to the next solution over time.
“That’s very much part of what this is about, as well as acquiring a company with a great set of customers and a great set of technicians to allow us to further enhance the e-commerce capabilities,” he added.
“It’s just us doubling down on our European investment.”
Cronin added: “What we’re going to be doing in the short term is further enhancing the integration that we have between the Venda platform and the NetSuite platform, continuing to sell both products, and allowing our customers the choice of an upgraded end to end solution as and when the time’s right.”
There are two technology plays here: firstly, it’s about companies moving more of their core business systems to the cloud, as well as omnichannel commerce, across devices and across all parts of the customer experience, from EPOS and order management to inventory and customer support.
For Venda, whose customers include Tesco, TK Maxx and Arsenal Football Club, there was a noticeable trend of becoming more integrated into their customers’ business as e-commerce became more important.
“It’s clear that businesses succeed now by having fully integrated business systems,” Cronin said. “Some retailers are running on business systems that were built maybe 10 or 20 years ago, so now almost all of those systems need upgrading and enhancing.
“NetSuite’s vision of being able to deliver all that capability in the cloud, in a way that upgrades are managed for you, that security’s managed for you, that availability is managed for you, is really exactly the same idea we had for e-commerce. They just have a more complete product set.”
NetSuite will discuss the financial implications of this deal on July 24. Find out more information here.