A new vertical suite for manufacturing companies has been announced by a leading vendor of on-demand, integrated business management software suites for the mid-market enterprise and divisions of large companies, NetSuite Inc., announced. Providing mid-sized manufacturers with an integrated on-demand solution they can put to work today, includes new functionality for Assembly, Work Order and Bill of Materials, NetSuite for Manufacturers, takes aim at SAP's core market and seeks to exploit the prolonged delay of SAP's Business ByDesign product roll-out.

Chief Research Officer, AMR Research, Bruce Richardson, declared: "NetSuite has been offering vertical suites for the wholesale / distribution industry for a while with a proven track record." He adds: "Manufacturers have been longing for SaaS offerings to build better overall total cost-of-ownership. Until this release from NetSuite, there haven't been any broad SaaS product offerings that include financials, CRM, Ecommerce and manufacturing. The on-demand suite approach-pioneered by NetSuite-could prove to be a major market accelerator."

Launched in April 2006, the NetSuite Wholesale / Distribution Edition core is strengthened by today's new release, which is a natural progression of NetSuite's leading role in delivering Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business suites designed to address the specific requirements of vertical industries. Initially aimed at the light manufacturing sector, NetSuite's offering for manufacturing is also the latest example of how NetSuite's SaaS-based business management technology has evolved to address more complex processes in industries long dominated by on-premise vendors such as SAP. As they have struggled to deliver their own on-demand offering, Business ByDesign, the company's rapid move into manufacturing comes at a difficult time for SAP, to address customer requirements in their core market. NetSuite for Manufacturers now gives SAP customers and others an option they can purchase and deploy without delay.

To replenish standing inventory levels of finished goods or special order work orders built to exact specifications for a particular customer, light manufacturers are enabled by new work order capabilities to readily manage the build process for production work orders.

A bill of materials that outlines what components are required to successfully build the finished good is required any build process. BOMs are tightly coupled with both assemblies and work orders and cover the components required for a single assembly plus all the components required by a particular work order. In the printable BOM in PDF format, assembly instructions can also be included.