AI comes to the back office as NetSuite Next brings enterprise intelligence within reach

Pictured above: Evan Goldberg delivers keynote at SuiteWorld 2025 in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas doesn’t do subtle, and neither does SuiteWorld. When Oracle NetSuite rolls into town, the lights flash, the music pumps, air dancing tube men wave about, and the showmanship rivals any headline act on the Strip. Inside Caesars Forum, where thousands of attendees gathered for this year’s conference, the rotating stage was headlined by NetSuite’s Founder Evan Goldberg who unveiled something the company calls the future of business systems: NetSuite Next.

At SuiteWorld 2025 in Las Vegas, Oracle NetSuite unveiled what founder and Executive Vice President Evan Goldberg called “the biggest announcement in our entire history”, the launch of NetSuite Next, a generational evolution of the cloud ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) that he says reimagines how artificial intelligence works for business.

Speaking to more than 8,000 attendees (and more online), Goldberg described NetSuite Next as “collaborative, insightful, adaptive, and trustworthy”, an ERP experience designed to make AI a natural extension of everyday work.

“Cloud gave you access. AI gives you action. NetSuite Next puts AI to work for businesses by making it a natural extension of the way they already work. These are real tools solving real problems, not technology for technology’s sake.”

For many SMEs, that statement could mark a turning point, and demonstrates the future of business management powered by AI.

ERP systems have long been seen as the domain of big enterprise – complex, expensive, and hard to implement. But NetSuite’s latest release promises something different: Enterprise-grade intelligence that’s built-in, not bolted on, and accessible through simple, conversational interaction.

At the heart of NetSuite Next is Ask Oracle, a conversational AI assistant that allows users to search, analyse, and act across their entire business system using natural language. No menus, no manual report-building.

“It’s not a co-pilot,” Goldberg explained. “It’s a jet engine. Conversations are the future of how people will interact with business systems.”

Ask Oracle enables users to request information in plain English, from “show me my top five overdue invoices” to “forecast next quarter’s revenue based on current pipeline”, and receive interactive charts, insights, or even full workflow actions in response. The AI understands user context, meaning a CFO, warehouse manager, or sales lead could ask the same question and get results tailored to their role.

For SME owners still testing the waters with generative AI tools, this also represents a new level of practicality, AI that doesn’t just talk back, but gets work done.

Craig Sullivan, NetSuite’s Group Vice President of Product Management, says this was a deliberate shift.

“Our goal is to radically change the user experience, to make it intuitive, contextual and collaborative,” he told NZBusiness on the sidelines of the keynote.

“AI is now a built-in part of how you work, not an optional layer you have to learn.”

The broader ambition of NetSuite Next is clear: To democratise artificial intelligence for everyday business operations.

Businesses can interact with AI as naturally as they would a colleague, while maintaining full visibility into where every number or recommendation comes from.

Goldberg described this as taking NetSuite from a “system of record” to a “system of action and reasoning.”

“You go from hunting for errors to having anomalies flagged for you,” he said. “From reacting to market changes to predicting them. From guessing at your margins to knowing in real time, where your opportunities and risks are.”

For New Zealand’s SMEs, that’s an appealing proposition. Many have already adopted cloud platforms such as Xero or MYOB to simplify bookkeeping and compliance. NetSuite’s approach extends that philosophy to larger, more integrated business systems – with AI handling the heavy lifting.

But with implementation costs often high, and resources limited, many mid-sized Kiwi operations consider ERP a “nice-to-have”.

Goldberg believes the barriers are falling fast. The combination of cloud infrastructure and practical, conversational AI could make advanced automation attainable even for smaller firms.

“NetSuite Next enables users to discover patterns in their business and engage with the system in their own words,” he said. “It understands context, so it can deliver answers and actions that provide immediate value.”

That’s a compelling message for growth-minded businesses that have outgrown spreadsheets or disconnected systems but don’t yet have IT teams or AI experts in-house.

Goldberg’s well-choreographed keynote demonstration showed Ask Oracle pulling live data into visual charts, rewriting reports, and even creating AI-optimised forms that automatically hide irrelevant fields, all in response to natural language prompts.

It’s this shift – from software as a tool to software as a partner – that NetSuite believes will define the next era of business systems.

“Ask Oracle doesn’t just give you data back,” Goldberg said during the on-stage demo.

“It delivers rich, interactive insights — and then lets you act on them. Answers aren’t static. They’re actionable.”

Sullivan adds that this conversational model goes beyond simple search. “The AI understands the context of your business, the structure of your data, and the role of the person asking,” he says. “That means every interaction feels relevant, it’s not a generic chatbot bolted onto your ERP. It’s part of the workflow.”

A recurring theme throughout the keynote was trust, a word Goldberg and Sullivan repeated often.

In an era where AI adoption is often slowed by fears over data privacy, hallucinations, or compliance, Goldberg said that NetSuite Next puts explainability at its core.

“Users can click to see the reasoning behind a recommendation or forecast, ensuring transparency across the system.”

Sullivan adds: “Whenever you see a financial report and interact with Ask Oracle, it will reference the source and tell you exactly where this number came from.

“You’ll always be able to trace the logic. That’s how we’re building confidence in AI, through explainability.”

This approach, he says, is backed by Oracle’s global infrastructure and the company’s significant investment in responsible AI frameworks.

“We take this notion of trust and confidence in AI very seriously. Every action, whether taken by an AI agent or a user, is recorded, auditable, and compliant with the same controls our customers already rely on.”

For existing NetSuite users, perhaps the most practical news is that upgrading to NetSuite Next won’t require a full reimplementation.

“It’s a seamless process,” Sullivan says. “You can preview your account in NetSuite Next, flip a switch when you’re ready, and start using new capabilities at your own pace. It’s the same system – just evolved.”

But only in the next 12 months when the rollout is expected in North America, perhaps longer for us in New Zealand.

That evolution includes a redesigned user interface built on Oracle’s Redwood Design System, improved mobile experiences, and “agentic workflows”, AI-driven processes that can autonomously complete tasks like vendor payments or reconciliations, with human approval where needed.

For New Zealand businesses, the arrival of NetSuite Next is less about chasing the latest tech trend and more about understanding where the future of business software is headed.

ERP is evolving, from a back-office accounting engine into a collaborative, intelligent assistant that helps business owners focus on growth, not grunt work.

If cloud ERP was once seen as the “chicken before the egg” for Kiwi SMEs, as NZBusiness reported previously, then AI-infused ERP may finally offer the missing piece, a system smart enough to do the hard work, but simple enough for anyone to use.

As Goldberg told attendees: “There are no limits to what businesses can achieve when AI becomes part of the way they already work.”

From the buzz on the SuiteWorld floor, that message resonated.

The underlying message at SuiteWorld 2025 is that AI doesn’t have to be complicated, it just has to be useful.

“For 27 years, we’ve built NetSuite around the idea that one unified system can help businesses grow faster, smarter, and with less stress. Now we’re taking that same philosophy into the AI era – helping businesses not just access their data, but act on it,” said Goldberg.

NZBusiness is in Las Vegas at SuiteWorld 2025 courtesy of Oracle NetSuite.