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 thin