Nicky Tozer, EMEA senior vice president, Oracle NetSuite

At Oracle NetSuite’s recent SuiteWorld in Las Vegas, the firm’s EMEA Senior Vice President Nicky Tozer sat down to discuss its AI plans, why the Oracle-owned vendor has taken a different approach to pricing than its rivals, and the challenges of travelling when covering a large region.

Despite not being a big tech person, Tozer leads NetSuite’s sales and operations in the EMEA region, having joined Hyperion (which was subsequently bought by Oracle) in 1996.

She then left to join NetSuite, which itself was bought by Oracle the following year.

Tell us about some of the big announcements from NetSuite at SuiteWorld this year

The single biggest announcement that we’ve made today, and the single biggest product development the business has made in the last 27 years is NetSuite Next, and all of the AI capability that’s coming with it.

When NetSuite was founded, it was built on three pillars: the suite, industry functionality, and an extensible platform.

So if you’re a software company or a retailer, you’ve got out of the box capability for those industries. And then, of course, the platform which is extensible, so extendable. So if you want to add different functionalities to that, or indeed, you’re a partner who wants to do that as well, then we can continue to expand what we’re doing, and, of course, this is all in the cloud.

All of those things mean that we are now completely ready for the AI era, and as we add the next suite, or next capability into that, what we can do is build on that unified data model with the AI agenda workflows to make sure that we are giving customers the ability to run autonomous processes for them, but to also be able to collaborate with those processes, and to make sure they’re just basically increasing productivity from what they’re doing.

Describing it as the biggest development since the platform was first founded is quite a bold approach. What makes it such a game-changing announcement for you guys and for your customers?

A lot of people in the industry would argue that AI is the biggest innovation in technology since the internet – and I tend to agree. But if you think about the opportunities that its gives to our customers to improve what they are doing, how fast they can do things, or how accurately they can do it, it is an opportunity to improve their business far more than we’ve ever been able to do before.

Every customer is looking to be more efficient while growing, and these developments mean they can use their teams to be more forward-thinking and more productive in what they are doing.

Tell us about some of the exciting opportunities you see for your customers?

Well, I think what we can say is that over the last two or three years, everybody knows inherently that AI is a great thing and they need to be using it, and they’re going to get great advantage from it, and they don’t want to miss out on it. But they can’t necessarily articulate what it is they’re going to take advantage of and how much it’s going to increase their productivity or benefit their business.

What we’re offering now is some very tangible use cases, things like the autonomous close process, as an example. Some of the other examples we have demonstrated include bill paying and all of the commerce payments from ChatGPT.

Clearly customers can think about their own examples, but we are presenting them with these processes that can make their business change significantly.

AI has changed significantly in the past few years, but many of your competitors have already launched solutions. Why is NetSuite taking this approach?

I wouldn’t want to comment on our competitor’s strategies, but if you look again at our core principles, we have a platform that offers functionality out of the box that can be tailored for specific industries. What we are doing with AI is adding to that capability.

This is all powered by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) technology, which has been developed with unrivalled speed and security, and access to a range of LLMs.

What about pricing? NetSuite has said the GenAI tools will be integrated into NetSuite Next, meaning no additional costs for customers. How can that model work for NetSuite?

Our belief is that it’s built into the capability of the product, and we should continue to offer it. You know, at some point in the future, that might change in turn, but it’s more about the processing requirements. But at the moment, we haven’t made any pricing announcements, and we see it as functionality that’s built into NetSuite Next that we think every customer should have.

What made you want to work in tech?

Initially, I didn’t. When I left Keele University with a Business and Languages degree I wasn’t particularly set on what I wanted to do with my career. But I lived around the M4 corridor, which is home to a lot of tech companies. I became an SDR at one of them, and I enjoyed the variety of work and the engagement with customers.

I later joined Hyperion, which was acquired by Oracle in 2007. A few years later I left Oracle to join NetSuite to work in sales.

But I am not a technologist, I am not a developer. I don’t have an IT background, so when I talk to customers, it is about how technology can help them run their businesses.

That’s what I enjoy about this role – seeing projects where we help our customers improve their business processes using our technology. It’s really interesting to hear about the customers and then to see their successes as they go forward, and realise what they were trying to achieve in the first place.

What do you do to relax outside of work?

These days I tend to sit on the sofa and watch TV. I travel quite a lot because I oversee a very large region, and even though I do live travelling, it can become less exciting when you do it for work all the time.  But I enjoy skiing too.

Is there any technology you couldn’t live without?

I am not a massive user of technology. I use my phone a lot, and obviously I use NetSuite a lot. At home, I also use Alexa regularly.

Finally, how do you take your coffee?

I’d love to like coffee because it smells so good, but it’s too bitter. So I’m a tea drinker. Breakfast tea, one milk, no sugar, perfect.