As NetSuite’s ANZ Industry Partner of the Year for 2026, the Annexa team was on the ground at SuiteWorld 2026 in Las Vegas, following the keynotes, roadmap sessions and partner discussions and sharing daily recaps of the big announcements.
More than 45 SuiteSkills were unveiled during the week, alongside industry-specific SuiteAgents, AI workspaces, agent development and management tools and predictive capabilities within Ask Oracle.
NetSuite also introduced SuiteExpress, its new AI-led implementation approach. As the week progressed, conversations shifted from the announcements themselves to the practicalities of adoption. NetSuite customers wanted to know which capabilities would deliver results first, what they could start using today and how quickly the rest of the roadmap would make its way into daily operations.
NetSuite reported that more than 15,000 customers, about one in three of its customer base, are now using AI via the platform, describing it as the fastest-adopting technology in the company’s history, and shared that AI Connector usage has gone from less than 1,000 users at launch in late 2025 to more than 20 by 20 as of October. are already available for Australian and New Zealand organizations or coming in the next year.
Investment in AI capabilities
“We went to Las Vegas expecting significant investment in native AI capabilities, and NetSuite certainly delivered. The more telling development was seeing SuiteSkills in the broader agent ecosystem built to work with external AI platforms as well as NetSuite’s own,” said Annexa director, Matthew Owens.
For years, software vendors have tried to draw customers deeper into a single ecosystem. SuiteWorld pointed to a different future, one in which businesses move between AI assistants depending on the task at hand and ERP provides the operational and financial context behind each interaction. It is a recognition that no single AI platform will do it all, that most businesses end up with multiple AI tools and agents working across multiple systems, and that NetSuite’s role in that picture is to remain the critical source of business data and transactions.
Ask Oracle as the first point of entry
For most organizations, Ask Oracle is likely to be the first point of entry as NetSuite Next and Ask Oracle begin to roll out. The barrier to entry is low, as people can start asking questions about their business and generating insights without changing the processes they already run.
The strongest interest from finance teams will probably come from another area. Throughout the week, the financial closure ran through demonstrations and roadmap sessions, with flow analysis, reconciliations, close management, payment approvals and exception handling reflecting a broader push to reduce the effort involved in repetitive operational processes.
Many finance teams still rely on spreadsheets, offline processes or third-party tools to manage parts of the close, and we expect Intelligent Close Manager to be an immediate adoption for the many customers who are currently working around the platform’s tight limitations in this way.
What happens ‘after the AI prompt’
NetSuite described the adoption path during SuiteWorld as a steady progression, in which organizations start by asking questions, move on to recommendations and guided actions, and allow more automation only as trust develops, and we expect this pattern to hold in the next two years, with customers most wary of agents carrying out transactions and making decisions on their own.
ERP platforms have traditionally required users to navigate menus, forms and transactions to complete their work, and that gradual shift in reliance has wider implications for how people interact with them. What emerged from SuiteWorld was a picture of systems taking on more responsibility for coordinating activity, presenting recommendations and executing approved actions.
‘Who does what’ until the end of 2027
By the end of 2027, we expect a growing share of the work that people now do through screens and forms to be performed by AI agents. People will manage exceptions, approve decisions and monitor automated processes, rather than performing each step by hand. ERP will continue to drive the business through this change, increasingly as the engine working in the background rather than the interface employees spend their entire day on.
SuiteExpress, NetSuite’s AI-led implementation toolset that captures requirements, migrates data and recommends configuration from a customer’s own documents and data, will undoubtedly change how projects are delivered, with documentation, analysis and configuration becoming faster and increasingly automated.
AI and the changing economics of ERP implementation
AI will significantly change the economics of ERP implementation, and that is something partners must embrace rather than resist. We should stop measuring our value by the hours spent configuring systems, writing code, and performing repetitive implementation tasks. Instead, we need to spend more of our time understanding how our clients’ businesses work, challenging existing processes and identifying where technology can improve results.
Deep industry expertise also becomes more important in that model, because knowing how to ask the right questions and recognize problems before they happen is what experienced consultants bring, and implementing a bad process twice as fast still leaves a bad process.
Who will win in the age of AI?
The organizations likely to gain the most from AI are not necessarily those with the latest tools. Process documentation, data quality, approvals, governance and operational discipline remain central to success, and none of them can be bought from a vendor. The pace of product development reinforces this. NetSuite is moving toward more frequent releases, turning the implementation of a one-time project into a continuous improvement of how a business uses the platform.
The biggest change for finance and operations teams is learning from doing the work to overseeing it. We have spent decades training people to operate software, follow procedures and process transactions and increasingly they will define outcomes, instruct agents, validate outcomes and handle exceptions.
Breaking the habit is the idea that a person touching each transaction manually is the best form of control, because good governance comes from the right rules, approvals, audit trail and exception management rather than from manual processing. Teams must also challenge why certain processes exist in the first place, because the biggest gains from AI come from eliminating unnecessary steps entirely, far above anything gained by making existing processes faster.
Practical tips for CFOs and Ops leaders
For CFOs and operations leaders, the practical advice is to treat AI as an operational improvement opportunity rather than another technology initiative. See where people spend their time, which processes are repetitive, where the bottlenecks are and where information is moved between spreadsheets, emails and the ERP. You can then select one or two of these processes, determine what they currently cost the business and run a controlled pilot to see what is possible.
At the same time, make sure that data, permissions and approval processes are in good shape, because AI can automate work very quickly and that only helps if it works with the right information and controls. There is every reason to start before the full set of announced capabilities arrives in Australia and New Zealand.
Annexa’s advice: Prepare now for the next wave of AI
“Use the next six months to get your house in order,” Owens said. “With AI as fast as possible, having your core platforms and data organized and secure means you can move quickly and take advantage of the latest models as they arrive, rather than being locked into one. Most teams in Australia and New Zealand are running lean, so it’s hard for anyone else to catch up.”
Annexa is an Oracle NetSuite Implementation and AI System Integration Partner and NetSuite’s ANZ Industry Partner of the Year for 2026, with offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Auckland. Jarred Spriggs, Matthew Owens, Bart Wadley and Isabel Ford attended SuiteWorld 2026 in Las Vegas.
About annexa
Annexa is a high performing NetSuite solution provider and AI system integration partner supporting mid-market and enterprise organizations across Australia and New Zealand. The company brings deep experience across AI, finance, multi-entity operations, supply chain, eCommerce and advanced integration, delivering connected AI-powered ERP solutions that improve visibility, lift performance and create scalable foundations for growth. Find out more at https://annexa.com.au/