Kodella
Scaling up Business with Game - Changing Solutions and Services

The first half of 2019 showcased a significant boom of commerce-focused projects, including omnichannel, B2B, B2C, and online marketplaces. Enterprises are shifting toward an omnichannel strategy when it comes to their customers. Organizations have also put a strong emphasis on B2B and B2C customers creating their own online marketplaces. Adopting these trends in stride requires reliable solutions that can facilitate growth and allow enterprises to communicate with different systems in real-time. The NetSuite platform, which is designed with an open architecture, can serve this need. NetSuite’s cutting-edge SuiteCommerce products are touted to emerge as a critical path to the future growth of businesses looking to migrate to NetSuite.

Kodella, a software implementation company headquartered in Newport Beach, California, has changed the game for NetSuite adoption. With Kodella’s esteemed status as NetSuite’s Breakthrough Alliance Partner of the Year, they are using their knowledge to achieve seamless implementations for their customers. The firm’s simple-and-unique approach utilizes dedicated Netsuite-certified implementation teams and agile methodology to provide businesses a great opportunity to scale up. While conversing with the CIO Applications’ editorial team, Jeff Dennis, CTO of Kodella, shared his insights on the company’s journey, solutions, and value proposition that the company imparts to its clients.

Could you give us a brief overview of Kodella?

Kodella was founded by myself and my two partners, Eric Bibi, our CEO and Ryan Albretsen, our Chief Customer Officer, on the principles of collaboration, mutual respect, and trust. Three years ago, we decided to become a NetSuite Alliance Partner. Our decades-old friendship gives a good balance within our organization and allows us to stay focused on our vision of building our portfolio around NetSuite. Having over 20 years of collective experience using NetSuite and 35 years of ERP and eCommerce experience, we believe that NetSuite is the best ERP platform that offers enterprises a powerful and effective tool to drive business forward.

With our long term industry expertise and core focus on NetSuite solutions, we have garnered the faith and trust of several established brands across several business verticals — manufacturing, distribution, retail, and software. We have a team of about 70 individuals who are certified NetSuite ERP Consultants, NetSuite Administrators, and NetSuite Developers. In 2019, Kodella was awarded NetSuite’s Breakthrough Partner of the Year for North America. Honored by this accolade, we are striving to stay ahead of the curve with our approach and collaborative process.

What are the significant challenges that you have seen faced by businesses in the space?

The top three challenges that typically happen during implementation are data migration, cross-functional communications during the time of development, and finding the right-sized viable solution for clients in terms of scope, expectation, and delivery.

We address data migration challenges by employing a team exclusively dedicated to data migration, that works alongside the Customer Success Manager and the development team. This structure enables our agile development teams to be laser-focused on delivery and value.

When it comes to communication, there are a lot of communication breakdowns happening in the consulting world. Identifying the proper protocol for clear communication during the time of development is crucial for project delivery. We mitigate the potential for miscommunication by collaborating with customers in-person or over the phone in real time. We give clients direct access to development teams and our internal project management boards, which adds visibility and trust to the relationship.

In terms of finding the right-sized solutions for our customers, we stress the concept of a Minimum Viable Product. The idea of the MVP is to get the customer up and running in NetSuite with core functionality so they begin to see immediate value. We find that seeing what people actually do with respect to a product is a much more reliable way to understand their real needs.

Could you specifically talk about your solution suite?

The core of everything that NetSuite offers is their ERP platform, which is a powerful financial management solution. Therefore, when we engage with customers, we always start with their financial components and try to stack up their finances on the ERP platform. By migrating their current financial software to NetSuite, we are always trying to merge differing systems to the NetSuite platform. Once customers are live on NetSuite and start to see the value of the powerful financial software, we proceed to additional phases. We have seen several enterprises with a strong e-commerce presence using outdated websites. We can bring the operations of those companies to the NetSuite platform without setting up an integration point. This allows enterprises to achieve a unified database and eliminate disparate systems, which is imperative to a growing company.

Could you walk through the implementation process that you follow at Kodella?

At Kodella, we do things a bit differently as we behave internally much like a software startup. We never adopt a “top-down change” approach to optimize a process. No team member — executive level or entry-level — participates in such actions. Instead we use an agile methodology throughout our organization and time-box our projects into two-week project checkpoints, called “sprints” with our clients, facilitating a continuous feedback loop between Kodella and clients. This allows us to deliver value to our clients quickly, and build upon that delivered value with every sprint iteration.

With such an approach in our corporate DNA, we are able to “fail fast”. We never want to work ourselves into a situation where we’ve invested months building a solution that isn’t aligned with our client’s vision. We also stress full transparency in our communication and project tracking by giving our clients access to our project plans, status, and communicate with our team members in real time. When it comes to implementation, instead of relying on traditional modes of change through change orders, upcharges, and project delays, which lead to dissatisfaction among clients, we follow the philosophy that ‘change is normal’. Having a team dedicated to assisting customers to adapt to changes, we help them meet their needs.

How does the future of Kodella look like?

As we look toward the future, our organization is experiencing growth in both services and product offerings. We are also expanding our partnerships with A/P automation, sales tax compliance, and other strategic partners that have built-for-NetSuite certified modules. Our footprint is expanding globally in EMEA and JAPAC and will continue over the next 12-24 months. We have strategic plans and platform enhancements that we’re currently building in-house. These new products will deliver great value to our current and future clients.