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Located in Alameda, California, Saildrone designs, manufactures, and operates ocean-sensing drones. These autonomous, uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) use sensors to deliver insights about activity above and below the ocean surface from around the world, for ocean research and maritime security. Saildrone implemented NetSuite and steadily increased the modules it uses to meet the growing complexity of its business.
Products: NetSuite Advanced Customer Support, NetSuite Advanced Manufacturing, NetSuite Advanced Revenue Management, NetSuite Demand Planning, NetSuite ERP, NetSuite Financial Management, NetSuite Fixed Assets Management, NetSuite Inventory Management, NetSuite Learning Cloud Support, NetSuite OneWorld, NetSuite Project Management, NetSuite SuiteBilling, NetSuite Work Orders and Assemblies
Company
Saildrone
Location
Alameda, California
Industry
Manufacturing
Software and Technolog Companies
Employees
100 to 249
Number of Subsidiaries
1
NetSuite Products and Services Used
NetSuite Advanced Customer Support
NetSuite Advanced Manufacturing
NetSuite Fixed Assets Management
Partner
Myers-Holum
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Netsuite nas realiy allowed us to be able to scale so much faaster and so much more profitably than we would have been able tootherwise.”
Barak Ben-Gal
CFO, Saildrone
Diving deep for business-building insights
Delivering valuable ocean data
Powered by wind and solar energy, Saildrone’s fleet of USVs gather critical information for maritime security, ocean mapping, and ocean data for customers including governments, civil agencies, and private companies. Since its launch in 2012, Saildrone has used its USVs across various missions, such as measuring dangerous weather events, collecting CO2 data in hard-to-reach areas, and tracking illegal fishing and drug trafficking.
Sailing upwind into business complexity
As Saildrone grew, the complexity of its business became nearly impossible to manage without an ERP in place. The company struggled to manually track the thousands of critical parts that went into each USV, which could result in weeks of mission delays and thousands of dollars in unnecessary expenses in the event of an error. Saildrone also needed to delve into each mission’s associated costs to determine whether its pricing structure and government contracts would yield a profitable outcome.
Implementing an enterprise-wide system
Saildrone implemented NetSuite ERP in 2016, but when CFO Barak Ben-Gal joined the company in 2020, he wanted to update and expand its use across the business. He enlisted the help of Myers-Holum to implement additional NetSuite modules, develop company-specific customizations, and integrate NetSuite with upstream and downstream engineering and operations systems. The biggest differentiator, according to Saildrone, was implementing NetSuite across the entire business, not just in one department. The company has five times as many NetSuite users outside the finance department as in it, doing tasks from supply chain demand planning to warehouse receiving. By using tools such as NetSuite SuiteApprovals to route approvals for purchase orders and vendor invoices across each department, Saildrone estimates NetSuite saves the company over 500 hours of work a month.
Simplifying component traceability
Using NetSuite Inventory Management, Saildrone can track each component and their location within its facilities and designate reorder points through NetSuite Materials Requirements Planning. The team also uses NetSuite Advanced Manufacturing to generate work orders and trace where each piece of inventory goes in the production process and NetSuite Fixed Assets Management to calculate depreciation across hundreds of different assets as they complete the production process and enter service.
Plotting the course to expansion
Saildrone also implemented NetSuite Project Management so it could report in detail on the costs of missions—including each associated journal entry, invoice, purchase order, and hours allocated—to provide cost justification in highly regulated government contracts. As it looks to the future, Saildrone has expanded its NetSuite footprint to include NetSuite OneWorld to ease complexity as it branches out further internationally.
