Vermont SportsCar Races to Success with NetSuite Cloud ERP
Published on by Oracle NetSuite & Myers-Holum
Vermont SportsCar Races to Success with NetSuite Cloud ERP
“We’re running in a global race series with electric rallycross. As we continue to expand in this and other ways, NetSuite enables that growth.”
-Brian Oldfield, CFO, Vermont SportsCar
The following is an excerpt from the Oracle NetSuite and Myers-Holum case study available for download at the bottom of this page.
Smith’s reputation for high quality craftsmanship and attention to detail, born from his early interest in sports car restoration, became hallmarks of Vermont SportsCar’s rally car construction. From a handful of technicians working in a 3,000 square foot building, the company has grown into a 70-employee organization that operates from a 75,000 square foot state-of-the-art facility.
As Subaru’s largest factory support motorsports program, Vermont SportsCar builds vehicles in house, manages designs for race components, engines, drive trains, and other equipment, and manages race operations and logistics right from its headquarters.
“It’s a full umbrella operation, from design all the way through to execution at the races,” said Brian Oldfield, CFO of Vermont SportsCar. “We do everything here."
Throttled by Aging, On-Premise Technology
As Vermont SportsCar grew, its technology needs changed. “We were quickly outgrowing that,” said Oldfield. He wanted a platform that could share accurate, up-to-date financials with potential business partners or investors.
“We’re running in a global race series with electric rallycross. As we continue to expand in this and other ways, NetSuite enables that growth,” Oldfield explained.
Another major difficulty the company faced at the time involved creating and using budgets. The dynamic nature of Vermont SportsCar’s work combined with the complexity of their existing system made the process especially challenging.
For example, basic activities like moving an item from one storage area to another or creating supersessions for substitutions were difficult to execute with the existing software. And, if a component on a car needed to be redesigned, the user would have to create an entirely new part number.
The company’s technology struggles didn’t end there. It also employs several offsite engineers and consultants who work all over the world and who couldn’t access the company’s on premises Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.
Needless to say, a cloud-based system was at the top of Vermont SportsCar’s “must have” criteria list for its new ERP. It reviewed four or five different options before selecting NetSuite and launching its implementation in January 2021.
‘We Made the Best Choice’
Vermont SportsCar tapped into NetSuite Alliance Partner Myers-Holum’s solution expertise and experience with the leading cloud ERP system.
“A lot of the value we’ve extracted from NetSuite was generated by our relationship with Myers-Holum and its team,” said Oldfield.Oldfield.“Myers-Holum understands our business, and the specialists it has pulled in as needed, be it a reporting specialist or someone with expertise in another area have been absolutely phenomenal.”
Being project based, Vermont SportsCar runs on a complex revenue model and has unique reporting requirements. A project may be segmented in various stages, for example, and require constant updating to reflect the current status of the vehicle being worked on.
Before NetSuite, the company was pulling static data and aggregating it in Excel spreadsheets. Then, those spreadsheets were shared via email with team members around the world.
Today, the company’s CFO can be 2,500 miles away from the Milton, Vt. location and still be able to log into NetSuite, view the activity, review reports, and pull up budgets. Oldfield also likes the system’s flexible reporting options, budgets, and sub general ledgers, the latter of which the company previously lacked.
“The change has been dramatic. It’s just a complete night and day difference,” said Oldfield of the company’s switch to NetSuite.“I can say with confidence that for our particular business, we made the best choice.”