GoPro, headquartered in Half Moon Bay, Calif., is a seller of wearable, waterproof digital cameras. As it experienced rapid growth in sales, the company found itself unable to communicate properly with logistics partners, according to chief technology officer Stephen Baumer. "We had disparate solutions, very Band-Aided together, very grassroots," he says. Having started out with a staff of just seven people, a bigger GoPro suddenly needed to take a more comprehensive look at its supply chain.
Baumer says the company had no desire to built a large on-site server farm to support its information-technology needs. It turned to the software vendor NetSuite to provide a wide range of applications - including accounting, enterprise resource planning, electronic commerce and customer relationship management - under a hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.
Implementation of the technology was fairly straightforward, recalls Baumer. GoPro was able to grow its business around the new capabilities, customizing the tools to meet its unique needs. Much of the effort involved the importation of large amounts of legacy data related to customers and accounting. The whole process lasted between six and eight weeks before go-live.
Baumer says customization was possible even under the SaaS model. NetSuite subsequently rolled out a visual builder which allowed the company to map its unique business processes without any knowledge of coding. Says Baumer: "I'm a huge advocate of cloud services." In the end, GoPro was able to use the technology to improve collaboration with suppliers, giving it a new perspective on parts sourcing.
