From Nonprofit to For-profit, NetSuite Supports World Centric’s Business
Evolution
Company
World Centric
Location
Petaluma, Calif.
Industry
Distributor and Seller of Certified Compostable Food Packing
Applications Replaced
QuickBooks, Excel
Solutions
NetSuite NetSuite Site Builder
“NetSuite fits a company no matter what their stage of development.
We started using NetSuite when we were quite small, and it has been instrumental in helping us
grow our business and is still highly functional for us.” World Centric
Customer Success
The for-profit social enterprise focused on selling and distributing certified compostable
food packing made from plants, uses NetSuite to run its accounting, order management,
inventory management, supply chain management, ecommerce and customer relationship
management (CRM) business processes.
Founded in 2004 as a nonprofit to raise awareness about climate change and other
environmental issues, World Centric transitioned to a socially responsible for-profit
company after sales of compostable products took off. An implementation of NetSuite eased
the transition.
World Centric has grown rapidly, providing over 200 SKUs of compostable products that serve
as alternatives to disposable plastics and Styrofoam™ as well as custom orders for
organizations and events.
Using NetSuite to track all of its orders, World Centric relies upon a network of
distributors to provide its products to food service businesses and retailers across the
U.S. World Centric also runs its ecommerce operation on NetSuite, which enables direct order
fulfillment for consumers and organizations purchasing in smaller quantities.
World Centric stores all of its product data in NetSuite, allowing any of its full-time
employees to access real-time supply chain and inventory data at anytime, anywhere.
Challenges
Unlike other organizations that structured themselves around a product or service idea,
World Centric started as a mission-driven nonprofit and initially lacked the necessary
systems to support its rapid growth as it became a for-profit entity.
Previously running on QuickBooks and Excel spreadsheets, the company needed business
management software that would allow it to fully integrate customer orders and invoices and
support an ecommerce operation.
Previous use of spreadsheets meant that data was siloed and not integrated. Different
systems were being used to track invoices, orders, ecommerce and customer queries and the
company lacked a single unified system which could support all areas of its business.
Solution
With NetSuite, World Centric has a single unified cloud business management system in place
that can effectively and efficiently support all areas of the company’s business including
integration between inventory and ecommerce.
NetSuite gives employees real-time knowledge and insight into product inventory and shipment
data to track orders, which they can then share with customers.
World Centric employees across the organization use NetSuite to gain a birds-eye view into
business operations including products, inventory and orders.
NetSuite helped to significantly improve collaboration across the entire organization,
particularly important as World Centric continues to build out a remote sales team across
the U.S.
NetSuite customization capabilities enable World Centric to adapt the system on an as-needed
business basis.