Last updated: May 19, 2026
Two things happened this spring that should change how you think about your ERP.
Oracle restructured at a scale the company has never attempted before. And in the same window, NetSuite shipped a release that puts intelligence inside the workflows your finance team runs every month, not next to them.
Most customers will feel the first one before they notice the second. This issue is about both, and about what our team is already doing in the gap between them.
In this edition
→ From 14 days to 5: what Bryan showed AICPA Miami
→ What Oracle's reorganization changed for your support
→ Why "Intelligent" is the word that matters in Close Manager
→ How our team uses AI on real NetSuite builds
01 · From the AICPA CFO Conference in Miami
From 14 days to a 5-day close cycle
At the AICPA CFO Conference last month, Bryan demoed a custom language model tuned to one client's NetSuite environment. The client's close cycle, which had historically taken 14 days, now runs in 5.
The most interesting part was not the demo itself. It was what happened around it. CFOs and controllers stopped, watched, walked away, and then came back with their teams. Most of them asked Bryan some version of the same question. How soon can we have this?
There is a useful pairing in this issue worth naming directly. The Close Manager story below is what NetSuite is building into the product. This is what our team is already building for specific clients, tuned to the exception patterns and workflows their teams actually deal with. Both are real. Both are happening on roughly the same timeline. The customers who benefit first are the ones who notice the pattern early.
Where does your close stand right now? Reply and we'll compare notes.
02 · The Oracle Reorganization
What Oracle's reorganization actually changed for your support
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From Bryan Willman Techfino, CEO/CIO |
While Oracle did some restructuring in late March, the NetSuite product remains on a great trajectory. The 2026.1 release shipped on schedule and is feature-rich (you can read our assessment in this very newsletter).
The part to plan around is provisioning. License provisioning requests that used to turn around in days are now taking two to three weeks. If you have projects starting in the next month or two that depend on new licenses landing in your instance, get the paperwork signed and submitted now. If you wait until you need the license to request it, you will be waiting.
Account contacts have moved too, and some escalation paths look different than they did in March. None of it is alarming on its own, but the customers who plan ahead are going to have a meaningfully better quarter than the ones who don't.
Connect with us for NetSuite support or operationalizing AI with your platform →
03 · The 2026.1 NetSuite Product Release
Why "Intelligent" is the word that matters in Close Manager
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From Red Magbojos Techfino, Practice Manager |
Most product release notes are forgettable. The 2026.1 release is not, and the reason is one feature most customers are still underestimating.
The Intelligent Close Manager is the first time NetSuite has built AI directly into a financial workflow your team actually runs, instead of putting it next to one. That sounds like a small distinction. It is not.
Olivier said it better than I would have:
"This is the first time NetSuite has put intelligence directly inside a core financial workflow, not next to it. The exceptions surface where the work actually happens. That changes the day."
Olivier Gagnon · Techfino, Lead Architect and Practice Manager
In practice, Close Manager pulls together three things the close has always scattered across spreadsheets, sticky notes, and "I will check on Monday." Unreconciled items flag themselves in real time. Exceptions route to whoever owns them, without someone having to hand them off. The audit trail updates as work gets done, instead of getting reconstructed after the fact.
For the clients already running it in test environments, the thing they keep telling us is not "this is faster." It is "I am not chasing anyone anymore." That is the part that changes the week, not just the day.
The bigger picture is that this is the start of a pattern. The next several NetSuite releases are going to look a lot more like this one than like the point releases of the last few years. Intelligence is becoming part of how the platform works, not a feature you bolt on after the fact. Worth knowing now, while there is still time to be early instead of catching up.
See what the month-end close looks like when it runs itself →
04 · How Our Team Is Using AI
Two pieces from Bryan and Olivier, on what it really looks like to build with AI in the loop
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Two pieces this month from Bryan and Olivier, coming at the same question from opposite directions. What does it really look like when an experienced NetSuite architect builds with AI in the loop? Neither of these is a manifesto. They are two people who have been writing software for a long time, describing what is actually working for them right now. |
By Bryan Willman, Techfino, CEO/CIO
The Joy of Vibe Coding: How Bob Ross Would Teach Us AI
What if we have AI backwards? Bob Ross taught a million people to paint by celebrating happy accidents. Bryan makes the case that coding with AI should look a lot more like that, and most teams are still trying to control what is meant to collaborate.
Read about the Joy of Vibe Coding ... Bob Ross style →By Olivier Gagnon
Vibe Coding: Is the Future Bringing Us Back Into the Past?
Is vibe coding the future, or a return to craft we forgot? Olivier thinks both, and that the old engineering instincts about what code has to actually do are exactly what makes the AI part work.
Read why engineering instincts matter in the age of AI → |
From the editor Rachel Cogar leads marketing strategy for Techfino and curates TechNotes. She builds each edition from what the Techfino team is hearing inside client work, with each piece written by the person closest to it. |