The Bee Equity Partners | Investment Firm Uses NetSuite to Support Tech Startup Sector in Mauritius
Established venture capital firm works with ERP Success Partners to implement a cloud ERP that gives the firm full visibility over all of its in-house financial operations.  
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The startup scene in Mauritius has been growing considerably over the last few years, and venture capital firms like The Bee Equity Partners are standing by, ready to help innovative entrepreneurs bring their new ideas to market. Founded in 1974, this listed fund originally focused on passive investments. In 2016, it pivoted over to investing in high-growth technology startups.  

One of just a small handful of VC firms in Mauritius, Bee provides entrepreneurs with modern financing solutions that are tailored to meet the realities of the entrepreneur and complementary to traditional banking financing. With a core team of four that focus on investment screening, business appraisals, and finance, the company outsources non-core tasks to reliable third-party providers. 

Bee also relies heavily on technology to run its business operations, manage its finances, and keep tabs on its portfolio performance.

“AS A LISTED ENTITY, WE HAVE TO COMPLY WITH PRETTY RIGOROUS REPORTING REQUIREMENTS”

Olivier Fayolle, CEO

Moving into the Cloud

Up until 2016, an accounting firm was managing Bee’s finances on the Sage on-premise enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform. Wanting to bring that aspect of its operations in-house, Bee began looking for a modern, cloud-based ERP and an implementation partner to work with.   “We had just hired an internal finance manager, and had to decide which system to implement from the ground-up,” says Fayolle, who was hoping for a fairly seamless data migration from the on-premise platform to a cloud-based option. After researching the options, Bee decided on NetSuite Cloud ERP.  “We didn’t have the IT infrastructure or team to be able to use a hosted accounting system or ERP,” Fayolle explains, “so we studied the cloud opportunities and decided on NetSuite.” 

The Right Implementation Partner

Without in-house IT resources, Bee also wanted an implementation partner to both install its new ERP and migrate its existing accounting data into the new platform. After being introduced to ERP Success Partners by a mutual acquaintance, Fayolle engaged the NetSuite partner to manage both processes.  Fayolle says those early conversations were focused on picking the right ERP for Bee’s growing business. “ERP Success Partners presented the NetSuite value proposition in a very transparent and professional manner,” says Fayolle.  
Leveraging NetSuite’s Power
Today, Bee is using NetSuite’s built-in accounting functionalities plus several customized reports (e.g., balance sheets). Fayolle says that migrating the company’s data from Sage and into NetSuite was the “trickiest part” of the implementation process, but adds that ERP Success Partners helped ensure a smooth transition.  “We were worried about the migration, but it went very well,” says Fayolle, whose team also received the training it needed to be able to get up and running quickly on NetSuite. It continues to call on ERP Success Partners when technical questions arise. “They’re always there to help us.”

“IMPLEMENTATION WENT WELL AND WAS WITHIN BUDGET, JUST AS WE ANTICIPATED. THERE WERE NO PROBLEMS; WE WERE VERY SATISFIED WITH ERP SUCCESS PARTNERS’ SERVICE.”

Measuring the Benefits
Bee has benefitted from bringing its accounting function in-house and implementing a cloud ERP platform. With a 360-view of its finances, the company can easily review historical data, generate reports, leverage data analytics, and use all of that intelligence for good decision-making.   Fayolle also likes the improved report quality that NetSuite provides. “Four years ago when we needed an audit report for our accountants, the quality just wasn’t very good,” he explains. “We couldn’t even tailor our reports.”  Fast-forward to today, and Bee not only has tailored reports to use as benchmarks, but it also has clear key performance indicators (KPIs) to work with. These data points are critical for VC firms, which must be able to accurately track their overall performance plus that of their various portfolio companies. “With NetSuite, we now understand what portion of our portfolio performed well, where we are compared with our budget, and whether we’re on track to achieve our goals for the year,” says Fayolle, who adds that the firm is now in “investment mode” and gearing up to add more startups to its portfolio over the next year or two.

 “WE’VE BEEN ABLE TO EXPAND OUR CAPABILITIES AND EXECUTE ON OUR STRATEGY WHILE MAINTAINING OUR SMALL, CORE TEAM.”

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