Webinar Roundup

From Spreadsheets to Strategy: What AI-native FP&A looks like for NetSuite businesses

Key Takeaways

  • FP&A integration made easy – NoBlue2 and Abacum have partnered up, with an Abacum expert joining the NoBlue2 team, allowing them to implement FP&A reporting integration within their NetSuite offering
  • Eliminate “Excel Drift” – Abacum bridges the gap between NetSuite and active planning, keeping financial models unified and in real-time without manual data input.
  • AI-native – Abacum’s embedded multi-agent AI handles advanced tasks like multi-step driver analysis, instant dashboard visualisation and live external querying via MCP (Model Context Protocol).

If your finance team is still relying on spreadsheets to plan, forecast, and report,  you’re not alone. But there’s a better way. 

For modern finance teams, NetSuite is the ultimate source of truth. But when you need to plan or forecast, and that truth gets exported into dozens of disconnected Excel sheets, you’ll find your data is already stale. 

For our latest webinar, we’ve teamed up with Abacum to showcase how finance teams are moving from historical reporters to strategic advisors using an AI-native FP&A platform built for 2026. This marks the start of a partnership which has seen an Abacum expert join the NoBlue2 team.

Abbey Tizzano, one of our Senior Account Managers, was joined by TJ Dhadwar, Abacum’s Partnerships Manager and Ainhoa Roig, one of Abacum’s Solutions Consultants. The team took a deep dive into AI-native FP&A and how Abacum and NetSuite work together to automate your forecasting, budgeting and reporting.

View the recording here:

 

Onto our roundup:

In-house FP&A Expertise

We have recently welcomed a dedicated FP&A expert to our team and are becoming fully certified to deliver in-house Abacum implementations, fully integrated into your NetSuite solution. Our expert will work with your NetSuite consultant to ensure that your data is synced across both platforms, minimising disruption for you and your team.

Why We Partnered with Abacum

A few years ago, Ian Irwin, our Chief Solutions Officer, felt like there was a gap for our client accounts within FP&A. 

We knew we wanted to find a solution that was capable of handling both simple and highly complex corporate use cases without massive implementation overhead.

After evaluating several different solutions, we decided on Abacum for several reasons:

  • Ease and speed of implementation – typically between 8-12 weeks
  • Familiarity and ease of use – Abacum uses Excel syntax, which is something most users will be familiar with, so there’s no steep learning curve
  • Roots in FP&A – Abacum was purpose-built as an FP&A platform, rather than a BI tool that pivoted into the FP&A space, so it’s easily able to handle the complex use cases and calculations we see with our customer base.
  • Gold-standard service and support

 

Seamless Integration: Abacum & NetSuite

TJ highlighted how Abacum acts as an extension of your NetSuite environment and showed some of the benefits it brings:

  • Instant global consolidation: Automated FX translations and subsidiary eliminations offer a consolidated global view of multi-entity structures in seconds.
  • No need to rebuild or reconfigure: Abacum maps directly to existing NetSuite segments (departments, classes, locations, charts of accounts, etc).
  • Real-time data ownership: Abacum supports fully automated daily syncs, direct syncs using existing NetSuite roles/permissions, or manual refreshes right before major meetings.
  • Official built-on-NetSuite status: As an official SuiteCloud Developer Network Partner, Abacum’s security and architecture are thoroughly vetted to remain entirely stable through NetSuite’s semi-annual releases.
  • Self-serve connection – whether you use direct sync, pull in custom saved searches or automate your key report retrieval, Abacum offers several options for customers to connect with NetSuite.

Live Demo Highlights: Abacum in action

Ainhoa then took us through a demo of Abacum, its integration with NetSuite and the many capabilities it has to offer NetSuite businesses.

Screenshot from Abacum webinar showing how to connect Abacum with NetSuite

Here we highlight some of the key features of Abacum from Ainhoa’s demo:

Spaces & models

Spaces are essentially your reporting dashboards. Highly customisable and collaborative, they can be shared within and across teams so everyone can see exactly the same information, in real-time. 

Models are the underlying formulas and calculations that drive the output to your Spaces

Table Builder

Ainhoa showed how easy it is to create a table in Abacum, using the Table Builder feature. 

Webinar screenshot showing Table Builder feature in Abacum

Her demo included how to view data over different time frames, how to view actuals vs active forecast and how to configure your table variables (rows) to see the information you need. 

You can filter your tables via an easy-to-use checkbox and click-and-drag functionality, making it incredibly quick and intuitive to create clear, effective reports.

Finally, Ainhoa explained how to view different visualisations for your data, such as bar charts, line charts, waterfalls and pie charts. 

Adding tables to reports:

Once you’ve created your table, simply navigate back to the relevant Space, and click on + Add Block to see your table in your report.

Webinar screenshot showing how to add a reporting block to your Space in Abacum

AI analysis embedded throughout

Where Abacum excels is its embedded AI, which takes the platform beyond reporting to actually interrogating your data. Wherever you see the AI symbol, just click on it, and you’ll get in-depth, AI-powered analysis and context, drawn from across the whole platform. 

Webinar screenshot showing how to access AI agent in Abacum

Abacum’s agent uses Anthropic’s latest and most up-to-date Claude AI model (Sonnet 4.6). It works like a chat feature, and can easily handle multi-step prompts and questions, and also create visuals, making it a highly powerful and valuable tool for FP&A. 

  • Tables – use AI within Table Builder to give more context to your numbers and provide reasons for changes, and which customers, channels or financial metrics are driving them.
  • Questions from stakeholders –  if there are questions your non-finance users need answers to, quickly, they can simply ask the AI agent and it will help find them – directly from your data sources. 
  • Suggested prompts & questions – the agent will also suggest questions your team can ask, or pre-generated (but fully editable) prompts (such as contribution or variance analysis, of finding outliers), to aid the process
  • Reporting – within your Space, . 
  • Bigger picture – finance teams can add more context to reports and view trends with AI analysis and insights gathered from the whole platform. 
  • Creating Spaces – you can even use AI to create your Spaces for you. Simply prompt the agent on what you would like your Space to show, and it will create your dashboard.
  • Saving prompts – once you’re happy with them, you can save your prompts and templates, so you don’t have to go to the trouble of writing or creating them again each time.
  • Scenario Studio – this is similar to Goal Seek on Excel. Simply input a revenue target and the AI automatically analyses the variables (like booking values or marketing spend) to show you exactly what assumptions need to change to hit your goal.

Explore Abacum for Yourself

There’s a reason the fastest-growing companies can report and plan 75% faster with Abacum. To see how Abacum can automate FP&A for your company, click below

Find out more about Abacum

Live Q&A and Audience Takeaways

How do you get non-financial department heads to log in and engage with the system?

Abacum creates tailored spaces with embedded video tutorials and provides customised training sessions during onboarding.

What does a typical first 90-100 days look like? What does success look like post-implementation? 

Abacum offers two tracks: 

  • Co-build – a 70/30 collaborative training model where you learn to build along with the team. During this time, we’ll build out use cases and will collaborate with you on training and using the platform, so that as time goes on, you become more and more confident using and customising it.
  • Bespoke – Abacum builds it out entirely and trains you on the backend logic afterwards. 

How does Abacum pricing work? Does NetSuite integration cost extra?

Pricing is on a per-user basis (Admin, Contributor, etc.), in addition to the flat platform fee. There is no modular pricing, meaning features like headcount or revenue planning don’t cost extra down the line. You’ll only pay more as you add users. 

Ready to elevate your financial reporting?

Get in touch with us today to arrange a personalised demo

If your finance team is ready to make smarter decisions, Abacum’s FP&A platform has got your back

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