NetLedger adds partners to target vertical industries

NetLedger, which makes a suite of applications for small and mid-sized businesses, is set to announce partnerships with vertical industry software providers in the biotechnology, agriculture, construction and other industries.

NetLedger , which makes a suite of applications for small and mid-sized businesses, is set to announce partnerships with vertical industry software providers in the biotechnology, agriculture, construction and other sectors.

The partnerships will allow the third-party vendors to sell NetLedger’s products into new markets, the company said. The announcements are due to be made Tuesday at the company’s second annual partner conference in Redwood Shores, Calif.

Among the partners are Ryburn, which makes software for the agricultural industry, BuildTopia, which makes a business management system for residential builders; Shannon Systems, which offers electronic data interchange and e-commerce services, and Document Sciences, which offers content processing services.

“The partnerships are important because we’re the only company with a whole integrated suite aimed at small businesses,” a NetLedger spokeswoman said.

The company has also announced a number of usability improvements to its products, including the Oracle Small Business Suite, an accounting, employee management and Web site publishing package. Larry Ellison, Oracle’s top executive, is a majority stakeholder in NetLedger, and the company licenses the Oracle name for use with its applications suite. The improvements also appear in NetLedger’s NetSuite, a Web-based program adding advanced accounting and customer relationship management to the Oracle Small Business Suite, and NetCRM, a Web-based sales management tool.

Among the new features for the three products are a new activities bar in which users can add any activity to a record with one click, paginated reports that allow for faster delivery of that data, and a quicker method of marking tasks completed on users’ home pages.

The new features, which were announced last week and are available immediately, also allow users to customize the way the information is organized and displayed and to view large numbers of items in compact table formats.

NetLedger’s products are delivered as online services, and the company touts their cost efficiency because users don’t have to pay large up-front licensing fees or maintenance fees for hardware or software.

NetLedger counts more than 6,000 small- and mid-sized businesses as customers.