For many small business owners, managing growth often means juggling too many systems — from spreadsheets to accounting tools to supplier portals — each working in its own silo. That’s the exact challenge Odeko set out to solve. Originally launched in New York, the company began as a disruptor in the café and coffee shop supply chain space, offering independent operators a way to consolidate their vendor relationships and ordering processes into one simple platform. Instead of having to “talk with five, six, eight vendors a day,” as Kelly Simons, Director of Enterprise Systems at Odeko, put it, small coffee shops could focus on what matters most — running their business and serving their customers.

In our conversation, Simons shared how Odeko’s digital-first approach has evolved alongside its rapid growth. As the company expanded from local delivery to a full omnichannel operation — including service, e-commerce, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) lines — its need for a unified system of record became clear. That’s where NetSuite came in. Simons explained how the company transitioned from basic accounting software to a full ERP platform capable of supporting acquisitions, financial consolidation, and automation across teams. For small business leaders facing similar scaling challenges, Odeko’s journey shows how the right systems foundation can transform complexity into opportunity — without losing sight of operational efficiency or customer experience.

Here is the full transcript of the interview:

Leland McFarland So, uh Kelly, for readers who may not be familiar, uh can you start by telling us a bit about Odeko? Uh, what do you do and what type of customers do you serve?

Kelly Simons Sure. Uh, well, first of all, let me introduce myself officially for you so you know where I fit in the organization. My name is Kelly Simons, I’m the Director of Enterprise Systems at Odeko. So anything that doesn’t have the Odeko name on it, like our ordering portal or an e-com site, all falls to me to do. I’m the de facto owner. So Odeko, uh originally started as a disruptor in the supply chain area. Uh, for mostly targeting mom and pop’s, uh coffee shops, independent chains, cafes, that kind of thing. Um, they we developed a portal that was homegrown and custom built to allow them to place orders in a seamless manner. Uh, one of the things that happens in the world is if you are an independent company, um, you have to talk with five, six, eight vendors a day, right? That’s not efficient. You want to focus on running your business. Um, and also you don’t always get the best prices because you’re buying a case of oat milk instead of like allowing us to buy it, you get the better discount.

So the goal was to kind of consolidate and give a one-stop shop point for these people that own these businesses to place orders and to get benefits of more bulk buying power, right? Um, and that was the original genesis of our business. Um, originally started in New York and uh that’s what we still call our home. And we have an office, a mothership I call it, in New York because it’s just a small drop station. Our company is digital focused and we’re remote first on our corporate level. Um, and so that’s how we interact with our customers.

Leland McFarland Perfect. Uh, what was happening in your business or tech stack that made you decide it was time to implement NetSuite?

Kelly Simons So, predates me being there, but, um, research, questioning, that kind of thing. Um, at one point in our business, uh, they were on the typical small basic business model of accounting software. Um, I’m sure we all know which one of those could be because that’s very common. Um, and uh there was an inflection point where they realized that they needed something more powerful in order to lay the foundation for growth. And that was one of the things that they were looking for was a system that was reasonably priced, fit the needs of the market, and could grow as the business grew. Uh, that was one of the main focuses on it. Now, there was a talk at one time of building their own ERP. Evidently, I heard that there were people that looked at people like they had lost their mind because NetSuite has spent 27 years crafting an ERP and it still grows every day. Uh, so that was kind of the impetus behind it. Laying a platform that they could use uh to consolidate and talk one language: inventory, ordering, accounting, finance, typical things that you would do.

Leland McFarland Okay. Uh, when did you first begin your NetSuite journey and what were the top goals you were uh hoping to achieve? And by you, I know now that you uh, it’s more of Odeko, not uh…

Kelly Simons Yeah, yeah. So, um, whenever you’re in a rapid growth model for a startup business, um, people come on and as you make an acquisition, let’s say, they don’t speak the same language, they don’t have the same information, the systems are different. Um, so having a system that is the source of truth that allows you to pump things in and out of it back and forth. Uh, the goals were to be able to to unify, have a common point to go get information, and to consolidate financials to so our shareholders were happy. We could say, “Hey, look, here’s the information.” Right? So that’s some of the main things that we did.

Leland McFarland Great. Um, can you walk us through your uh NetSuite setup? Uh, which models and tools are most crucial for uh your your daily operations?

Kelly Simons Sure. So we are a OneWorld instance for NetSuite. Uh, we did have multiple subsidiaries. We’ve recently collapsed some of them just because we’ve kind of restructured a little bit. Um, so it’s very valuable to us to be able to use that to utilize if we need to have different subsidiaries and if we do a different new product, which we just recently launched. Sometimes we may want to put it as a different business unit so if we needed to jettison it, God forbid, you could easily, right? Um, we regularly on a daily basis are using inventory management, operations tools for ordering and fulfillment and all of the normal things to get orders through and out the door to our customers. Uh, there’s a lot of financial tracking that goes along with that. Um, being able to use the traditional models, fixed assets, which was done all on a spreadsheet, which is now internally in the system. Uh, just, um, it allows us to be a little bit more agile to pivot faster and to see things quicker. We also have leveraged the extensibility of the system by going with partners. So Celigo, Brex, those kind of things for anything that we needed to be a little bit more sophisticated than some of the standard models might be, right? So, that’s what we do on a daily basis. It’s our lifeblood now.

Leland McFarland Now you’re you’re attached at the hip with uh NetSuite, right?

Kelly Simons Well, I’ve always been attached to the hip with NetSuite. That’ll be what I do until I retire in 10 years. So…

Leland McFarland Um, how has NetSuite changed the way your finance or operations teams work on a day-to-day?

Kelly Simons So before, if we had bought a company or did anything like that, we’d have to go to three or four systems, pull data, try to match the data, try to align the data to make sure it works, right? Um, nowadays when we acquire a company using our repetitive playbook, um, we groom the data, put it in the system so it all matches. They go to our chart of accounts, they go to our structure for customers, things like that. And so in the given day, people are more agile, more efficient, and are able to process things more quickly. A a good good tidbit here is we use Celigo to take our e-com business into NetSuite, all of our ordering. That was a manual process a year ago, took two people 90 hours a week just to process manual e-com orders. And now we’ve grown the business about 40% year over year with the same amount of people because we’ve automated. So all those kind of efficiencies that we gain from being able to quickly pull financials and metrics and things are huge in our company.

Leland McFarland Perfect. Um, how have you customized or extended NetSuite to fit the unique needs of a business like yours?

Kelly Simons So we have, um, an engineering team internally and they focus primarily on our portal and our front-end processes, right? And some of the integration stuff, like microservices into into NetSuite. Um, but we have some workflows that we do to add pieces of data. We have some custom scripting. Uh, we built a workflow that forces invoices to print twice a day. Right? It creates the invoices twice a day. So somebody doesn’t have to manually monitor those. Um, we’ve used custom fields and rules and forms and records, you name it, we’ve done it. Uh, we haven’t gone too far afield and crazy, right? Uh, but we are using that. And then of course, again, as mentioned, we leveraged the extensibility from the partner network to help us if we need to extend beyond. Right?

Leland McFarland Do do you know how the implementation went uh originally?

Kelly Simons So from my understanding, the initial implementation went pretty well. Um, again, you’re typically dealing with people who have never used NetSuite before, so they make decisions are made that maybe, you know, five years down the road probably were need to be reviewed and refined. Uh, I don’t think it went really badly, but of course it was a very skeletal implementation. So it was like a very small segment. I use the analogy it was like the iceberg. They got the tip, but there was all underneath that wasn’t being used yet. And so, um, it, I don’t think there was a lot of bumps. I do, I will say there was some clarity that was needed about what NetSuite could do. And uh they were also, keep in mind, doing this around the time when a lot of the pandemic was coming around and, you know, so the world was different. We all know the world in that time period was different, right? So…

Leland McFarland Yeah. So it was kind of more of a gradual integration?

Kelly Simons Yeah, so they did a, they did the first part which is more financials and some of the order managing and that kind of process. But as time has passed, and especially as I’ve joined as well, we’ve, not saying I’m perfect or the be-all end-all, but we’ve moved it more and more into the center and started to use more and more of the layers of the product.

Leland McFarland Perfect. All right. So NetSuite has been making big moves with AI this year. Um, has Odeko started using any of uh NetSuite’s AI-driven tools or automation?

Kelly Simons So, some of them are like really new, hot off the press. The one that I use the most right now that I love is in the NetSuite knowledge management area. There is thousands upon thousands upon thousands of articles and how-tos, right? And in the times past, you’d have to go type in what you want, it would give you a list of 200 articles, you’d have to click into them, then you go into a rabbit hole where you click into another article that was on another article, that was on another article, right? Um, the new language that they use where I can human speak and type in a prompt and it returns me the top things that it might be, and says here’s one, two, three, four, this is your best option, has been game-changing for me because it takes me what would have taken hours is like seconds to find an answer usually. Um, and I love the fact, one of them the other day actually said, “I’m sorry, you can’t do that from in NetSuite.” It just said you can’t. I was like, “Okay, that’s good to know.” That that’s nice to know, you know, I’d rather you tell me I can’t. Um, I guess, you know, and I’m excited about some of the things coming. Uh, I’m also equally a little bit nervous about NetSuite Next and how much more. Um, but we’re slowly but surely starting to adopt some of those principles in NetSuite.

Leland McFarland Now you mentioned NetSuite Next. Is that the thing, like, out of all the AI advancement, you know, the the the coming soons, um, is that the one that you’re kind of looking forward to most or is there another AI tool that you’re kind of…

Kelly Simons Well no, so I’m really looking forward to NetSuite Next. But again, cautiously optimistic. Because in my mind, I see a positive, but I also know that in the adoption curve, if you move too quickly with some users, they are paralyzed. And now I can see a prompt for a controller and they’re going to be fine, but a warehouse clerk may struggle a little bit more with a prompt, right? Now we all know in the AI world that the world will change and a BA might not be a true BA like we’re used to now or a developer even might not be a true developer. They may leverage an AI tool to do their job and then their responsibility is to check the work, right? Um, so I I think that that’s where I’m most excited about. I’m excited to see things come in. One of the things that I know is coming that I think is going to be awesome is uh being able to tell it what I want a workflow. I can type in what I want and it will give me basically what needs to be done or tell it to go do it itself. Another thing that I’m really excited about that I just learned about here is the autonomous close process. Right? Now, we’ve gotten our close down to pretty tight. We’re about three to five days. When I first started, it was close to 30 for a monthly close, which was insane to me. But the autonomous close process that it basically goes and acts on your behalf in the back, posts the things up, you need to review and you hit yes. It just, I’m I’m in awe. You know what I mean? It’s going to be a great, it’s it’s going to be a very big game-changer in our company.

Leland McFarland Now, now you talked about adoption and having uh users adopt it. Now, we’ve all seen the the the old person, you know, not necessarily old, the person who loves the older systems in the back doing everything pen and paper and using an abacus. Um, how do you address uh those types of users?

Kelly Simons So, first of all, one thing that is really hard for me to kind of do is a lot of the people I know of that are in like warehouse jobs and things like that, they equate AI to job loss. So the first thing you have to do is retool that narrative of it’s not a job loss, it’s a direct, your job is evolving, right? So that’s always a new thing. I think, uh, change management is one of the hardest things to do. And there are people that I know of that sometimes I have to get on with them and I’m like, okay, let’s walk through this. Okay, now tell me what you don’t understand, right? So it’s a little bit of hand-holding with them, which I don’t mind. I would rather them ask and we spend time than them to assume and something just paralyze them, right? Um, there is the theory of the adoption curve, which I’m, I don’t know if you’re familiar with. It’s like an 80, it’s a 20-60-20. There are those people, like, for instance, that bought the iPhone. They were standing in line when the first iPhone came out. Then there’s that middle group that waits to see what happens with the first phone and then they buy it. And then there’s the group that you have to wrap a a rope around their feet and drag them behind you to get them to buy said thing. It’s the same thing with this. Uh, there are going to be some people that it just, they’re not going to transcend into AI very well and it’s because there’s a fear. And it’s how do you address them where they are? How do you meet them where they’re at? Because my mother would be good at AI because that’s just her. My stepdad, no. He he’ll be completely lost. So that’s the same thing with people we work with.

Leland McFarland All right. Final question. Yep. Um, what’s next for Odeko and how do you see your partnership with NetSuite evolving over the next few years?

Kelly Simons So, we are now an omnichannel company. We have a service line, we have a a BU, an e-com line, we have a regular local delivery line, we just launched a new project that’s uh a software SaaS product that we’re rolling out. Uh those are going to continue just to accelerate. This year we bought five companies. We have, yeah, so there’s that. In 2026, our focus is on organic change with some other additional acquisitions possibly. Now I don’t know for sure. It’s always one of those things that’s up in end. Um, we are going to continue to grow. That’s the goal. Is to continue to become a larger company, more and more, more and more market share, that kind of thing. Uh with the ultimate goal at some point of pre IPO. And uh how our partnership with NetSuite is just my platform that’s going to continue to be my base to help me enable that. Um, even whenever they come to me sometimes and say, “Hey, I want to go do blah blah blah,” and I’m like, “NetSuite can do that.” “But I still want to talk to someone else.” “Okay, fine.” But in the back of my mind, NetSuite is still going to be the one to do that. You know what I mean? But sometimes you have to do that. Uh so NetSuite is still going to be our partner. It’s going to be there for a while. Um, I don’t see us ever moving away from it in the next five years.

As Odeko continues its upward trajectory — having acquired five companies this year alone — its partnership with NetSuite remains central to its long-term vision. “NetSuite is still going to be our partner. It’s going to be there for a while. I don’t see us ever moving away from it in the next five years,” said Simons. With plans to expand organically while eyeing a potential pre-IPO future, the company is using its ERP backbone not just for accounting, but as a growth engine.

Simons described how automation and AI are now reshaping everyday workflows, from financial closes to order processing. Tasks that once took “two people 90 hours a week” are now handled in a fraction of the time thanks to integrated tools like Celigo. She’s also optimistic — yet cautious — about NetSuite’s next wave of AI innovations, such as autonomous close processes and natural language workflows. “I’m excited to see things come in,” she said. “It’s going to be a very big game-changer in our company.”

For small business owners watching AI transform enterprise software, Odeko’s experience offers a practical roadmap: start by building a solid digital core, embrace automation thoughtfully, and lead your team through change with patience and vision. Growth is no longer about scaling chaos — it’s about scaling smarter.

This article, “Interview with Kelly Simons of Odeko” was first published on Small Business Trends