Financial metrics matter to everyone in a company, not just those in finance and operations. That’s especially true in a company experiencing hypergrowth, like Sol de Janeiro. The beauty company launched in 2015, and its first product—Brazilian Bum Bum Cream—went viral. Sol de Janeiro has grown lightning-fast ever since.
We spoke with Caio Pimenta, senior manager of global analytics, about how Sol de Janeiro brings financial metrics that matter to everyone in the business—and how the Domo and NetSuite integration makes that possible.
Can you share more about how our partnership began?
I joined Sol de Janeiro in 2022 to build the business intelligence (BI) arm from scratch. I wouldn’t even call it business intelligence anymore—it’s about growing data and analytics capabilities throughout the business.
As a company, we’re experiencing hyper-growth after only nine years in business. Before, we didn’t have a BI tool, a data warehouse, or a data lake—nothing. So, we started our journey in 2022, doing extensive research in all the data tools. We decided to pick Domo and launched in January 2023. By June 2024, we had almost 200 users. It’s really embedded into the company, and we’re also starting to expand into custom apps.
When did you integrate NetSuite, and how have you used its tools?
We started integrating NetSuite with Domo right off the bat in January 2023. Back then, a lot of our business was very siloed between departments. My team sits in a global department, which means we tailor services to the entire company.
One of our needs was to eliminate those silos and focus on data integrity. Everyone needs to know how our sales are doing. Key stakeholders need to know about all of our shipments and all of our products. All that data was in NetSuite, our enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. That was our source of truth. Before Domo, everyone was exporting data into Excel sheets, which could be hard to understand and wasn’t streamlined. With Domo, we were able to build a hub where the teams can digest data from NetSuite in a user-friendly way.
Over time, we added new use cases for our supply chain and finance functions. One of these is master data management, standardizing all of the SKUs and their categories. Some of the SKUs had different names and needed fixing, so we created a dashboard, pulling data every day and instructing the user to make changes in NetSuite, refresh the data, and see their progress.
How does Domo help expand Sol de Janeiro’s data access in NetSuite?
Some of our people have NetSuite access because they’re the ones inputting purchase orders, recording sales, changing shipments, etc. But many of our business users don’t have NetSuite access, because they don’t need to be in the tool itself. Instead, they rely on Domo to view and pull the ERP data relevant to their roles.
Our commercial teams fall into this second group. They are the ones going into meetings with retailers. They’re using NetSuite data plus our retail sales to inform and guide those conversations—but they do so by creating their own special reports in Domo.
What efficiencies were you able to gain by bringing Domo together with NetSuite?
One example is month-end reports. I would estimate that these reports—for example, of cost of goods sold (COGS) and gross margin—would take our finance team a couple of days to assemble. It involved getting all the data, identifying any issues, and filling in more details where needed. Domo has helped accelerate the process; now, it takes about 30 minutes.
Now with Domo, we pull the reports and review them in meetings. We can bring in any missing files, rerun the flow, and make sure to validate it. Then, the dashboard is ready for action. All this happens in a half hour.
Instead of spending time manually building the reports, the team can now really dig into any problems they find. For example, why is the SKU more expensive than what we expected it to be? They can dig into the issue.
How did you go about getting buy-in for using Domo alongside NetSuite?
We got buy-in for Domo by showing its value—particularly by sharing how the tools could save time in people’s days. For example, we demonstrated how, with Domo’s tools and connectors, you no longer need to spend three hours in Excel inputting data dumps and fixing formulas. Time savings and efficiency mean a lot to our employees.
We did a few more things to get buy-in for integrating Domo and NetSuite. We developed a strong training plan for adoption, and we encouraged users to become editors in Domo. We also created an internal community in Microsoft Teams—a small channel where people can exchange information. We invited them to take the New Power User Orientation class, which I heard good feedback about.
What other benefits have you experienced from using Domo and NetSuite together?
Because of the sensitivity of the financial data in NetSuite, we need to prevent it from being compromised by user error. Integrating with Domo has allowed us to maintain data integrity with the ability to transform and cleanse the data, ensuring we always get correct answers.
Integrating Domo has also allowed us to connect to other data sources for a more complete view of retail performance. For example, we have also enabled real-time tracking of shipments, facilitated by our Shopify platform.
This feature is particularly beneficial during high-sales periods like our July sale and Black Friday, where we handle hundreds of thousands of orders. Our custom dashboard, powered by Shopify data, allows us to monitor our 3PLs’ performance against their service-level agreements. This ensures we can promptly address any issues and continually improve our shipping efficiency.
How else are you using Domo today and beyond?
Recently, we launched a custom app for our leadership team, allowing them to easily consume our sales and operations data. Initially, we built out the dashboard, incorporating our finance data, forecasts for the year and quarter, and the ability to drill down from retailer to category to SKU. Additional sections covered demand, supply, forecast attainment, and service levels.
Despite having all the necessary data, we needed a presentation view that was visually appealing and easy to use. I dedicated about two hours to converting the dashboard into a custom app using App Studio, and the result was impressive. The leadership team was thrilled with the new look and functionality.
(Thanks again to Caio for sharing Sol de Janeiro’s experiences.)
So, what’s next for Sol de Janeiro?
NetSuite provides an excellent ERP system for Sol de Janeiro. Its capabilities help eliminate the silos that could keep the company from thriving and ensure the financial metrics that matter live in one streamlined place. Integrating Domo makes NetSuite even better by making this data even more accessible and allowing for even deeper drilling down.
If you’re ready to see how NetSuite and Domo together can strengthen your business, explore more inspiring success stories and valuable resources.
