Nscale chooses Antire to power its IT foundation for growth

Nscale replaced a legacy ERP system with Oracle NetSuite to underpin both rapid growth and a dynamic business model in the rapidly evolving AI market. Antire was the preferred partner in supporting evolving business needs and establishing a robust IT platform for the fast-expanding hyperscaler.

The speed at which artificial intelligence (AI) technology and industry are changing today is something we have hardly experienced before. To deliver competitive solutions for the AI market, you must be at the forefront and, at the same time, be able to adapt your business model to the market quickly. This is the whirlwind in which Nscale excels. The hyperscaler urgently needed an IT platform that supported both the rapid AI market changes and growth.

Nscale faced significant challenges with fragmented legacy systems, exacerbated by a previous unsuccessful attempt to migrate Norwegian entities onto the group system. 

Cherilyn Laban, Head of Accounting and Reporting at Nscale, starts, “We struggled with a legacy system that couldn’t support our growth nor adapt to our evolving business needs, together with fragmented local business applications. Therefore, we were very keen to bring everything onto a more relevant ERP platform that could scale and grow with us.” 

Nscale wanted to consolidate the group's transactions and processes onto a common platform for all entities.

Critical to have a partner that understands the business

Laban started to search the market for the right ERP solution and to find the right partner.

She emphasizes: “Having the right partner is critical. Someone who can think alongside you, understands how your business processes work, and understands the technologies and tools that will optimize your business is important because then they can bring trusted advisory to the project.”

Recognizing the urgent need for a unified and scalable platform, Nscale soon found Oracle NetSuite to be the right platform and Antire the right partner.

Laban says she was confident that Antire was the right partner after the first session due to Antire’s agility, honesty, and comprehensive expertise. Antire also had the same values as Nscale. She didn’t want to use valuable time to search for another partner. Nscale needed a rapid implementation and had a short timeline before going live. The first meeting with Antire was in December. The go-live was set for March!

“On top of implementing a new ERP system, we were changing our business model live under us. So, in parallel to setting up NetSuite, we had a fundraising, and laid out our go-to-market strategy. Our tight schedule seemed impossible,” Laban adds.

This is what a hyperscale AI infrastructure looks like.

Establish an optimal NetSuite platform from the start

Nscale’s goal was clear: to consolidate global operations on a single, agile ERP platform capable of capturing granular data upfront, automating downstream processes, and providing real-time analytics. The initial implementation covered core NetSuite modules, Antire Pay for streamlined payment processes, and Zone Capture to automate banking and scanning operations.

Nscale is a very cash-driven business. Real-time insight into the cash flow—cash in and cash out—is crucial. Before implementing NetSuite across the group, Nscale’s financial team struggled to grasp the complete financial picture across all entities. Financial reporting relied on individuals, spreadsheets, and manual processes. NetSuite replaces these cumbersome processes with updated dashboards and automated reports. This has had a substantial positive impact on Nscale.

Cherilyn Laban emphasizes how important it is to get the building blocks right from the beginning of an ERP project: “There's a lot we want to achieve, so we need the system to be able to tomorrow to build a straight tower tomorrow and the next day, if needed, to build a circle. If you get the building blocks wrong from the start, it will be a lot of work on the back end to try and move things around.”

In addition, Nscale’s strategy is to stay lean and mean. For Nscale to achieve its growth goals with a small team, it needs to leverage the technology, leverage the processes, and leverage and optimize the NetSuite platform and tools to make the company as productive as possible.

In addition, Nscale wants to keep things as simple as possible. Nscale aims to keep NetSuite as standardized as possible and minimize customization because it becomes harder to be agile if you customize too much. Antire has introduced Nscale to out-of-the-box functionality and additional products that support the business, like Antire Pay and Protibase integration.

NetSuite will hold the master data, reinforcing a single source of truth. In addition to the NetSuite project, Nscale is implementing a new HR tool and an asset management system, Hexagon. Both will be integrated into NetSuite as well.

Laban says, “Ultimately, the financial data is crucial for all our decisions. So investing in the right tools and ERP system now is vital for our success in the future. Critical business decisions are to be made next year.”

Nscale, Aker, and OpenAI will build Stargate Norway: a 100,000 NVIDIA GPU AI Gigafactory powered by renewable energy in nearby Narvik in Northern Norway. Pictured above is the location. Read the full story here.

Preparing the ground for AI tools

The next major phase for Nscale will be using artificial intelligence to extract more value from their data. That's also a reason to keep the NetSuite platform as clean, standardized, and agile as possible. Clean data and sound data quality provide the best support for gaining real business value from utilizing artificial intelligence (AI).

Laban says, “Nscale is leaning on Antire’s AI experts to create a path to ensure that Nscale will be AI-ready as soon as we are live with NetSuite.”

“One of the lessons I have learned is that if your data is not clean enough, if your data is not available enough, you can implement every single AI tool there is, but it will not work out well, and the value is not there. It is a rubbish-in, rubbish-out situation. So, that's been fundamental throughout the project, which is to keep data in one place as much as possible and to keep data available for other systems. NetSuite is going to be the anchor.

With Oracle NetSuite as a solid foundation in place, Nscale is poised to continue its global expansion and is equipped with robust, agile financial and operational infrastructures.