Zack Nelson, chief executive officer of NetSuite (NYSE: N), was in Durham along with other executives wrapping up a $200 million deal to buy Durham-based Bronto Software and why he plans to invest in more people and jobs in Durham.

In his own words, he describes why he’s making the buy – what capabilities Bronto brings:

“Sitting here in North Carolina, it’s been a very interesting decade that both companies have been really powering parallel pads around the commerce environment, NetSuite as end-to-end commerce platform and Bronto really focusing all of their efforts on marketing automation particularly around commerce and ecommerce,” Nelson explained in a conference call with Wall Street analysts. NetSuite launched in 1998, Bronto in 2002.

“I think that’s a unique characteristic of Bronto. Certainly it was exciting to us and certainly we saw a lot of synergy between that vision and what we are doing on the commerce platform. …

“I think the next big thing for us to add to the world was the marketing, was a deep marketing automation piece. We’ve always had some capabilities in marketing automation, they’ve been more centric around B2B. We have a lot of use of our marketing automation frankly in the suite, particularly in ecommerce but this really gives us the opportunity to get the domain expertise and the capabilities of a company that’s only been focused on this area for that for a decade. I’d say why it’s coming together in the customer base is pretty transparent. You are only a click away from — in a marketing campaign from actually buying something.

“So, marketing ecommerce while they used to be very separate things, as the channels we’re very separate have become a tightly integrated thing. And we really have always believed that combining rich transactional data which NetSuite is really the system of record for orders, invoices, shipments, returns, those types of things with rich behavioral data which the Bronto system and marketing automation in general has the system of record for is a game changing point of integration. …

“The other thing I think is very important going forward again that something that Bronto is focused on is, how do you start to deploy campaigns not just for an ecommerce channel but across all of your touch points, how do you a campaign that works in retail and works online and works in your call center and works on phone, you really need a tightly coupled marketing machine and then omnichannel machines. So, bringing those two things together is going to unleash I think some really interesting capabilities and certainly our joint customers believe that to be the case as well.”

You can read the full transcript at: http://seekingalpha.com/article/3098496-netsuites-n-ceo-zach-nelson-on-q1-2015-results-earnings-call-transcript?find=bronto&all=false