CASE STUDY

Defense Contractor Vatn Systems Builds a Scalable Financial Foundation With NetSuite

August 21, 2026

Vatn Systems designs, manufactures, and delivers autonomous underwater vehicles for the U.S. Department of Defense and NATO allied nations. Founded in May 2023 and based in Bristol, Rhode Island, the company has grown from twenty employees to about one hundred in just over a year, with plans to triple headcount over the next two to three years.  

As a defense contractor, Vatn Systems needed a financial and operational foundation that could scale with that growth from day one, all while meeting strict Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) compliance standards. Stephane Uhl, VP of Finance at Vatn Systems, led the company’s ERP selection and implementation with NetSuite and Caravel. 

Challenge 

Vatn Systems started on QuickBooks, a platform that worked well in the company’s earliest days but could not keep up as the business shifted from an R&D prototype shop to a full manufacturing operation. 

  • No Inventory Visibility: running on QuickBooks left the finance team with no way to track inventory in or out, no traceability, and no reliable way to put a cost on its own products. 
  • Untracked Purchase Orders: purchasing happened by phone with no formal approval process, so the company had no visibility into supplier pricing or what materials had actually arrived against each order.  
  • No Audit Trail: without recorded transactions across manufacturing, purchasing, or assets, Vatn Systems lacked the audit trail it will need ahead of a planned financial audit by the end of 2027. 
  • Strict Compliance Requirements: as a subcontractor serving the U.S. government and NATO allies, Vatn Systems needed a system built to DCAA standards, since some government customers will not consider a vendor without an approved ERP already in place. 

Solution 

Vatn Systems built a shortlist of five ERP platforms with a track record in the defense industry, including NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, Epicor, Acumatica, and Deltek. After demonstrations, pricing discussions, and hands-on testing in sandbox environments, the company selected NetSuite for its modern, cloud-based architecture and early, sustained investment in AI and machine learning. NetSuite recommended Caravel directly, and Caravel stood out for a proprietary module built into NetSuite that satisfies DCAA requirements without connecting to a separate platform. 

“Instead of having an ERP and then having activities to be compliant with DCAA out of the system, the good thing with Caravel is that they build this embedded module within NetSuite, so we don’t have to connect to any other platform,” said Stephane Uhl, VP of Finance at Vatn Systems. 

Working with a lean internal team, Vatn Systems and Caravel scoped a deliberately narrow first phase: purchase order approvals with three-way match, sales orders and project-based revenue recognition, cash management, the DCAA compliance module, and advanced manufacturing functionality for bills of material, routings, and work orders.  

The company also connected its banking relationships and its payroll and expense management platforms to NetSuite, with some systems syncing data as often as every fifteen minutes. Vatn Systems also migrated close to two years of historical trial balances from QuickBooks so its full financial story would live in one system from the company’s founding forward. 

The original six-month timeline extended to seven months after Vatn Systems chose to pause and reassess scope ahead of go-live, still a fast turnaround for an ERP implementation that typically takes a year or more. The company also kept customization to a minimum, relying on Caravel’s contract-type framework, firm fixed price, cost-plus reimbursement, or time and materials, to activate the right labor and material tracking options for each government contract. 

“Through the life and the journey of the project, you’re going to change the scope. You have to build a flexible system, a flexible scope, to be able to implement your system the right way that will fit your expectation at the end,” said Stefan Uhl, VP of Finance at Vatn Systems. 

Outcome 

Less than four months after go-live, Vatn Systems has already turned NetSuite into the operational backbone finance, manufacturing, and supply chain teams rely on every day. 

  • Purchase Order Control: in the two months after go-live, Vatn Systems processed more than 300 purchase orders, a number that has since grown toward 500. 
  • Inventory Visibility: the company can now assign an accurate value to its inventory for the first time, a critical shift for a manufacturer that previously had no way to cost its own products. 
  • Automated Asset Accounting: fixed asset and prepaid amortization schedules that were once built by hand in spreadsheets now calculate automatically once an invoice is tagged, cutting hours from monthly close. 
  • Labor and Project Tracking: Vatn Systems has recorded roughly 2,500 labor tracking transactions across 30 to 40 active projects, giving the finance team the ability to compare budgeted hours against actual hours for the first time. 
  • Cross-Department Adoption: employees across supply chain, manufacturing, and engineering access NetSuite from day one, replacing the emails and phone calls once needed to track down a purchase order. 

With its financial foundation in place, Vatn Systems is now rolling out a CRM system to organize its growing sales team, alongside a dedicated production system and a product lifecycle management tool, both designed to connect back to NetSuite as the company’s system of record. 

About Caravel 

Caravel has served more than 1,000 clients over the past decade, providing a comprehensive range of services, including accounting, strategy, business process, and technology selection. Caravel is proud to be part of the technology services group of BPM LLP, a top 40 accounting and advisory firm. 

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