Did You Know This About . . . NetSuite?
- RJMC
- Sep 29
- 4 min read
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Oracle NetSuite: The ERP for Scalable Growth, But at a Price
For businesses looking to scale, the leap from legacy or fragmented systems to a single, unified platform is a critical one and Oracle NetSuite can present a solid solution for many companies. Oracle NetSuite is widely recognized as the first cloud-based ERP system, launched in 1998 with a business model centered on delivering integrated business applications over the internet. Today NetSuite delivers a "one-stop shop" for managing everything from financials and inventory to CRM and e-commerce. It's a powerful solution but comes with some trade-offs. Here’s a look at the pros and cons of NetSuite for growing businesses.
The Pros: A Single Source of Truth
1. A Truly Unified Platform: NetSuite's core strength is its single database model. It integrates a wide array of business functions – full featured ERP that will support your accounting and financial needs as well as sales order management, supply-chain purchasing, manufacturing, and inventory control. NetSuite also offers an e-commerce solution – as one unified one system. This eliminates data silos, reduces manual data entry, and provides real-time visibility across your entire organization. Imagine a sales order automatically flowing to inventory, accounting, and fulfillment, all without a single keystroke. Oracle NetSuite is hosted in geographically distributed Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) data centers across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.
2. Built for Scalability: NetSuite is designed to grow with your business. Its cloud-native architecture means you can easily add modules, users, and even new subsidiaries with its OneWorld feature without the need for a major IT overhaul. This makes it a future-proof investment, capable of supporting a small startup's needs today and a multinational corporation's requirements tomorrow.
3. Robust and Customizable: The platform offers a high degree of customization. Through its SuiteCloud platform, you can create custom fields, forms, and workflows to match your specific business processes. We recommend adopting Oracle NetSuite best practices; however, you do have the flexibility to tailor the system to your needs. Even without customization, NetSuite offers extensive “personalization” to tailor user screens, dashboards, and reports for your organization. The system also offers a level of automation to streamline a variety of business processes and workflows increasing efficiency and productivity.
4. Real-Time Business Intelligence: With all your data in one place, NetSuite provides powerful real-time analytics and reporting. Customizable dashboards and KPIs give you an immediate, 360-degree view of your business's performance, from sales forecasts to inventory levels. This allows for data-driven decisions that are both faster and more accurate.
5. Oracle NetSuite Ecosystem: Oracle NetSuite's ecosystem offers a wide array of third-party software, known as "SuiteApps," designed to extend and customize the platform's core ERP functionality. These applications are available through the SuiteApp Marketplace and integrate with NetSuite to address specific business needs across different industries.
The Cons: Complexity and Cost
1. High Implementation Cost and Effort: Oracle NetSuite can be a significant investment depending upon the complexity of your organization and how you configure your software licensing. Implementation can be straight-forward or complex, time-consuming and expensive depending upon your implementation approach. Having the right implementation partner will be the key to your success. Data migration, in particular, can be a daunting task that requires meticulous planning, testing, and validation.
2. Licensing and Consulting Services: One of the most common frustrations for potential customers can be the process of obtaining a licensing quote that will address your specific required functionality. Be prepared to learn about the various options presented within an Oracle NetSuite Ordering document which will be all encompassing for your specific solution but can be complex to understand. The subscription licensing model will be a source of ongoing costs that can increase as your business adds users or modules.
In addition to your Oracle NetSuite software licensing agreement, be prepared to negotiate a consulting services statement of work (SOW) to support the implementation process with a partner of your choice. The SOW may be the most important document to ensure accountability and project success – don’t take it lightly! The success of a project can ride on the completeness of the statement of work.
3. Steep Learning Curve: While a powerful system, NetSuite's comprehensive feature set can be overwhelming for new users. The user interface is not “Windows-like” but adoption can be quick once users become familiar with the navigation and search functionality. Allocation adequate time to user testing and user training to validate functionality and ensure user adoption. For organizations that require some customization with many users assume several months for testing and training before go-live.
4. Right Size the System: While the modular nature of Oracle NetSuite allows you to add features and functions as you grow, it also means that some core functionalities are not included in the base package. Companies often have to license additional modules to obtain the functionality they require. This is why a thorough understanding of your current and future needs is key critical to right sizing your system up front and understanding your on-going investment. This process will be beneficial in the long run and provide greater assurance that management will not caught off guard by the cost of the system in the future.
Final Takeaway
Oracle NetSuite is an industry leader for a reason: its ability to unify and scale business operations is unmatched. For companies ready to invest in a long-term, comprehensive solution, the benefits of a single, cloud-based platform can far outweigh the costs and challenges.
Oracle NetSuite can also address the needs of a smaller Start-up organization with the understanding that as the complexity of the company grows the cost to implement that functionality will also grow.
The good news there is that you will not likely outgrow NetSuite. Before you sign on the dotted line, it's crucial to understand the total cost of ownership and the complexity of the implementation process.
According to Oracle, over 40,000 companies globally use Oracle NetSuite to manage their business operations across 217 different countries.
RJMC has had significant experience working through complex Oracle NetSuite implementations. The results have always been favorable and definitely improved inventory management over the options provided by using QuickBooks alone.
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