NetSuite ERP Reviews

The client's use cases really revolve around core financial and accounting tasks such as ARAPGL cash management and things of that nature as well as some supply chain. Inventory management at a rolled-up level. They had a separate system for their core product inventory life cycle management, however, this was from the financial aspect and vendor integration and purchasing side of supply chain and billing management was going to be done through the NetSuite implementation. 

Due to the fact that they had more on their wishlist, we were going to get into some commerce stuff, however, we backlogged that. CRM is what they're actually going to start on next year. We backlogged that as well. I'm all about focusing. I'm really about accounting. The initial high-level inventory management is the core thing we deployed as part of the first phase.

The client saw a lot of elimination of manual steps that they were doing in their old system. The acceptance of a lot of best practices made even just basic monthly closing a lot simpler and a lot quicker. They went from taking almost three and a half weeks to do a monthly close to five to seven business days.

That time savings alone, there's cost value there from a human resource standpoint.

The user interface is very good. That is extremely important when you're making and implementing change. A good, intuitive user interface and good documentation from a standpoint for training and support is super-important. The accounting functions are pretty basic and this was pretty standard. 

While more customization on the cloud would be nice, it forced years of bad practices that were exceptions or custom ways of doing things. 

The solution lends itself to scalability. 

There's good integration with other products. 

It's perfect for a company that is growing, that's still on the border of small to midsize. It fits perfectly from a cost and functionality perspective of them trying to get to standard practices that allows them to grow efficiently. They can take on a new business without adding people.

The cloud version lacked the flexibility for some customization. That would've been nice, however, it also then forced us to get out of some bad practices. It really helps you, actually, as it's not as necessarily flexible in terms of customizations, at least the version we worked with. They were working towards improving it.

Some of the features around the payroll and payroll taxes and management of that are lacking. We had to outsource some of that because we found that the functionality isn't there. This has been one of the bugaboos in that product. If the company grows into a lot more markets in terms of the business states and regions, they would need to look at maybe an alternate product for the sales tax and use tax compliance, as that area has gotten more complex in the last few years with the change in laws. NetSuite is well-suited for that.

I've been using the solution for over 15 years at this point. 

The solution is pretty stable. It's a tried and true product. It's going to the cloud that's different. By the time we went live, we were two releases behind the current release and so we didn't really have to worry about bugs. It was more stable at that point. At the same time, we were sandboxing with a newer version. I got the client on a cadence to catch up at least one version or stay one version behind the current. They've gotten better at responding quickly to critical bug fixes as well. Oracle may have just had some resource constraints or focus constraints on how they were responding.

At the time of deployment, they were going through a lot of technical issues with the Fusion product that was diverting resources off of NetSuite. Again, because they've got such a product suite, resources are sometimes very fixed or it's hard to scale up quickly and get the right people on board. I got the sense that they had teams focused across multiple products.

That said, stability-wise, it was pretty stable when we went live. Overall from a product standpoint, from a performance standpoint of the Oracle cloud, there was definitely some issues that they were experiencing. However, based on my regular contact with his client over the last eight, nine months, post-implementation, things have improved as Oracle was already on a path to upgrading their data centers. 

With my prior client in 2018, I was involved in a lot of Oracle products at that time. Oracle had started down the path of pushing clients onto newer equipment, newer systems, and even transferring them into newer updated data centers. It doesn't happen overnight, however. They've been strategically doing that since late 17, all the way through this year.

Scalability is one of the areas of limitation, as it's not designed for the larger, more complex businesses or businesses that grow out of being a small regional player into a super-regional type of organization. 

With the improvements in the cloud product it's possible to move to another Oracle product such as the Fusion more easily. In that respect, once you get a certain level or need certain functionality, the ability to move from a NetSuite to Oracle Fusion now is much easier to do from the cloud.

Our clients are mixed organizations. Most are in the mid to large size company. I'm talking in the hundred millions into billions. I've had quite a few clients that are four billion-plus.

Early on, the response was critical. There are those bugs or fixes that they'll get to that aren't impacting your businesses versus extremely critical bugs. Fields won't accept the value that needs to accept the value, or it's not calculating something correctly that's very obvious, for example. Responding to critical bugs was the initial problem. We felt it was putting clients at risk due to the fact that there wasn't a workaround. We were worried about going live with these particular bugs. Fortunately, they were able to resolve them.

I was able to escalate it enough and had enough connection, a good rapport with the Oracle leadership, for what we needed to do, that they acknowledged, "Our resources were pulled away on this. And we're getting somebody to specifically address these and look into it." And so they don't wait for the regular release packages. They made available a patch that we could deploy. They had them deploy it into the Oracle cloud. That's the other thing - you're directly engaged when Oracle manages your service in their cloud. Their team can deploy it whenever you say go. And so, because we were still in the test environment, we could get that in, and retest things. It was later than we liked, however, it still allowed us to go live. We were able to get it in and test it before we went live.

Overall, I'd say we are mostly satisfied with the level of support we receive and I would rate it eight out of ten.

While we looked at other solutions, we didn't deploy any others with this particular client.

The initial setup has improved. Concerning what I know about it from 15 years ago to now, it's fairly straightforward. It's a lot more streamlined. There are not as many customizations you can do. You can create a few fields and add things here and there, however, when it comes to really create custom processes it forces you to use workflows and things like that. It's simpler in that it provides a lot more visibility to the business of how their processes work.

I've had multiple engagements involving NetSuite as it is a good sweet spot system for mid-level size enterprises. I don't recommend it for large-scale enterprises. It's also too much sometimes for small companies. It's a great sweet spot, like I said, for mid-level companies. A lot of companies have been on it and sometimes they make good candidates as people who don't feel comfortable with some of the extra bells and whistles. It's a good, basic, fundamental ERP accounting supply planning system.

I'm not sure which version of the solution I'm using right now. I know it wasn't the latest as I'm not a fan of going right away to the latest and greatest typically due to the fact that there are some bugaboos that have to be worked on.

Companies want you to get on the latest system. However, another reason we don't choose the latest was once we went through a build and deployed a model with an 8 UAT, by the time we were ready to go live, they had already released another version. We held off due to the fact that we were comfortable with what we tested. 

While we started using on-premises deployment models, we also now work with the cloud. 

Oracle's done a good job, especially lately. I did a major Oracle project a few years ago where their cloud infrastructure was still a little slow performance-wise, compared to, hosting on Amazon or AWS. However, Oracle's really improved that. Especially in the last year, they've really upgraded their infrastructure center. The performance of NetSuite on the cloud is pretty good now. You can still get that on an on-prem type implementation or a cloud. My last deployment actually happened to be on the cloud. That's another reason we stayed with an early version, The client was still getting their feet wet with NetSuite in the cloud at the time.

I would advise others to be detailed in how they assess their needs to make sure that is the right fit for the company's size, not only for now but over the next five years. A company needs to ask itself: What are the business' growth plans? If you're shortsighted and go into it, where you're already at the top end of the capabilities, then you're losing your investment value. Also, it will be more time and effort to set it up, when you should really be picking either the next product up or a different vendor at the outset.

Overall, it's quite a good solution. I'd rate it nine out of ten.

I have multiple pharmaceutical distributions. I'm currently doing two projects with companies that are what are called stevedoring companies. They're companies that load and unload these massive vessel ships that come into the ports all over the world. Containers and cruisers and things of that nature. I've also done a large 3PL shipping company. I've done a couple of manufacturing companies. I've done a couple of manufacturer distributor companies. It's a very versatile system. It can be used for a variety of businesses.

It's less about functionality today. Although the functionality is there, most systems are pretty competitive on things like financials. At that level, what makes a solution competitive is the architecture, and NetSuite has the most advanced system architecture in the market today. It was built for the cloud. It's a true cloud application. It's truly, purely web-based. 

There's no infrastructure required. It's fast licensed, it's multi-tenant for releases. 

I would say that the solution is highly configurable. 

The solution's data structure is very referential. You can easily customize new data in the system. It's a system that's built for enormous flexibility and customization.

The system itself, the reporting dashboards, integration, API, workflows, all that stuff's strong in NetSuite. The functionality is strong.

They've got people working deeply on it. They spend incredible amounts of money on R&D and their releases are very robust and they just keep moving forward with more.

There's always room for improvement in every system.  It's going to have some functional verticals that just aren't as competitive in the app, due to the fact that there are older systems that have been built for 20 years that are deep. For example, in manufacturing, there's something called process manufacturing, versus discrete manufacturing. There's a couple of systems that'll beat NetSuite on process manufacturing.

In terms of the main improvement to NetSuite is the talent itself. It's grown so fast and there are about 25,000 companies running on it, and it's a relatively newer system compared to other competitors. It's growing so fast that the talent base in the partner organization (there's about 200 of them), is pretty thin. 

There's a lot of bodies. There's a lot of kids there. I call them the kids because they're people in their twenties, maybe in their thirties. If you're under 40, you are still a kid to me. What it boils down to is that I've been doing assessments for 40 years. I have five grown sons between the age of 30 and 44. Not a single one of them, if they worked around the clock for the rest of their lives, could catch up with me on experience, because in today's market people get pigeonholed and specialized. They don't get a broad experience. People aren't building systems anymore, so you don't have that depth. What it boils down to is most of these people working in these ERP projects, in all the systems, are truly not systems people.

They're actually people that just know how to push buttons and settings and workflows and reports, and spit things out. They know how to configure a system, however, they don't really know much about how it would actually do what it does, or how it's built. Therefore, the weakness in that is that when you get into business models that require some real custom configuration, they don't really know how to do that. 

In today's market, young people aren't learning how to really learn a business. What's happening is a lot of systems focused work without first understanding the business that they're actually serving. That's prevalent in the NetSuite world and these newer systems, due to the fact that they've basically been staffed with and around young people who really don't have a lot of business experience. They may know a lot about that application, that system, but then not really know very much about the business. Business experience is an issue in this market today.

We've worked on multiple systems, however, I've probably been engaging with NetSuite to some extent for the last seven years.

The solution is highly reliable. I've got a client who's been running for four and a half years flawlessly, with no outages, no errors, no failings. Of course, part of that is the architecture and the system. Part of it is we did a world-class job of implementing it. However, the bottom line is you can really mess up a system if you don't know what you're doing. That said, NetSuite itself is a highly reliable system.

Scalability is pretty good. It's targeted. Oracle has its Oracle cloud product and some other junk products in between, but the two flagship products are Oracle Cloud (for tier one companies, over a billion dollars in revenue)m and then NetSuite, which is targeted for the half a billion-dollar or maybe up to billion-dollar revenue. We have four companies with over a billion dollars in revenue on NetSuite.

Up to that point, it's really very scalable. Even after that point, it's really not a matter of the system not being scalable. It's more the server and the data centers that they've sort of configured for that. You've got 25,000 companies, and 90 plus percent of them are probably in the hundred to $500 million range of revenue. Revenue is not always a good indicator, because some companies, like the company I'm in right now, is a half a billion-dollar revenue company. However, they function more like a hundred million dollar company because the invoicing they do is very large and very complex invoicing, but large-dollar transactions.

So they'll do a $25-$50,000 invoice as well. That rolls up to half a billion pretty fast. That said, the volumes aren't really there. They don't have any more volume than a retail business, or a distribution business might have with a tenth their size. You can't use revenues and bills as a total indicator every time. 

I would say NetSuite would struggle to scale beyond a billion dollars if it were a retail business. That's just in terms of how it's built. It's built for the mid-market, and some limitations are there that you wouldn't hit then until you get to a billion. It's still a great system and there is a provision for buying up to more tiered levels of processing capacity. That way, very large companies can run on NetSuite.

Technical support is very weak. That's because, once again, they've hired a bunch of kids. They've got kids behind the scenes doing the work and they don't necessarily retain much deep talent on the inside at NetSuite. 

They mostly have a great software development group, however, their support group tends to be very young people who basically don't know much. They know the system, again, however they don't necessarily know how to interact with the business. 

The best way to get systems support is really from the network of qualified partners. That's where the talent goes and that's where the money is. That's where people can make the most money. Whenever any of these people get any talent, they tend to jump ship from NetSuite and go out to work for one of the partner companies.

Everything's complex today. It's all complex. Any system is complex. However, NetSuite's setup, what makes it easier, is there's not a lot of complexity in the actual customization. That's easier. Any system, even Microsoft's Dynamics, is going to take 30% or 40% more labor to do the same things. 

NetSuite's highly configurable and it's also very structured for settings, presetting, roles, permissions, personalization, etc. If the partner that's selected is skilled, if they know the system, then the configuration works actually in a pretty straightforward manner. 

There may be a lot of variabilities or a lot of complexity, mainly because clients are complex. Nobody does things the same way. If they did, they'd run out of business pretty quick due to the fact that you always have to have something that differentiates you from your competitor. All those differentiations have to be thought of and incorporated into the implementation.

Licensing costs are all over the place. It really depends a lot on the business model. How many seats, what modules they're getting, and what kind of discount you can negotiate all will adjust the cost structure in different ways. 

The discounting can range, depending on what's compelling to that model. For example, I bought these two stevedoring companies and they're old companies, they're longshoremen. They've been doing longshoremen work since clipper ships. The systems tend to be old. Nobody had ever really put a stevedoring company on NetSuite before. When I went to NetSuite to negotiate for them, I was able to get okay pricing. There's a pretty broad opportunity if we get one or two of these done. NetSuite was willing to get me a very deep discount in that case. It depends on the deal. The numbers are all over the place.

We're not a reseller, we're a selection company. We represent the client.

The inherent weakness where you might be disappointed is not functional, because functionality can be built out. It's like buying new furniture in a house. The house is a big cost, the furniture you just need more of. More functionality can be built out readily if the architecture is good. NetSuite's architecture is so phenomenal that you can almost not even imagine. I have one subsystem that my client has, but it's an old premise-based proprietary application that no one else has. It's unique to their business, but it's about ready to fall over. I looked at it and we're going to build it into NetSuite, because NetSuite is capable of absorbing more functionality. So, it's really about architecture. And architecture and NetSuite, I couldn't even imagine what it's going to ask for there. It's really very good.

Ironically, NetSuite's kind of killing our business, because if you're doing mid market, it's going to be NetSuite or Microsoft dynamics. Everything else is not really worth the attention. Where we do selection work we don't get shared revenue. We don't get kickbacks or anything from anything we do. Our work is to help companies pick the right solution, pick the right partner, and get the implementation done. Our work has shifted much more to helping oversee the projects. We do a business assessment work, we do system selection work, we do solution, basically formulating the solution for the client. Then we negotiate for the right licensing, the right contracts, service agreements and we oversee it.

We're like a general contractor for a commercial building. What's happening is that the clients no longer have people like us inside. Basically, systems have become commoditized over the last 20 years to the point where if they've got insight IT people they're really server people. Servers, networks, virus, security, phone systems. These people don't know anything about applications. 

In NetSuite's environment, there's no versioning. It's actually a release strategy. It is in the cloud, so it's multi-tenant and the releases come in and go. Obviously, they have some release numbers on each of them, however, the client really doesn't have to worry about that.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

We use the product for inventory and financial management. 

I am impressed with the product's ease of use. It also helps us reduce the techstack. 

The product should improve its warehouse management solution. 

I am using NetSuite products for three years. 

The tool is stable and we have had no issues with its stability. 

We work in a cost-controlled environment and hence use authorized NetSuite support from India. The team provided us excellent support but since they were based in India, there was a delay in time between our environment and theirs. However, the support was economical. 

The product's deployment is simple since it is a well-documented solution. 

I would rate the product an eight out of ten. The tool is comprehensive. It is better to use the integrated platform of NetSuite and avail of its benefits. 

We use it for the projects we do in the telecom industry.

I didn't see the NetSuite ERP having the profit center or fund management features we have in SAP, and that's where we are struggling. What we need is a fund management feature, which we didn't find in the current version.

We're mainly looking for the fund management feature in the next version.

I have been using this solution for one and a half years.

It is a stable solution. I would rate the stability of NetSuite ERP a six out of ten. I haven't experienced any glitches or bugs with NetSuite so far. However, there are some features, like local taxation, that are not properly available in NetSuite. To access those features, we have to purchase a bundle.

The scalability of NetSuite ERP is quite good when incorporating APIs and plugins. In that regard, I would rate it highly. However, when it comes to high volumes of transactions, I am not sure if it is still scalable.

I would rate the scalability of NetSuite a seven out of ten. There are around 20-30 users in our organization.

It was expensive. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten.

We are currently using NetSuite ERP, but it doesn't satisfy all our needs. We are hoping SAP will be a better fit for us.

Overall, I would rate the solution a six out of ten because many features are not there yet.

NetSuite ERP is used for a lot of things. It has modules for accounting, distribution, and services. It's a full-fledged ERP solution.

The most valuable aspect of NetSuite ERP is the multi-subsidiary portion, it is the strongest across all the other ERPs. If you want to do consolidations, it works a lot better than other tools.

NetSuite ERP's UI could be improved. There are some features that are very complex that do not have to be. There are some aspects of the solution that could be simplified and this can include the documentation. Since it's a very complex tool, you expect to have great detailed documentation to help you implement it.

I have used NetSuite ERP within the past 12 months.

NetSuite ERP is highly scalable for companies that have six, seven, eight, different subsidiaries across different countries. NetSuite is well suited for that use case.

NetSuite ERP is straightforward to implement, however, it can become really complex. You could decide to use it out of the box, but if you really want to make it complex, you have the ability to. Sometimes you need to think about not going overboard with everything.

NetSuite ERP has a cost per module you want to use, and then you have the license per user.

If you compare the four best ERPs, they're all on the same level. They are all doing the same thing, in terms of features.

I would advise others to make sure they understand the cost structure and that it fits their budget.

I rate NetSuite ERP a nine out of ten.

I have found there to be many features, such as manufacturing, accounting, financials, inventory, and purchasing.

The solution is not user-friendly and it is complex to use.

I have been using NetSuite ERP for approximately two years.

In the two years, we have been using the solution it has failed twice and we have experienced many bugs and glitches.

The technical support is okay but they are not quick to respond.

I have previously used Microsoft Dynamics. it has some better features than NetSuite ERP.

The company that did the implementation did not do a good job.

The price of the solution is quite high.

I rate NetSuite ERP a four out of ten.

We use NetSuite ERP as a production and application support solution.

NetSuite ERP is good for a trading company that involves buying and selling.

The solution is not good in a production company.

I have been using NetSuite ERP for approximately one year.

The solution could be more stable.

We have approximately 70 people using this solution in my organization.

I was satisfied with the support.

The installation is easy.

We have a team of five which includes technicians and a manager that do the implementation and maintenance of the solution.

There is an annual license required to use this solution.

I would recommend this solution for a trading company.

I rate NetSuite ERP a six out of ten.

I became a real fan of NetSuite due to the fact that it's very easy to use and it's very easy to configure from the implementer side. When you're looking for an ERP solution, often it can be very difficult to configure and difficult to use, however, this is very easy. I'm pretty impressed. It sounds like a short or a small solution, and yet it's not.

The whole experience it's very easy. It's very intuitive. It's integrated into everything well so you can navigate and use it in a very simple way. The whole experience for the ERP is very fine. This ERP has no interface. It's completely integrated so you don't have to run any process from accounting to get all the numbers. Everything is detected online instantly.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

Most of the features that my customers deal with I get access to. I can't recall coming across any missing features. We haven't come across areas that are hard to understand or configure. It's all pretty straightforward. 

If you do go through an implementor, you need to be careful that they are actual implementors and not just resellers.

The stability of the solution is very good. There are no bugs or glitches that we've dealt with. it doesn't crash or freeze.

The solution is very scalable. It's not an issue to expand it.

The technical support is very good. We've been very happy with the level of support we get. They are helpful and responsive. 

The initial setup is not overly complex or difficult. It's simple and straightforward. 

You have to be aware of the experience of the implementer before the initial setup even if it seems like it's easy to implement. There are some skills and there are very, very many new resellers that they are naming themselves implementers. My only advice is to be aware of the experience of the previous implementation on the NetSuite platform and be aware if these implementers also sell other solutions. I deal with some implementers that sell SAP as well and they sell Microsoft as well and these kinds of platforms need their own people due to the fact that it's not fixed. 

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten.