What needs improvement with NetSuite ERP?

Some clients in my past complained about the accounting setup, as it requires people who already have knowledge about NetSuite ERP. They don't appreciate having to pay for consultants or specialists to work with it. It's not easier for them to understand. But every other feature that NetSuite ERP has is pretty decent. They're even introducing new features such as Bill Capture which was introduced last year. My sales and warehouse managers don't find the demand planning feature effective. They say it's quite buggy.

While I cannot make extensive suggestions for NetSuite ERP, I can say that AI features are notably absent, unlike in Salesforce. The addition of AI features in NetSuite ERP would enable automatic triggering, approval processes, and event streams to IT teams or cross-functional teams. Implementation of AI features would be highly beneficial for NetSuite ERP.

Reports are good but not perfect. The custom reports could be improved. The initial setup process for reports can be a bit complicated and may require more user-friendly options. My previous company faced difficulty with reporting when it was too complicated to find proper reports. Overall, improving the reporting feature would be beneficial.

The main implementation challenge is finding experienced consultants to translate customer needs into NetSuite ERP's standard functionality. The second challenge is getting enough time from customers for proper implementation. To address these, I focus on raising customers' awareness of time commitments, building a network of skilled consultants, and sometimes declining projects if the right resources aren't available. The tool must enhance its extension layer and add customization/configuration functionality. In this aspect, competitors like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics are five to ten years ahead.

In the future, I would like to see improved customization options in NetSuite ERP, possibly through generative modules, to enhance flexibility and efficiency. I would also like to see improved language support in NetSuite ERP, particularly for Arabic, with more extensive dictionary levels to better serve our region.

I really like NetSuite, but my two (2) pet peeves are 1) the way it handles Standard Cost valuation methods and the hoops it makes you jump through if you have multiple warehouses as a result, planned standard in NetSuite speak; 2) It does not recognize COGS when you recognize revenue at invoice processing.  It recognizes COGS at fulfillment as one transaction and then revenue at invoice processing as another, then you have to marry those two transactions or trick the system in other ways.  That might be OK for some industries or companies, but not in most.  There are ways around it, but it takes some doing and requires consultants that are keenly aware of it.

Our interactions with Oracle have not always been positive. Obtaining clear and transparent information on costs has been challenging, and we often struggle to understand the details of the invoices we receive from Oracle. The communication has been peculiar, and the overall commercial process has been less than satisfactory. Understanding the licensing aspect was particularly challenging for us. We were taken aback by the lack of clarity regarding when costs would commence and which functions necessitated a license.

In NetSuite ERP, they should focus on offering better customization options. In Microsoft Dynamics Business One, we have features like formatted search queries and SDK-level development, which allows us to easily put controls at the front end. NetSuite ERP lacks this level of customization, and if they improve it, the product will be even better. Another area of improvement is documentation and support. In Microsoft Dynamics Business One, we can easily refer to Google and manuals to manage things in-house, but with NetSuite ERP, we often have to depend on developers and experts for support. Additionally, since NetSuite ERP uses the Oracle database, mapping extra requirements can sometimes be limited or constrained. They should address these aspects to enhance the product.

The manufacturing and planning side could be improved. That part isn't up to date. NetSuite could be easier to integrate in general.

Maintaining workflow on the solution is very difficult. So, it needs improvement. Improvement in the solution's manufacturing is also needed. For manufacturing, we are looking at other providers to make it possible for integrations and to maintain every integration to the system. We want everything to be stable here in Colombia since we don't have localizations.

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.

The pricing may be the only area for improvement. Currently, many vendors and OEMs are using a user-based pricing model, where we pay for each user accessing the system. However, NetSuite has a more modular pricing structure. The pricing could be adjusted accordingly, which could be beneficial. Additionally, adding advanced modules such as AI components or customer service modules could help the system become more scalable. The integration of Oracle products, such as AutoCAD and CAD Drawings, with NetSuite, is a standard requirement for most customers. However, the current integration available requires a lot of workarounds and manual coding. To make the solution easier to implement, having a middleware to connect existing editions of Oracle would be beneficial. This would make it easier for customers to implement the cost platform solution.

The areas that this product needs to improve on is the implementation and inventory processes. That is my accounting-based opinion. The more automated these processes are, the better.

An area for improvement in NetSuite ERP is its accounting functionality because it has certain limitations. You can't maintain sub-ledgers or post accrued expenses in sub-ledger forms, so you'll need to post in journals. The pricing is another area that can be improved in NetSuite ERP because the pricing was lower when it wasn't part of Oracle, but after Oracle acquired Netsuite and NetSuite ERP was offered as a cloud service, the price went up. I'd like to see a new feature in the next version of NetSuite ERP: scripting, so you can develop and add your modules to the solution. For example, you want to add a new project accounting module to NetSuite ERP. Still, that module should be yours, meaning that Oracle shouldn't have any rights to it, and you should be able to use that module on NetSuite ERP entirely or even sell it to other vendors. It's just Oracle or Netsuite serving as a host where you can showcase the additional modules or functionalities you've developed.

If they could provide more integration options to connect with different products, that would be ideal. Although they provide a lot of functionality within NetSuite, if something is very complex in nature, for example, if you are a manufacturing company, if you're using it for manufacturing, there may be an MRP where we have to do position planning, those advanced features are not available in NetSuite. From a user spec perspective, there is definitely a lot of scope for UI and UX enhancement. I would expect some screens to be more user-friendly and from the configuration side, so everything in the NetSuite world works on the bundle. If they can provide any mechanism where we can quickly group the bundles based on the need or the process, then that will be helpful. The current process is very time-consuming. We have to do it one by one.

There is always a way to improve the tools used for customizing it to the special needs of the customers. They could make it even better. The pricing is high. For small companies, it is not very competitive.

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.

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

The solution is not good in a production company.

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.

There is a lot of room for improvement. Multiple manufacturing features need to be updated on NetSuite. More functionalities need to be added. I think there are a lot of functionalities coming out for warehouse management systems and manufacturing automation via advanced manufacturing functionalities. I think they need to improve a little more on those aspects and make it easier on the scheduling aspect. In the next release, I would like to see more planning functionalities for manufacturing. I think there are already a few planning functionalities coming out, but more is expected from NetSuite.

Evan Goldberg, the gentleman that created NetSuite, had worked at Oracle. Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle had provided seed money to start out and Larry actually owned a large part of the stock. NetSuite pioneered this whole system and two years ago, Oracle said we want to acquire you guys. Oracle was a little bit late to cloud computing and NetSuite offered them the ability to have a large cloud presence. Oracle realized that NetSuite has been a huge success in The United States — it's been wonderful. But Oracle is a worldwide company. So they decided to take their development teams and development budgets and pushed into new countries and created new country versions and multicurrency versions. They also decided to move into new industries. So they started doing lots of development for NetSuite. In the two years since Oracle re-acquired NetSuite, they took on Hyperion, which is one of the leading FP&A Solutions in the world. They created a NetSuite version of it. So, what needs to be improved? There's a lot of development in a lot of areas and a lot of markets that haven't been served. One of the things that I did, was I had all of my clients going into NetSuite and they were loving it. Still, I also had a lot of pharmaceutical clients, pharmaceutical manufacturers that could not use cloud-based software because it was hard to validate. Not to mention, NetSuite puts out a new version every six months. What we thought were the validation protocols, would not allow us to do that. For years and years, Pharma has been version-locked into the old system because they don't want to revalidate. Well, we found a way around that and we started moving into the pharmaceutical industry, aerospace, and defense. The security issues related to national security have stated that we can't use cloud software unless it's encrypted. But now the Department of Defense has started saying, "Hey, NetSuite is. We're not seeing security breaches into the data or anything like that". There's a lot of areas like that, that NetSuite has to mature and grow into. What needs to be improved is the development in the other areas and other businesses that can use NetSuite, but it's rapidly coming about. Five years ago, certain companies, like Pharma specifically, would come and tell us they would like to use NetSuite. We'd have to tell them that we don't do that. Please search elsewhere. They would say, "But our CFO used to work in a company that has NetSuite. He thinks he can do it. He wants to do it". By pushing the market like that, NetSuite got into a lot of areas that they wouldn't have broken into previously, but people had used NetSuite before and they loved it. A lot of it's been driven by the market itself and the development is catching up.

It would be great if they offered localization for Central America. It'll help us create local taxes, local fiscal requirements, and local reporting issues easily.

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.

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.