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Welcome to NetSuite for Consultants. In this book, I assume that you already know about NetSuite’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) products, and I will cover everything you should know when starting to implement the product for your own company, or as a solution provider or consultant. I’ll explain the soft skills a consultant should have, how to get to know the client’s business and people, how to analyze and document client requirements, and much more. We’ll then dig into the process we follow when implementing NetSuite and break that down by business process. Finally, I’ll cover how to handle gaps you find between the client’s requirements and NetSuite’s features, so you know how to handle whatever comes your way.

To implement NetSuite, you’ve got to understand a lot of details about NetSuite as a company, the NetSuite...

NetSuite the company, NetSuite the product

NetSuite is both a company and a product. The company was founded as NetLedger in 1998 by ex-Oracle employees, with the dream that someday, a complete ERP system running in the cloud would be a good fit for many small and mid-sized companies. At that time, only larger enterprises were offered a single application offering – everything a company would need to run its business. Smaller companies had to piece together applications such as accounting, inventory management, and billing themselves, with the help of system integrators. The accounting software of the day was either like QuickBooks, which ran on a personal computer with a local database, or a much more complicated server application with a relational database, which required a team of IT specialists to set up and maintain. When companies outgrew QuickBooks, they had to move up to the larger, on-premises-installed applications. The market was not geared toward mid-sized companies...

NetSuite editions, features, accounts, and centers

Oracle NetSuite (the company) has built the NetSuite products so that clients don’t need to worry about which server their NetSuite account is running on. When a business first signs up for the service, the NetSuite sales team will size up the organization and help them choose the right package of options. This includes getting them on the correct server tier. A basic starter account for a smaller company typically runs on a shared cloud-based application server platform so that computing resources are efficiently shared among a set of companies. However, the data that’s accessed by each is completely segregated, so each company will only ever have access to its own records. Companies that require greater performance can purchase premium server tiers and can even request dedicated servers when the need arises. This is typically done for companies with high transaction volumes who cannot afford to ever be slowed down by another...

How NetSuite is updated

Since NetSuite runs in the cloud and not in every client’s office, it is NetSuite’s job to keep the application software up to date. The product receives updates automatically, twice per year, typically around April and November. The first of these major updates is known as the .1 release for that year, while the second is known as .2. So, this year, at the time of writing, clients will be updated to 2025.1 in April and 2025.2 in November. These updates include both fixes for reported problems and new features and enhancements to the product.

In between these two major updates, NetSuite can also patch any part of the system via what are known as either e-fixes or hot pushes. An e-fix is a small update that’s used to fix defects reported by NetSuite clients and rolled out to the live systems only when needed. Hot pushes are very rare as they are emergency patches needed by one or more clients, usually to resolve a recently introduced product...

NetSuite people – sales, support, and services – and partners

NetSuite was founded in northern California but is now truly a global organization. Oracle’s headquarters moved from California to Austin, Texas, at the beginning of 2021, but NetSuite’s people reside in many countries around the world.

You’ll find NetSuite employees based in North America, and there are teams in Australia, Europe, Asia, and Central and South America too. Salespeople are the frontline points of contact, helping new clients get started on the product.

The sales teams are divided into two groups – direct sales and account managers. The direct sales team gets you started and the account managers take over just before an organization goes live.

NetSuite’s Customer Success teams offer professional services for any client looking for help with their implementation (or any time after that, really) but NetSuite also sells services from third parties just as often. These...

NetSuite’s product offerings

If we tried to list all of NetSuite’s features and options, the list would stretch over many pages, but the product’s main offerings can be summarized as follows:

• ERP and CRM: These products include things such as finances, procurement, and order management. This is where we’ll talk about customers and contacts, items and inventory tracking, purchase and sales orders, GL accounts and journal entries, revenue recognition, and many more topics. NetSuite changes how they sell this every so often, but generally, they offer a package for small companies (those who have outgrown QuickBooks, for instance), mid-sized companies, and larger enterprises.

  Most NetSuite ERP customers purchase the OneWorld product, which allows for things such as multiple subsidiaries, currencies, and accounting books (when needed).

  The ERP and CRM features are where we will focus most of our time in this book since there is so much under this heading –...

The NetSuite SuiteCloud Platform

When none of the earlier options will satisfy a particular client requirement and they are adamant that their business cannot function without it, then customization built with the SuiteCloud Platform will be needed. We usually refer to these situations as gaps in the client’s requirements since they are not covered by native NetSuite features, including simple custom configurations or any existing partner solutions.

In these cases, you can help the client define their requirements and then design a customization to satisfy them. Depending on the complexity of the gap, this can mean a short delay while the custom solution is created, or it can sometimes become the largest chunk of work being completed by the implementation team. We’ll discuss these types of customizations in Chapter 18, but for now, just note that you should always work with the client to find acceptable workarounds to avoid having to create a custom solution on the NetSuite...

NetSuite’s mobile apps

In addition to the standard NetSuite UI, which works best on non-mobile devices, NetSuite also offers a set of handy apps for Apple and Android devices to meet the needs of users who are away from a desktop computer:

• NetSuite Mobile: The flagship app for any NetSuite user, this app allows users to enter expenses and time entries, approve transactions, log activities and events, receive reminders, and much more.
• Manufacturing Mobile: This new offering allows manufacturers (with or without NetSuite WMS) to gain easier access to MFG transactions (work orders, assembly builds, and so on) from a mobile-friendly interface. This is not an app you get from an app store, however; it’s a bundle you add to a NetSuite account, which then creates a new URL that your mobile users can access in their browsers.

Here’s an example of the dashboard in the current NetSuite Mobile application for Android and iPhone:

Summary

In this chapter, you learned how NetSuite is set up and works, how the company is organized, and what you can do with the NetSuite product.

Armed with this knowledge, we can explore the first steps we must take to implement clients on NetSuite – the methodology we will use and how we can apply it in the real world.

In the next chapter, we will move on to the topic of choosing an implementation methodology. This is critical to the success of every NetSuite implementation, and with this in mind, you can communicate the details of your process methodology to your clients.

Self-assessment

I’m going to include this section at the end of every chapter. This will allow you to think about the topics that were covered and see how they apply to your work:

1. When does a company need to move up from the base tier in NetSuite to a more premium version? Have you worked with a client who has needed this?
2. If you create something custom in a sandbox, what’s the easiest way to move it into the Production account?
3. If you’re confused about all of the available modules that can be used along with your NetSuite ERP account, which team at NetSuite is best suited to helping sort things out?
4. What is the difference between SuiteCommerce Advanced and SuiteCommerce InStore? What are the benefits of each product, and what kind of company should purchase each option?
5. A client wants to allow their users to enter time and expenses while they’re working at client sites, on projects. Which NetSuite features can you recommend they explore?