Audaxium Blog

Here’s a short and sweet overview of NetSuite just in case you’re interested.

Recently I’ve been finding more and more positive reviews of NetSuite.  If you’ve looked at it before and took a pass perhaps it’s time to look again.  

Recently NetSuite has won a few awards, The Software Satisfaction Awards click on CRM and Customer Management. Also check out the award from Accounting Today

If you’ve got other good blog posts Reviewing NetSuite let me know and I’ll post them here.

The other day I was having a nice discussion with a new NetSuite customer about best practices when implementing NetSuite.  We covered a wide range of topics but the one that I’ll cover today is training.  I’ve got a few simple words of advice on how to ensure that your NetSuite experience is a great one.

Training for NetSuite is available from a number of sources.  Each one has it’s place and should be used appropriately.  I would encourage you to work with your NetSuite implementation partner to ensure that you have all the bases covered.  Cutting costs by cutting training will surely cost you more in the long run.

Online Training

NetSuite has some decent online training available via the customer support center, formerly known as NetSuite University, now called Suite Training. There are 17 online videos some of which are almost 30 minutes in length.  In total there’s about 4 hours of video.  

Most of the content there is good and well produced.  It’s also very general in nature.  Normally, when introducing new users to the system, I will direct them to 3 or 4 video that pertain to their role in order to get them familiarized with the system.

Because the content is fairly broad it’s important not to use those videos as the only training resource for either yourself or new NetSuite users.

Also available via NetSuite Central are some documents on particular topic. They are also worth a read if you are new to being a NetSuite Admin.  They are:

• KPI Scorecards for Business Intelligence
• Customer Returns Management
• Getting and Giving Credit With Gift Certificates
• Keyword Marketing Campaigns
• Forecasting for Success

Give those a read if you are just setting out.

Customer WebCasts

Also available via NetSuite Central are some previously recorded webcasts done by the NetSuite Training Department.  The content varies widely and you’ll find some useful ideas and tips inside.  These presentations are longer than the basic videos above and you’ll find yourself hovering over the fast forward button, but they are very useful.  You’ll find such topics as:

• Commission Management 
• Forecasting – Predicting Your Sales Future 
• Data Mining: Mastering Reporting and Saved Searches in NetSuite 
• NetSuite Productivity Tips 
• Productivity Tools for Sales Reps – Make Selling Easier 
• Involve Your Customers: Using Self-Service to Optimize Customer Relationships 
• The Ultimate Marketing Tool: Closed Loop Marketing Campaigns 
• Webstore Customization: Using Site Templates to Enhance your Website

As a NetSuite admin make sure to check these out, grab a beer and sit down and watch them.  You’ll also want to direct specific users, such as sales and marketing to go watch some of them as well.

Scheduled Online Courses

Now that you’ve gone over the basics you may want to attend some of the Administration courses that NetSuite puts on on a regular basis.  You can learn more about some of these NetSuite training options here.

These courses are longer and can last the entire day.  They also have a price but can be useful in rounding out your training plan and can give you an opportunity to ask questions.  There are not a ton of different courses, as you’ll see but they are the commonly requested ones.

So what’s left?

The training above will probably serve you well as a NetSuite system administrator.  By the time you get done the above training and you have been given a chance to mess with your demo or sandbox account you’ll be using the help file or the NetSuite user group to get most of your questions answered.  

However, both you and your users have missed out in two key areas.  First, I have found, the end users will benefit from customized training done in the context of your specific NetSuite instance, and their jobs.  Secondly, the admin has missed out on someone providing advice on why to do certain things in NetSuite as opposed to how to do things.

Custom Training

Once everyone is up to speed with the basics I suggest that you, the NetSuite Admin, or someone like us in partnership with you, sit down and plan out training for your end users that shows them specifically how and why to do certain tasks in NetSuite to get their jobs done.

You can deliver this training on-site or over the web, my suggestion is to do it face to face, in order to look over peoples shoulders and help them through.

This training should target a specific group of users at your company and be focused on their tasks, and, it should also provide an overview of how their work impacts the work of those in other departments.  With an integrated system like NetSuite this is particularly important.

When it comes to your own knowledge ensure that you have a resource who will be able to explain what the ramifications are of configuration decisions within your own instance.  You don’t want to learn the hard way, just do it right the first time. Often times a partner, like Audaxium, can help with this custom training.  You can also get help from NetSuite Professional Services for a fee.

If you’re interested in learning more about this please let me know!

What’s New?

Lastly, I encourage everyone to check out the what’s new training, again via the customer portal, on an ongoing basis.  It’s important to keep up with the new functions being launched. There are a lot of them and you want to take advantage of them just as soon as possible.

Planning

The final word on this topic is PLAN!  Ensure that, as you are launching NetSuite, that you have a training plan for yourself and different user groups.  Make sure that you make full use of the resources out there to maximize your NetSuite productivity.

Keep your plan task focused.  By showing users how to get their tasks done in NetSuite you’ll have much better results than by demonstrating features and buttons.  Pay particular attention to how to view information related to their tasks in NetSuite, searching and reporting is just as important as the work itself.

A few days ago NetSuite announced a new “Suite” for multi-channel retailers.

  What does that really mean?  It means that a company using NetSuite can use it to sell B2B, Online with the ecommerce functionality, and at multiple Point of Sale retail outlets.  

You can read more about the Suite at NetSuite’s Retail page. 

Essentially you can use all the wonderful functionality of NetSuite, to manage inventory in multiple locations, to get real time dashboards, and run a fantastically organized business and you can now get a a point-of-sale module specifically for NetSuite. The OnSite POS solution allows you to use the power of NetSuite for all in-store transactions and supports the latest POS hardware from top vendors.

The integration of NetSuite with OnSite offers you:

• Integrated card-present (swiped) credit-card, PIN-debit, and gift-card acceptance
• Support for bar-code scanners, electronic-signature capture devices, receipt printers, and terminals
• Manager security overrides for refunds and other sensitive activities
• Special-order management including in-store Web-order pickup, customized item purchases, and fulfillment/shipments
• Cash-drawer management with centralized reporting
• Time-clock management for individual employees.

The above text was taken right from the NetSuite site.

This is good news to companies who liked NetSuite but found it a stretch to use in a retail, B2C or walk in B2B setting.  

So check it out!  hehe

Paul Greenberg wrote a nice article at ZDNet about CRM for the Mac. Give it a read.  It nicely sums up the CRM options for Mac Fans. And it gives a solid shout out to NetSuite as being a particularly strong choice.

There are many people who are far more qualified than I to talk about why Apple hasn’t really penetrated the business market but I was talking to a Mac user today and this article struck me as timely.

NetSuite has supported the Mac for some time and officially supports Safari, Netscape and Mozilla on the Mac OS.

Historically I’ve always been a Windows user because of compatibility issues with business applications, but now, with NetSuite, I really have a full choice over what I use.  In fact, now, I don’t care what co-workers or customers use because it really doesn’t matter. Use a Netbook, a Macbook, or Ubuntu.  NetSuite, being hosted, will be accessible for you.

Heck, NetSuite will go one step farther for you as it supports the iphone.  I’ve tried it out, on a loaned iphone.  It’s ok if you have a wifi connection or a solid 3G connection, but if you are on a flakey data connection you might want to steer clear or maybe just use it to look up a phone number.

All in all, NetSuite is a good fit for those of use who would rather have choice in the OS and/or browser that we use.  Freedom is a wonderful thing.

If you haven’t checked out the blog at www.netsuitesuccess.com check it out.  

There’s a number of posts by users of NetSuite discussing it’s benefits and how it’s worked for them.  It’s a new blog with user submitted content.  Definately worth a read.

How’s that for a short post?

Last night NetSuite announced their 2008 Q4 results. You can listen to the audio of that call here.

In listening to the call it was clear to me that the reason why NetSuite was successful, when so many other software companies are having troubles, is that the value offered by NetSuite really stands out in tough times.  It’s a valuable application that is much easier to start using than what we’ve been used to as consumers of enterprise software.

The second thing that stood out was that NetSuite is enabling progressive companies to continue to invest, first to get better now, and secondly to improve for when the economy starts coming back.  Now’s a good time to update systems and NetSuite allows it with it’s pricing model and implementation ease.

NetSuite continues to add customers, improve the application, and increase customer satisfaction.

One thing is for sure, the tone of the call was very positive, and so was the sense that NetSuite is very well aligned with the needs and desires of the customer.  

To read more on the numbers and analysis check out Michael Faucette’s Blog, Dennis Howlett’s Comments, or some quick numbers on ZDNet.

Yesterday I gave you a few tips and things to consider when making custom searches.  Here’s a few more things to consider as you’re taking a deep dive into the wonderful world of NetSuite Custom Searches.

So click the “Use Advanced Search” button and let’s go!

Summary Tab

So you’re an expert with criteria and results.  Great.  Now I want you to go on over to the criteria tab, look down, and check out the summary subtab.  It’s a powerful tool that you should know how to operate.

Basically this tab can be used to filter out results that would normally be included when you use the summaries on the results page.  

For example, maybe you are searching for companies and looking for average sales order size and you want to filter out companies where the average is less than $500.  Or, perhaps you want to show the last time (maximum of date) that a prospect was called but you want to filter out maximum dates that occured this week. I’m sure there are even better examples of creative uses of this feature.  

The tip?  Go mess with it and figure it out.  It can take some experimenting

Highlighting

It’s rare that I see a search with highlighting. It’s very useful and can help focus attention on the results.  Make sure you consider using it regularly, it’s pretty simple. Just set your criteria for the highlight and then what you want to do to the row that meets that criteria.

Keep in mind that your highlighting criteria doesn’t need to be in the results so you can basically add visual information without adding columns.

Here’s some examples.  In a list of Prospects, highlight yellow those with open quotes worth more than $10,000, highlight in red those that have no calls in the past 90 days.  In a list of Customers, flag those that have made their first purchase in the last month.  In your list of calls, bold those where the contact has an open support ticket!  Better to know that before you call no?

Criteria vs Filters

Often a NetSuite user will search for lets say opportunities, with a create date of this week, and show a bunch data about them.  They’ll save the search, and then go make another one for opportunities created last year, with the same columns in the results.

Rather than do this, pop over to the “Available Filters” tab.  Select the create date field, add it as a filter and remember to click the little box that shows the results in the footer of the search.  Add a few filters.  Now you can have a search result that you can dynamically filter to get at just the data you need.  Pure awesome.

“My Team”

If you happen to be creating a search where you just want to see your own stuff, AND, your search is so awesome you think others should use it too, consider filtering by “My Team” rather than your username or “is Me”.  This pops up all over the place, in transaction searches for example where Sales Rep = Mine, or on events where Organizer = Joe

The My Team filter will show everyone who reports to you, or whoever runs the search, using the Supervisor information in the HR tab of your employee record. This is a nice way of making the same search usable by multiple people, and therefore reducing KPI and dashboard clutter.

Allow Subscriptions

NetSuite allows you to email the results of searches based on a few criteria, you already knew this.  Rather than just adding recipients explicitly consider hitting the check box to allow users to subscribe to the email notification, or search results. This is for public searches and ones that send emails when the record being searched is created or updated.

Lead notifications are a great example of this.  It’s pretty intuitive why email out the fact that a lead has been created for you would be a good idea.  If you let users subscribe, it also means they can unsubscribe at will, and resubscribe later.  This self serve option is better than requiring you, the owner of the search, to keep making changes to the recipient list.

If there’s one thing you can spend some serious quality time with in NetSuite, it’s the searches.  It’s rare that I get a search challenge I can’t meet one way or another.  Because they are used to create custom KPI’s in NetSuite it’s a good idea to become familiar with all their in’s and out’s.

Here are some common tips I have for those who have moved beyond the basics of searching in NetSuite.

Selecting the Type

The first thing you do when you create a search in NetSuite is select the type of record you want to search.  It seems obvious and I won’t go through the long list of record types here.  You can search on any record type you want.  But here’s something to consider.  If you are doing a search that includes related records, carefully consider what record you might want as your starting point.  

Example. Are you looking for Opportunities with outstanding estimates attached?  Or are you looking for Opportunities attached to outstanding estimates?  There’s a difference and it will affect your results slightly.  In this case the one to many relationship will give you a different perspective.

The reason for this brings us to the next point…

Related Fields and Records

One thing I see NetSuite users miss regularly is the fact that you can search and filter records based on related records and information.  For example, if you log a call, that call record will typically be attached to the lead or prospect.  You can now search for leads and prospect that have been called by you, on a certain date, with a certain subject.

In the criteria tab, if you scroll to the bottom of the “filter” pulldown you’ll see related records with a “…” beside them.  Click and a box will pop up with fields from that record.  You can do this on both the criteria and results tabs. You can get very creative with this and really dig deep into your data. Experiment with this, make it your friend. 

Go Private

I’ve seen a few instances of NetSuite with hundreds upon hundreds of searches show up for users in both the “Menu” and in the list of public searches.  Most of these searches are wrong, irrelevant, or out of date. Do yourself a favor and don’t click the “public” check box and don’t click the “Show in Menu” check box on your saved search.  You’re just cluttering other users’ interface if you do and making it harder to find what they are looking for.

If you do want to make a search available to someone, just hop over to the audience tab, and select who should see it. Keep the menu reserved for very common and highly used custom searches.  Don’t make your admin clean up your mess for you.

(Remember that making searches public is a role permission, you might not have permission to do so.) 

Transaction Main Line

When searching transactions often people get confused as to what they are looking at, items on a transaction or the Header.  For example the amount on a line, and the amount of the entire transaction are different.  

For this reason you’ll see a “Main Line” field.  In the criteria you can set this to be true or false depending on what you want to see. 

In the results tab this field shows as the  * symbol.  If you are confused, put this field in the results and you’ll see which rows of your results come from transaction headers as opposed to the items they contain.

Result Summaries

One thing you’ll discover fairly quick is that when NetSuite shows search results it will show the same record multiple times for each time it’s found by the search.  For example you search for companies, and show, in the results, company name and call subject.  For each different call the company name will show on a new row.  If you’ve called the company 5 times, there will be 5 results rows.

For this reason you’ll want to use the “Summary Type” column to group things up, count them etc.  Get familiar with them. Once you use a summary you need to summarize each field you want to show in the search.

But here’s the real tip.  When you drill down on the search, the “non-summarized” results will show.  So even if you don’t want a particular field to show up in the actual results, if it’s useful,  let people see it in the drill down by including it in the results, just without being summarized.

More to Come

Tomorrow I’ll post a few more tips that I have in the back of my mind.  And, because a picture says a lot, I’ll probably record a video for this as well sometime soon as well.

If you have other tips and tricks, leave a comment!

My thought of the day.

Does technology give your company a competitive advantage?   Think on that one for a bit.  We’ll come back to it.

Yesterday I got a reply from an individual who said that he’d rather get a free application to manage customer support rather than pay for something that was integrated.  This might make sense for his business, but then I got to thinking, why?

Most productivity tools that are available to the market place have been there for years. It’s rare for a really new technology to come out that blows everyone away.  And when it does it makes money for the developer (normally) as opposed to the first few users.

So, no, technology can’t give you, as a consumer and user of that technology, any kind of long term competitive advantage. Maybe you can get ahead of the curve and be a first or second mover, but likely the technology is available to anyone, and just having the toolset is not enough.

Therefore, and this is very important, the evaluation of productivity tools should not be undertaken from a “what’s better” for individual tasks or operations, but how does it support your unique processes, which do give you advantage.  Put another way, what does the technology enable you to do?

An application focused at a specific area may be right for you if it enables you to optimize the associated processes, without impacting downstream activities.

An integrated application may be right for you if it enables you to optimize the complete business process, without impacting productivity along the way.

Of course the CRM world is a great example of this.  SalesForce.com vs NetSuite vs all the other CRM and ERP vendors.

Remember that for the “Best of Breed” approach there is a cost to integration.  This might not mean developing a connection between two different systems, or buying addons, it might mean the cost of the human effort to move information, or to navigate multiple systems.  Or there could be a cost in information being missed and lower customer satisfaction.

The final thing to keep in mind is that many processes and most stratagies live outside of technology.  How you engage customers and partners, how you compensate employees, and how you communicate, amongst other things goes well beyond the tools you use.

Every business out there, even ones that sell the same products to the same customers, can have the same technology platform and still be completely different companies for the processes that really matter.

Software as a service, or SaaS is a well known animal to most of us.  But, in talking with some prospects today, I realize that the average business owner doesn’t have the time, or possibly the inclination to really dig in to the benefits.

The other day I happened upon a great blog post over at the BuildingSaaS blog that summed up the primary reasons for why hosted systems benefit the customer. 

John Martin’s post is very comprehensive and he goes into some depth on each point below.  I highly encourage you to check it out.

• Upgrading the software and technology stack
• Becoming orphaned on an old software version
• Solving infrastructure software incompatibilities
• Operating the infrastructure and software
• Maintaining multiple non-production environments
• Diagnosing technical issues
• Building technical expertise for the software
• Enduring cost surprises
• Shelfware, with Maintenance Fees for Unused Software
• Platform Changes When Upgrading
• Aging Software
• Licensing Shenanigans
• Multiple Instances and Versions
• Internal Support Staff Costs
• Performance Tuning
• Waiting for Quality

Keep in mind that these benefits are all from the technology perspective and generally relate to the long term costs of maintaining your IT infrastructure.  They don’t include other benefits of hosted, multi-tenant applications that certainly apply to something like NetSuite, such as:

• Access from anywhere
• Easier system configuration
• Enterprise Level Security
• Best in Class Backup
• Highly Scalable
• etc.

The best line from his post is:

The common factor is that a SaaS vendor’s motivations are much better aligned with the customer, since the SaaS vendor’s revenue is tied to the customer’s satisfaction, retention, and software usage.

I really believe in this.  Even though it might not seem like it, if you are paying as you go for your software you can be darned sure that your software provider cares that you keep using it, much more than if you got delivered a box of software. 

It may take some time for all of us to start assigning dollars to each of these benefits to truly determine the ROI of moving to the hosted model but it’s happening, especially as those version upgrades from traditional software vendors continue to disappoint.