Audaxium Blog

I’ve had a few conversations in the past few days to people who are, or have, implemented NetSuite.

If it’s just NetSuite CRM, or NetSuite ERP and Accounting, E-commerce, or the whole ball of wax here are some things to consider if you’re just getting into it.

This is by no means a comprehensive list but just what has come to mind in the last couple of days.  This list is also a bit more appropriate for smaller implementations of 10-100 users.

Find an Admin

If you’re going to be successful you need to get a person dedicated to learning NetSuite who you trust to implement and make decisions about how you run your business. 

There’s a lot of changes that can be made quickly and you shouldn’t let everything get managed by committee.  You’ll go faster if you loosen the reigns. 

Get an Executive Champion

There are going to be those who look to to the big cheese before they commit to a new system.  Make sure that you’ve got a leader who is going to lend not only her full support but also big ideas on where the company is headed.  

It’s not enough to attend the kick off meeting and ask for updates.  NetSuite is THE system of record.  Get the big cheese involved.

Prioritize your Requirements

You can’t have everything you want on day one.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a sales person, or the boss, get over it.  

Pick your big wins and focus on those.  A lot of little wins will come along for the ride and you won’t waste time boiling the ocean to get at all the tiny details

Consider other Departments

I’ve seen it happen over and over. One department gets going with NetSuite and makes a bunch of decisions without considering the implications for other groups.  

NetSuite offers an amazing opportunity to get everyone working together.  Use it.

If you don’t fully understand the implications, call someone who does. *cough

Keep it Simple

Sometimes it’s fun to cook up a complicated plan and see how far you can get but more often than not it means that you’ll just have a lot of late nights prior to going live.  

The more simple you keep things, the more flexibility you have down the road, and there’s real value in having options.

Things to keep simple? The plan, the requirements, the customizations, the phases, the roles, well, everything.

Plan for Change

I love NetSuite because it can be changed fairly quickly.  Don’t worry if you don’t nail everything for day one.  You’ll be able to change things as you go to make life easier on all the users.  

Don’t go for months without getting people up and running on the system.  You’ll have plenty of room to have multiple phases after go live.

Be Bold

People who defend old, silly processes never cease to amaze me.  Don’t be afraid to use the implementation to change some things about the way you do business that annoy employees and customers.  

Be easy to do business with.

Automate Later

There are two reasons you want to delay writing scripts to automate things in NetSuite whenever you can. First, you don’t really know what you want and what’s important. And secondly, it adds a level of complication to your plan that violates Keep it Simple.

I’ve seen too many people invest in scripts and then turn them off because they either complicate the users experience or they can’t accommodate every little scenario.

Automate once you’ve gotten everything working manually.

(There are exceptions to this rule but you’ll know them when you analyse your business requirements and prioritize them)

Plan for Improvements

This tip goes with the above one.  Every NetSuite implementation should have a Phase II where you put in a bunch of improvements that weren’t critical but are still helpful. Do this for two reasons.

First, it keeps the momentum going on the adoption of the system.

Second, you don’t want to delay Phase 1 with a bunch of “nice to haves”

Consider a Partner

If you’re purchasing NetSuite you can purchase, separately or together, the software and implementation from an implementation Partner.  Many people don’t even consider this.

I’ll get into this in a later post but an Implementation Partner like Audaxium can offer a different kind of service than those offered directly from NetSuite.  Partners have often used the software in production and can be more flexible in how they engage with you.

Ignore the Naysayers

There are a lot of people who will be negative about change, about NetSuite, about your plan.  Your challenge is to pick out their key concerns, address them as best you can and then move on. Move with confidence and people will follow.

Right now the News is filled with bad press about the economy. Last weeks Economist painted a particularly gloomy picture.

It’s all well and good to simply unsubscribe from the news feeds but that won’t make you successful in the long run, just maybe less stressed.

Right now a lot of businesses are waiting cautiously, not spending money, but waiting for signs of a turnaround.  Cruising along. Perhaps your business is one of them.

So how will you know when a turn around is beginning for your business?  Your business is unique, it won’t simply happen for everyone at once.  For some it’s already starting, for others, they may have to reinvent themselves to simply stay afloat.

Will you wait until you’ve had two good sales quarters in a row?  How long does it take to roll up a quarter?  1 Month?  That might just be looking 7 months into the rear view mirror.

Will you wait until you’ve had 2 good months over targets?  Can you be sure that it’s not a lucky blip?

Will you watch the forecast, and when it starts to grow, start investing in your business?  How reliable is your forecast?  What’s driving the uptick?

Will you look at inbound leads? When they start increasing, turn up the heat on the reps.  How will you know where the leads are coming from and what their intent is?

Unfortunately there’s no one answer but I can say one thing for certain.  Those companies that only look far in the past for recovery will do less well than a firm with a balanced view of it’s KPI’s

The questions to ask yourself are:

• “Do I have the systems in place to get me the numbers I need, and trust, fast enough to react in a timely fashion?”
• “What are the 3 pieces of data I need to predict the direction my business is headed?”

If you’ve got the systems, great.  If not, give me a call.  Now’s the time to invest to ensure that your business can really be excellent once everything is moving again.  Don’t wait until you’re too busy to become more productive.

Here are some example Key Performance Indicators that NetSuite Provides out of the box. Perhaps some of these could help if you had them on your dashboard every day. Keep in mind that you can create your own KPI’s as well!

• Authorized Commission
• Authorized Partner Commission
• Bank Balance
• Cases Escalated
• Cases Closed
• Cart Abandonment
• Closed Issues
• COGS
• Credit Card Balance
• Equity
• Estimated Commission
• Estimated Partner Commission
• Fixed Assets
• Forecast Override
• Gross New Leads
• Hosted Page Hits
• Inventory
• Long Term Liabilities
• Net Cash Flow
• New Business (Sales Orders)
• New Customers
• New Customers (Sales Orders)
• New Issues
• New Opportunities
• New Visitors
• Open Issues
• Open Opportunities
• Open Prospects
• Open Quotes
• Operating Cash Flow
• Operating Expenses
• Opportunities Lost
• Orders
• Other Assets
• Other Current Assets
• Other Current Liabilities
• Paid Commission
• Paid Partner Commission
• Payables
• Pipeline (Projected)
• Pipeline (Weighted)
• Pipeline Deals
• Profit
• Quota Reps
• Receivables
• Revenue
• Sales (Cash Basis)
• Sales (Orders)
• Total Open Opportunities
• Total Open Quotes
• Total Orders (Count)
• Total Pipeline (Projected)
• Total Pipeline (Weighted)
• Total Pipeline Deals
• Total Sales (Orders)
• Unique Visitors
• Web Orders
• Web Revenue
• Web Site Hits