Here’s a funny video from NetSuite spoofing the Apple vs Mac ads, except this time it’s SAP vs NetSuite.

There are a couple other amusing videos on the NetSuite Youtube channel.

To find your sneak peek documents, simply click the help button, and type Sneak Peek into the search tool.  But since it’s out there in the wild already, you can also link directly to it here.

While this version didn’t knock my socks off at first glance, there’s a few things in here that I think demonstrate how NetSuite is improving the product to better align with how businesses work, rather than rolling out flashy, but useless functionality.

Here’s a few of the things I think will make existing customers smile.

Attachment Support for Online Case Forms

Previously you could use a case form on your website that would create a case directly inside the system, but you couldn’t attach a file.  This lead some customers to create their own forms which would then send an email to NetSuite that included the attachment. NetSuite has a 5 mb file attachment limit on this method so some customers then would use a YouSendIt form as well.

Now you don’t have to worry, and can have customers attach files directly, saving a few extra steps for the support reps.

Trend Graph Support for all Dashboards

Previously you couldn’t add a “Trend Graph” to other tabs.  Now you can.  Yay!  It’ll make those other tabs that much more useful, especially when you want to keep your Home dashboard nice and light, and move certain information to the other tabs.

Additional Custom Search portlets

Today you can have one “Custom Search” on a dashboard.  Now you can have 3.  The work around was to use report snapshots but this will give end users that much more flexibility in dashboard setup.  It’s small but I love this enhancement.

CSV Import – Select Custom Form Option

“In previous releases, the user’s preferred form for an imported record was automatically used for validation and to display the set of fields available for import.”  Man was this ever annoying.  Now I’ll be able to select another form that doesn’t have restrictions when importing.  There’s nothing like importing 5000 records and then having it fail because your preferred form didn’t like what you did!

CSV Import – Purchase Order, Vendor Bill & Vendor Bill Payment Support

For those out there who didn’t want to code up complicated web services apps to import POs this could be huge.  If you’re a reseller and you’ve been hand keying in Purchase orders this will be one thing you’ll want to test ASAP.

Lead Qualification and Conversion

It’s been rather busy here at Audaxium but just as soon as were eager to look at the new Lead Qualification and conversion rules in depth.  NetSuite will now help with the capturing of critical information on the lead record, and attaching it to existing prospects, opportunities etc.  Don’t let your sales team keep processing leads the same way, check out these enhancements and see what they can do for you.

To turn on this part of this feature you’ll have to go to “Setup, Company, Enable Features”.  Then you’ll see a “Lead Conversion Mapping” setup in the sales section where you can define what information gets copied over to Contacts, Opportunities, and Tasks.

You’ll also see a “Convert” button on a lead.  If it’s an “Individual” you’ll be able to hit the convert button, and create a contact, company, opportunity, and task at the same time.  Neat.  I know a lot of companies create leads as companies only, and not individuals.  They’ll have to ponder this now.

Absolute Item Pricing per Customer

We all do it.  We tell a special customer that they can buy product X for a specific price.  But what happens when that doesn’t conform to one of your price levels?  Previously you’d have to remember every time you created a Sales Order. But now you’ll be able to set a custom price level right on the customer record.

Just make sure, when you are updating prices, that you have a search that shows you all those customers with custom price levels!

Period Close Process Enhancements

In 2009.2 you’ll be able to lock, check and update, then close periods.  And there will be a better audit trail on who has closed and opened periods.  Previously a period was either open or closed, and if an adjustment needed to be made, you couldn’t tell who opened the period. (Although you could tell who made the change to the transaction of course)

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It seems like a decent release for NetSuite.  If you’re a NetSuite user, head over to Beta and check it out. If you want to get a demo of NetSuite and it’s new functions, just let us know!

You’ll find his thoughts on Business Intelligence From the Cloud there.

Essentially the article is a nice summary of why one should consider NetSuite.  These benefits are simple, yet can have very positive impact on many organizations.

• Better information at your fingertips and therefore faster and hopefully better decisions
• Less time and money spent messing around with integration
• Faster implementation times

So there you have it! If you’re getting educated about the benefits of software as a service, articles like the one above will provide you a good starting point in developing your elevator pitch to your boss.

With this in mind NetSuite allows customers previews of the new functionality at beta.netsuite.com.  When you log in there you’ll see the “sneak peek” and the release notes for the new version.

If you’re a customer just log into beta.netsuite.com once your beta account has been provisioned and you’ll be able to try out the new functionality in your own account without messing with your live account. There you’ll see the release notes. Give them a good read and prepare a plan to test, and rollout, the new features. In particular, test your scripts.

You’ll also want to do a some training for some of your users on the new functionality and how you want them to use it.

Here’s a few things that caught my eye along with my comments.

Bugs

This isn’t a feature but the word on the street is that the quality of this release is very good.  If you can check out the posts on the usergroup forums on this.  Of course there are always issues but those people who have done extensive testing of 2009 in their own instances have mainly good things to say.  Your mileage may vary.

Price Lists

Nice! You could always make a price list of sorts, a custom estimate, but now you can create standard price lists for emailing to customers. You can even create an individual price list for a specific customer with their own pricing. Two thumbs up!

Spend some time figuring out exactly how this functionality works and how to use it as it’s not incredibly intuitive. It’s especially nice if you have different price levels for different types of customers and just quoting them isn’t really appropriate.

Multiple Units of Measure with Serial and Lot Items

Now you’ll be able to include batch/lot numbers along with items that need multiple units of measure. Chemicals by the gallon, pint and quart? With batch number attached. This will be perfect for a potential customer I was just talking to!

Direct List Editing on Transactions

If you love direct list editing, like I do, this will be nice. Now you won’t have to open and edit that estimate just to change expiry date or include it in your forecast when you’re viewing it in a list.  This will be great for sales reps everywhere.

Subsidiary Budgeting in OneWorld

NetSuite has a very good budgeting tool. I like it at least. Very good for keeping things on track. Assuming you can get your team to agree on the numbers! Now OneWorld users in subsidiaries will be able to budget in their local currency and not in the currency of their parent company.

Project Tasks Portlet

Project Tasks are different than regular tasks in NetSuite. Now you can more easily keep track of your project tasks in their own portlet on your dashboard. Cool. This will be very helpful for services groups using NetSuite.

Sales Campaigns

I’m never turning this on! Who wants the sales team to send out their own mass emails to their customers! Spam City! Seriously though. You can restrict access so that reps can only send to their own customers. Especially nice if you require prospects to opt in to emails before receiving them. Now reps can stop bugging marketing to do it!

Seamless Integration with Microsoft Outlook and BlackBerry

This feature, the latest sync client for Outlook and BlackBerry is only being rolled out in a limited “Beta” fashion. But it’s still cool. You can schedule syncs which you couldn’t before. And, wait for it… You can sync with Microsoft Exchange Server. I know someone who is going to jump for joy reading this! This has been a long time coming and apparently works fairly well.  I still have yet to test this out in an Exchange Server environment.

Multiple Dependent Dropdowns

How I have longed for this feature. This is fantastic. Now, you can filter the choices in a dropdown field based on the selections in one or more other fields. In the past you had to deal with some pretty long lists where most of the data wasn’t relevant based on other information on the form. It opens up lots of customization options.

Customizable Results for Global Search

Here’s a feature I didn’t know I missed. Now you can customize what fields are shown when you do a global search. Very Nice, and easy to configure as well it looks like.

Direct List Editing of Global Search Results

User-Defined Reminders

Another very nice enhancement. It’s easy to set up custom searches and portlets in NetSuite. But now you can set up a custom search and have it appear in your reminders portlet. Your list of everything that needs doing. I know users who basically only use the reminders portlet to show them what needs to be done. Now anything can show up there.

Showing Totals in Search Results

Google Checkout Integration

“With Google Checkout integration, you can offer Google Checkout to your Web store customers as an option for checkout, along with NetSuite checkout and PayPal Express checkout.” This is not rolling to all customers. Like the Outlook/Blackberry sync it will be limited to a few customers for a while and then released to everyone.

Conclusion

At around 64 Pages Long there’s a lot in the 2009.1 release notes. And keep in mind that there will likely be a 2009.2 release. I know that 2008.2 was one that had a lot of nice things I liked.

There’s a lot in there. Be sure to dive in and give it a solid read. Be sure to have your note book at your side while reading. If you’re a NetSuite admin there will be a few things you’ll want to add to your task list as you browse.

NetSuite 2009.1 will be rolling out from February through till April.

There you’ll find a number of useful applications that you can purchase from various 3rd parties to enhance your NetSuite instance.  From Address Verification, to a Google Calendar Widget, to advanced Asset Management, you’ll be able to quickly find them there.

Most, if not all of the applications were available previously, but it was more difficult to find them either on the NetSuite site or on the Web.  Now suiteapp.com puts them all in one place and makes it easy to search.

This is a great development by NetSuite and it’ll be interesting to see the number of applications grow as more and more companies realise that it’s very convenient to build upon the NetSuite platform, as opposed to an online “Platform as a Service” without any core functionality.  You may just see some Audaxium apps up there at some point in the future.

If you want to read the rather text heavy press release from NetSuite… It’s called NETSUITE UNVEILS SUITECLOUD, ENABLING BUSINESSES TO RUN THEIR CORE BUSINESS OPERATIONS IN THE CLOUD

When I saw the the title of this article come across my screen I was intrigued and thought I’d share it here.  It is an excellent example of the value proposition of NetSuite, even if it’s not being deployed as an end to end implementation.

As you will see, when you read the article, NetSuite offered Fusion UV Systems the configurability they wanted at a fraction of the price required to deploy a similar solution from SAP.  In this case the cost was limited to just the costs of deployment, and not the licenses.

The implication of this is that it shows just how affordable NetSuite is to companies who want a very capable system, be it ERP or CRM, but don’t want to bankrupt themselves to do it.

For me the highlight quote from the article is:

For one, NetSuite is very user-friendly, Mitchell said, and it was very easy for sales representatives to get up to speed on the software.

It’s also easily customizable. It’s easy to create a new field and even change a business process without hiring a consultant to do the programming, she said. It takes a little less than an hour to do so.

“For me, the big point is I’m able to do my marketing campaigns. I’m able to make a lot of changes and reconfigure,” she said. “It’s very flexible that way.”

I like the article because it is balanced.  It does talk about some prior shortcomings with NetSuite.  Issues that I feel are primarily resolved.

There are many other stories out there like this, but this one is a great example of why NetSuite can make a lot of sense.

You can read more about the benefits of switching from Sage to NetSuite here.  On that page you’ll read a number of customer testimonials from people who have already made the switch.

My feeling is that this is more than a simple promotion. At time’s like this it’s an opportunity to save money and improve your business.  If you’re interested in learning more contact us and we’ll get you more info.

In the past there haven’t been that many NetSuite blogs out there. It’s nice to see some people stepping up and helping the community outside of the private usergroup.

blog.netsuitetipsguide.com
The latest Tip here is about NetSuite Online forms. But I really liked the tip on the Net Value of Relationships.  Nice.

blog.suiteknowledge.com

Steven has a good tip on using Item Groups to track free items given away by a sales rep.

suiteasia.blogspot.com

Chelsea’s latest tip is one of my old ones, Emailing Transactions.  There are some other good tips here as well.

blog.netsuitereporting.com

Reporting is one of the more important areas of NetSuite.  Here’s hoping for more tips from NetSuiteReportingGuy.

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.

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