NetSuite ERP Reviews

NetSuite ERP has dramatically improved our organization. We went from QuickBooks to NetSuite. You can compare this transition to changing from tennis shoes to a flying car. You really have much more functionality over foreign operations with NetSuite. I would say in capability, report-wise, data querying, is much better to use than QuickBooks. QuickBooks is only for small companies.

The feature I find most valuable is the reporting function as I work in accounting. There is an innumerable number of data analyses and reports that you could be called to do on a daily basis. The ability for just your average users to do what they call customized reporting or searches is very simple. Again, it's a user-centric tool. You don't have to have involvement with your IT function. If you're in a New York company, especially in software, where you have engineers that are hyper-focused on product development, you don't get any support from them anyway. So, having a product that can be supported by the users themselves is golden.

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.

I have been using NetSuite ERP for about 20 years.

My impression is that the NetSuite ERP solution is quite stable.

I would rate this solution's scalability a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. Currently, there are around 40 or 50 users of this solution in our organization.

I would rate NetSuite ERP's technical support a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. Obviously, you can't get a dedicated support specialist unless you want to pay a huge amount of money for that, but I would say their technical support is good. The more you go to a third party, the worse it gets.

Positive

The setup process mostly depends on the type of VAR that you have. If you have a good VAR with competent engineering capabilities, your implementation could be a dream. But if you're like me and you have a VAR that is horrible, unresponsive, lacks the skillset, is completely unhelpful, and likes to point fingers, then you're going to have a very difficult implementation that's going to turn into a nightmare.

We were doing an integration with Stripe, which was a horrible experience. Stripe is a poor product, so it was very difficult to engineer that kind of data integration. Most of the VARs are not capable of handling that kind of environment. 

Time-wise, it can really depend on how long the deployment can take. If you're not trying to integrate it with a platform like Stripe, then you can have an easy implementation. That really depends on how much data you're trying to integrate, in terms of historical data. In the United States, we have laws around Sarbanes Oxley requirements. So there are certain steps that you have to follow to make sure that you have the right amount of data. When you do a new ERP system, you're really kind of concerned with the functionality in your reporting. So if you have transactions going through the new system, but you don't mirror them in the old one, you're never going to know whether or not what you're trying to do can be comparable to the old way, which is something you've relied upon and you have. It's like a test case, for example.

The implementation is done through a third-party team. We have VARs that help with that kind of work. NetSuite also has its own implementation teams. But if you have more customized implementation needs, like integration with third-party platforms, other than a banking function, for example, Stripe or Bill.com, then you have to get some VARs that are very knowledgeable.

The ROI is visible almost immediately. Its capability of dealing with foreign operations are much better than QuickBooks. With QuickBooks, you can't do foreign currencies within one environment. So if you have a US company, you can only do one currency, the US dollar. However, in NetSuite, you could do multiple currencies for each entity. The difference in capabilities is just night and day.

It's an annual, usage-based subscription. The more users you're going to have, the more licenses you need. The pricing is very much to my liking. I was very satisfied with it. I don't have any complaints. If you have a very superior product, you're going to pay for it, but that's the trade-off.

A lot of times, you have multinationals that can work under different reporting requirements. For example, you can have a parent company in a different country that's subject to IFRS and then you can have US entities that are subject to US GAAP. They have ways of accommodating that and that will definitely cost you more money. They're called books. It's very much like what you would think of, like, a sub-ledger. So it would be where you'd make specialized transactions to integrate between two different regulatory bodies.

I would advise others trying to implement this solution to be very careful about the value-added reseller (VAR) that they choose. There are some really bad VARs out there. They will promise you the world and then when things go bad, they'll point the finger at you. It's better to go with NetSuite's recommendation first. Obviously, they're not going to choose somebody to implement their product unless they've carefully vetted them and have had good reviews.

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.

I have been working with the product since 2005. 

I don't have any issues with technical support. It depends on getting the right person. They could improve by enhancing documentation and search capabilities, being more proactive about known issues, and addressing the overload on their third-level support.

Neutral

Regarding costs, it's not just about licensing. Customization recurring costs can become expensive over five to eight years, especially with new releases. However, NetSuite ERP integrates well with third-party applications, so it can still be used for finance while another ERP is used for localized production.

I recommend this product to professional services companies and those with complex international financial requirements. NetSuite ERP has strong capabilities in the finance domain that other ERPs may lack. I don't typically recommend it for complex manufacturing/production companies, as it requires too much customization, which can be expensive to maintain in the long term.

Regarding alternatives to NetSuite ERP, I've had good experiences with Epicor in projects and discrete manufacturing. Business Central is gaining popularity for finance and operations, while AP is good for process manufacturing.

Regarding AI, NetSuite ERP isn't quite there yet. You need three to five years of ERP data before AI can bring significant value. I've done some AI projects on the periphery of ERP, like using AI for asset management predictions. The tool's financial management capabilities are strong for complex requirements, often with out-of-the-box functionality that other systems would need customization.

I rate NetSuite ERP an eight out of ten for companies it fits well.

It is a very solid product for finance and procure-to-pay processes.

My company is working with Anchor Group to make some developments in the base of our NetSuite ERP to ensure that we can handle all the information and the process that we use. The other part is that we are integrating SMART ERP Solutions for external devices.

NetSuite ERP's finance model and how they manage the budget and procure-to-pay process, apart from the fact they are easy to install and that they provide a nice dashboard are some of the solution's valuable features.

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.

Even though, at the moment, I am not using NetSuite ERP full-fledged, I am involved in its implementation process. Also, I don't know the version of the solution I am using.

I rate the stability of the solution an eight out of ten.

Considering my experience with other companies, I rate the scalability of the solution a seven out of ten.

At the moment, we don't have direct support for Oracle NetSuite. Instead, we are working with a third party who is an expert in this area. So, it's difficult to say how the support is. However, in my previous company, I found that the response time for support was very fast.

The solution is deployed on the cloud.

The solution's initial setup process was complex.

The implementation process was carried out by a third party. We are working with Anchor Group.

At this moment, it's hard to say whether I have experienced an ROI using the tool since we are in the implementation part. But as our research, we hope that we can experience an ROI in almost two years.

The price is less than the cost of daily hours. The difference is very representative for us.

Before choosing NetSuite ERP, we evaluated a local system from Colombia and SAP ERP's cloud version.

It is a very friendly tool. It generates a dashboard in your system profile. You can maintain track records, and the reporting function is very good, making it a very favorable solution. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

It's used in manufacturing and other environments for day-to-day operations.

I like the ease of setup and customization of forms.

Improvement-wise, it should be more customizable. Currently, you can't enhance the product yourself in terms of development for any applications unless you've got a very strong and big development team. Those are the skills that are in very short supply.

I would also like them to provide the ability to format their reports as required. Currently, it has quite a basic reporting structure, especially when you're trying to generate reports. So, I would like them to spend more time improving its ability to customize the visual formats of reports.

I have been using it for the last three years.

It's extremely stable. I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of stability.

It's scalable. I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of scalability.

Their official technical support takes a while to get back to you, whereas, on the user forums, which also have their technical support people, they're very quick. However, they give you more standard answers instead of trying to find a bespoke solution for you. I would rate their support a six out of ten.

Neutral

It's a software-as-a-subscription solution. It has a very straightforward setup. I would rate it a nine out of ten in terms of ease of setup.

It's very competitively priced due to it being a subscription model. So, clients are quite happy with the pricing. I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of pricing.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.

The NetSuite which we are using is mostly for our financial processes, mostly OTC or maintenance, the creation of reports, getting dashboards, tracking the payments or cancellations, et cetera. All this is something for which we are using this solution. At the same time, we are using the SuiteAnalytics feature where we can create our custom reports as well for NetSuite.

First of all, it's really easy to use. It has great functionality and is perfect mostly for a company where they're in the initial stage or even the middle stage of its own development. If they want to quickly start with an ERP system that is ready to use, it's really helpful. 

It's good value for money as well. We can install the bundles based on our needs. 

At the same time, the team has a good support system, in case we run into any issues and they do provide a lot of configurations and customization options. If something is not working out, we can customize that as well. 

One more very good point which I have seen while using NetSuite is, that they provide all the leading processes already in-built, whether it's the OTC or P2P, or test to order. All those configurations are already ready to use. We just have to put our data and we can start running those. Unlike others, you don't have to customize.

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. 

We've used the solution for the last three years. 

The solution is stable. There are no latency issues. It's highly available. I've never seen a system going down.

Its scalability is good. 

This whole platform is designed in such a way that they do have a user-based billing model, however, system by system is robust. If somebody, some company, is using that at their initial stage and they're growing, so it will not provide any technical issues as such, in terms of systems slowness or things like that. However, if a company's business is getting complex, if there are a lot of new workflows being added, then NetSuite might not be the right choice for them. Scalability-wise, we can scale. In terms of the volume of users, there is no system impact in NetSuite.

We have our clients which are using it. From our company side, as a part of our team, there are four to five people who are using it. I'd rate the solution four out of five in terms of scalability.

They have pretty good support.

Positive

We chose this solution as it's SaaS-based, so there was no headache on the infrastructure, support, or maintenance side. That is been taken care of by the Oracle vendor itself. Secondly, it's very robust and fully customizable. We can customize it as per our needs. That was the one consideration. There is already a process set up for multiple currencies, and locations. They provide leading practices - all the standard practices with respect to the business, whether it's a B2B, or order to cash, everything is available. It's not taking up a lot of time for the initial setup. There are no extensive configurations or implementation work involved.

It's a SaaS product, so we don't have to deploy it to any product here. It's something that is managed by the company itself.

It took some time to spin up, however, it was, I would say, easy to medium complexity. Out of five, it was like a 3.5 in terms of ease of setup.

The solution offers very good value for money.

While I was a part of the discussion, I cannot recall how much the solution costs. 

We are a partner for NetSuite. We have our own NetSuite license also.

It's a SaaS solution. It's auto-upgrading. There's no specific version number that I can recollect.

If a business or company is not fully grown, then it definitely can start with NetSuite. It's really very user-friendly. It provides all the basic functionality. If some company who already have a very large presence, in terms of employees or in terms of their products, and they are fully matured, they have a lot of different complex processes in their business, then NetSuite might not be the right choice for that stage of the business.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten as definitely there is a scope for improvement.  However, from what we observed so far, it's helping us with all the requirements as per our company size. 

We use NetSuite for inventory and order management. 

NetSuite helps us simplify business processes. 

NetSuite is a better value than some competing solutions. The fee structure is simpler, and other ERP solutions don't offer as many options for configuration.

NetSuite is good for data management, but it's missing payroll features. 

We started using NetSuite for a Turkish company two or three years ago.

NetSuite's stability is okay. 

I rate NetSuite six out of 10 for scalability. 

I rate NetSuite four out of 10 for ease of implementation. It's difficult to implement but easier than some other ERP solutions. 

NetSuite is expensive, but it is about average for an ERP solution. There are some extra costs depending on the scope of the solution, so it's not always transparent for the customers. Over the course of a project, customers may decide that they need to pay for other modules, which adds to the base price. 

I rate NetSuite ERP eight out of 10. NetSuite is suitable for small and mid-sized companies. Still, it is essential to define your exact requirements before implementing the solution so that you can prepay for the ERP to fit your needs. 

For example, a small company that incorrectly estimates what it needs might go into the hole trying to implement it. In the early stages, you need to compare the numbers for NetSuite and SAP Business One with accurate data about the requirements. 

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.

I gained that experience and knowledge from one of my previous assignments. I had the opportunity to demonstrate Microsoft Dynamics Business One, and they were considering it as an alternate product to NetSuite ERP and Microsoft Dynamics. 

Therefore, during that assignment, I acquired knowledge and experience about NetSuite ERP.

The initial setup is easy. However, if your company works with a standard environment and has well-defined processes, then you can easily map the system. It's like an off-the-shelf product that you can buy and use, almost like a plug-and-play solution. 

However, if your company has some extra requirements or needs to map certain areas into the system, then it can be troublesome. That's the case with NetSuite ERP. In contrast, Microsoft Dynamics Business One doesn't have that barrier.

Another significant difference is the licensing. With Microsoft Dynamics Business One, we can use Test more licenses, which allows for extended testing periods. However, NetSuite doesn't provide that kind of facility. While they may have trial options, you have to pay for subscriptions and hosting right from the beginning when implementing the product. This might cause budgetary challenges for some companies during the implementation process.

The cost can vary depending on the company's size, the number of users, and the service providers. It's not a fixed amount, and it depends on specific requirements and agreements with the service provider.

I am using Microsoft Dynamics. I'm referring to the SME-level product of Microsoft Dynamics. Our Oracle NetSuite is at the same level as the SME product of Microsoft Dynamics.

NetSuite is the biggest competitor for Microsoft Dynamics Business One. We need a fully cloud-based solution, and for that, a stable internet connection and proper IT infrastructure are required. Also, if you use tablets, smartphones, or laptops, you should have the right level of access through browsers. Additionally, dealing with massive amounts of data may require extra configuration to improve transaction processing speed and scalability.

Before considering NetSuite ERP, I would advise you to evaluate your requirements and check the feasibility with Microsoft Dynamics Business One as well. If you find that NetSuite meets your needs and is the ideal product for you, then you can go with NetSuite.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten.

The client's use cases really revolve around core financial and accounting tasks such as ARAPGL cash management and things of that nature as well as some supply chain. Inventory management at a rolled-up level. They had a separate system for their core product inventory life cycle management, however, this was from the financial aspect and vendor integration and purchasing side of supply chain and billing management was going to be done through the NetSuite implementation. 

Due to the fact that they had more on their wishlist, we were going to get into some commerce stuff, however, we backlogged that. CRM is what they're actually going to start on next year. We backlogged that as well. I'm all about focusing. I'm really about accounting. The initial high-level inventory management is the core thing we deployed as part of the first phase.

The client saw a lot of elimination of manual steps that they were doing in their old system. The acceptance of a lot of best practices made even just basic monthly closing a lot simpler and a lot quicker. They went from taking almost three and a half weeks to do a monthly close to five to seven business days.

That time savings alone, there's cost value there from a human resource standpoint.

The user interface is very good. That is extremely important when you're making and implementing change. A good, intuitive user interface and good documentation from a standpoint for training and support is super-important. The accounting functions are pretty basic and this was pretty standard. 

While more customization on the cloud would be nice, it forced years of bad practices that were exceptions or custom ways of doing things. 

The solution lends itself to scalability. 

There's good integration with other products. 

It's perfect for a company that is growing, that's still on the border of small to midsize. It fits perfectly from a cost and functionality perspective of them trying to get to standard practices that allows them to grow efficiently. They can take on a new business without adding people.

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.

I've been using the solution for over 15 years at this point. 

The solution is pretty stable. It's a tried and true product. It's going to the cloud that's different. By the time we went live, we were two releases behind the current release and so we didn't really have to worry about bugs. It was more stable at that point. At the same time, we were sandboxing with a newer version. I got the client on a cadence to catch up at least one version or stay one version behind the current. They've gotten better at responding quickly to critical bug fixes as well. Oracle may have just had some resource constraints or focus constraints on how they were responding.

At the time of deployment, they were going through a lot of technical issues with the Fusion product that was diverting resources off of NetSuite. Again, because they've got such a product suite, resources are sometimes very fixed or it's hard to scale up quickly and get the right people on board. I got the sense that they had teams focused across multiple products.

That said, stability-wise, it was pretty stable when we went live. Overall from a product standpoint, from a performance standpoint of the Oracle cloud, there was definitely some issues that they were experiencing. However, based on my regular contact with his client over the last eight, nine months, post-implementation, things have improved as Oracle was already on a path to upgrading their data centers. 

With my prior client in 2018, I was involved in a lot of Oracle products at that time. Oracle had started down the path of pushing clients onto newer equipment, newer systems, and even transferring them into newer updated data centers. It doesn't happen overnight, however. They've been strategically doing that since late 17, all the way through this year.

Scalability is one of the areas of limitation, as it's not designed for the larger, more complex businesses or businesses that grow out of being a small regional player into a super-regional type of organization. 

With the improvements in the cloud product it's possible to move to another Oracle product such as the Fusion more easily. In that respect, once you get a certain level or need certain functionality, the ability to move from a NetSuite to Oracle Fusion now is much easier to do from the cloud.

Our clients are mixed organizations. Most are in the mid to large size company. I'm talking in the hundred millions into billions. I've had quite a few clients that are four billion-plus.

Early on, the response was critical. There are those bugs or fixes that they'll get to that aren't impacting your businesses versus extremely critical bugs. Fields won't accept the value that needs to accept the value, or it's not calculating something correctly that's very obvious, for example. Responding to critical bugs was the initial problem. We felt it was putting clients at risk due to the fact that there wasn't a workaround. We were worried about going live with these particular bugs. Fortunately, they were able to resolve them.

I was able to escalate it enough and had enough connection, a good rapport with the Oracle leadership, for what we needed to do, that they acknowledged, "Our resources were pulled away on this. And we're getting somebody to specifically address these and look into it." And so they don't wait for the regular release packages. They made available a patch that we could deploy. They had them deploy it into the Oracle cloud. That's the other thing - you're directly engaged when Oracle manages your service in their cloud. Their team can deploy it whenever you say go. And so, because we were still in the test environment, we could get that in, and retest things. It was later than we liked, however, it still allowed us to go live. We were able to get it in and test it before we went live.

Overall, I'd say we are mostly satisfied with the level of support we receive and I would rate it eight out of ten.

While we looked at other solutions, we didn't deploy any others with this particular client.

The initial setup has improved. Concerning what I know about it from 15 years ago to now, it's fairly straightforward. It's a lot more streamlined. There are not as many customizations you can do. You can create a few fields and add things here and there, however, when it comes to really create custom processes it forces you to use workflows and things like that. It's simpler in that it provides a lot more visibility to the business of how their processes work.

I've had multiple engagements involving NetSuite as it is a good sweet spot system for mid-level size enterprises. I don't recommend it for large-scale enterprises. It's also too much sometimes for small companies. It's a great sweet spot, like I said, for mid-level companies. A lot of companies have been on it and sometimes they make good candidates as people who don't feel comfortable with some of the extra bells and whistles. It's a good, basic, fundamental ERP accounting supply planning system.

I'm not sure which version of the solution I'm using right now. I know it wasn't the latest as I'm not a fan of going right away to the latest and greatest typically due to the fact that there are some bugaboos that have to be worked on.

Companies want you to get on the latest system. However, another reason we don't choose the latest was once we went through a build and deployed a model with an 8 UAT, by the time we were ready to go live, they had already released another version. We held off due to the fact that we were comfortable with what we tested. 

While we started using on-premises deployment models, we also now work with the cloud. 

Oracle's done a good job, especially lately. I did a major Oracle project a few years ago where their cloud infrastructure was still a little slow performance-wise, compared to, hosting on Amazon or AWS. However, Oracle's really improved that. Especially in the last year, they've really upgraded their infrastructure center. The performance of NetSuite on the cloud is pretty good now. You can still get that on an on-prem type implementation or a cloud. My last deployment actually happened to be on the cloud. That's another reason we stayed with an early version, The client was still getting their feet wet with NetSuite in the cloud at the time.

I would advise others to be detailed in how they assess their needs to make sure that is the right fit for the company's size, not only for now but over the next five years. A company needs to ask itself: What are the business' growth plans? If you're shortsighted and go into it, where you're already at the top end of the capabilities, then you're losing your investment value. Also, it will be more time and effort to set it up, when you should really be picking either the next product up or a different vendor at the outset.

Overall, it's quite a good solution. I'd rate it nine out of ten.