Table of contents
The pace of change in the world of business has never been quicker. New technology has resulted in new practices, while disruptive businesses are finding ways to do things cheaper, faster, and better.
Staying ahead of your rivals or growing and scaling your business requires a deep level of efficiency. As a result, platforms like Oracle NetSuite have emerged to serve competitive business sectors.
In this article, we'll explore what NetSuite is used for and how it can provide your business with a crucial edge.
What is NetSuite?
NetSuite is the leading cloud-based software for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). It offers a wide range of applications to help streamline your core business functions all in a single platform. Think of having real-time access and a 360-degree view of your core business from accounting, customer relationship management (CRM), e-commerce, human resources, inventory management, order management, and more! NetSuite gives you the control and visibility to run your business anytime, anywhere along with more than 40,000 fast-growing businesses across the globe.
What is Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)?
To fully understand the possibilities when implementing NetSuite for your business, you first need to understand what Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is. To put it simply, ERP software can help you manage your entire business!
At its core, ERP is a comprehensive and integrated software used by organizations to manage and automate their core business processes and functions across various departments such as accounting, manufacturing, supply chain management, sales, marketing, and human resources (HR). Its primary goal is to provide a centralized platform that facilitates the flow of information within an organization to improve efficiency and decision-making.
What is NetSuite used for?
This type of software integrates all your business departments and functions into one system, allowing you to:
- Streamline data
- Synchronize reporting
- Automate business processes across your entire organization
Connecting and unifying your business allows you to manage staff, products, customers, inventory, and more from one place. This setup means you have better information and analysis, which means more accurate reporting that allows you to make confident data-driven decisions.
Who is NetSuite made for?
NetSuite is a modular business solution. It is highly customizable and can integrate a lot of third-party software. As a result, it can be customized to serve the needs of a wide range of businesses. NetSuite is suitable for:
- Business-to-consumer (B2C)
- Business-to-business (B2B)
- Companies in a diverse range of sectors and industries.
- Startups, SMEs, and Enterprise level firms
What Industries are NetSuite used in?
NetSuite is used by businesses across a wide variety of sectors, such as:
- Digital Media
- Bioscience & Biotechnology
- Consulting Firms
- Educational Institutions
- Energy and Solar
- Food and Beverage
- Health and Beauty
- Healthcare
- Manufacturing
- Medical Practices
- Nonprofits
- Professional Services
- Restaurant & Hospitality
- Retail
- Software
- Transportation & Logistics
- Distribution
NetSuite Functions and Capabilities
NetSuite's comprehensive set of functions and capabilities make it a versatile solution suitable for almost all types of industries. Its cloud-based nature enables easy access, scalability, and adaptability to changing business needs. Here are the key functions and capabilities of NetSuite you should know:
Accounting, Financial Planning, and Reporting
Financial Management
The Financial Management module is a management solution that helps you track and record your business finances. It can handle typical bookkeeping tasks with powerful automation flows that update the general ledger, track accounts payable and receivable, and even submit invoices.
One of this module's most significant advantages is that it speeds up monthly close and helps you create reports quickly and easily. The latter feature is essential in an environment of strict regulatory compliance and reporting.
Additionally, NetSuite Financial Management supports revenue recognition standards and can help businesses with multi-subsidiaries or international offices deal with real-time currency conversions and more.
Managing Global Businesses
NetSuite OneWorld was built to help international or multi-subsidiary enterprises efficiently manage different business units. By centralizing company data on one platform, business owners have a 360-degree view of what is happening in every location.
OneWorld supports multiple currencies, languages, and tax jurisdictions, meaning your enterprise is ready to work everywhere. Additionally, it allows you to standardize processes across your entire network or integrate different business units, even if they don't have the NetSuite platform.
OneWorld offers roll-up abilities on the local, regional, or global level. Management can take a high-level or granular view of the organization, allowing them better visibility and transparency at all times.
Business Planning and Budgeting
NetSuite Planning and Budgeting helps businesses create financial reports and forecasts across their entire company or departments. This module can integrate with current budgeting and planning tools, like Excel, and automate important business and financial data to make better forecasts for revenue, spending, expenses, headcount, and more.
Powerful calculation engines and superb templates mean businesses can create more accurate, meaningful forecasts, allowing them to adjust and intervene on the fly with data-driven decisions and insights.
Billing
Suite Billing is a robust module that helps businesses manage invoices and billing. It supports many different business models and transaction types, like subscriptions, memberships, usage-based billing, and various other transaction models.
SuiteBilling records your income based on up-to-date revenue recognition models, ensuring you stay compliant and can dig up granular transaction details when you need them.
Business Operations
Inventory Management
NetSuite Inventory Management is a fantastic tool that centralizes your inventory across different channels or locations, giving you a real-time, accurate view of your stock levels at all times. By pulling this information together, you can significantly reduce the loss of revenue that occurs when you run out of stock.
Inventory management has powerful automation features that can alert management when inventory is low and also auto-reorder items, which is a fantastic feature for larger businesses with lots of different stock.
Replenishing orders is just the start. Inventory management can also manage cycle counts and help you adopt a just-in-time approach to inventory management that keeps warehousing costs low while boosting sales, revenues, and customer experiences.
Order Management
NetSuite Order Management is a helpful module that can handle the ordering process from end to end. Order management is an excellent tool for eCommerce businesses because it gives them more control and visibility over the order processes, from receipt to shipping to settlement.
By implementing pre-defined rules, you can automate order processing and fulfillment across various sales channels, ensuring quicker deliveries and greater customer satisfaction. This process improves delivery speeds and flows, reduces delivery costs, and results in more return customers.
Procurement
NetSuite Procure to Pay saves time and money by improving the procurement process. Procurement involves several different departments, which can lead to inefficiency. Procure to Pay pulls together each department and automates processes like purchase orders (POs), authorizations, and even payments.
Procure to Pay gives businesses a considerable amount of oversight and transparency across the enterprise. Teams can monitor spending and ensure swift payments that improve vendor relationships.
Warehouse Management
NetSuite's Warehouse Management System (WMS) combines with the Inventory Management module to improve your storage and delivery processes. The software helps with putaway, picking, and returns thanks to its excellent barcode scanning system.
This fully digital solution can run on various mobile devices, meaning your warehouse operatives can receive and pick anywhere. Additionally, with centralized data, you gain a detailed oversight of your warehouse operation, improving efficiency and a variety of health metrics like faster fulfillment and shipping.
Manufacturing
NetSuite Manufacturing was made for organizations that build or assemble products. The module helps manufacturing businesses plan and schedule production, manage shop floors, and monitor their production environment. Powerful data collection and analysis mean data-driven impact that improves the bottom line.
The Manufacturing module helps you track and organize supplies, ensuring you have everything you need when you need it. Additionally, managers can gain fuller oversight of work orders and use the NetSuite platform to reduce costs, improve quality, and ensure the business meets its obligations on time.
Demand Planning
Demand planning is a crucial supply chain concept that helps organizations forecast demand for goods so they can be produced and delivered efficiently. The discipline uses historical data to project and understand the factors that affect demand, allowing businesses to predict sales or identify opportunities.
The NetSuite Demand Planning module helps you understand moving averages, seasonal averages, and linear regressions. Additionally, the module can automate work orders and purchases so your business can respond to demand quickly and drive better revenues.
Customer
Customer Management and Service
NetSuite Customer Relationship Management (CRM) module provides businesses with a holistic view of their customers. Sales automation tools allow for lead creation, nurturing, and sales, providing a boost to your customer acquisition. Additionally, powerful sales forecasting tools can help you understand future revenue and guide the allocation of your resources.
CRM tools are about more than just generating sales. Customer retention is a fantastic predictor of revenues, and NetSuite CRM helps you keep on top of customer relationships by collecting all data from the customer journey in one place. This data can help you understand your ideal customer profile (ICP) more profoundly and also help you intervene at the right point before customer churn.
Finally, NetSuite CRM includes robust marketing automation tools that help you reach potential customers across a variety of different channels. The most powerful features are customer segments and campaign management, which help you target prospects more precisely, ultimately improving sales and conversion rates.
Netsuite SuiteCommerce: End To End E-commerce Solution
SuiteCommerce is an essential tool for powering your commercial activity. Created with retailers, manufacturers, and distributors in mind, the module was built to offer your customers fantastic omnichannel sales experiences. Celebrated for its intuitive and user-friendly capabilities, you can use it to launch eCommerce sites that are perfect for today's mobile-first consumer.
Businesses with multiple locations and multiple channels can centralize their transactions and site visits with SuiteCommerce and the NetSuite POS system. This consolidated approach means a unified, seamless customer experience that is built on top of a robust backend that manages payments and customer data and automates the information back into the ERP.
Employee Management
Payroll
NetSuite Payroll helps businesses automate earnings, taxes, deductions, bonuses, and time off. Additionally, it can help with tax accounting. This module can also print checks or pay employees by direct debit, ensuring a smooth, reliable process that your employees will value. Additionally, it helps file taxes and creates employee tax forms.
With employment laws and regulations constantly changing, an automated payroll system saves time and reduces errors, promoting compliance and employee satisfaction.
Human Resources
NetSuite's SuitePeople system is a powerful HR solution. Packed with features that help you effectively manage your staff, it stores employee data, helps with effective onboarding, tracks compensation details, and more.
SuitePeople offers self-service tools that help employees request leave and gives them access to internal organizations' charts and directories. Additionally, it helps management conduct and track performance reviews. SuitePeople takes advantage of automation to encourage employee self-service, freeing up your HR staff and boosting employee retention.
Business intelligence
Analytics
SuiteAnalytics is a robust business intelligence (BI) tool that helps you derive incredible insights from your centralized data. SuiteAnalytics workbook helps users get the most from saved searches and reports by producing custom filters and visualizations.
The module provides intuitive drag-and-drop tools that eliminate the need for coding. SuiteAnalytics helps you gain the most from your data and helps with better decision-making, forecasting, and business understanding.
NetSuite Add-On Modules
Professional Service Automation (PSA)
NetSuite Professional Service Automation solutions were built for service businesses or departments within product companies. With features like project management, resource management, expense and time tracking, billing, and project accounting, you can be sure that your services are tracked and monitored transparently.
OpenAir granularly tracks time and expenses and automates billing based on hours, milestones, or other schedules. NetSuite PSA helps you complete projects on time and on budget, providing better quality services while boosting productivity.
SuiteApps
SuiteApps is a collection of apps developed by NetSuite and third-party contributors that aim to augment and customize your NetSuite functions. These apps help you integrate third-party SaaS within the NetSuite platform, allowing you to adapt the solution according to your business goals and objectives.
While most SuiteApps are hosted on NetSuite servers, you can also integrate it with other specialized workflows.
SuiteCloud's application and developer tools allow you to make custom adjustments to the platform, so it suits your workflows and ethos. Additionally, it will enable you to unlock the power of automation, freeing your staff from mundane jobs and allowing them to contribute to value-driven work that boosts your revenues.
The Benefits of NetSuite
Before we answer the question, "What is NetSuite used for?" Let's discuss some of the best reasons to use the ERP platform.
Real-time view of your business in the cloud
NetSuite centralizes various data sources across your business and makes them visible in user-friendly, customizable dashboards.
These dashboards let you monitor the KPIs and metrics that matter to your business, so you're always up to date and ready to act or intervene.
Reduce costs for IT and technology support
NetSuite is an all-in-one cloud-based business solution. As a result, you can save on IT infrastructure and maintenance costs.
Centralize your services
Large, complex software stacks are the norm in modern-day business environments. NetSuite offers users a way to manage multiple business processes on one platform. This situation allows you to run one platform for accounts, customer service, HR, and eCommerce.
Users can enjoy incredible speed and accuracy with a more holistic view of business processes.
Great customization
NetSuite is known for its flexibility and customization. You can integrate and support lots of different applications with NetSuite, which can provide a valuable boost to productivity. All data from these various sources can be automatically sent to your dashboards, giving you unprecedented levels of control and transparency.
Access anywhere
NetSuite is a cloud-based solution that is perfect for remote or mobile workers. With high levels of security, your staff can easily access NetSuite through any internet device, giving you access to critical business data where and when you need it.
Why Is NetSuite Better?
NetSuite vs. Quickbooks
NetSuite and QuickBooks are both powerful accounting software. However, they are designed for different types of businesses. The choice depends on the specific needs, size, and complexity of your business.
If you are looking for a more robust system that can handle a higher volume of transactions, NetSuite is the better option for you. It is highly scalable and adaptable to the growth of your business. NetSuite also has more in-depth functionality in areas such as inventory management, supply chain management, manufacturing, and more. Most importantly, it allows for extensive customization whereas QuickBooks may not offer the same level of flexibility and may be ideal for small businesses or individuals who only require basic accounting.
NetSuite vs. SAP
It is important to note that SAP is a well-established and widely used ERP software among enterprise businesses. The primary advantage of NetSuite, however, is it is a cloud-based ERP software that allows you to manage your business anytime, anywhere. In contrast, SAP involves on-premise installations which can be more time-consuming and resource-intensive.
Since maintenance and updates are handled by NetSuite in the cloud, it is typically easier and faster to implement compared to SAP. It also usually requires less upfront investment in infrastructure and ongoing maintenance making it more cost-effective.
NetSuite vs. Sage Intacct
NetSuite and Sage Intacct are both reputable cloud-based ERP solutions, each with its unique benefits. Choosing between the two boils down to the specific needs of your business.
While both are multi-tenant ERP solutions, the primary advantage of NetSuite is its ability to run your entire business with a breadth of modules for robust customer relationship management (CRM), manufacturing, e-commerce, and human capital management (HCM).
Sage Intacct is primarily built to handle accounting and finance. Although there may be add-ons, it doesn’t offer the same level of functionality as NetSuite’s modules. It may also pose challenges if your business runs internationally due to currency conversion and global support limits.
How Seller Universe Can Help
Sellers Universe brings experience and expertise to the NetSuite environment. Our deep familiarity with the tool means we can help businesses plan, implement, and administer NetSuite and support them in achieving greater efficiency, productivity, and revenues.
We work with companies of every kind and help them integrate their existing software stacks and business processes into NetSuite. Our consultative approach means we can help enterprises build powerful customizations, too.
If you are interested in the benefits of NetSuite, get in touch today to discuss how we can help you bring your business to the next level.
