- Financials first philosophy
- Strong functionality with regards to CRM, Marketing etc.
- Ace in the hole - an open platform
The goal of achieving a true end to end ERP or CRM system that offers one single platform to run your entire business on seems to be the 2021 equivalent of the Wright Brothers’ mission to achieve manned flight over 100 years ago. Ok, perhaps a slight exaggeration, but a lot of ERP and CRM providers have been working hard to achieve this over the last few years - one central system on which you can manage your entire business and have a full 360 degree view of your customer. The truth is that although for some businesses this is possible, the more complex a business becomes, the more difficult this is.
Business owners and executives need to make a decision about which platform gives them their “must haves” and then enables the best integrations for the “nice to haves” for their business. What sets NetSuite apart from the rest is that it brings the best of both worlds together - a first in class core solution for your business, coupled with open extensible architecture that gives your business the flexibility and agility to grow.
An Open Platform With Strong Foundations
NetSuite has a “financials first” philosophy. When setting up and running any business, there’s a strong argument that getting the right finance system in place should be the number one priority, and then you can start building around that. This is something that NetSuite strongly believes - build strong foundations for your business and then build up. Beyond being a best-in-class accounting and finance system, NetSuite has leading CRM, marketing, ecommerce and analytics/reporting capabilities as part of the platform.
As mentioned, one of NetSuite’s founding principles and arguably it’s biggest strength is that it is built as an open platform. This means there is a whole ecosystem of solutions/apps available that works quite similarly to Apple’s App Store or the Google Play Store. With seamless integration, there is no limit to the extension of third-party apps that you can leverage, should you wish to extend the capability of your business systems. This gives businesses the choice to go with applications that best fit their specific needs, and the confidence to know that they will integrate seamlessly into NetSuite. Your business needs the ability to flex, adapt and pivot as time goes on; and NetSuite's open and extensible cloud architecture sets it apart from the rest.
A Finance System for Growing Businesses
With NetSuite being a finance system at its core, it means that every deal closed by a salesperson in NetSuite’s CRM will be automatically pushed through to the financial statements; any purchase through your company's website, or any transaction anywhere else in the business, will be reflected and beautifully displayed on the relevant reports and dashboards by leveraging NetSuite’s powerful native analytics capabilities. Things like this are extremely powerful, as it eliminates the risk of error or duplication of efforts.
NetSuite is typically used by businesses that have outgrown whatever system they’ve chosen to get them started. There are some great finance systems out there for small businesses that just want something in place that will allow them to get off the ground, but as the business grows there usually comes a time where you need something that is more powerful - but still allows you to maintain agility. This is often where NetSuite comes in. It certainly is possible for a new business to use NetSuite from the outset, but typically we see businesses adopt NetSuite as their requirements become slightly more complex.
A Powerful and Scalable System
The beauty of NetSuite is that once you’ve adopted it, it can scale forever. At PKF Digital we have implemented NetSuite for 50 person companies through to 15,000 person companies, and in neither case will they ever reach a limit. In fact, the more entities your business has and the more complex your requirements become, the brighter NetSuite will shine. It’s also worth noting that it’s backed by Oracle’s massive R&D budget, so every year the system will be upgraded twice - imagine how these improvements will be compounded over the years.
NetSuite is built to be a scalable system, and so our philosophy at PKF Digital when we partner with a business to implement NetSuite is that we’re entering into a ‘forever’ partnership. We know that implementation is just the first step of a long and successful journey. We also recognise that when you grow as a business, so do we.
I hope you’ve found this short piece useful, perhaps you’re someone who knows all this already or perhaps you’re a newbie to NetSuite - either way I think it’s important to always go back to the fundamentals.
Feel free to get in touch with myself or anyone at the PKF Digital team if you’d like to know more about NetSuite and PKF Digital.
Cheers,
Conor
conor.mcgowan@pkfdigital.com.au
0490 693 428
pkfdigital.com.au