It is extremely important for service organizations to track and monitor their resources working across multiple projects to ensure high service quality standards that drive customer satisfaction. A solution like Oracle NetSuite offers service organizations an extensive solution that is designed to help deliver successful projects.
Globally, businesses start by using entry-level software to support their core functionalities, especially accounting, finance, inventory, and human resources. A few applications like QuickBooks or Tally have almost become de-facto business software for startups and mid-size businesses. Some even offer additional features like support add-ons and third-party systems to expand their functionalities.
However, at some point, organizations outgrow such entry-level business software.
Even though stand-alone accounting software is widely used, many organizations after a certain point are unable to run their businesses comfortably with them. This is especially true for high-growth organizations that have been operational for a while and have been growing.
1) Absence of Real-time reporting: Entry-level software capabilities are typically inadequate to provide consolidated views & real-time information. This is mainly because employees are dependent on data spread across spreadsheets to fill the gaps in their information. Also, the organization resorts to manual operation for non-existing functionality such as reconciling customer and debtor information, or in cost of buying out or manufactured items. In such situations, organizations may also implement stand-alone applications and encounter challenges in integrating the same with the essential accounting software. This causes obvious delays in processing and reporting. When information access and availability take longer or become difficult, it is an indication that the business needs have outgrown the software.
Additionally, if subsidiaries were to employ different financial software, manually moving data between systems would lead to manual errors, adding to further data inaccuracies. Without real-time data & accurate information, the management team would lack insights & visibility into the business’s performance.
2) Integrations with disparate systems: A typical accounting software is not built to manage increasing customers, vendors, inventory & orders. The key driver for expansion & success lies in greater transaction volumes & quick consolidations, but most such software cannot tackle such kind of pressure. Complete audit trails, intelligent business planning, real-time reporting & automated workflows would need to integrate additional applications & systems. In the absence of perfect integration, one is only contributing to the hairball of spreadsheets. Also, such stand-alone software cannot manage stronger financial controls or support complex financial processes like subscription billing & invoicing.
According to a study published by the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), the most critical challenges faced by accounting & finance teams today are integrating disparate business systems, adding business intelligence software & replacing disparate systems with a single business suite & database.
NetSuite ERP with its suite of business management applications solves such industry-specific problems with ease and finesse.
3) Excessive Manual Intervention: Incompatibilities between systems & imperfect integrations have left employees with manual movement of data causing manual errors & reporting delays. Employees are spending large business hours every week entering order information into the invoicing system, while someone from sales is copying invoice details into the sales compensation spreadsheet.
Such manual data entry leads to invoice queries, which when not resolved in time may lead to a month-end crisis. Simple processes like expense claim approvals or routine contract signatures take a few days to weeks to finalize when paperwork is passed around to be validated with information from disparate systems. With data lying around in disparate systems, it gets difficult to get real-time information in the right format for trend analysis, so employees fill the data gap with guesswork instead of actual data that is hard to find.
In today’s highly networked world, not having access to real-time data & having to wait around, while data is manually moved from multiple systems, frustrates suppliers, customers & business owners. They could be spending their business hours making business-impacting decisions with real-time perfect insights.
4) Non-scalability: When a business wants to scale up, transform, become digital, or react to market opportunities & competitive threats, it needs advanced and specialized functions. Entry-level accounting software lacks specialized industry-specific capabilities like prepayments, manufacturing, inventory, or warehouse distribution calling for additional standalone software with integration complexities.
And their ability to handle increasing volumes and maintain data integrity becomes a challenge. Embracing mobile solutions to augment user experience while making information access and decision-making swifter is the hallmark of applications such as NetSuite, a go-to application for all Digital Transformation needs
5) Agility: It gets too difficult to add sales channels, product lines, or locations in accounting software. Whenever there is a change in business, employees must work overtime, or new staff is hired to work around to accommodate the changes. A process that cries out for automation is done manually or from spreadsheets, making scale-up, time-consuming and manpower-intensive.
As a growing business, it is essential to employ a holistic solution that will tackle all the shortcomings mentioned above. It is vital to look beyond accounting software and deploy an integrated solution that is agile, scalable & requires minimal manual intervention to avoid financial inefficiencies. Additionally, allowing businesses to analyze data & maximize performance instead of copying & combining data from multiple systems.
Can NetSuite address the five concerns?
NetSuite Cloud ERP is a solution that goes beyond standard bookkeeping & facilitates end-to-end financial management with extended functionalities for growing business to scale.
NetSuite provides a suite of business applications that includes advanced financial capabilities on a single platform. NetSuite’s financial management capabilities combine core accounting & financial functions with strong compliance management to generate real-time reports. These reports help growing businesses drill down to details with quick reports complying with multiple financial regulations. Additionally, NetSuite supports functionalities like recurring revenue or multiple currencies to solve specific company & industry-level problems with a single suite.
How can NetSuite's advanced financial features help?
1) Accounting: Integrates complete accounting functionalities (GL, AR, AP, TM, FAM, PM) on a single platform to provide real-time visibility & intelligent insights for financial supremacy.
2) Billing: Provides real-time visibility into financial & billing activity by centralizing entire billing operations. Manages subscription billings with auto-renewal, consolidates invoices & supports multiple pricing models by integrating SuiteBilling Features- (subscription management, pricing models, rating engine, billing schedule, change orders, subscription self-service, recurring revenue recognition, reporting.)
3) Planning & Budgeting: Allows businesses to perform financial planning & budgeting with modeling capabilities for both department & company by providing approval workflows & reporting. All this on a single scalable solution by integrating planning & budgeting features- (budgeting and planning, scenario planning and modeling, revenue planning, operational expense, workforce planning, trended financial statements, data synchronization, dashboards, and Microsoft Office integration)
4) Revenue Recognition: Allows businesses to comply with accounting standards, report on time & adhere to evolving revenue recognition mandates by integrating revenue recognition features- (Allocations. Rules & Schedules, Revenue Plan Management, Forecasting & Reporting).
5) Financial Reporting: Facilitates detailed insights with the help of pre-configured role-based financial dashboards, reports & KPIs for informed decision-making. Additionally helps in generating compliant financial reports & statements with accounting standards by integrating reporting features- (Configurable Financial Reports, Report Snapshots, Multidimensional analysis, Multiple Reporting standards).
6) Financial Consolidation: Helps business in consolidating spread financial & accounting processes, financial assets, data & reporting across all the units, subsidiaries & locations with tax mandates & compliance. All these by integrating consolidation features- (Consolidation, Multiple tax & Accounting standards, Intercompany Accounting) on a single platform.
7) Governance, Risk & Compliance: Supports businesses to legitimize GRC programs with audit-ready solution support. Additionally, manages evolving compliance, regulatory & operational needs with extensive built-in reports & certificates by integrating GRC features- (Automate controls, Audit trails, Third-Party Audit reports, Security Monitoring, Audit & Compliance reporting, and Securing Master data.)
In addition to the impact that NetSuite brings to the business, an additional reason for NetSuite’s growing popularity is the ease of using the NetSuite Mobile App. This enables on-the-go professionals to boost remote productivity. The team can manage time and expense records, approve sales and purchase orders, access calendars, and much more. After all, a mobile app adds to the convenience, especially when it is the world’s only end-to-end cloud business management mobile application.
NetSuite ERP, the Comprehensive Solution
NetSuite’s ERP features enable the entire business to operate on a single platform by reducing the need for additional business applications. When a business grows, along grows the number of customers, orders, inventory, employees, data & workflows. NetSuite ERP capabilities accommodate all these on its cloud platform.
1) Accounting Software: NetSuite’s accounting software integrates accounting & financial applications (GL, AP, AR, TP, FAM) on a single platform to offer compliant financial close.
2) Order Management: NetSuite order management integrates (multi-channel order management, Sales Order Management, Returns Management, and pricing Management) on a single platform to provide order visibility across channels for efficient order processing & increased sales.
3) Inventory Management: NetSuite Inventory Management integrates multi-location fulfillment, replenishment, cycle counting & traceability on an integrated platform for efficient utilization & accurate planning of inventory.
4) Warehouse Management: NetSuite capabilities include inbound logistics, order fulfillment, mobile warehouse management, and bin management for intelligent pick & pack, warehouse space & stock utilization.
5) Supply Chain Management: NetSuite provides supply planning & supply chain execution capabilities for consistent stock quality, stock availability & timely delivery of stock across the supply chain.
Replacing entry-level accounting software & additional applications with a single NetSuite ERP cloud solution will streamline all business operations and empower the organization with real-time visibility and reporting across channels.