NetSuite for Small Businesses
Small businesses have varied and hectic daily operations. Many of these operations are supported with spreadsheets. As they expand into new product lines or locations, these spreadsheets prove to be difficult to manage. Many small businesses use entry-level software solutions to manage their business. Whilst this solution offers support in the initial days, eventually, they fall short of the capabilities needed to support growth. Additionally, multiple stand-alone solutions pose integration challenges and at times may bring in manual intervention.
Ideally, small businesses must leverage a resilient enterprise software solution with a futuristic motive. The solution should be failure-proof, agile, affordable, and a quickly scalable solution that equips them for future innovation, expansion & growth. A software solution like NetSuite Cloud ERP brings entire finance and business operations into one platform and automates key accounting tasks to provide consolidated business reports.
Challenges Faced by Small Businesses?
Cash Flow Monitoring: As businesses grow, it is easy to get clogged down in invoices, reconciliations, missed orders, and spreadsheets, affecting cash flows. Small businesses find it especially difficult to balance accounts payable and accounts receivable to maximize cash flow and liquidity.
Reporting on Critical Financials and Business Operations: Businesses use standalone software that is heavy on manual processes which can lead to inaccurate and poor bookkeeping of transactional data. This inaccurate bookkeeping can cause reporting problems like cashflow crunches, misstated revenue for taxation, erroneous deductions, and audit issues. This also costs the reputation of the organization if not paid attention to.
Budgeting and Forecasting Capabilities: Financial forecasts and budgeting are the keys to meeting business goals. New businesses find issues with this since they do not have enough trading history to base the forecasts on. In the absence of a single source of data, arriving at accurate estimations is always a challenge.
Adhering to Governance, Risk, and Compliance: One of the biggest challenges small businesses face with regard to taxes is the cost of compliance, without an effective Governance Risk Compliance (GRC) solution. In the absence of a solution to streamline these compliances, businesses are vulnerable to risks.
Raising Capital and Investment: Shortage of capital inhibits a small business from expanding, hiring, and reinvesting. To increase the chances of availing new loans, investors, and, venture capitalists for further expansion and growth, small businesses need to make sure the GRC, profit & loss statements, cash flow, and balance sheet are up to date, accessible in real-time, and audit-ready.
Data-Based Marketing Efforts: Customer acquisition concerns like how to select the right channel for acquisition, and what lead generation tools to go for, are decisions that need data and insights. Also, how to ensure customers’ delight in the light of limited resources and support is a major concern.
NetSuite ERP for Small Business
Small businesses need a software solution that can meet the growing business requirements at every stage of their growth. NetSuite is built for the cloud to serve small businesses across all industries like manufacturing, distribution, retail, eCommerce, professional services, and non-profit organizations. NetSuite is currently used across 200 plus countries by 27000 plus companies who vouch for the solution. NetSuite offers real-time information, enhances customer service, and reduces IT and related costs by centralizing and automating financial and operational functions.
Why should Small Businesses go with NetSuite ERP?
Features: NetSuite has expertise across industry verticals and sub-verticals. NetSuite is a unique solution that streamlines both front-end as well as back-end operations. The solution is one of its kind for small businesses covering accounting, sales, and marketing with eCommerce. NetSuite’s revenue tools assist small businesses to plan better and be prepared for their financial future. The planning, budgeting, and forecasting tools allow the management team to plan out different scenarios by figuring out various possibilities.
Compliance and Reporting: With NetSuite, get a complete picture of your business. Get real-time insights across business lines, eliminate data silos, manage compliances, and smoothen financial closes.
NetSuite SuiteSuccess Starter Edition: Out of the many value additions, NetSuite’s SuiteSuccess Starter Edition is designed specifically for small businesses. SuiteSuccess is a pre-configured version of the software specific to the industry. It can give you a complete picture of how the software can be deployed. It helps in accelerating the implementation of technology.
NetSuite has done it without compromising with watered-down light versions of key modules and applications. Additionally, the SuiteSuccess starter edition provides 95 plus pre-built reports, pre-configured roles with dashboards, and intelligent metrics for better and faster decision-making.
Cloud Solution: NetSuite has been one of the first native cloud solutions. It is a lot more mature than other solutions that are rewriting their applications for the cloud. It has standard workflows based on industry best practices that will help organizations to scale. NetSuite can be an assuring and failure-proof choice for all those companies that are taking their first big step up from software that they have been using in their early growth cycles to digitally transforming to a cloud ERP.
Scalable: It is a fully integrated ERP solution that is scalable to your business growth. New users, locations, and subsidiaries can be added to NetSuite cloud ERP. It assists in making entry into new markets, adding new product lines, adding new channels, and planning customer engagement across these channels.
Productivity Tools: NetSuite empowers the business with an executive dashboard, KPIs, file management and sharing, import/export of records, customizable reporting, and anytime, anywhere web access. NetSuite gives you the option to customize the dashboard with your KPIs to track performances and progress in real-time.
Lower total Cost of Ownership: As a web-based, hosted solution, you save on costs otherwise incurred with the hardware, IT staff, software maintenance, and security. When compared to other cloud solutions, NetSuite is affordable since it has an ‘out-of-the-box solution that includes the core software functionality while additional modules can be added as the business grows. Infrastructure investments are not needed with NetSuite. The cost of the user license is a flat rate per license.
Also, you do not have to spend on costly and time-consuming upgrades. When a software update is available, you shall receive notifications. NetSuite releases two new updates every year, which include security and functionality updates. This brings down software maintenance costs for small businesses.
Integration: NetSuite’s cloud ERP systems are hassle-free when it comes to integrations with other cloud-based third-party products, additional modules, and applications. This integration happens without the requirement for any downtime or additional hardware.
Importance of NetSuite Implementation Partner?
The important decision that you must make besides selecting a solution, is selecting the right ERP implementation partner. This is especially true for smaller businesses that are taking their first step toward streamlining their processes and operations. This ERP partner is going to be associated with your business far beyond the implementation process. It is essential to choose a partner with whom you can establish a strong working relationship, both in the initial stages and in the long term.
The partner should have a globally accredited implementation methodology to ensure successful, smooth, and quicker implementations. The right partner will extend a concrete support program like a help desk and online support with self-help resources and they stay proactive in assisting your business with identifying and addressing new challenges as your business accelerates.
NetSuite Small Business is designed for growing companies. It can be configured to meet your business’s unique needs. For a solution as extensive as NetSuite, the ideal NetSuite implementation partner is one who has the solution and domain expertise, pursues a tested methodology, offers support, and helps you get the maximum ROI from your ERP investment.
