We’ve spent the past few months working with a customer implementing Netsuite. It’s been an interesting process.
The Problem
The customer had several issues that needed addressing.
- Their Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains accounting system wasn’t getting the job done for them.
- In fairness to the system, it had been set up poorly several years ago. The current staff had inherited the system and was extremely frustrated.
- Due to the poor initial set-up, business reporting from the system was extremely limited.
- Besides the usual work-around of using Microsoft Excel for reporting, all data related to sales was being moved to a CRM system, Salesforce.com, to facilitate sales reporting and general CRM.
- Even thought the customer had an on-going license and was paying maintenance on the Microsoft CRM product, it had never been implemented.
- The customer conducted most of their business through e-commerce. While Microsoft sells an e-commerce add-on for Dynamics, the customer had chosen to go with an open-source e-commerce system that was easily customizable.
- The customer was fearful that the answer to their problems was to add another IT person to the payroll
The result was that the customer had to maintain three customer master files, three product master files and had three sources for sales reporting. There were three different servers involved, two different SqlServer databases and a purchased middle-ware software to help tie all the systems together.
It was a complicated environment that the customer wanted to “clean up.”
The customer also wanted to explore moving to cloud computing. They wanted their IT, accounting, sales and marketing staffs to spend more time working on the business rather than working with computers and the various systems.
The Solution
Even though a re-implementation of the Microsoft Dynamics system combined with an implementation of the Microsoft CRM system – software already licenced and owned by the customer – would have met the business requirements, the customer made the decision to switch to Netsuite. Why?
- The time and money required to go forward with the Microsoft solutions was much greater than just starting from scratch with Netsuite.
- Netsuite provided all needed functionality for the customer including e-commerce, CRM, sales reporting, manufacturing and inventory management within one system and one set of master files.
- Netsuite provided a platform for future functionality and growth.
- Elimination of the existing servers and software cost structure, including maintenance, led to an annual savings that was greater than the annual cost of Netsuite.
- The customer avoided adding an additional IT person to their payroll. With Accio taking over the day to day infrastructure management, the existing IT person became solely focused on the business.
Time Frame
The whole process of analyzing the business and related processes, identifying requirements, analyzing the fit of the Microsoft software, creating demo scripts and evaluating Netsuite took about three months. Netsuite went live six weeks after the software contract was signed.
Win-Win
This was a great project for both the customer and Accio. It was our first experience evaluating and implementing Netsuite. We found the software to be better than we had even expected.
The best part was that the customer’s “bang” for their software buck improved greatly. Customer cost avoidance was in the tens of thousands of dollars. They have a comprehensive platform on which to run their business with an annual cost structure that is actually less than what they had been experiencing.
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