Chapter 22

Ten-Plus Key Differentiators

In This Chapter

Closing the loop with order processing

Effortless Web store integration

Importing data

Security and NetSuite

Shortcuts to save you time

What makes NetSuite different? How will you love it? Let us count the ways.

Full-Circle Order Processing

Where other applications provide only one piece of the puzzle, such as generating leads, NetSuite handles every part of the order process. You can import a lead list, e-mail the list to drive them to your site (also created in NetSuite), and have them automatically converted to customers when they buy something in your site. You’ll then find the sales order already there in your account, where you can approve it, fulfill it, and invoice it. And the accounting for all these steps is taken care of for you!

Even better, you can then replenish your stock by reordering the items you sold; you then receive the items and pay the bill. If the customer has any problems or questions, he can submit a support case, which you can track in NetSuite, and you can process a return or refund if necessary. Furthermore, all this information about the client is viewable by looking at the customer record for that client.

Your Web Site and Your Back Office: Together at Last

The Web opened whole new markets for companies, but the software running Web sites and the software running the back office weren’t integrated. With NetSuite, your Web shop and your accounting are all one big happy family, with Web shops and profit and loss statements living happily as one.

Make NetSuite Suit You

No matter what you want to customize in NetSuite, from the names of the fields to the colors on the screens, everything’s up for grabs. You can change it to suit just how you do business — enabling features, renaming fields, adding custom fields, and just generally tailoring NetSuite until it’s a perfect fit. Also, much of the customization can be done by business users; you don’t have to be a technogeek to change it up.

Data and Analytics, Delivered

NetSuite’s powerful analytics features range from the dashboards where you monitor important indicators at a glance to saved searches that help you find just the information you need. Call it business intelligence for everyman (and woman). Your data analysts will be happy for two reasons: First, they can get all their data hungers met with powerful capabilities (like embedded SQL); they’ll also be happy because you won’t be asking them for help all the time. Analytics and reporting become self-service, letting people answer their own questions and leaving the hard stuff to analysts.

Bring Me Your Tired, Your Weary, Your Data

Like the Statue of Liberty, NetSuite welcomes all the data in. You can import files from Quickbooks (using an option called “Send Us Your Quickbooks File”) or from any platform using comma-separated variable (CSV) format. So whether you buy a mailing list or want to import items from a new vendor, you can easily bring your data into NetSuite — no typing skills required. The feature you need here is called the CSV Import tool. For more information on this important tool, see Chapter 2.

Rolling Up Is Just as Fast as Rolling Down

Consolidating monthly and quarterly results can be tricky and time consuming. Add the complexity of mergers and acquisitions and see if you can improve your time to close. Not likely.

Amazingly, with NetSuite you can. Consolidation is faster and more flexible than with any other major ERP software package on the market today. You won’t dread end-of-month and end-of-quarter any more, whether you’re consolidating results from one company or 100 subsidiaries in 5 regions. (That last bit applies to users of NetSuite OneWorld, the multicurrency version of NetSuite for companies that do business globally.)

Hey, What’s That?

How many times have you looked at a screen and said to yourself, “What the heck does that do?” The good news is that in NetSuite, clicking a field name reveals the answer to that question. Plus, if you click the Help link (in the top right of every screen), NetSuite tries to take you to just the page you need based on where you were when you clicked. And while we’re on the topic of help, did we mention that the Help system has more than 1.5 million words and more than 3,600 topics, all wonderfully searchable? (We looked up a lot of pretty obscure things while writing this book, and we found every single topic, preference, or option we wanted to know about in the Help Center.) And in case you don’t see a feature we mention in this book, searching for that feature in the Help system will show you whether that feature has been enabled in your account. Help isn’t static; it tailors itself to your account setup and your role. Such a sensitive Help system!

Get Me Where I Need to Go — Now

Often you work on something and that isn’t the end of it. You change an employee record, and the employee wants something else updated. You work on an opportunity, and more activities need to be recorded. NetSuite feels your pain and puts something quick and easy on your home dashboard so you can get back there quickly.

The Recent Records portlet is a handy, clickable list of the records you’ve touched most recently. Another usability feature we love is typeahead. Start typing a customer’s name, and NetSuite comes back with completions. Most applications don’t do that, so getting used to this feature may result in being miffed at other applications that aren’t as helpful.

In the Cloud, but Locked Down

The best part of NetSuite security is definitely something you can’t see: NetSuite’s data centers are bastions of corporate security. They have SAS 70 Type II Compliance, a security certification that’s extremely difficult to qualify for. (Most security admins just give up and go home after they realize how rigorous the certification process is; few companies get this certification on their own.) If anyone ever audits you (heaven forbid), you can point directly to NetSuite’s SAS 70 Type II Compliance and call that security level your own. Also, NetSuite implements the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS), a best practice for locking down e-commerce transactions that flow through your NetSuite Web site.

Bonus Chapter 6 provides some great advice about security that you can set up in NetSuite. Visit www.dummies.com/go/netsuitefd.

Roles and Permissions

Because NetSuite holds every part of your business data, it’s important to limit who has access to what. You don’t want salespeople with information about everyone’s payroll history, for example. NetSuite’s fully customizable roles let you control who can see what parts of your data; that way they can use the resources they need for their job but nothing more. Customers, vendors, and partners all have roles to view their own data securely.

Don’t Just Sell Products — Sell Projects!

Project management comes in three sizes within NetSuite: small, medium, and large.

In the small size, you don’t need to sign up for any additional functionality. You simply start tracking tasks and time, albeit separately from each other. You can relate the two by upgrading to medium functionality when you turn on Projects on the Enable Features page and create customer-specific Work Breakdown Structures (WBS). But, wait, there’s more! If you turn on Advanced Projects, you can set up full-featured projects and subprojects complete with scheduling and Gantt charts. If you want to go extra large, take advantage of NetSuite’s integration with (and ownership of) a product called OpenAir, a professional services automation suite for project-based businesses.

Work-Life Balance

The more ways you can make sure your work gets done, the more time you have for writing your Great American Novel or going to your kids’ soccer games. Here are some of the ways that NetSuite helps you get stuff done:

Carry it with you. NetSuite integrates with your browser (of course) but you can also access your account from the iPhone, Palm, or BlackBerry.

Glance at your dashboard. The Reminders portlet helps make sure every process gets completed.

E-mail yourself. You can have saved searches and reports e-mailed to you on a schedule or even e-mail yourself a snapshot of your dashboard.

Check your Outlook. NetSuite integrates with Microsoft Outlook, so any e-mail that comes to your inbox can go right to the appropriate record in NetSuite; calendar entries can also be synced with Outlook.