In my experience, demand planning is many times put aside when implementing new systems. In many midmarket sized companies, planning for the purchase of product is often performed in Excel with information pulled together from sales history and tribal knowledge from the buyers themselves.  This makes the process easy to continue despite changing systems. 

NetSuite natively supports direct shipping integration with but UPS and FedEx, which allows users to print shipping labels for a wide variety of service levels for each carrier from within the NetSuite UI.  To expand upon those capabilities, NetSuite also supports the integration of third-parting shipping platforms that connect to hundreds of other carriers, such as USPS, DHL, and even LTL and large freight transportation providers.  These integrations allow for shipment information to be passed back into NetSuite automatically, however the standard functionality that converts UPS and FedEx tracking numbers into links does not work with any other carriers.

When choosing a costing method in NetSuite, each has benefits and some "gotcha’s" that can surprise you if you are not fully informed.  Some of these show up due to multiple locations and related to specific activities such as: transfer orders, cost roll-ups, inventory adjustments, and supply methods. 

When choosing a costing method for your inventory it is very valuable to fully understand all of your options and the impact of such a decision. Things to consider when making this include the following:

It’s tough running a growing business. 

I’ve been there.  You start out with a dream, then a vision.  You see an opportunity to make your mark in the world by helping people achieve ‘X’ in their lives.  You did the work to develop your product or service, and you know it is world class.  You analyzed the market potential and the sky is the limit.  So you look at all your investments, the 401(k) and get a 2^nd mortgage on the house for a working capital line of credit. 

 In November 2016, Microsoft announced Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations.

In April 2018, they announced Dynamics 365 Business Central.

So what does that mean for you? What’s next?

You’re currently running a legacy version of Microsoft Dynamics, and Microsoft is still supporting it – for now.

When you originally implemented NetSuite, you chose the best addons, integrations, and customizations for your business needs at that time. But are you able to stay competitive with the solutions you chose years ago? 

Moving to a new ERP system is a big investment of time, money and resources. There’s no question about that. It’s only natural that decision makers want to take some time to ensure that they are getting the right solution for their business so that they can get the most ROI out of their investment. 

On Thursday, August 2nd, Evan Goldberg, the Founder of NetSuite and EVP of Development for Oracle NetSuite released the following video titled Today, Tomorrow, and the Next 20 Years for NetSuite. 

At Concentrus, we specialize in helping distributors with their own warehouse pick the best warehouse management system (WMS) to meet their business needs. As such, there are a few items that we recommend our clients consider to determine if they even need a WMS, and if so, what kind of features they should be looking for.