One of the main reasons I hear from companies when moving to NetSuite or requesting a customization is: I want to make the process people-proof -- I want to eliminate human error. I think that’s an ambitious goal and maybe the wrong focus.
There are many schools of thoughts on People, Process & Systems (Technology) and I won’t go into the different theories. The goal of this blog is to help you see how all three are key when making decisions during your NetSuite implementation or your customizations.
I fundamentally believe the ROI of your systems investment needs to be focused on maximizing the value of your employees. In fact, we don’t call each other employees or colleagues, we’re teammates. From the top down, we believe everyone is a teammate.
People – There are very few industries that can operate without relying on good people. The focus on people begins at the top from the culture, to the hiring and the retention. Your teammates bring unique skills that drive your organization to the overall mission. Process and systems are tools teammates use to drive their highest and best use. Don’t build a process or use a system to put a band-aide on a people issue. Fix the core of the issue by having the right people in place.
Process – The process is a key piece of any organization. Organizations that do things well, whatever their “thing” is, can do it better than anyone else and are able to do it consistently. To be able to accomplish both of those things you must have process. Ultimately the process is focused on delivering the best results in the most efficient manner. People and process both have an input with processes, but remember, without people to think through processes they won’t be improved and without systems they’ll be doing a lot of work that is not their highest and best use.
Systems – NetSuite! Systems! The saving grace for organizations! Well at least that’s what many people think. However, systems, even NetSuite are tools for organizations to implement their processes and get the highest and best use of their people.
At Concentrus, we focus on helping customers get clear on their processes and ask the hard questions regarding if the right person is in the right seat. During your implementation or your customization project we want to ensure we build a system that will deliver the highest ROI to your organization and many times that starts by looking at the people and process.
I’ve heard examples such as, I’d like to build a workflow for order approval because I must check for data entry errors. Building the workflow is very simple, but this customer's case is not their workflow, it’s their people or their process. If we start there, we can understand the core of the problem and develop a solution that will free up that manager for their highest and best use. In the end we recommended not creating a workflow, but rather check why data entry errors were occurring. It turned out the data entry team was converting part numbers from an old catalog to a new catalog and sometimes made mistakes. By focusing on the core of the problem we helped the customer adjust their process and saved them time and money on costly NetSuite customizations.
Now imagine if that approach is used at the time of implementation?
If you’re considering NetSuite, are in the middle of an implementation or need to redo your implementation, or need NetSuite customizations reach out to Concentrus. We’re happy to help!
