Your Guide to NetSuite Customization

In the age of digital transformation, ERP systems have become an indispensable part of modern businesses looking to meet customer demands, reach business goals, and outdo competition. NetSuite offers a range of capabilities across automation, data analysis, collaboration, integration, and reporting, helping address the changing needs of businesses.

NetSuite Benefits

Named a worldwide leader in IDC MarketScape for SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Finance and Accounting Applications, NetSuite delivers the visibility and control needed to make smarter and faster data-driven decisions.

While the benefits of BI and ERP systems integrations are manifold, the benefits can’t be derived without a sound BI strategy. Our resource will walk you through the potential of BI and ERP as a solution.

Built from ground up, the modern ERP solution offers features spanning Financial Management, Order Management, Production Management, Supply Chain Management, Warehouse and Fulfillment, and Procurement. Using NetSuite, enterprises can:

• Leverage a range of modern capabilities to accelerate growth, drive innovation, and remain competitive
• Streamline mission-critical processes, focus on tasks that matter most, and react to new market opportunities swiftly and confidently
• Combine data with new-age analytics to generate meaningful insights and turn them into actionable decisions
• Scale their business up or down and adopt new business models – in a quick and seamless manner

However, to make the most of NetSuite investment, organizations must consider the option of customizing the solution to better meet the unique needs of their business. NetSuite customization not only helps in tweaking the solution to suit current needs, it also helps align with long-term business goals.

5 Core NetSuite Customization Options

Since every business has its own unique set of business processes, they need to be able to enhance or modify the capabilities of the out-of-the-box NetSuite system to fit their needs. NetSuite offers a comprehensive toolkit of SuiteCloud customization options in order to build and implement complex processes and integrations.

1. SuiteScript

   A platform built on JavaScript, SuiteScript enables organizations to completely customize and automate business processes, allowing them to build new functions, processes, as well as entire applications in NetSuite. Using SuiteScript, they can:

1. 1. Access and manipulate core business records and user information via scripts that are executed at pre-defined events
   2. Build custom HTML, Flash or NetSuite-based interfaces from scratch or by leveraging revolutionary SuiteScript UI Objects
   3. Automate workflows and customize business processes using JavaScript extensions
   4. Enforce data validation and business rules by triggering User Event SuiteScripts as users open, edit, or save records
   5. Facilitate field-level calculations and alerts which run within the user’s browser as they work with data and records within NetSuite

2. SuiteTalk

   For organizations looking to integrate NetSuite with a variety of on-premise and cloud environments, SuiteTalk makes the process of enhancing, extending, and integrating third-party and legacy systems easy. Using SuiteTalk, organizations can:

1. 1. Build website-to-NetSuite integrations as well as create lightweight custom mobile applications
   2. Exchange any data element, workflow process, or transaction to create a seamless, unified business management solution
   3. Use any programming language or platform that supports the SOAP or REST standard to generate NetSuite business objects in that language
   4. Achieve full support for customization, including strongly typed custom fields with automatic validation based on the field type

3. SuiteBuilder

   SuiteBuilder allows organizations to customize components that control how users interact withNetSuite. They can tailor NetSuite to individual business needs and processes using a simple point-and-click interface for creating fields, forms, record types, and transaction types. Using SuiteBuilder, organizations can:

1. 1. Customize and personalize the NetSuite application without having to write a single line of code
   2. Define how users interact with NetSuite and what data they have access to by setting permissions for individual roles or specific group of roles with similar tasks
   3. Customize data relationships and user interfaces via Custom Records that can stand-alone or easily tie in with standard objects such as customers or items in data relationships ranging from one-to-one, one-to-many, to many-to-many
   4. Personalize dashboards and view key performance indicators, and trend graphsto enhance productivity 

4. SuiteAnalytics

   With SuiteAnalytics, businesses can leverage embedded BI capabilities to unearth real-time insights from custom applications. Using SuiteAnalytics, they can:

1. 1. Build KPIs from custom data and applications and overcome the complexities of managing and maintaining separate reporting tools
   2. Embed real-time dashboards with custom applications and identify key issues quickly
   3. Leverage self-serve real-time analytics across all areas to quickly get the answers they need across their customizations

5. SuiteBundler

   Organizations can use SuiteBundler to package and deploy their customizations from a sandbox environment to production environment. Using SuiteBundler, they can:

1. 1. Bundle groups of customizations, manage versioning, and deploy customizations in near real-time
   2. Effectively manage customizations by packaging them quickly and easily and move them between NetSuite accounts

Leveraging an MSP for NetSuite Customization

Despite the benefits of NetSuite customization, planning the customization is not easy. A lot of care needs to be taken to ensure success: product data needs to be protected, testing needs to be done continuously, and user experience should be seamless. For this reason, it’s a good idea to leverage the capabilities of a Managed Services Provider for NetSuite customization. A qualified MSP can:

• More accurately identity requirements as well as provide insight into common issues and challenges
• Prioritize customizations based on their importance and urgency and decide the order in which they should be implemented
• Identify key personnel needed for the customization effort and build a robust team of qualified and experienced professionals
• Build complex workflows, implement advanced NetSuite modules, and integrate NetSuite ERP with other applications
• Ensure all customization requests are achievable within the designated time and budget constraints
• Overcome any issues that users face in understanding or leveraging customized modules and features

Meet Precise Company and Industry Requirements

ERP customizations have long been synonymous with high costs and long development times. There is also a constant fear of heavy customization that can make the solution difficult to use and integrate. Yet, in a world where organizations must continuously tweak efforts in keeping up with the pace of change, NetSuite customization can help in tailoring the solution to meet precise company and industry requirements. Partnering with an MSP is a great way to connect to legacy and third-party applications, build new workflows, and set permissions according to user roles.

Ready to take the next steps towards investing in NetSuite? Contact an expert at Synoptek today.