So, you have finally purchased NetSuite. You have agreed and signed the contracts, and it is a big outlay for your business even with generous discounts. You have paid for the implementation. Another big outlay for your business. Now you have gone live and are reaping the benefits. Right?

More than likely not. It is more likely that you are currently living through your finance nightmare. Your processes are broken, and you don’t have proper visibility over what is happening, from invoicing to month end – Everything seems more difficult!! What has gone wrong?

 

What’s gone wrong?

ERP Implementations are difficult. They require significant amounts of change to the way your business operates, and we all know change is hard. Some decisions will have been forced on you by the way the system operates, and it is unlikely the business will have been able to understand the complete impact of these changes. Most businesses find finance operations chaotic after an implementation so don’t beat yourself up.

 

Suite Success implementations are completed within a few months and at a fraction of the cost of implementing larger-scale ERPs. This means that standard SuiteSuccess implementations will not go into the same level of detail as other Tier 1 implementations.

SMEs can usually put up with and will elect for some additional risk to save thousands on implementation costs. When you were selecting your implementation partner, were price and time to go live 2 of your selection criteria? Assuming they have delivered what was agreed the implementation partners are not to blame.

 

6 reasons why NetSuite implementations fail

1. Insufficient Process Discovery

Did the project spend enough time on process mapping and discovery? Detailed process mapping takes time and cost and needs to pick up finer process details as these are the details that will make life difficult post go live. A minor manual step in the current process that is overlooked can have big implications post-go-live. It is unlikely that your implementation partners included this in the budget so will need to have been done in-house.

On the back of process mapping customisations to the system should have been identified. Again, these may put the project over budget so may have been kept to a minimum.

 

2. Broken Integrations

Existing integrations with other systems are one thing that should have been picked up during process discovery. Unless these were included in Phase 1 they may be broken post-go-live meaning they will have been replaced by manual uploads. The process will then become a lot more cumbersome requiring multiple manual loads for transactional and master data.

We recommend planning Phase 2 to rebuild these integrations and take away these data headaches.

 

3. Data Quality and Migration Issues

Poor data quality or insufficient data cleansing prior to migration can lead to incorrect or incomplete information in the system. This can cause a range of problems, from inaccurate reporting to process failures.

 

4. Inadequate Training and Change Management

Inadequate training for end-users and a lack of a structured change management plan can result in resistance to adopting the new system. Without proper training, users may struggle to utilize the system effectively.

 

5. Insufficient stakeholder involvement and poor communication

We get it your team is busy. An ERP implementation eats up lots of your time and you still need to be across everything going on in your department. The same is likewise true for your team and other key stakeholders in the business. Involving key stakeholders from various departments is crucial for understanding their specific requirements and ensuring that the system meets their needs. If stakeholders are not adequately engaged, it can lead to a misalignment between the system and business processes.

 

6. Testing was based on minimum acceptance criteria

NetSuite implementation partners often base testing on minimum acceptance criteria ie there are no technical flaws in the configuration and your business can go live with NetSuite. It is not designed to test that NetSuite is configured for all the different scenarios that your business will encounter.

It is unlikely you have tested that your new process works with all different customer types and contracts and will not break down if there are data gaps coming from source systems. There will likely always be gaps with testing but the more cost constraints on your testing budget, the more gaps you will discover after.

 

How can we help?

 

We offer a post-go live gap assessment, in which we will give you a questionnaire to complete and set up sessions with your team members to identify the main gaps resulting from your implementation. On the back of this, we will be able to advise on high-level next steps such as:

• Configuration Review – we will need to take some time to assess your configuration and advise on the steps that need to be taken to make your processes work easier.
• Process Review – we will do a deeper dive into your business processes including process mapping to identify your process gaps.
• Customisation recommendations – after conducting the process and configuration review we will be able to advise on customisations that will make the system better fit your business processes.
• System integrations – we can provide advice on systems integrations with other applications in your software stack.
• Training Sessions – there will often be additional training required for your team as they encounter new issues when they are using the system.

 

Get in touch with us today for a free discussion about your implementation and how we can help you through the post-go-live chaos.