I posted a little while ago about some bad experiences had by
Netsuite customers, in fact the CEO of Atlassian himself left a comment on the post indicating their
disappointment with the product.
I thought it would be a good idea then to talk to a Netsuite user and get
their perspective. Rich Haus is VP Services at BMG Seltec, Seltec is in the
software and automation business, and they cater for the materials industry:
asphalt, concrete, aggregates etc – the guys who provide the heavy material for
construction. So it's an interesting mix: "old-fashioned" business, with a
"new-age" software package.
First some chronology. Seltec began using Netsuite for their sales team
functions back early in 2005. At the beginning of 2007 they then rolled out
Netsuite for their service and back-end accounting functions. They utilised the
Netsuite professional services teams for both implementation exercises.
Product assessment
Haus indicated a high level of satisfaction with the Netsuite program. From a
former situation of having to run integration on three separate offerings,
they're now integrated at the application level thus enabling information
sharing and collaboration. Seltec is a business with around 50 people – their IT
function is made up by three people each giving a third of a day so it becomes
obvious that utilising an already integrated product saves them a lot of time
and resource. As Rich said;
services. It makes sense to obtain the implementation function from within the
software supplier – there is a proximity to the product development team that
just isn't possible with a third party professional service
It's also interesting to note that Seltec have also rolled out a hosted
exchange solution for their email – yet another logical time saving
decision.
Seltec have been pleased with the flexibility of the Netsuite product -
indicating that customisation has been, in their experience, much easier than
with an on-premises solution. They're also impressed with the general Netsuite
user interface.
Haus has been please with the SaaS experience generally – updates have
generally been seamless with no real issues becoming apparent as upgrades occur
- however as the complexity of the system increases, more room for potential
problems develops – it is at this stage that an excellent service channel is
key.
The implementation exercise
As mentioned above, Seltec utilised Netsuite's in-house implementation team.
Haus was broadly pleased with the experience he had, indicating that one time
the operative was reasonably competent while the other occasion was an excellent
experience. He did indicate some disappointment at an implementation operative
who could do little more than read the manual – obviously Seltec is a pretty
savvy operation, and the cost of the implementation exercise would lead one to
expect a real gun running the process who knew the product intimately – as with
all things it often comes down to individuals.
Haus did indicate that any problems Seltec had would likely have been worse
had they used a third party provider given the proximity to the product team
that an in-house team brings. He did however mention that in his time spent on
the Netsuite user forums, he did have low level interactions with third party
providers and these individuals seemed to have a very good grasp of the Netsuite
offering.
Summary
All in all Seltec have had an excellent experience with Netsuite – both in
terms of product and also implementation. I'm keen to hear from other users -
past or present – with their view on Netsuite.
I’m somewhat encouraged to hear of your experience as our NetSuite purchase and implementation experience can only be described as a disaster – or maybe a debacle. The claims made the salesperson was extremely exagerated, the implementation expense was almost tripple the original quote and months into the post-implementation operation the software is slow and unstable. Our management team has finally recognized that at this point we’re throwing good money after bad and we’ve begun a project to look for an alternative software as a service ERP application.
Colleen,
I’d be careful. Whatever other service you pick – and there are not too many – will need implementation, customization, so if the root cause of your problems is poor estimates, scope-creep..etc, you may have to go through it again.
Speed and stability are of course real concerns that NetSuite will need to address.