One out of every two companies is planning to get or improve their current ERP ecosystem. But choosing the right software is only part of the total project. Many companies naturally veer towards NetSuite for their platform; it’s one of the most versatile and comprehensive systems available on the market for companies of all sizes, and it facilitates everything between straight out-of-the-box functionality and complete customization.
However, for businesses that feel like their NetSuite environment doesn’t sit quite right in the business processes, the answer isn’t switching to a new platform or adapting your business around the default settings in NetSuite. Instead, the improvements and upgrades you’re looking for might be tied to the level of NetSuite support services you have access to.
Your company may rely on a NetSuite admin for day-to-day bugs and license permissions, or you might need a contract team of implementation experts when you’re first setting up your customized iteration of NetSuite. But if that’s where your investment in NetSuite support services ends, your organization may be suffering from a limited capacity to truly engage with the software.
Getting the right NetSuite support is a critical component of your success with your ERP. Let’s explore what that Goldilocks level of support can look like for your business, as well as some of the core business benefits advanced NetSuite support services can bring—many of which will address the challenges that brought you here in the first place.
General NetSuite Support Services Are Important…
Just like every tech system your business relies on, you need a degree of generalized NetSuite support to keep things humming along. Whether you have a preventative maintenance service that monitors your network, security, and data operations, or an in-house admin available for commonplace tasks, this level of service is ideal when you aren’t making many changes. General support might provide:
- Answers to “how do I” and “where is” questions
- Help resolving bugs and defects
- A ticketing system or direct connection to the NetSuite Basic Support provided with every subscription
- Help changing passwords, license permissions, and other basic setup operations
This is crucial when onboarding new employees, keeping business operations rolling smoothly, and mitigating the challenges of unexpected downtime. But it leaves several crucial gaps in what your business and your ERP-based operations need to thrive.
…But They Don’t Cover Everything—You Need Advanced Support
Advanced NetSuite support services go further than what you might receive as part of a general subscription maintenance plan, a support line from NetSuite’s basic plan, or an in-house admin who resolves general helpdesk queries.
Related: Comparing the Costs of Different NetSuite Support Options
However, the broad spectrum of possible levels and directions of NetSuite services is precisely that: broad. So you can clearly see where your current service coverage might fail to meet up with your business needs, consider these common situations that need more support.
When You Have Custom Integrations
Creating custom integrations and data flows within your NetSuite is a common practice and, when set up correctly, needs little to no ongoing fiddling. But custom integrations and fields still open the door to complex problems in the future. Advanced support services can offer you these capabilities:
- Mapping and remapping different data fields together so you have data right where you need it
- Testing and refining your data architecture that hums along in the background of your ERP environment
- Adding new integrations to your existing environment and making sure the new changes don’t interrupt ongoing processes
- Modifying your system over time as you change your operations, your digital tools, and your products or customer regions
When possible, having support services from the same organization that created the integrations and custom work is best. They are already familiar with the customizations and can continue to build off the same foundation.
When Any Interruptions Could Cost Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars
Depending on the size of your business, errors can start to cost thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of dollars very quickly. Whether this is losing sight of inventory as it travels around the world during the holiday rush or knocking out all of your online shopping carts in a key region, SMBs and enterprise organizations can quickly face system errors they can’t afford.
In these circumstances—and preferably before them—it pays to have advanced NetSuite support services. This tier of service can include aspects like constantly monitoring the data flow to check for early warning signs of bugs, ensuring you have a constant team on call regardless of in-house turnover or sick days, maintaining a regimented series of checklists and recurring maintenance to keep your ERP in tip-top shape as NetSuite adds new functionalities and options.
Advanced services give you the ability to prevent as many interruptions as possible and respond with lightning-fast speed to the others.
When You Have Government Contracts, HIPAA Concerns, and Other Security-Related Requirements
If your business is in a specialty industry or has reached a certain size, you’re going to start housing incredibly sensitive information. This goes beyond employee data to things like:
- Client IP
- Government contracts and information sets that require the appropriate government clearance to handle
- Third-party patient data
- Customer data that hasn’t been aggregated and anonymized
In these circumstances, you can’t make due with generalized support and third-party eyes on your ERP. You can’t simply have an appropriately cleared internal employee, either—they might not have sufficient expertise in enough arenas to meet the needs of your projects and organization-wide demand. Instead, you need a vetted team of professionals with whom you have an established vendor agreement that meets your standards.
When You Have Too Little or Too Much Work for an In-House NetSuite Admin Team
Having the right-fit level of NetSuite support is often a matter of logistics as much as anything else. If you have a small operation with few employees, you may not have enough day-to-day demand to warrant in-house, salaried professionals. While you may occasionally need custom scripting or upgrades to new NetSuite modules, that’s not enough to justify full-time staff.
Alternatively, you might bump into the opposite scenario: your in-house admin has enough day-to-day responsibilities to keep themselves busy, but that means they have no room for new projects or sudden emergencies.
Both of these circumstances can happen to any business: you don’t need enough support to warrant more internal hiring, but sudden spikes in demand outstrip available bandwidth. When this happens, you need reliable backup in the form of advanced NetSuite support services from a trusted vendor that’s already familiar with your system.
Related: 9 Signs You Need a Netsuite Admin Resource
5 Benefits of Advanced NetSuite Support Services
Having immediate access to expert support staff and custom development teams does more than give you peace of mind when you sense an impending crisis. Advanced support can strengthen your business, curtail costly risks, and set your business up for long-term success. Consider these five business benefits of choosing advanced support.
Benefit #1: Keep Your Organization and Overhead Lean
The average salary for a NetSuite admin can be between $62,000 and $98,000. Your organization must also pay for benefits, training, equipment, and more—as well as budget for eventual turnover. If you want to keep your operation lean by hiring third-party services and contractors for everything but your core business team, one of the best solutions is proactively forming relationships with support organizations. You can reduce turnover and employee-related costs, get the level of support you need when you need it, and avoid bogging your organization down.
Investing in advanced NetSuite support services also protects your cash flow and prevents sudden, unexpected spikes in overhead. With an ongoing contract arrangement, you have a predictable cost for ongoing support and a price sheet for supplemental services.
Benefit #2: Your Business Operations Can Be More Dynamic
When you have limited support, you have limited options. This means you can’t easily add new custom data fields or reports when your products and services change, and you can’t immediately take advantage of new modules and upgrades released by NetSuite. But when you have more advanced support, you have a channel for constantly refining and improving your ERP’s capabilities without a disruptive integration or project.
Benefit #3: You Aren’t Restricted by In-House Knowledge or Capabilities
Each NetSuite expert can only know so much. One expert may have years of experience with SuiteScript and can customize any data architecture or report you need. Another expert may have decades of experience in warehousing management and know the most effective modifications to prioritize in NetSuite based on your business model. Yet other experts will have endlessly different arrays of industry, technical, and service experience. When you hire a single employee or even a small team, you’re limited by their knowledge.
But when you hire an advanced support team, you gain access to that entire organization’s knowledge. Even better, it’s their job to constantly be learning, training, and testing new NetSuite developments. You can benefit from that knowledge and wider pool of capabilities.
Benefit #4: You Can Reduce the Risk of Outages, Inefficiencies, and Bad Integrations
Constant access to a higher tier of support allows you to more actively prevent problems. Instead of having a helpline you can call when things go wrong, you have proactive monitoring that recognizes issues before a problem develops. If you have inefficient integrations from past projects, legacy systems, or an in-house employee you’ve let go, an advanced support team can identify them, address them, and improve upon them. This more comprehensive level of attention ensures better ERP performance.
Benefit #5: NetSuite-Certified Technical Experts Can Recommend Iterative Updates and Improvements
When you choose the right advanced NetSuite team, there is a certain level of quality control in the consultants and staff helping your organization. For example, it’s important to work with NetSuite-certified individuals and organizations, as this certification guarantees expertise, knowledge, and experience in different domains. Because of this higher bar, the support team also stays up-to-date on new releases and product developments, which in turn benefits your business. They can recommend appropriate changes based on their understanding of your business rather than just reacting to problems or requests down the line.
Protect Your Organization With Customizable NetSuite Support Services From Limebox
A strong ERP is the foundation of a mature business, but organizations need more than the right hardware and software—they also need the right level of support. Advanced NetSuite support services from Limebox are designed to meet the unique needs and objectives of your business and provide organizational-wide benefits. Our support and development services include:
- SuiteScript custom coding when it provides the most value—we never upsell or overcomplicate
- Access to a wide pool of industry knowledge
- Scalable services for your day-to-day operations, busy seasons, and projects
Reach out to our team today to talk about what you think may be missing from your ERP, and we’ll work together to build (and support) something better.