Organizations rely on NetSuite to streamline business processes, improve operational efficiency, and serve as their source of financial truth, providing a 360-degree view of organizational health. As you look toward your organization’s 2026 goals, it’s important to ask, is your ERP delivering on its promises? Or is a poor setup, slow user adoption, and inaccurate or incomplete data preventing you from using your system to its fullest potential?
Let’s take a closer look at each of these three pain points as we think about how best to realize NetSuite’s potential:
Top Three NetSuite Pain Points
- Poor Setup
Setting up NetSuite is complex, time consuming, and labor intensive. Companies often make the mistake of investing a lot of money in a new system, but then shortchanging the implementation process. This can result in poorly designed or overly complex processes that do not meet business requirements, exacerbate existing inefficiencies, and result in a system that is complex and difficult to maintain.
- Slow User Adoption
Strong change management is key to a successful NetSuite implementation, but it is also one of the things most frequently neglected. Too often, a small group makes decisions as to system setup without consulting the affected end-users. Worse, companies frequently fail to explain to employees the reasons behind adopting a new system, leaving them feeling frustrated, resistant to change, and left out of the decision-making process. Successful change management and strong user adoption requires end-users to feel engaged, understand the benefits of moving to a new system, are consulted on process design, and are adequately trained prior to go-live.
- Inaccurate and Incomplete Data
While data migration can be one of the most tedious parts of a NetSuite implementation, ensuring imported data is clean, complete, accurate, and accessible is critical to making the most of your new system. Going live without good data is a recipe for frustration, can lead to poor decision making, and will impede end-user trust in the system.
Often, companies suffer from a combination of all three of the above pain points and are left questioning whether their investment in NetSuite was worth the time, energy, and money spent on the project.
This is where SquareWorks can help. We can address all three of these pain points, and a range of other common issues, via optimization projects designed to help you get the most out of your ERP system.
Here are some examples of how SquareWorks can help you overcome these and other common pain points:
Optimization Use Cases
- System Simplification
Our consultants will review your current system setup, match it to your requirements, and suggest ways to simplify processes, improve configuration, and make ongoing system maintenance simpler. We often start by performing a health check, either of your entire system or of a single workstream, from which we produce an overview of issues and a list of suggested improvements. Such improvements range from process simplification, to automation of tedious tasks, to better end-user training and, at times, additional customization of NetSuite.
- Change Management and End-User Training
Frequently, companies pour a lot of effort, time, and money into a NetSuite implementation, only to have end-users resist adoption of the new system. This can happen due to lack of end-user involvement in the implementation process, a system design that does not adequately support day-to-day operations, or poor training of those employees expected to use NetSuite. SquareWorks can help with all of these issues by vetting system design with end-users, recommending changes to better align processes with configuration, assisting with end-user training, and demonstrating ROI via streamlined operations, accurate, insightful reporting, and automation of routine tasks.
- Data Remediation
Our consultants often help cleanup inaccurate or incomplete data that has migrated as part of a NetSuite implementation. Doing so involves reviewing and vetting the original requirements, analyzing the migrated data, identifying errors, inaccuracies, and gaps, and then assembling a plan for remediation. Such projects can be time-consuming, but the results are improved reporting accuracy, greater end-user confidence in the system, simplified aggregation of disparate data points, and better insight into corporate health.
- Implementation of Controls
Even when companies complete a successful NetSuite implementation, they often realize, after the fact, their system lacks the necessary controls and separation of duties to pass an audit. SquareWorks can help by reviewing roles and permissions, implementing approval workflows, and building audit-specific reporting to make sure you are prepared for your next SOX or ITGC audit.
- Creation of Comprehensive Reporting
NetSuite comes with strong out-of-the-box reporting, which is often enough to get companies started. Frequently, however, after go-live, leadership, management, and end-users want reporting better tailored to the business’s needs, their own needs, and for the company’s day-to-day operations. Whether you are looking for standardized SEC financials, reports to help better track and manage inventory, or reports to help analyze your business’s cash flow, SquareWorks can help.
Optimization use cases can also be industry-specific, addressing unique regulatory, compliance, reporting, and operational needs. Regardless of your industry and its unique needs, SquareWorks can help you get the most out of your investment in NetSuite.
Optimization Roadmap
Our consultants begin each optimization project by:
- Ensuring all stakeholders have been identified and are included in the project.
- Clarifying roles and responsibilities with the team.
- Confirming the problem statement and objectives of the project.
- Assembling a project plan with clear deliverables, due dates, and milestones.
Once the SquareWorks consultant completes the above, they begin meeting with key stakeholders to determine requirements and use cases, to review existing configuration, and to develop a go-forward plan.
Once the consultant has a comprehensive overview of the current state and desired future state of the system, they assemble a list of recommendations for review by the team.
Often, some of the recommendations can be completed by the client’s resources, while others may fall to SquareWorks to complete.
In addition to configuration and process changes, the SquareWorks consultant may recommend a tool to help automate routine processes such as reconciling vendor bills to POs and receipts or booking month-end expense accruals.
Recommendations can also be prioritized into an optimization roadmap and scheduled according to an organization’s availability and budget. Some SquareWorks clients also choose a managed services plan for general, ongoing NetSuite assistance outside the confines of a specific project.
From automating routine tasks to simplifying system configuration and improving reporting and end-user adoption, SquareWorks will help you meet your business goals effectively and efficiently by optimizing your NetSuite instance. To get started on an optimization project with SquareWorks Consulting, contact us here.
