You’ve made the decision to move your business to NetSuite. Congratulations! As you probably know, NetSuite is the world’s #1 cloud ERP software, empowering over 29,000 organizations across the globe to grow, scale and adapt with agility.
However, before you dive into implementation, it’s critical to properly assess your company’s readiness. Rushing into NetSuite without laying the proper foundation can set you up for failure. We get it – you’re eager to unlock the promise of the cloud. But patience now will pay off exponentially later.
In this post, we’ll walk you through the key components of the NetSuite Readiness Assessment – from evaluating your business requirements to auditing data to testing integrations. Follow this comprehensive framework before you begin, and you’ll smooth the path for a successful NetSuite rollout.
Here’s the kicker: The readiness assessment isn’t just about checking boxes. It’s about deeply understanding your organization and tailoring a solution that clicks. That’s why we recommend working with an expert NetSuite partner like SuiteRep for guidance upfront.
As you’ll see, conducting an effective readiness assessment requires experience – both with NetSuite best practices and a breadth of unique business use cases. An outside specialist like SuiteRep brings that hardened knowledge to the table.
So let’s get started. Here are the six essential components of assessing your company’s readiness for NetSuite:
Define Your Business Requirements
The first step is sitting down with stakeholders across your company – from the C-Suite to Finance to Operations – and documenting your business requirements. Get very clear on:
- Your company’s immediate goals and long-term vision
- Your pain points with current systems and processes
- The specific capabilities you want NetSuite to deliver
This involves honest conversations about what you want to change and what must stay the same. Coming to alignment upfront saves massive headaches down the line.
Here are some key questions to ask:
- What are our top frustrations with our current systems? Where do they limit our growth?
- What features does NetSuite need to “must have” vs. “nice to have”?
- How should NetSuite streamline our operations and reporting?
- What integrations with other apps are critical?
- How will we measure if the implementation is a “success”?
Documenting these requirements in detail will provide the blueprint for designing your unique NetSuite solution. This is your chance to cast vision as leaders – take full advantage.
Pro Tip: Don’t gloss over pain points. The readiness assessment is where you air out lingering questions or apprehensions about moving to the cloud. Addressing concerns upfront prevents frustration creeping in later.
Map Your Processes
Now comes the grunt work – mapping the key processes that power your company. These may include:
- Lead to Cash – How you acquire customers, fulfill orders, generate invoices, recognize revenue, collect payments
- Purchase to Pay – How you purchase goods/services, manage vendors and accounts payable
- Record to Report – How you maintain financial records, close your books, generate accounting/operational reports
- Inventory Management – How you forecast demand, store items, record warehouse transactions, value inventory
- Hiring and Onboarding – How you recruit talent, handle paperwork, manage employee records
Take an outside-in look across departments to fully capture cross-functional workflows. Look for inconsistencies between documented processes (if they exist) and actual practices.
This process mapping accomplishes two things:
It helps you improve processes before moving them into software. Streamline manual workarounds and information silos before they get baked into a new system.
It allows you to gap analyze against NetSuite’s best practices. Where are potential disconnects between your processes and how NetSuite is configured out-of-the-box? Identifying these gaps early is hugely valuable.
Pro Tip: Tag key users and subject matter experts across workflows now. You’ll reference thismapping throughout implementation planning to pull in relevant perspectives.
Audit Your Data
Now it’s time to clean your data house. Auditing data – especially legacy transactional records and master data – is essential preparation for migrating to the NetSuite cloud.
When assessing your company’s data, focus on four key areas in particular:
- Data quality – How accurate, complete and reliable are our records?
- Data accessibility – How easily can our various systems export data needed for migration?
- Master data – How consolidated, clean and governance-driven are customer, item, employee and other domain entity records?
- Transaction data – How consistently structured is our order/sales/accounting history?
Scoping early gives you runway to remediate issues and fill gaps. It also helps shape integration and migration strategy – including realistic timelines.
You may uncover some ugly realities that require ETL fixes, changing operational behaviors or manual data manipulation. But isn’t that why you’re moving to NetSuite – to replace duct-taped systems? Better to deal with blemishes now.
The key is framing data migration in terms of business impact – not just technicians turning knobs. What master and transaction anomalies should you address to avoid heartburn down the road? Get clear on priorities.
Pro Tip: Don’t go it alone. Lean on outside data experts to audit information across source systems. They’ll dive deep while you focus elsewhere.
Evaluate Your Application Portfolio
Taking inventory of your existing software footprint clears obstacles down the line. Get a handle on:
- All applications currently in use with core functions
- Whether each app will stay, retire or require integration
- Interdependencies between apps (ex: data sharing)
- Contracts, costs and timing considerations to exit applications
- Risks and change impacts of archiving legacy apps
You’ll identify redundant solutions to retire alongside legacy systems during the migration. In other cases, specialty apps fills critical niche needs that NetSuite can’t match – so integrating them is the play.
Getting on the same page with department heads about the future application portfolio will help shape integration requirements down the line. Pro Tip: Don’t underestimate resistance to losing niche capabilities – address concerns transparently.
And remember: The readiness assessment is your chance to clean house. Pitch the C-Suite on changes by linking retain/replace/integrate decisions to cost optimization and future agility.
Test Integrations
While NetSuite delivers end-to-end process functionality for most mid-market use cases, you’ll likely need to integrate complementary or legacy systems at the edges.
That’s why testing priority NetSuite integrations is a must during the readiness phase. Validate that:
- Any data sharing/synchronization between apps functions as expected
- Transactions flow seamlessly between NetSuite and other solutions
- The unified experience across integrated tools is air-tight
Common examples for testing include:
- CRM tools
- PoS systems
- Planning, budgeting or corporate performance management (CPM) solutions
- HR, payroll or benefits administration platforms
- Warehouse management tools
- Ecommerce engines
These validation tests accomplish three things:
- Alert you to any complexities in advance – before users do.
- Enable you to demonstrateROI by pallate-testing an integrated solution.
- Help qualify vendor capabilities – including SuiteRep! – to deliver a truly unified landscape.
You don’t have to connect all possible touchpoints. But hands-on testing with priority integrations nets tangible confidence in how systems will sync.
Pro Tip: Cloud connectors like Dell Boomi make integration testing during readiness cheaper/easier than ever before.
Build the Business Case
The readiness assessment is where all the pieces come together to build an ironclad business case for NetSuite. That requires converting findings into the universal language of business value.
In our experience, the most compelling cases include:
- Specific operational metrics expected to improve
- Areas of anticipated cost reduction
- Departmental use cases that alleviate friction
- Opportunities to enable growth
Back up claims with data, user stories and conservative assumptions. And frame the current vs. future states – how does tackling pain points translate into a better experience for employees and customers?
Solid business cases support leadership buy-in, secure budget and rally stakeholders. They also help define implementation team structures and inform change management strategy.
In short, readiness assessments justify change. So be explicit on the why behind adopting NetSuite. The business case sets the stage for adoption all the way through rollout.
Bringing it All Together
Chances are this readiness assessment exposed some gaps – but that’s ok! Now you can address them before major time/money commitments. Use outputs to shape project planning and inform what success looks like.
And remember: None of our recommendations here are silver bullets. The readiness assessment is about asking the right questions to set your company up for success in the cloud.
Next Steps
We hope this overview provides a framework for effectively assessing your business readiness for NetSuite. But don’t go it alone – lean on an expert like SuiteRep to help plan and conduct your readiness assessment.
Here are three reasons choosing SuiteRep pays dividends now…and for years to come:
We Take a 360 View
With 200+ successful NetSuite deployments under our belt, SuiteRep brings unmatched experience understanding how all the pieces fit together – from business requirements to data migration to change management and beyond. We navigate readiness with a comprehensive lens, quickly sniffing out obstacles.
We Bring Battle-Hardened Best Practices
Beyond sheer project volume, SuiteRep stays on the cutting edge of NetSuite functionality and integrations. Our proven messaging, project plans and technical toolkits accelerate NetSuite implementation. We apply those battle-hardened assets during readiness to set you up for success.
We Become Your Trusted Advisor
Readiness assessments require digging deep into processes and asking tough questions. A provider with only tech expertise can miss critical context. Our team mixes business strategy, technical implementation and change management to extract what matters. Consider SuiteRep your NetSuite sherpa for the long haul.
Conclusion
We hope this thorough overview provides a clear framework for assessing readiness before diving into NetSuite. While conducting an effective assessment requires time, effort and executive buy-in upfront, it pays massive dividends on the back end by supporting a smooth implementation. And the visibility you gain into processes and data is invaluable beyond just NetSuite.
Of course, don’t hesitate to lean on SuiteRep for guidance. Our battle-hardened best practices and 200+ customer deployments bring critical perspective. Whether you’re just exploring or committed to NetSuite, we offer direction every step – from readiness to launch and beyond.
So be rigorous upfront. Clean your data house, map workflows, define success metrics, test integrations and build an ironclad business case. Those investments early in the journey will make deployment, user adoption and solution optimization smoother than ever.
Now…let’s get you NetSuite ready!