Considering an upgrade to your accounting system? It’s a huge decision to migrate from QuickBooks or Xero. It's a lengthy and expensive process if approached incorrectly. This guide explores why you would migrate to NetSuite and the best practices to ensure your implementation runs smoothly. We’ll run you through 6 SaaS optimization strategies to make the process seamless.
Upgrading to Netsuite is a great SaaS optimization technique for your SaaS stack. If your company is growing beyond the capabilities of its current accounting software, is restructuring its operations, or simply wants to be prepared for growth, you can benefit from migrating to Netsuite.
Netsuite enables you to report on your business from a central location, rather than having multiple QuickBooks and Xero accounts for different regions. Not only does it centralise reporting, Netsuite consolidates finance, supply-chain and logistics into one system. This gives you data integrity and the ability to improve internal controls.
What’s more, Netsuite helps you automate your consolidation process. You can process a higher volume of transactions with ease, handle multi-currency different entities, and create a custom dashboard for FP&A teams. Their automation also allows you to create custom permissions and easily integrate with third-party apps. These features can help businesses save time and money on their financial processes.
If you’ve outgrown your current accounting software, upgrading to Netsuite is a great strategy to reduce your software costs. Here are 5 steps to ensure the migration to Netsuite goes smoothly.
Before you begin your Netsuite migration, make sure to clearly define your goals for the change. What are you hoping to achieve? Communicate these goals internally to ensure that everyone is on the same page. To ensure success, every stakeholder must have a clear understanding of the objective. Whether you’re managing the migration directly or going through a Netsuite partner, it’s critical that you prepare thoroughly by identifying: employees impacted by this migration, technical requirements, roles of key stakeholders, and potential risk items.
Start by identifying every employee, stakeholder, or agency who will be affected by the migration. Let them know what is happening, what you want to achieve, and what they should expect. Work with key stakeholders to communicate clearly about the roles they'll play in your migration. It’s also important to create a clear budget and timetable for key stakeholders so that they’re aware of what’s happening.
Remember to list down the technical requirements of the migration. What do you need for data preparation, formatting, or exports? Do you require form customization? What do GL mapping and account charts look like? Knowing this will help you form a strategy for reducing your software costs during the migration.
Get key advisory teams to provide feedback, recommendations and ideas for the implementation process. Ask technical stakeholders to help with data preparation, formatting and importing. For both advisory and technical teams, ask for ideas and recommendations to help with technical processes such as data preparation and importing. This will help flesh out better SaaS optimization strategies for this migration.
Will this migration overlap with quarterly or year-end reporting? Have you chosen a reliable NetSuite implementation partner? Remember, post-launch support and ongoing customisations are as vital as the implementation process.
Pro tip: Certain partners also have special arrangements with NetSuite and are able to score huge subscription discounts for their clients. This could save you thousands in the migration process, and is a great strategy to reduce your software costs.
Project planning helps you to accomplish tasks more efficiently by eliminating wasteful activities and patterns. Without a proper project plan, it can become a lengthy and expensive process.
Create a communication schedule with your implementation partners and department leads. What are the expectations of all team members on the project? What systems are being migrated? What data sources will be migrated?
It’s also important to know the timeline for custom features. Engage with your Netsuite partner and agree on the kick-off date, data sources, required customizations, user testing, launch date, and post-launch support processes.
Pro tip: NetSuite stores all your data tables. You can reference all data points to build custom live reports either directly in NetSuite or using a 3rd party BI platform.
Having a migration plan is vital to ensuring a smooth Netsuite migration. It should include the roles and responsibilities of internal and external team members, as well as timelines for each data source to be migrated. This includes customer and vendor records, marketing, payroll, fundraising, inventory, and your customer relationship management systems. If you have entities in different counties, you may also require additional licenses. Make sure to incorporate these in your migration plan.
It’s time to implement Netsuite! This generally follows four steps: Netsuite set-up, data preparation, data migration, and then post-launch training.
When you go through project implementation, take the time to review processes prior to engaging with the implementation team. The time required to migrate will vary depending on the number of applications and customizations that are needed. Implementation and system testing is a lengthy process so make deadlines flexible. It can also be useful to hire an internal resource to look after the general system administration as it can be quite complex for anyone without prior Netsuite experience to handle efficiently.
After you have implemented Netsuite, don't automatically revert to old processes. The biggest mistake is sticking to existing processes that were created around old systems. Make time to see what the best practice is and what works best for your company.
Finally, keep a close watch on the progress of your project. This will allow you to see and quickly adjust the project when it's not going according to plan. You should also check your project's performance regularly so that you can identify any issues before they become major problems.
Pro tip: Don’t be alarmed if Netsuite is running slowly; this tends to happen when transaction volumes are high or when there are many custom scripts running in the background. If you want to speed up the process, NetSuite allows purchasing additional bandwidth which comes at an extra cost.
The process of migrating will certainly take some time, but it will be worth it in the long run. When done right, it’s a great SaaS optimization technique for your SaaS stack. Follow these 5 steps to ensure a smooth migration to Netsuite. Want a discount? Hudled offers an exclusive Netsuite offer for customers that can save you thousands. Sign up today to eliminate overspend and get positive ROI from day 1.