NetSuite ERP for Administrators

Learn how to install, maintain, and secure a NetSuite implementation, using the best tools and techniques

Anthony Bickof

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781788628877
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781788626163
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Intelligence
• Index: Business

Learn steps and tasks to help a NetSuite administrator perform both his daily and monthly tasks efficiently. Advance his expertise to become NetSuite leader without having to spend time and money on corporate trainings.

Key Features

• Understand the business considerations and implementation of the NetSuite ERP
• Gain a deep knowledge of enterprise security, data management, process automation, and analytics
• Learn techniques to sail through system maintenance while ensuring accuracy and to practically troubleshoot issues

Book Description

NetSuite ERP is a complete, scalable cloud ERP solution targeted at fast-growing, mid-sized businesses and large enterprises. It's the smartly executed combination of financial management operations and built-in business intelligence, which enables companies to make data-driven and well-informed decisions. This book will help administrators become expert enough to be seen as the NetSuite leader at their company and to be able to advise department heads on specific processes, and strategic decisions. We start with an overview of ERP and NetSuite ERP, before going on to explain the built-in features to show the breadth of NetSuite ERP's product and its ease of use. We then discuss business aspects, focusing on the most important processes in NetSuite. Then you'll understand the implementation aspects that are generic enough to cover all the features. The focus then shifts to specific skills that you will need to administer for any system, such as roles, permissions, customization, and data imports. Moving on, you'll learn how to centralize the creation of search templates and give users the tools to pivot the data and expose it to the user in useful ways, such as on the dashboard. The book ends with checklists providing actionable steps that you as an administrator can take to do your job and support the application through new releases and troubleshooting problems.

What you will learn

• Explore how the framework streamlines the implementation of new and existing features
• Leverage built-in tools to optimize your efficiency and effectiveness
• Test configuration to check the implementation of role-specific permissions
• Understand how to optimize the amount of data to be shared with users
• Import data like new leads and employ current data like pricing updates
• Perform on-going maintenance and troubleshoot issues

Who this book is for

This book is for administrators, consultants, and Project Managers who would like to improve their skills in the areas of configuration and system management. Basic experience implementing NetSuite is assumed.

Analytics – Searches, Reports, and the Dashboard

How do we provide our users with the real-time, actionable business intelligence that they need to run their business? NetSuite has three features to accomplish this: searches, reports, and dashboards.

As a rule of thumb, I believe I can gauge a company's use of NetSuite by looking at three screens: the CEO's dashboard, the CFO's dashboard, and the dashboard of a random user. If the dashboard is set up, my assumption is that the system is being used properly. Failure to setup these dashboards is a reflection on the use of NetSuite; I suspect the company won't be renewing their NetSuite contract when they need to.

That's how crucial the dashboard is. A strong dashboard enables the user to operate tactically and strategically. Tactically, it displays the day's priorities and highlights any issues that need to be immediately addressed. The dashboard also shows longer-term goals and trends that the user needs to be keeping track of.

On the other hand, searches and reports are two different functions that serve very similar ends, namely the ability to turn more data into business intelligence. They have very similar functionalities and the question is always whether to summarize data using a search or the report.

These three concepts are inextricably linked because the dashboard is comprised of underlying searches and reports. This allows the user to drill down from a dashboard summary right into the details. It also provides us with the ability to extend the dashboard by customizing searches and reports and linking them to the dashboard.

In a sense, the dashboard is the beginning and the end of the discussion on business intelligence in NetSuite. We will start by exploring the built-in features of the dashboard because we need to learn what is available before we look at creating other searches and reports. We will then look take an in-depth look at searches and then reports. Finally, we will link all the concepts by showing how you can place your custom searches and reports onto the dashboard.

In this chapter, we will do the following:

• Define the dashboard.
• Explain the different mechanisms that are provided on the dashboard in order to display data in the best way in which it will be understood.
• Discuss the types of data to present on the dashboard segmented by the user, such as a manager versus an individual contributor.
• Compare searches and reports, showing the advantages and disadvantages of each.
• Look at searches and start by comparing specific tools to their Excel equivalent to apply the administrator's existing skills to NetSuite.
• Look at all the various options that are available in searches and show use cases where these can be used.
• Build commonly used searches and reports demonstrating the filtering and formatting options available.
• Learn how to centralize the creation of searches and reports. We will cross-reference this with Chapter 5, Security and Permissions, by showing you how to make the searches and reports available to specific users.
• Leverage searches and reports to set them up on the dashboard.

Dashboard overview

Dashboards operate in the same way as a dashboard in a car because they are designed to summarize data for the user. But the driver does not need to open up the gas tank prior to a long drive in order to check whether there is enough gas to make it to the destination. Instead, the driver just needs to focus on the dashboard, which will summarize information such as speed and the level of gas. The car dashboard also has the ability to highlight certain information that requires immediate attention, for instance, the blinking light as we are running out of gas and need to fill up.

The NetSuite dashboard does a similar thing. It summarizes data for the user to be able to manage the business from from one screen. It is dynamic and can highlight metrics that require immediate attention. It is very powerful and should be used by all NetSuite users in order for them to keep up to date with their job responsibilities.

We're going to start with the dashboard because it not only has many built-in features that we can use without the need to start from scratch, but is also the likely destination for many of the searches and reports that we will be building. The dashboard is organized by portlets, which are different ways to display information.

Each portlet must be enabled to appear on the dashboard. Click the Personalize button in the top right-hand corner of the dashboard to select the portlets you wish to see on the dashboard:

Personalize dashboard

The options are divided up into sections including Standard Content, Report Snapshots, and Trend Graphs, and we will explain all of those options in the pages ahead. The portlets are merely mechanisms to display content. We still need to choose the content we wish to display on each portlet individually. Each portlet has its own setup options which we access by clicking on the ellipses button in the top right-hand corner of the portlet. The ellipses button becomes visibl...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright and Credits
• Dedication
• Contributors
• Packt Upsell
• Preface
• The Value Proposition – Doing More with Less
• Exploring NetSuite Tools
• OneWorld
• Implementing
• Security and Permissions
• Customization
• Imports
• Analytics – Searches, Reports, and the Dashboard
• Workflows
• Integration
• New Releases
• Troubleshooting Tips
• An Ongoing Maintenance Checklist
• Other Books You May Enjoy