This article is relevant if you desire to expose an interactive real-time order status to your customers using NetSuite without the need to produce data integration.
Background
NetSuite is a powerful order manager. We have helped many clients integrate their eCommerce sites with NetSuite so they can manage their orders and fulfillments from the very capable NetSuite ERP back-end system. Consider these articles:
- 2013: Magento to NetSuite Integration: 15 Questions To Ask
- 2017: Shopify to NetSuite Integration: Your Way!
- 2019: Accelerate your NetSuite REST Development with Pre-Defined Business Templates
In some order situations, especially in complex fulfillment configurations, such as those in the premiums industry, the customer is very curious and often uneasy about order status. There are often scenarios where the customer needs to supply branding or artwork to the order management process so that the delivery will ultimately come together.
Other configurations have long lead times and may require assembly or the gathering of various components to produce the entire solution. Some organizations deliver complex design and build services for real estate construction. Take a moment to think about what it takes to build kitchen cabinetry; many design decisions are required in the process. Various order elements need to be acquired and then fitted for the ultimate application.
A common challenge is to help the customer stay informed on order progress as well as request information along the way. The most common approach is to use a back-and-forth customer email communication between order managers. This type of communication is costly because of the need to keep looking up and packaging information for the customer. It’s easy to become confused.
Typical Approach for eCommerce Order Status
For those that invest in eCommerce integration with NetSuite, the common sense approach is to pass NetSuite order status back to the eCommerce platform to help the customer get status. The idea is that the customer works with the eCommerce site and the managers work with the NetSuite ERP backend. While this is effective, it introduces latency and it may require multiple data syncing routines especially when customer transaction coordination is required. There are other models that can and should be contemplated.
Rule Framework to Drive Order Management
Before discussing the way the customer can interact with the order, it’s important to consider a framework for managing order fulfillment. Yes, NetSuite has a basic Order Approved, Order Pending Fulfillment type built-in type status. But this is insufficient for complex orders. I have written a number of articles on our Record State Management (RSM) framework which supplies a superior method of creating state and respective rules that invite high visibility and true exception processing capacity. See these articles:
- 2017: Learn how to Manage any NetSuite Record by Exception
- 2018: Learn How to Build Scalable NetSuite Sales Order Practices
- 2019: Learn How To Create Additional NetSuite Statuses to Produce Transaction Control
While this order status and rule framework are in no way necessary, there is an elegance to what becomes possible for customer coordination when you build your customer order view experience under the same pattern.
Use NetSuite to Host Customer Facing Order Status and Management
Instead of syncing data back to the eCommerce website, why not simply have NetSuite host a fully interactive branded customer experience? In this manner, through various intelligent web framing techniques (avoiding logins), the customer will not know that the HTML they are seeing is coming from NetSuite.
Here, we craft a powerful responsive (HTML that dynamically changes to fit the computing device) set of web pages that interact with NetSuite business logic and data. The exact same rules and status that the internal order managers are using can be used to drive customer coordination. Hence, our business logic is not replicated between environments. There is no latency in information as both the customer and the employee order manager are working with the exact same data.
We also do not need to purchase and manage separate web infrastructure or syncing routines. NetSuite is producing the hosting and intelligent logic we need to drive the user experience.
NetSuite Customer Order Viewer Demonstration (7:10)
To fully appreciate what is possible, we produced a video of recent work (7:10) my firm crafted with an existing client. Our tools allow us to use a team approach to craft the solution: HTML presentation is based on templates using modern responsive techniques. We use a Model View Controller (see my related 2020 article) to expose data and logic to the client. And we use NetSuite Suitelet technologies to craft software libraries to expose logic and database updates (see related article on how to make NetSuite act with high performance). There is no extra software to purchase as we leverage open source offerings based on the latest modern techniques to deliver web experiences.
Design Your Customer Order Viewer Experience
All visual and processing elements are within our control with no additional need to buy more software — all that is needed is what you already invested in: NetSuite. This concept brings new thinking to what we often consider a customer portal.
When you combine NetSuite with a capable innovative team of professionals that hold high standards for care, a world opens up that unlocks the ability to earn greater customer trust while lowering processing costs. This leads to more profit and greater enterprise value.
If you found this article relevant, feel free to sign up for notifications to new articles as I post them. If you suspect that you can drive more capacities from your NetSuite investment, let’s have a conversation.