This article is relevant if you are curious about how to gain access to the potential promise offered by the NetSuite ERP system.
Background
The purpose of this article is to discuss the importance of modeling to unlock NetSuite’s potential. While many use the word “modeling” loosely, I believe it is imperative to discuss the modeling process in order to appreciate the skills of professionals and leaders who consistently deliver strong outcomes.
This discussion is not about the craft of configuring NetSuite after the model is in hand. It is about the planning exercise that helps executives make informed business decisions, mitigate risk, and achieve desired outcomes with their NetSuite investment. It distinguishes those executives who think beyond the Stronger Feature Set Mentality.
Modeling Fundamentals: Leveraging NetSuite’s Platform
To discuss this, I offer a point-by-point analysis of the constitutive elements.
- Leadership Competency: Modeling is a fundamental leadership skill in NetSuite implementations and optimizations. Executives may not always realize they need to invest in this discipline, but modeling is the force that drives the outcomes they expect. It should also serve as a benchmark for assessing whether a professional has the leadership capacity to deliver.
- Modeling as Idea Space: Modeling is the mechanism we use to create an idea space that clarifies relationships between concepts. It sharpens thinking and directs action. Without a model, teams configure features in a piecemeal fashion. With a model, leaders shape outcomes tied to measurable business improvements, such as faster close cycles, clearer margin visibility, and reduced manual work.
- NetSuite’s Adaptability: Unlike many business systems, NetSuite allows us to adapt and shape processes to meet specific requirements. This adaptability gives us leverage when it is guided by a well-formed model.
- General Platform, Specific Outcomes: NetSuite offers built-in records and logic that can be tailored to address common business scenarios. This breadth makes it applicable across industries, but generality alone is insufficient. To unlock value, NetSuite must be fitted to the unique business model at hand.
- Where Potential Gets Locked: Many NetSuite implementations fail to allocate sufficient time for modeling specific business challenges. The result is predictable: shadow spreadsheets, poor adoption, reporting gaps, and frustrating work patterns. Once in that situation, many realize they have the right software, but they had the wrong implementation.
- Software as Building Material: Software is an intangible building material. It allows us to shape language, processes, and rules that direct business action. Because NetSuite was designed to be adapted for use, modeling becomes the foundational capacity that demonstrates a professional’s competence to produce meaningful outcomes.
The Process Behind Modeling
Modeling is a structured practice involving two parties: the customer who seeks capacity in NetSuite, and the modeler who designs and delivers it.
- Purpose: Modeling begins with intent; to create capacity that enables business actors to achieve their objectives. The modeler must understand not only the requirement but also its business consequences, such as margin improvement, cash preservation, control structures, lead times, and exception handling. Without business literacy, modeling remains shallow and leaves potential dormant.
- Listening: Effective modeling requires careful listening to business actors, reflecting back goals in a way that makes them feel understood. This builds trust, secures adoption, and prevents resistance later.
- Synthesis: Once the business need is clear, the modeler blends creativity and experience to design a solution. Entities, states, and rules are shaped in the modeler’s mind, then translated into potential software artifacts.
- Recording: Narratives, diagrams, and flowcharts document the ideas. These artifacts carry meaning across teams, even when the modeler is absent. They lay the groundwork for alignment, auditability, and governance.
- Dialogue: With a recorded model, the modeler engages in conversation with the customer. This demonstrates they were heard, provides a story of how NetSuite will be built to deliver outcomes, and deepens trust. Adoption improves when stakeholders see their input directly reflected in the design. A decision log here adds discipline, recording tradeoffs and rejected alternatives so institutional memory is preserved.
The Fitting Puzzle: Applying the Model in NetSuite
Once we have a model, we hold the answer to the puzzle. The puzzle then becomes: how will we shape NetSuite to fit that answer? This requires both creativity and experience.
- Built-in Structures: We begin by evaluating NetSuite’s native structures to determine how well they align with the model. Missing components become the gaps.
- Gap Solutioning: Four main approaches close the gaps:
- Adapt: Utilize NetSuite tools (such as custom fields, workflows, refined forms, and scripts) to tailor the platform. Depending on the complexity, this may involve significant work and risk.
- Buy: Add external tools that align with the model. This requires careful selection, evaluation, and integration.
- Change the Process: Simplify or adjust the business process to better align with the platform. This can be the lowest-risk path, and a compromise may be welcomed.
- Defer or Retire: When complexity outweighs benefit, features can be postponed or dropped. Recording these decisions in the log ensures transparency.
- Fitting Considerations: Once gap strategies are chosen, we evaluate what it takes to shape NetSuite for the customer’s needs. Key considerations include:
- Standards: Customers use many other systems daily; their expectations for speed and clarity are shaped by those standards. NetSuite should meet or exceed them.
- Extraneous Elements: Hide what is not needed to reduce noise and improve adoption.
- Adoption: Role-based forms, clean navigation, and reduced clutter keep training costs low and drive user willingness.
- Controls: Role definitions, permissions, approval chains, audit logs, and segregation of duties must be built into the model. Neglecting controls leaves risk exposed.
- Reporting: A strong model produces decision-support reporting from day one. Envision required reports upfront to guide the design.
- Effort: Shaping NetSuite requires investment. Customers must weigh cost against outcomes, and professionals must make tradeoffs visible using a fit matrix balancing value, complexity, control, time, and risk.
Example Model to Describe CRM Concept
A single artifact can open a world of listening. For example, in our NetSuite system for our NetSuite Systems Integration Practice, we model business development with a diagram of records and states that represent how relationships with prospective and committed customers evolve. What might otherwise be called “CRM” becomes a more powerful lens on relationship development, triggering meaningful conversations about the flow from sales to delivery.
Review the image. NetSuite’s customer record uses three built-in states: lead, prospect and customer. However, when an opportunity is identified, we utilize NetSuite’s project record with custom states of “Pending Commitment” and “Pending Delivery” to manage both our unbooked and booked business. Simple to understand yet not out-of-the-box.
Modeling as a Marker of Leadership
To unlock NetSuite’s potential, modeling is a crucial skill for leaders. The modeling process takes time, and shortcuts only increase dissatisfaction while leaving potential locked.
Within our practice, we evaluate professionals on their ability to model. It is the key skill that consistently produces the outcomes our clients demand. Customers who understand NetSuite’s promise recognize that modeling is not optional; it is the foundation of success and the standard by which competence is measured.
If you found this article relevant, feel free to sign up for notifications to new articles as I post them. If you are seeking stronger NetSuite leadership because you need actors to model your business and fit NetSuite, let’s have a conversation.
