Implementing a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system like NetSuite can seem like a daunting task that will inevitably disrupt your business. However, with careful planning and preparation, it is possible to transition to NetSuite without significantly interrupting your core operations. Here’s how:
Conduct Thorough Due Diligence
Before embarking on a NetSuite implementation, it’s vital to fully understand what the system can and cannot do. Conduct detailed due diligence to determine if NetSuite meets all your feature and functionality needs across financials, inventory, order management, CRM, reporting, and more. Identify any gaps that you may need to address through customizations. Getting clear on requirements now prevents business process disruptions down the road.
Take Inventory of Your Data
A major part of any ERP implementation involves migrating legacy data into the new system. Before you begin this process, take a full inventory of all essential data across your organization and map out how it needs to move into NetSuite.
Critical activities include:
- Documenting all existing data sources, data structures, and integrations
- Assessing data quality and cleansing issues
- Mapping data fields between old and new systems
- Planning your data migration strategy
Thorough data preparation streamlines system configuration and saves you from business interruptions later when bad data gets exposed in reports or transactions.
Define Business Processes Upfront
NetSuite gives you flexibility to configure workflows and business processes in many different ways. To prevent go-live snafus, you must make detailed decisions about your future-state processes well before the implementation begins.
Key areas to address include:
- Financial workflows – How will budgeting, invoicing, collections, expense approvals, and reporting work?
- Fulfillment – What are the procedures for managing inventory, drop-shipments, returns, and procurement?
- Commerce – What are the steps for creating quotes, taking orders, billing, and delivering shipments?
- HCM – How will you handle payroll, benefits, time-tracking, expenses, and other HR processes?
Documenting these procedures aligns all teams on the right workflows so you can configure NetSuite accordingly and minimize business disruption.
Clean Up Existing Systems
Legacy systems frequently become dumping grounds for outdated, redundant, and poor quality data. Before launching NetSuite, conduct an audit of all existing systems and clean them up.
Activities should include:
- Purging inactive records and old transactions
- Eliminating duplicate records
- Correcting inaccurate data
- Enforcing naming conventions
- Archiving stale documents
This “cleaning exercise” greatly simplifies data migration into NetSuite later on. It also improves current system performance in the interim.
Budget for Customizations
Even flexible systems like NetSuite may not meet 100% of niche business needs out-of-the-box. That’s why building a budget for potential customizations is key.
Examples of common customizations include:
- Integrations – Custom APIs, EDI, or other connections to external applications
- Industry-specific features – Custom modules, transactions, or reports
- Forms/records – Additional custom fields, documents, or data objects
- Workflows – Custom approval routing rules, validations, notifications, etc.
Plan for customizations during due diligence and reinforce these requirements when negotiating your NetSuite contract. This ensures you have the budget and scope needed to tailor NetSuite to your unique processes without business disruption later on.
Phase Launch Regionally
Big bang NetSuite deployments that go live for your entire global organization simultaneously are incredibly risky. Instead, take a phased approach by region. For example:
Phase 1 – Deploy NetSuite for your North American operations first. Work out inevitable configuration kinks and get staff accustomed to the system before expanding globally.
Phase 2 – Roll out NetSuite to your European divisions next. They can leverage lessons learned in North America.
Phase 3 – Launch across remaining regions like Asia Pacific, LATAM, etc. after the first two deployments stabilize.
This helps avoid massive failures by gradually ramping up use on a smaller scale first. It also lets you adapt later deployments based on direct end-user feedback from the initial launch. And your team has time to complete any remedial data migration between regional implementations.
Create a Rollback Plan
Despite extensive testing and preparations, major go-live issues can still occur. Maybe critical functionality doesn’t behave as intended. Perhaps performance is unacceptably slow. Or there might be data corruption that blocks transactions.
To account for disasters like these, prepare a rollback plan for reverting back to legacy systems if catastrophes happen. This should specify details like:
- Who has the authority to approve a rollback?
- What is the decision tree for evaluating rollback worthiness?
- What is the step-by-step technical sequence for reverting?
- How quickly can you execute this sequence?
- What contingency business processes will you implement in the interim if rollback is triggered?
Having robust contingency measures established upfront gives you confidence to pull the plug on a failed go-live without prolonged business disruptions.
Invest in Change Management
Technical glitches aren’t the only launch risks. Lack of user adoption will quickly derail your NetSuite investment if stakeholders don’t fully embrace the software. Extensive change management is instrumental in driving acceptance and usage.
Key focus areas include:
- Stakeholder communications – Openly discuss how the system impacts end users early and often. Clearly explain benefits and prepare teams for changes well in advance.
- Training – Deliver customized training for each department on how NetSuite alters their day-to-day. Blend instructor-led sessions focused on new processes along with technical system training on features most relevant to each audience.
- Support – Provide ample go-live help resources like dedicated floor support, online knowledge base articles and demos, super users, tip sheets, and more to smooth the transition in adopting NetSuite.
With proper change management, you foster excitement for NetSuite across your organization rather than frustration – leading to rapid user adoption that minimizes business disruptions.
Why Choose Anchor Group?
If a worry-free NetSuite implementation seems out of reach, don’t lose hope! NetSuite consultants and developers at Anchor Group have both the technical and business transformation expertise to guide you through a low-risk rollout.
Implementation Focus
Our fixed-fee implementations emphasize predictability and accuracy over speed. We deliberately avoid overly aggressive timelines in favor of a phased, milestone-driven pacing focused on quality and stability from day one.
Depth of Experience
With over 500 successful enterprise software deployments and two decades helping leading brands across industries get the most from NetSuite, our unparalleled experience lets us foresee risks – allowing proactive resolution before go-live surprises ever disrupt normal operations.
Proven Methodology
Our proven approach combines industry best practices with proprietary processes honed over 20 years exclusively working with NetSuite. This step-by-step methodology for everything from analysis and configuration to testing and change management creates consistency and completeness for every complex project.
Discover why so many enterprises trust Anchor Group to make their mission-critical NetSuite launch smooth and disruption-free. Contact us today to explore how our people, portfolio, and process can de-risk your next implementation.