Dsg best practice guide for net suite implementation success

It’s Not Just About The SoftwareDSG Best Practice Guide for NetSuite Implementation Success

eBOOK

Copyright © 2014. All Rights Reserved. Demand Solutions Group. dsgcloud.com

Who is the eBook for?This book is for anyone who is thinking about implementing, or re-implementing, NetSuite’s market leading cloud ERP solution. It contains best practices and practical advice that can help organizations of all sizes and complexities reduce the risk and time taken to implement NetSuite successfully.

Contents

ExecutiveSummary

03Agility Matters

04Five Things to

Implement

05Five Pitfalls to

Avoid

06Five Things to Think About

07Summary

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Executive Summary

03

Cloud ERP – NetSuite is the Market LeaderThe cloud has revolutionized the ERP, CRM and business solutions world. SAP and Oracle may still be slugging it out in the enter-prise but the reality is that for most forward-thinking companies, the cloud is now the de facto application platform and NetSuite is the de facto market leader for ERP.

It’s Not Just About The SoftwareDSG was named NetSuite’s Worldwide Solution Provider Partner of the Year for 2013, an award that reflected seven years of our market leadership in the NetSuite community and hundreds of successful NetSuite projects of all levels of complexity.

From this experience DSG has learned that, while you need NetSuite’s functionally rich, stable software as the platform, a successful business solution is not just about the software – you need an implementation partner with:

"They're extremely adept at evalu-ating and understanding business processes in order to identify areas for improvement. That's not always the case with IT vendors."

Zendesk

Business Focus

If you don’t have a business-first focus, your solution will not meet its fundamental objectives of improv-ing business efficiency and performance.

Experience

Practice really does make perfect and this is one of the key benefits of working with DSG and our knowledge of hun-dreds of successful NetSuite projects.

Proven Approach

One of the ways that experience manifests itself is in the avail-ability and maturity of an implementation methodology such as DSG’s Realize meth-odology.

Teamwork

All successful proj-ects are the result of teamwork and DSG can build and lead a team through knowl-edge, commitment, referential behavior and mentoring.

Straight-Talk

There are often tough decisions that need to be made and DSG is never afraid to tell you what you need to hear, not necessarily what you want to hear.

Agility Matters in Business and Implementation

04

“This was one of the smoothest projects we’ve experienced. We really felt that the DSG team cared about the success of the project.”

Director of Product Management, Open Table

The DSG Realize, Optimize and Revitalize methodologies capture the essence of the cloud business model — agility, flexibility, time-to-value — and bake these attributes into how we implement NetSuite solutions.

These methodologies are followed systematically by DSG specialists who know your business needs inside and out, and are backed by DSG’s rich ecosystem of professionals who provide deep expertise on business, product and technical issues, and best practices whenever needed.

DSG Realize is a robust consulting methodology based on an agile, iterative and team-based approach to solution imple-mentations that uses a workshop model to involve customers’ domain experts in design and decision-making.

DSG Revitalize restores NetSuite solutions to their full potential in cases where either changes in business needs or poor initial implementation has meant that NetSuite has not delivered its expected value.

DSG Optimize acknowledges that business needs change and that user expectations grow over the life of using a solution, and that a solution has to be continuously optimized to remain e�ec-tive and to keep pace with your business needs.

NetSuite Implementation Best Practices – Five Do’s

05

“DSG is providing Mindjet with outstanding service and true partnership on our NetSuite imple-mentation. We are now well-placed to tackle more ambitious projects in the future. Mindjet is very happy with the return on their DSG investment.”

DSG brings a wealth of product, technical and business operations experience to the NetSuite implementation process and in the next three pages we’ve summarized our learning from this experience.

Do…

1.Have sustained Executive Sponsorship that ensures resource availability and key design leadership.

2.Ensure the Core Project Team consisting of power users in each functional area are present and participatory throughout the itera-tive configuration of the solution. Additionally these people need to be respected and empowered to make decisions.

3.Keep functionality simple where possible and expect to evolve the solution in production as enhancements are illuminated by the end-users.

4.Expect anxiety and stress, particularly nearing and immediately after deployment. Remain positive and take comfort that DSG’s Realize methodology ensures we will be there to support you in this critical “hypercare” period.

5.Expect to train the end-user community. There is no better way to ensure you can take the reins of your new solution than to train others on its use.

NetSuite Implementation Best Practices – Five Dont’s

06

Do NOT…

1. Underestimate the e�ort to extract and scrub conversion data sets; DSG’s Realize methodology ensures this process begins early in the project to mitigate unforeseen challenges.

2. “Lift and shift” business processes and / or data architecture; a new ERP solution provides a natural point of inflection to ‘get it right.’

3. Ignore DSG’s prescription to exercise key functional areas of the solution during the iterative configuration phase; this is an essential part of the process that breeds familiarity and provides a critical feedback loop to DSG.

4. Let open action items and key design decisions (larger critical path items) remain open; foster a culture of urgency and timely closure.

5. Fear customizations; while deference should be given to native functionality where appropriate, scripted solutions are common and often invaluable in filling functional gaps and driving user adoption.

NetSuite Implementation Best Practices – Five Things to Consider

07

1. Take the ball on end-user training and supporting material creation; DSG is there to support you but the Core Project Team should be ready to embrace their new roles as trusted internal advisors and power users in their respective functional area.

2. Don’t put too much emphasis on sustained on-site presence of your implementation partner; it’s costly and with modern collabo-ration tools, not necessary.

3. User Acceptance Testing (UAT) of all business processes, including related integration(s) and/or customization(s), should be thoughtfully and proactively approached with detailed test cases and with a rigorous and detailed feedback loop for any issues encountered.

4. A sandbox should be strongly considered to have in place at deployment; this ensures that changes can be made and tested after go-live as enhancements are identified, and then surgically migrated into production.

5. Deployment date, scope and cost determine proactively which one of these CANNOT yield and communicate this clearly to the project team. More than any other specific guidance, this will drive behaviors and clearer decision making throughout the project.

Summary - Go but Don’t Go Alone

Over the years, DSG has developed a couple of mantras, one is “It’s Not Just About The Software”, the other is “Go But Don’t Go Alone”. The combination of these two mantras, in our opinion, is the key to long-term success with cloud solutions like NetSuite. Your business is running your business not implementing cloud application software – that’s what DSG is here to do.

For more information, please visit www.dsgcloud.com or give us a call at 866.486.4064.

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Copyright © 2014. All Rights Reserved. Demand Solutions Group. dsgcloud.com