NetSuite and NetSuite Consulting | SightLines

The Retreating Giant: Microsoft Ends Bid for Yahoo, for Now

Tue, 06 May 2008 09:08:23 -0400

Microsoft Needs a Serious Re-evaluation

No good will ever come from trying not to lose. That's the key takeaway in the Microsoft / Yahoo story.

Everyone knows by now that Microsoft has walked away from their bid for Yahoo. The story has been covered everywhere. The real story is that Microsoft needs to re-evaluate its franchise and start to build with purpose again. For whatever reason Microsoft has moved to a defensive position, always looking to protect their current franchise. Like any entity taking a defensive position, it's easier to defend when its more narrowly defined.

This explains why Microsoft is so intent on defending the desktop. Certainly, they have a strong position in desktop apps, but don't they also have a strong position in the network and the server? Why did they decide to defend the desktop so urgently when their franchise is really client - network - server. Taking a less narrow view of their market would have led them to pursue a broader range of options when the Internet became a reality.

Similarly, they have recently invested in Facebook, a social networking site. By itself this is ok, but seen in a larger lens it looks again like a defensive move. Meanwhile Micorsoft owns 4 different enterprise applications, and noone in the enterprise market has yet integrated social networking functions - which are the same as collaboration tools in their underlying defintion - into an enterprise software suite.

A company the size and heft of Microsoft has to be able to manage threats to its business. We all understand this. But they must also take some challenging directions to new innovations, new markets, new ideas.

The interesting thing with Microsoft is that they have so much positive cash flow, you must wonder if this is a positive thing or not. When you have so much, does it remove a sense of urgency and create a sense of entitlement? They certainly did not fight for Yahoo like they just had to have it. Oracle ended of buying Peoplesoft for $26.50 after an initial bid of $16.

Competitive Intelligence: One Old Cow Creates a Stampede

Thu, 01 May 2008 13:22:01 -0400

What the SAP Delay Tells Us About Today's SaaS Market

Is SaaS becoming too popular? For one company, on the verge of a new product offering, it appears that the answer is Yes.

It was announced the other day that SAP's Business By Design product will be delayed for several more months. The reason given is technical in nature, as this article notes.

However, it seems odd to me that a company the size of SAP, with its enormous cash reserves and obvious technical acumen and talent cannot deliver a new software product after several years of effort. It also seems strange that they are reducing their investment in the product. If you are having technical problems, wouldn't you want to continue making the technical development investment?

So what is really happening? First, for those of you who may not have heard of BusinessByDesign (BBD), this is SAP's first attempt at a pure SaaS offering. A full ERP Suite delivered over the Internet as a service. Much like NetSuite in its intent, though with less of an e-commerce offering.

Also, it's worth noting that BBD really validates the SaaS marketplace and makes it clear that while NetSuite is an up and comer in the ERP/CRM market, it has started to cause some indigestion in the executive dining room of its larger competitors.

OK, our take on the BBD delay, or BBDD, starts with the observation that for a company like SAP with a lot of products already in the market, a SaaS offering is not a top line revenue addition. A SaaS offering will probably mean almost as many lost customers of the other products as new customers of BBD. A SaaS product is major disruptor.

For example, SAP sells Business One, a product that they purchased many years ago to sell into the Small and Medium Entreprise market, through the partner channel. Business One is often sold in the ASP model were the client purchases an on-premise license but then has the infrastructure hosted and managed at a data center. I can imagine that many of these customers would be interested in BBD, but I bet the channel partners would be a little sore about losing the hosting bucks to the mothership, not to mention the additional software and hardware that Business One users are forced to buy from the channel - CRM for example.

On the other hand, there are a lot of customers of SAP's main product R3 already running ERP on their own premises. I have to think that these customers are also interested in BBD. Running an on premise system sounds like a great idea when you consider just the cost of software and hardware. It's the soft costs of human talent that make on-premise software so expensive. The Total Cost of Ownership, or TCO, of on-premise software has not been lost on the managers of SMEs who, after all, can take a quick glance at the P&L every month to see $ in the IT Salaries line.

When you consider the current SAP customer base, whether R3 or Business One, you can quickly see that there must be some real concern at SAP over losing customers from one product to another. Interestingly, in the US, SAP now runs campaigns on TV and in print - The Wall Street Journal - dedicated to the proposition that smaller business can be successful with the high end R3 software. This looks like concern may have drifted into outright conflict. At any rate, it must be noted that when a customer switches, as many will, from SAP product X to BBD, it will be a zero sum game: One winner and one loser. Channel partners are not going to like this at all.

You can really take two views of where this leaves SAP. On the one hand SAP is in a bind. They have a new SaaS product but can't release it because too many customers would switch, creating too much conflict in the channel. At the same time, BBD also forces an on-premise software vendor to talk openly about the total cost of ownership of business management software when you buy the software, the hardware, the people, etc. and maintain it all yourself. There is a huge channel edifice in place that rakes in cash from these on-premise requirements, and BBD threatens to blow it up.

On the other hand, you could say that SAP was pretty smart about this. They have a product on the brink of release, which I am sure has probably put the brakes on other potential competitors coming out with an offering, but by not releasing it they manage to keep their channel mollified.

Either way, the main takeaways from the BBD experience are that SaaS, in a full suite, not just Best of Breed, or "focused applications" as they are now called, is ready for prime time and NetSuite, still the only player in the game, will benefit. And, second, we are on the verge of understanding the Total Cost of Ownership in a way that NetSuite users and partners have understood lo these many years, but which the larger market of on-premise software has always denied. When the biggest on-premise business application vendor validates the TCO of SaaS to the market, watch out. It's a stampede.

Brand Owner Solution Lessons Learned, Parts 8,9 and 10

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Our Brand Owner Solution Lessons Learned in Installments

8. Design 'Design' Projects

All brand owners start with a few products, and then the market begins to ask for more. First it's women's sandals and then men's sandals and kid's summer shoes. It's only a matter of time. This is great and exciting, when the force of inertia sets in and your brand starts to roll as if on its own. But it also costs time and money to design new products, or even new brands, with all of the attendant packaging materials, artwork, etc.
When this begins in your market, take the time to start putting your design projects into the enterprise system where at the very least they can be properly tracked; or, in the best case scenario, they can be quantified and measured. How much does it really cost to bring a new model to market, from original idea to a prototype ready for production run?
If you find yourself using a lot of spreadsheets to organize, track and measure brand initiatives then it's time to act and start using your enterprise suite for project management and measurement.
Apart from using the project to manage the work, it should also be a repository of the costs associated with product development. After all, if you have to sell 10,000 pairs of a sandal to break even, you have your work cut out for you. Don't wait until it's too late to find out where the costs end and the profits begin. An integrated enterprise suite enables the aggregation of important financial information at the project level, and you should be measuring your efficiency here also.

9. Share Data

Be prepared to share data:That would be an important message in Brand Ownership 101, if such a course existed. It may be inbound, like EDI transmissions from a large retail store; or it could be outbound, like a file of sales orders to fulfill sent to a 3PL partner. There are more possibilities in this area than we can name or enumerate in this paper, but suffice to say that you must be prepared as a brand owner to manager serious data transfer from and to all points in the brand eco-system.
Couple of key points: You will need an EDI partner to work with you and through your enterprise system. You may also need another access point to your enterprise suite, for non-EDI transactions, and for this we would strongly recommend web services, if at all possible.
The subject of data sharing also brings to mind the need for partners/brokers/dealers, vendors and customers to have access to your enterprise suite. Not the entire suite of course, but those records to which they are privy. This might sound like a 'nice to have' but for a brand eco-system where communications and collaboration are the life blood, an enterprise suite optimized for partners, vendors and customers is really a requirement. Receiving a sales order via the fax machine is ok when you have a few orders a day. But when you have hundreds of orders and each one requires negotiation and collaboration with the eco-system, and executive approval in many cases, the fax machine breaks down.
Maybe you think your brands aren't to this point in the sales cycle yet, but it won't be long. If you walk into the office one day and see a stack of sales orders on the fax machine you are in trouble and it's going to take some time and energy to get out of it. First you will need to train partners and customers in using your technology to place order or request quotes. Then you will have to work through all of the logistic issues with their setup. You would be better off coming to the realization early on that enabling your brand eco-system to access your enterprise suite right from the beginning is a better idea than hiring high priced accounting talent to re-key sales orders.

10. The Brand Eco-system, or Eco-system as Brand?

It is normal for brand owners to think about their brand as distinct from the 3rd party companies and business processes that bring it to market and put it finally in the hands of the end user. But be careful not to work at odds with your mission to create a known brand of value in your market. Each link in the chain from design project to manufacturing, logistics, warehousing and distribution adds value to the chain, and it is this chain that creates and supports the brand. Keeping those links tight and strong is really key to long term brand viablity.
In this short white paper we focus on the system and business needs for brand owners. Our conclusion, remarked throughout, is that successful brand ownership requires managing and collaborating with a brand eco-system of customer, suppliers, manufacturers, partners, and third party logistic providers to provide brand value to the end user. The level of management and collaboration required for brand management bespeaks the need for an integrated enterprise suite wherein you have complete visibility into your brand's many moving parts. This is not only a good idea, but a necessary one. We have also argued that the Internet with its sweep and ubiquity is natural ally of the brand owner, and they should use it at every step.
Best wishes and we'll be looking for your brands, soon.

Brand Owner Solution Lessons Learned: Parts 5, 6, and 7

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:44:32 -0400

Our Lessons Learned Whitepaper in Installments

5. Keep a Sharp Eye on Inventory

It's not nearly as easy as it sounds to put a product into the hands of a paying customer, especially when your model requires several third parties along the way. The only way to do it successfully is to manage inventory from the point where it is but a glimmer in your eye until the credit card swipe.
This is not easy or even possible if you are using several different pieces of software to run the business. And if you're thinking that different systems can simply be integrated, or integrated simply, please stop and disabuse yourself of these ideas. Consult any experienced information technology professional with whom you are acquainted and they will tell that no two systems are easily or well integrated, unless they start out this way.
With manufactures and distribution warehouses spread out over great geographical areas, it is vitally important that you understand lead times and safety stock levels, and that you continue to assess these over time as your business grows. Just as important is the seasonal inventory question. Sporting goods will start to jump a couple of months before the high school season begins. If your container arrives after the first game you are going to be sitting on a lot of inventory for a long time.
Managing these inventory levels is much easier when all of your purchasing and sales data is in the same system, enabling the system to do a lot of the work for you. Also, if you are selling to other businesses, then your sales pipeline also gives some very important information about the stock levels that you should be carrying.
The key point here is that in order to manage your brand eco-system with authority, you need to take a enterprise wide view of your systems and processes. Don't let various stakeholders cordon off pieces of your enterprise for their own narrow purposes. Frankly, sales people prefer to use a CRM that is not part of the enterprise suite, because they like autonomy, and are not fond of too much performance measurement. But a stand alone CRM means that your customers are now on their own island and this eventually creates huge supply problems.
Remember: Managing your enterprise means managing your brand-ecosystem. The best, most meticulous managers are not going to manage isolated islands of information well. A well functioning enterprise demands an enterprise suite. The enterprise suite also demands attentive management to create value. Don't stack the odds against yourself.

6. Automate Pricing

Customer pricing and vendor pricing are often the Achilles heel of brand owner organizations. Focused on the sale, as they should be, brand owners often develop a lack of pricing discipline in the market. For example, landing those first customers is important and doing whatever it takes may be necessary. But even as you negotiate prices product by product and customer by customer, try to maintain some rationale in the process.
One way to do this is to keep an historical record on the system of the various opportunities that you are working and the quotes you create. And instead of just adjusting the per unit price, attempt to work a volume price break in conjunction with price tiers. Do whatever it takes to land the business. But try to work the deal into an understandable model. One of the great pain points that we see on every implementation with a brand owner already in business is that they have negotiated prices with every customer and done so without any rhyme or reason.
Again, do what you need to land the business, but try to configure a price model as you move through each deal. Eventually your pricing will start to take shape and you will see patterns develop, based on product line, division, channel, etc.. When you at last have a system that can manage a complex price model you will be able to implement it and start to forecast not only sales but profitability.

7. Exploit the Search Engines

As we mentioned earlier, everyone now understands the need for a corporate web site, much like we all need business cards. The difference is that while all of us understand the use and meaning of a business card, most brand owners have not really asked themselves what the use of the website is and what it means in the larger context of business. Every day, the Internet becomes more important to the world of commerce. If you want your brands to occupy the mindshare they deserve, then a strategy to exploit the search engines is a must.
We hand someone a business card, or staple it to a brochure. Simple enough. But how do we hand someone our website? We should know the answer to this question because, after all, a website costs more than a business card and, day by day, has more gravity in the business world than all the printed marketing material we can muster.
There are two acronyms that every brand owner should know: SEM and SEO. SEM is search engine marketing, and SEO is search engine optimization. SEM is a strategy, with wide ranging tactics, to market your brand via the Internet search engines, like Google, Yahoo and Ask.com. SEO is the goal of optimizing all that you do on the Internet for the search engines.
Without becoming entangled in a lot of jargon, let's offer a few important ideas about what you should be doing online and how you should be doing it. First, your corporate web site, regardless of its main purpose, information or e-commerce, must be built within a context, and that context is the words and phrases that are key to your brand.
You have heard of the elevator pitch? The 30 second explanation of what your company does and why is a well known exercise for new business owners to sharpen their focus. The 'keywords' list is the same thing. A keyword is what someone types into Google as a search term. If you are selling sandals, then you should have a list of all of the keywords that describe your product from 'sandal' to 'beach shoes' and everything in between. What's the point? When you build your site you need to write about your business, brands and products using these keywords; you need to optimize your site for the search engines that will eventually 'crawl' through your site and then unite you with people searching for what you offer.
SEM is a topic greater than this white paper, but the other thing that you must think about is marketing on the Internet. A lot of business people think about marketing or advertising as 'paying for space' in one way or another; but there are other, and we would argue, better ways to create your brand marketing using the Internet. As mentioned earlier, your company has a fascinating story to tell and when you tell it your search engine rankings will take off. Hello customers!

Brand Owner Solution Lessons Learned: Parts 2, 3 and 4

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:27:29 -0400

Our Lessons Learned whitepaper for Brand Owners in installments

Yesterday we started the publication of our Lessons Learned whitepaper in installments, and we continue today with parts 2, 3 and 4.

Again, the purpose of this whitepaper is to introduce some important considerations about enterprise software to brand owners. Let us know what you think.

2. Know Thy Business: Divisions, Product Lines, Warehouses

One of the most important decisions that you will make in brand solution configuration is how you will measure the business. This is one area where starting at the end and moving backwards is very helpful.
How you will eventually slice and dice the data is very important. What does this mean? Well, ask your self these questions and you will start to get a feel for what's at stake:
> How will you sort team members' responsibilities?
> Who is in charge of what products and sales channels?
> How will you measure their results in their areas?
> How will you budget the business?
> How will you look at profitability? By Product? By channel? By product Line? By Product Line within Channel?
> How will you compensate channel/product managers and members?
> How many warehouses will you manage, and where will they be located?
These are just some of the questions that you need to consider. Each Brand Owner is going to have a completely different set of answers, depending on their markets, their product line, their channels, and, interestingly, their volumes. Our experience has taught us that expected sales volumes and expected $ volume per sale are very important determinants for how the business structures the software for optimal business analysis.
Companies looking to enter Brand Ownership must take the time to consider these questions before beginning configuration. Your business plan should help to guide you. Those Brands Owners who are already operating should think about whether their current structure meets all of their needs.
Over the course of time, your decisions on how to measure the business may change. This is to be expected. You must build flexibility into the system at the same time that you build structure. These are not opposing goals: Prioritizing your requirements and understanding the system's native functionality helps you to use the system wisely and keep some options open for future development.

3. Know thy Debits and Credits

The enterprise suite is, after all, an accounting engine as well as a tool for CRM, Inventory Management, Partner Management, etc. Creating a useful Chart of Accounts (COA) is very important not only for the accountants, but as well for anyone else who needs to measure various aspects of the business. It's important to think about the story that financial reports will tell you about your business.
Brand Owners may purchase raw materials, move them to the manufacturer and pay for the manufacturing process; or, the manufacturer may purchase the raw materials, handle logistics, and the brand owner purchases finished goods. These are very different scenarios and each will require a different chart of accounts.
Using the accounting system to its fullest extent will enable your business to transact not only the normal business of buying and selling, but also the unusual transactions of the Brand Owner's eco-system.
For example, many brand owners who deal with large retailers must pay these customers for co-operative marketing. This can be any number of things, from planogram space to catalog advertising fees. Managing the customer payment process and tracking it over time is important to customer profitability metrics. You should try to understand and test these transactions prior to project sign-off. They may require configuration that had not thought of when processing standard transactions.
On the other side of the ledger, some brand owners receive funds from vendors, also for a wide variety of reasons. Setting these transactions up correctly requires time and effort to understand the requirements exactly and test thoroughly.
Having a well crafted chart of accounts is the first step. Using it correctly requires that you understand how the system operates to take full advantage of the COA. Setting up Inventory and Cost of Goods Sold accounts may not be very helpful if you do not understand how to use the Purchase Order.

4. Know Thy Channels

Many brand owners begin with one channel front and center. They focus on an e-commerce market, or perhaps one or a few large retail stores, or catalog sales. At the end of the day, however, we have seen all brand owners move to a multi-channel sales model. Though your initial focus may be one channel or another, it's wise to consider other channels when you start to implement. You may eventually have to measure the business from a retail/wholesale perspective, and without some mechanism in place this will not be easy.
After you have considered the several sales channels you will attack, consider how you are going to attack them. This is a perplexing process for many brand owners and the main reason why most them focus on just one or two channels: They plan for what they know and are comfortable with. But in the end, your brand will end up in many channels and you should begin to understand the processes of each as soon as possible. Direct sales, partner/dealer sales, direct to consumer sales through your own catalog, e-commerce sales are just a few of the ways that brand owner products are sold.
All of these require different processes and different moving parts. Selling via partners will require the ability to calculate partner commissions, for example. And of course sales channels also determine how you decide to distribute product. Third party logistics companies work really well in some channels and not so well in others.
In all cases, a sale is the transaction created by marketing. As you consider various channels, ask yourself how you are going to announce your brand in the market via these channels. In many cases, the brand owners that we meet are very focused on the sale and for the marketing, well, not so much. Everyone now understands the importance of web site to the company, but this is the least you can do with internet marketing. What the world wants to hear is your story and it's a very interesting story. Go to #7 for more details.

Brand Owner Solution Lessons Learned, Part 1: Integrate the Eco-System

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:29:22 -0400

Our Lessons Learned whitepaper for Brand Owners in installments

Lessons Learned

1. Integrate the Brand Eco-system

2. Know Thy Business: Divisions, Product Lines and Warehouses

3. Know Thy Debits and Credits

4. Know Thy Channels

5. Keep a Sharp Eye on Inventory

6. Automate Pricing

7. Exploit the Search Engines

8. Share Data

9. Design "Design" Projects

10. Eco-system as Brand

Synopsis

SightLines Consulting implemented the Solution for Brand Owners in the Sporting Goods, Sports Apparel, Office Product and Candy/Confection markets over the past three years. Our experience with the business processes and requirements of brand owners sharpened our interest in the brand owner market and forged a complete brand owner solution; not a one size fits all model, but a flexible, tailored configuration, enabling Brand Owners in many industries to manage their brands and their businesses in the hyper competitive world marketplace.

Underlying the Solution for Brand Owners is our awareness of the importance of managing the relationships that support the brand: We call this the Brand Eco-system. Your products may be sold in a variety of channels, and your software needs to support all of them.

Then there are the vendors who manufacture, ship and distribute your products to the sales channels. Keeping the cost side of the business aligned with your brand market also requires a flexible and well crafted software solution.

This whitepaper details how our Solution for Brand Owners enables Brand Eco-system management and competitive advantage in the marketplace.

1. Integrate the Brand Ecosystem
Brand owners require a complex eco-system of vendors, manufacturers, designers, 3rd party logistic and distribution providers, and partners before their branded product lands in the hands of an end user customer. Managing this eco-system is the key to brand ownership, and management of the eco-system requires an integrated, enterprise database.
Multiple systems for various roles in the eco-system ultimately ends in failure and more re-work than value added effort. An integrated eco-system requires an integrated database. The only way to understand long range supply needs is to have sales forecast and inventory in a single system. Sounds simplistic, but it is the rare company, let alone brand owner, that can claim to have laid this foundation stone.
There are many ways to communicate today. Telecomm is pervasive. Our experience is that brand owners tend to rely upon the telephone and an email application to manage most of their communications. But do these tools enable collaboration? Sure, to a degree, but their focus is on a single back and forth exchange; or, in the case of email, a single thread.
An integrated system can manage these communication threads, bringing them all together into a single database where customer, brand and vendor records exist together. Collaboration requires a focus on multiple exchanges from multiple entities within the eco-system, with a reviewable history.

It Was NOT All a Waste

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 08:24:25 -0500

Avoiding IT Project Disasters: Prototype Early and Often and Other Important Lessons

Recently, one of the world's largest companies, and a leader in their industry, filed a lawsuit against the German software giant SAP. The plaintiff, Waste Management, Inc., contends that they were duped into investing $100 Million in an SAP software solution for the Waste Management and Recycling industry that was untested and defective. This is a rare bird indeed.

It's not that unusual for smaller companies to make a public complaint about a software failure. Smaller companies are normally run by the owners, and if they want to vent in public, they are going to damn well vent in public. When working with the Small Medium Enterprise, one must take special care - a good lesson to remember.

However, large companies, where the owners are represented by a board that management must answer to, rarely ever talk about failures of any kind, software or otherwise. More politically savvy, executives at large companies realize that in the end any failure will reflect back to them. In many, or actually most, cases when large, software implementations go bust, both sides eat some humble pie and move forward with nary a public utterance.

So to see such a public complaint filed by a company the size of Waste Management is both rare and surprising. What inspired it is quite interesting. Waste Management contends that they were given a series of demonstrations of the software product over the course of eight months that were actually rigged. The software that they saw was just a 'mock-up' thrown together for the purpose of the demonstration, with no 'real' foundation in reality. If true, this is one of the most incredible allegations that I have ever heard in the software industry, for two reasons. First that a software company would do something that stupid, and second that a prospect would not have the wherewithal to see that there was no engine under the hood - those engine noises are just a tape playing.

Software and software implementations can fail for an infinite number of reasons. But there are some simple strategies that you can take to make the most of your investment and keep the implementation on track. For small and medium enterprises that are considering a substantial investment in software, please consider the following appeals to the better, and wiser, angels of your nature:

Use a consultant. Self-serving, yes of course. But if I sold canoes and you wanted to cross a deep, fast river, I would do my level best to sell you a canoe. I like to eat, and sleep in a warm bed, as much as the next guy, I won't deny it. But more importantly, I do not want to see you drown. Selling you swimming trunks would be selfish and a disaster. Outfitting you properly for the challenge ahead is value we all profit from.
Prototype early and often. You can use a free live account of SaaS software, like NetSuite, in most cases. But a free, live account does not by itself suffice. See #1. Hire a consultant to at least help you to understand in 'system think' what your processes are and then help you to prototype them on the system. We do this for many clients: Business Process Analysis and System Prototype are the first two, and the most important steps, in the implementation process. Once you see how the solution goes together, you won't have any problem finishing the implementation yourself, provided you have the time to spend doing system configuration and training. But for gosh sakes, don't just jump in the river and start swimming furiously. You'll be surprised at how easily you sap (no pun intended) your strength.
Be realistic. It's software folks, and there are going to be holes and defects. There is not a business software anywhere at any time that fully meets all of the challenges that are thrown at it. Human beings can find more ways of doing business in a day than software engineers will ever understand in a lifetime.

But letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is a failed approach, also. One of the important things that all business managers should have before going into a system implementation is a list of objectives, all with a value for importance to the business. After you assess the software, ask yourself if it has met your objectives. The thing that we often see is that a company goes into the implementation with no list of objectives, and by the time they call us they are frustrated because they have discovered some nagging issue with the software. Quite often this issue has been blown way out of proportion as they have no business objectives for the implementation and therefore are not seeing the issue in the context of the entire software implementation. They are focused on one or two minor points to the detriment of all else.

After almost 20 years of doing software implementation, the one thing I can say with all honesty is that it is not getting any easier. It is a rigorous job. It requires a ton of patience and understanding. Finger pointing is a waste of effort. We make a strong attempt at collegiality with our clients because we know in the end that we will have to lean on each other to make it work, and it's hard to form a team with people you are not getting along with. But there has to be honesty first and foremost. If either side feels like the other is hiding something, then there is going to be trouble. No one profits in these cases. Except the lawyers. What a waste.

If you would like to read more about the SAP and Waste Management Case, you'll find a good overview, here.

Sprawl Fight Short Company Goes Live!

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 08:20:42 -0500

I'm a lover - and a fighter - and I love this Fight Short Site.

It's been a fun week here at SightLines Consulting with two go lives to introduce. Today we are announcing the go-live of the Sprawl Fight Short Company.

You can check out their new web site at http://www.sprawl.tv. This company is in one of the fastest growing sports in the country, MMA, or mixed, martial arts. They were the original Fight Short Company and they continue to offer the best in the business.

Steve Izzi, one of the company's owners, was an excellent person to work with. When he said that work was going to be done, it was. We held ourselves to the same standard and as a result the project finished in just over two months, and go live went off without a hitch. Sprawl is using the entire NetSuite application from Sales Force Automation to Marketing, Accounting, Inventory and full E-commerce to sell to their retail and wholesale markets. So this was full NetSuite implementation, from A to Z. Sprawl is setup to run for years on NetSuite, and evolve as they wish or need to along the way.

And again, as I have written recently, Sprawl took the smart road by implementing their e-commerce site within NetSuite and using the NetSuite content management system to the utmost. As a result, they can evolve the site over time without a PHD in HTML or a lot of professional services. Steve Izzi will be the first to tell you that he is not an expert in html coding, but he and his team, Scott and Craig, have all caught on to managing their NetSuite e-commerce module. Unlike a lot of static sites, Sprawl's will continue to change over time as the market requires, and Steve and the team will manage it all. The site makes excellent use of graphics and text. We expect it to achieve excellent organic SEO.

We also had a chance to do some interesting things on the site. We implemented a custom solution for the matrix items so that the size dropdown will only display those items that are in stock. This has always been a bugaboo with matrix items, because in the native solution the shopper does not learn that the item is out of stock until they get to the shopping cart. Even this custom solution was done with sensitivity to the fact that Steve and his crew will need to maintain it over time; so all they have to do is follow a few simple rules when they add new items to the site.

On the ERP side we implemented an account structure that enables a clear view of product line profitability. This is going to give Sprawl an excellent view of what they need to upsell to make their business more profitable.

Overall it was an excellent project. We enjoyed some chuckles along the way, but we got the work done together and responsibly. This is the key to a successful implementation. Best of luck to Sprawl. And if you want to be a grappler, check them out!

Indian Harvest: Great Products and a Great Brand and a Great, Brand New Website.

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 07:40:07 -0500

A SightLines Client Takes Their New Website Live!

I love hearty food, maybe a little too much actually. But during this Winter in Michigan, it's been cold and snowy, there is nothing like a great bowl of soup. And what's better in that steaming bowl than the goodness of natural grains?

OK, that's my plug for one of our recent clients, Indian Harvest. We just implemented a new website for them that I think really captures the essence of their brand. Take a look for yourself at http://www.indianharvest.com.

A little about what we did in the implementation and why. First, like I advocated the other day, we used NetSuite's E-commerce and Web Content Management System to the utmost. I think that you will agree that the client has both a great looking site, and a highly functional one. The photos and text supplied by Trevor Duininck and his staff, especially Mary Beth Dickey, are great, and they really pop on the site. Most importantly, Trevor and the staff can make changes to the site over time, let it evolve with their market, and they can do it without a Phd in HTML, or the services of a professional. Adding a new product should take less that 10 minutes.

We also did some cool stuff. It's not completed yet, and you can get a 'taste' of it here, on the page for Black Pearl Medley. We have added functionality to the site for the dynamic display of recipes for each item. As Trevor and the staff add recipes and link them to one or more products they will dynamically show up on the product pages. This is much better than a simple static group of recipes on the site.

We also added several custom fields to the system using NetSuite's built in, flexible customization tool, SuiteFlex. Again, this allows the staff at Indian Harvest to maintain the site very easily, and display a lot of information that's intrinsic to their business. Indian Harvest sells primarily to professionals who purchase in large quantities, and the regular customers will soon take advantage of the My Account functionality to log directly into a branded customer center.

SightLines would like to thank Indian Harvest for their work with us on the site - they did a wonderful job. Good outcomes mean that both sides did their part, and that was certainly the case here.

Hey, it was 14 degrees last night in Michigan - I'm thinking of Chicken and Wild Rice with some finely minced prosciutto, or how about Vegetable and Quinoa, or a great six bean chile? Yeah, that'll do!

Exploiting NetSuite's Content Management System for Your Web Site

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:08:34 -0500

You Purchased NetSuite - So Use NetSuite

Last week I talked about using NetSuite's inherent capabilities for SEO, search engine optimization, which I believe are excellent. This week, I want to broaden the argument a bit and talk about using NetSuite's Content Management system to generate, manage and grow your company's web presence.

Like so many of the posts here, this one started due to the pain that I come across on a pretty regular basis out here in the SME (small and medium enterprise) market. This started when a client that I have work with on a fairly regular basis asked us if we could help them make some changes to their website. Sure, of course we can. And then the pain started.

I knew that a pretty large consulting firm had helped them create their original site, but I had no idea that they had done an almost complete workaround of the system. Yes, it's housed in NetSuite, but uses none of the features of the system that make it pretty easy and straightforward to maintain and grow a site over time. This site is full e-commerce, but outside of the shopping cart, the rest of the site is custom headache.

Every little change takes hours to pull off. Adding a new product required almost a complete rewrite of the page that displays information on that product's category. All custom html. When I brought this up, very tactfully, with the original developers I heard that custom html was the only way to achieve the beautiful look and feel that they needed for a great brand. They were right about one thing: The client does have a great brand. But their custom code does nothing to enhance it. Half the time, when you look at the site it's out of alignment, or there are broken pieces here and there.

So last week the client needed a couple of new items added, and we went through hell and high water and it took almost 4 days to complete. We just didn't have room on the project schedule, but tried our best to get it done. There are NetSuite clients reading this right now who cannot believe it. But it's true. What should literally take 4 minutes, and takes them often less than 4 minutes, took 4 days of screwing around.

Another thing that I see a lot of is NetSuite client's who do not do e-commerce building their sites outside of NetSuite. What's the point with generating a web presence in NetSuite you ask? Well, if you are doing internet marketing I think that there are some really good reasons to consider a NetSuite web site. Understanding your site traffic is really only possible if you use NetSuite's Advanced Analytics. And again, managing content is so much easier with NetSuite than with a custom site. This is why custom corporate sites hardly ever evolve with the company they supposedly represent: They are simply to difficult to maintain for the non-coders.

In sum, a custom html website has no upside and lots of downside. I used to think that perhaps the developers really did care so much about the look and feel that they had to do custom sites. Now I am not so sure. After the past 4 days I am starting to wonder if they create custom html sites instead of using NetSuite's native Content Management System because they can charge a lot more for a custom site, and the ongoing support work helps them to manage slow times. Hmmm...

Of course if you are not ready to ask some good questions and really understand what you are buying, you might end up with anything.

NetSuite SEO

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 08:12:07 -0500

For Those of You Who Do Not Receive Our Newsletter, A Re-print of the NetSuite SEO Article

We receive a fair number of inquiries from prospects about NetSuite's SEO capabilities. For those who want to sell online, 'Search Engine Optimization' is a very important topic. A lot of people concentrate on the software when they think about SEO, but we would maintain that this is not the right approach. NetSuite, and any other shopping cart that you can name, do not by themselves provide SEO, though they can help. NetSuite now offers Descriptive URLs and Page Titles to assist with SEO. If you are using NetCommerce you should certainly be using these also.

When we implement NetSuite's NetCommerce at SightLines, we start with a lot of grunt work to help a site's seo. We detail what's required below:

Before you get started with NetSuite you should have a clear SEO strategy laid out. First, create a brainstorming list of search keywords that you think might be likely in your market. Then find synonyms. For example, equipment and gear are often used interchangeably, as are antique and vintage. Then test your list using several of the popular search engines and see where you might fit in, from both the general search and adword cost perspectives. This becomes the keyword hitlist.

Finally, once you pare down the list, make sure that you include the most important keywords in your Tab, Category and Item descriptions. The thing that we often see is NetCommerce clients who complain that they are not getting the hits they expected, is that they have not implemented a keyword strategy on their sites. SEO is finally what one machine thinks about another machine, but the human element cannot be underestimated. You can favorably impact your SEO by implementing a SEO strategy. There is no magic, just a lot of hard work.

Writing is not an easy task for a lot of NetCommerce users. But this is perhaps the most important part of the site. After the look and feel are refined, a lot of business owners think the job is done: Great Looking Store, we'll clean up. Well, not exactly. As a rule of thumb you should spend three times as much effort writing the content of the site as refining the look and feel. Why so much effort? Because you need to creatively and cleverly describe, in words, what you are selling and how the buyer is going to love it, all the while using the SEO optimization keyword hitlist. It's not as easy as it sounds. But take a look at the sites in your industry with the best organic search results and you will see that they do exactly this.

Announcing the NetSuite Solution for Brand Owners

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Verticalized Software Specifically for Brand Owners of Consumer Packaged Goods

Today SightLines Consulting announces its first NetSuite Vertical - The Solution for Brand Owners.

Brand owners? Ok, I know that this term is not yet part of regular business vocabulary, but I believe that it will be in the near future. These new enterprises are coming on line pretty quickly and really making waves in a lot of different areas.

Essentially a brand owner is an enterprise that brings products to market, from concept to cash. They develop product specs, source the manufacturing, in many cases they outsource the distribution, but they bring their products to market with great focus and energy - all of it concentrated on the core brand products. A brand Owner's most important task is to manage their Brand Ecosystem. This is the vast network of raw material vendors, manufacturers, logistics providers, distribution houses, partners/brokers and employees. All of these moving parts form the information value chain that brand owners require for success.

SightLines' Solution for Brand Owners is a specifically tailored solution for enabling brand owners to manage this ecosystem efficiently. For example, brand owners must sometimes pay customers for the product marketing. We have created a unique system to record and track these payments to customers. It's just one small example of how the solution enables a brand owner to meet market requirements.

Over the past three years we have helped several brand owners implement the solution, and have refined the solution each time. Here a few example:

Candy enterprise contracts manufacturing, packaging and distribution, while managing a vast network of brokers who put the product on store shelves
Sports apparel enterprise contracts manufacturing, aftermarket product embroidery, logistics and distribution and sells through both channel partners and e-commerce site
Sports equipment enterprise contracts manufacturing, does in house distribution and sells via broker reps and e-commerce site
Office Equipment enterprise develop private label and retail store brands, contracts manufacturing and distribution and sells through retail chains, catalogs and e-commerce site (future).

SightLines Consulting has come a long way in the last three years. Our beginnings were inuaspicious to say the least. In announcing our first NetSuite Vertical, a software solution built specifically for Brand Owners, we are also announcing that we have turned the corner and are now a full scale NetSuite Integrator with the ability to meet all of the needs of the typical NetSuite client, from implementation to ongoing service and support, from business process engineering to system customization, from SuiteScript to a custom Integration Appliance.

You'll be hearing more about the Solution for Brand Owners as the week progresses.

NetSuite for Geniuses: Using Locations and Bins

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Locations and Bins are NOT Interchangeable

When deciding on using multiple inventory locations and bins for managing your physical inventory, make sure that you understand them well and use them properly. There is one very important consequences of your decision:

You can fulfill a single sales order from multiple locations, but each location requires its own fulfillment, and therefore its own packing slip. What this means is that if if you have several physical inventory locations, i.e., warehouses, you must be careful on how you set them up. If they are all in the same physical location, then use one location and bins to identify the warehouses. If the warehouses are at different sites then you can use multiple locations and, of course, multiple bins within each location.

Are you a NetSuite Administrator?

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 10:11:04 -0500

We now have a group on Facebook just for you!

I have been meaning to announce that I have started a NetSuite Administrators group on facebook, the popular social networking site. I hope it will become a place for positive place for NetSuite super users to get together and share their knowledge. There are not a lot of rules, but I would like it to gel into something that all participants can find useful. So here are a few things that I, for one, find useful:

If you figured out a way to do something in NetSuite that was pretty cool and you want to shine for a bit, come and tell us what it was and how you did it. You might be surprised at the number of people that would help
If you have questions about how to manage NetSuite use, adoption and oversight in your organization, I think that we all could benefit from those discussions
We don't want to take the place of the user forums, but it would be great if we could have higher level discussions about managing a business in NetSuite, how NetSuite plays with other critical applications, etc.

Of course, we want to keep this a place where we call can find some enlightenment. I realize that software can some days be frustrating, and believe me you are not alone. I want our facebook NetSuite user group to welcome all who have a mature perspective.

So if you think that this NetSuite Super User group might be of interest to you, then please find us on Facebook. We are just getting started and would love to hear from you. Check it here: Facebook NetSuite Super Users.

NetSuite for Geniuses: It's Tax Time

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 09:55:31 -0500

Generating 1099s in NetSuite for the Contractors

We always receive several inquiries this time of year about printing 1099s from NetSuite for contractors that have worked for your business over the past year. It's actually quite simple.

First, you should be paying them from a specific expense account, or even from several specific expense accounts. So, when you look at the P&L you should see line items for Contractor Labor, or something similar. Some clients will create different accounts for different types of labor; for example, one for creative and another for technical. They can all roll up of course to a single contract labor account for totalling, also.

When you setup your accounts be sure to enter a value in the 1099-Misc Category field (only visible when setting up an expense account). Normally, for labor it is "7. Non-Employee Compensation," but if you have questions then please consult your accountant.

To manage the time, create a Service Item. Depending on how you bill time, the service item can work in several ways; but for the purpose of this discussion, suffice to say that you should set it up to charge the cost of the hours to the expense account we setup above for contractor labor, and charge the revenue to an income account for services.

In this way, you can enter the contractor's hours on a bill by selecting your service item: This sets up the contractor for payment, and sets up the client for invoicing, at the same time.

Even if the hours are not billable to the customer, logging them on the bill still makes sense, and it will feed the right account so that, at tax time, you can quickly run your 1099s for your contractors.

NetSuite and NetSuite Consulting | SightLines

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