RF-SMART Blog

NetSuite ROI: How to get your Team on Board

Written by Ruth Rosenstock | July 07, 2023

When a company begins to evaluate new technology, there are many different people involved during that evaluation. New software affects different roles within the organization and provides them with efficiency, scalability, and more. Because software can impact so many, it’s imperative that the right people be involved in the decision-making process. How can supply chain professionals engage the C-Suite in their evaluation?

A software evaluation will usually start because a business challenge has arisen within a department. For many companies, it’s not uncommon for these challenges to be uncovered in supply chain - meaning that a Director of Supply Chain or a Warehouse Manager is often the person evaluating how new software could solve their challenges. However, it’s important to involve key people from the C-Suite in this decision as well. The decision maker we most often see involved is the Chief Financial Officer.

Why Should Supply Chain Matter to Your CFO?

Supply chain is finance! Your company’s biggest assets are wrapped up in supply chain. With three out of every four U.S. businesses reporting supply chain disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chains everywhere are being re-evaluated for efficiency and accuracy. Since only 26% of Supply Chains say that their analytics capabilities are comprehensive, here’s some other reasons CFOs should be taking a closer look at supply chain:

  • CFOs have a unique responsibility to ensure supply chain resilience; they set the “tone at the top”
  • CFOs need to be very strategic in analyzing the supply chain and a proactive force in identifying and mitigating supply chain risk
  • Analytics can help CFOs uncover areas of potential supply chain disruption, or places where you’re gambling on your revenue stream and shareholder value. This is why a unified system like NetSuite is important; it provides the ability to expand that unified system with supply chain automation with solutions like RF-SMART.

Why should CFOs be a part of the evaluation process from the start?

Companies must have a growth plan to ensure they stay on top of running their businesses. The only way to make positive change is to have the information to analyze. If you’re spending hours putting together numbers and spreadsheets to find out what has happened after the fact, making on-time decisions become difficult. For companies to survive and grow, they need to be proactive, not reactive.

Let's take a look at four of the ways cloud technology can provide data to make those proactive decisions:

1. System Unification

  • ERPs replace disparate and diverse integration solutions
  • They create visibility across information flows to enable better-informed business decisions
  • An ERP solution provides centralized and collaborative governance for efficient control

2. Scalability and Resiliency

  • A cloud infrastructure and ecosystem creates connectivity for optimal uptime and broad reach
  • Cloud technology creates agility to respond quickly to customer or market changes
  • It increases data quality, which can increase trust in data-driven outcomes over the extended enterprise

3. Ecommerce/Digital Business

  • Cloud ERPs enable digital transformation initiatives with data and agile integration
  • Increased digital presence creates faster time-to-market
  • Digital business can increase customer and partner engagement

4. NetSuite WMS Cost Optimization

  • Leverage economies of scale in infrastructure to lower operations costs
  • Warehouse Management Systems leverage the availability of in-demand technical skills to optimize human capital costs
  • It enables partners with visibility and self-service to lower inquiry and onboarding time

For companies to grow and survive they need to be adaptable, efficient, and have a strong ROI. When choosing new software for an organization, both the Supply Chain Director and the CFO need to be aligned on expectations for ROI. When expectations are aligned, you can create a roadmap for how a software platform can make life easier and bring more money to the bottom line. We recommend evaluating what you want to achieve in the marketplace and performing an ROI analysis while evaluating software. By doing this, it will be loud and clear that you are not wasting any time by implementing a software that won’t provide value to you in the future.

 

To learn more about how RF-SMART can help you calculate your expected ROI, schedule a call with our team!

 

About the Author: Ruth Rosenstock joined the RF-SMART team as a Partner Engagement Executive in 2020. Her previous experience includes working with both Oracle and NetSuite. Ruth has assisted more than 500 customers on their NetSuite journey.