Oracle NetSuite CRM: Precision-Driven Customer Relationships

Company Overview

NetSuite, a subsidiary of Oracle, is a prominent cloud-based enterprise software company. Founded in 1998 and acquired by Oracle in 2016, NetSuite has headquarters in Austin, Texas. NetSuite offers a wide array of products designed to support various business functions. Their flagship product, NetSuite Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), provides a centralized system for managing financial and operational data accessible from multiple devices and locations. Their ERP solution integrates seamlessly with other NetSuite applications, including customer relationship management (CRM), inventory management, human capital management, payroll, procurement, project management, and e-commerce.

Oracle NetSuite's customer relationship management (CRM) essentially acts as an add-on module to their ERP system, enhancing the core platform with advanced sales force automation, comprehensive marketing automation tools, and robust customer service management capabilities. These features include sales and opportunity management, targeted marketing campaigns, and efficient case management, ensuring a seamless customer experience and driving business growth.

The company emphasizes data security and compliance, is SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 certified, and holds ISO certifications. They aim to provide businesses with a seamless and efficient CRM solution that drives growth and enhances customer relationships.

Although NetSuite does not hold a Better Business Bureau (BBB) accreditation, they have an A+ rating, demonstrating their dedication to providing top-notch customer service. The company’s acquisition by Oracle has further strengthened their market position, enabling them to leverage Oracle’s resources and expertise to enhance their product offerings and expand their global reach.

Features & Services

Sales force automation

• Opportunity management: This feature helps your sales team track potential sales by organizing all the information about each opportunity in one place. This includes details like the deal's status, expected revenue, essential contacts, notes, and related documents. It ensures everyone follows the same successful sales process and allows managers to see all leads and opportunities quickly
• Quote management: NetSuite makes creating and managing sales quotes easy. You can quickly turn quotes into approved sales orders and process them hassle-free. The system also provides intelligent recommendations to help you suggest additional products based on customer buying habits
• Sales forecasting: This feature helps predict future sales more accurately. It uses real-time data and various checks to provide a reliable sales forecast. Sales representatives can categorize different types of transactions (like opportunities, quotes, and estimates) and use adjustable probability measurements to refine forecasts. This way, you can analyze expected sales and compare them to actual results
• Incentive compensation management: NetSuite allows you to create and manage complex commission plans for your sales team. You can base commissions on sales targets, quantities sold, or product profitability. The system ensures transparency so salespeople can trust their commission calculations and focus more on selling. It also allows splitting commissions among team members and calculating commissions for managers and executives
• Contract renewals: This feature automates contract renewals. It tracks assets that need renewal and helps maximize renewal revenue. You get real-time insights into your existing contracts, renewal pipeline, and revenue status. The system simplifies revenue recognition by handling contract renewal and billing in one process while allowing a different revenue recognition process
• Intelligent item recommendations: NetSuite uses artificial intelligence to suggest products based on customer activities, purchase history, and buying patterns. These recommendations aim to increase order size and frequency. The system shows personalized product suggestions during sales order entry and on customer-facing e-commerce solutions

Marketing automation

• Marketing automation: This feature helps automate your entire marketing process, making aligning your campaigns with the sales team easier. It provides a framework for targeting, building, executing, and measuring the success of your campaigns. It simplifies the process of qualifying and converting leads, allowing for quick responses to maximize opportunities
• Campaign management: With this tool, you can create and track personalized marketing campaigns tailored to your audience’s demographics, purchase trends, response patterns, and support histories. It lets you coordinate marketing activities across various channels like email, direct mail, and events, ensuring consistent and relevant brand engagement. It also manages email marketing campaigns, with features like database management, segmentation, email personalization, and compliance with SPAM regulations
• Landing pages and forms: NetSuite’s web-to-lead forms allow prospects to enter their details into the CRM system in real-time. This information is immediately routed to the appropriate salesperson, enabling quick responses and increasing conversion rates. It also enhances sales productivity by providing detailed analysis of interactions, such as phone calls, tasks, meetings, and notes
• Lead reporting and analytics: This feature offers complete insight into your marketing efforts, tracking the success of your programs by lead source and promotion type in real-time. It helps measure the ROI of lead-generation programs and analyze campaign statistics from start to finish. You can categorize and assess the number of touchpoints needed to move a lead through the sales process, providing a clear view of your marketing performance

Customer service management

• Case management: This feature helps you handle customer support cases efficiently by managing and routing them from various channels like phone, fax, email, and web. It tracks support cases based on product, issue, case type, partner, or customer. To ensure high-quality support, you can monitor important customer service metrics such as call resolution times, customer satisfaction, subscription renewals, call volumes, and case trends
• Customer portal: This tool provides an online self-service option for customers, allowing them to submit support cases, track order status, and engage in interactive communication. Customers can view past support cases, quotes, and order history, saving time and enhancing their experience with your brand. The portal lets customers view and pay invoices or submit return authorizations without directly contacting support
• Knowledge management: This feature allows you to create a rich, searchable database of support articles, best practices, help topics, and training videos. You can easily organize and publish content, enabling customers and support teams to find the necessary information quickly. Users can submit online support cases if the search results don’t answer their questions

Partner relationship management

• Joint selling: This feature lets resellers place and track orders independently while giving your sales team complete visibility. Both employees and partners can be paid on the same sales transaction, and partner commissions can be calculated using the same criteria for employees
• Joint demand generation: Partners can register and track their leads, and your channel manager will automatically be notified to monitor sales activities and offer support. This feature helps measure the success of joint marketing efforts by enhancing lead management, tracking acquisition costs and conversion rates, allowing you to optimize future campaigns
• Sales forecasting: This tool provides access to partner sales forecasts, adding weighted probability insights to show potential revenue at each sales cycle stage. It also allows you to review real-time data on actual sales performance, recurring revenue, and partner commissions
• Partner commissions and royalties: Partner commissions are processed automatically, allowing channel managers to focus on driving new business. Commissions can be calculated using the same parameters for employees, such as sales, quantities, profitability, or custom criteria
• Knowledge management and sharing: Partners get access to a wealth of information, sales materials, and marketing assets through an online Partner Center. This feature also simplifies channel compensation management by allowing partners to view their commissions in the partner portal

Reporting and analytics

NetSuite’s reporting and analytics feature offers built-in reporting, real-time analytics, and customizable, role-based dashboards to help sales, marketing, and service teams continuously monitor their performance. Sales managers can measure continuous sales performance using personalized key performance indicators (KPIs) and track progress against goals such as achieved versus quota, actual versus sales forecast, and sales pipeline by stage.
Customer service teams can monitor key metrics like call resolution times, customer satisfaction, subscription renewals, call volumes, and case trends, allowing them to identify common issues and improve service based on real-time feedback.

Marketing teams can analyze benchmarks such as lead-to-close metrics, the number of unique website visitors, lead generation trends, and customer acquisition costs to understand which campaigns are effective and where improvements are needed. This comprehensive feature ensures continuous performance monitoring, better customer service, and effective marketing analysis, providing all teams with the real-time insights and personalized dashboards necessary to stay focused on their goals and enhance overall performance.

Pricing & Plans

NetSuite offers a flexible and scalable pricing model designed to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes. Instead of fixed pricing plans, NetSuite requires potential customers to request a quote for a customized solution tailored to their specific requirements. The pricing structure includes several key components: an annual license fee, optional modules, user licenses, and a one-time implementation fee.

The annual license fee provides access to the core platform, which includes essential functionalities for managing your business. To use their CRM software, you must also purchase a license for NetSuite ERP, the foundation for other integrated applications. Optional modules can be added based on your business needs, such as inventory management, human capital management, payroll, procurement, project management, and e-commerce. Each employee who uses the system requires a user license, and you can easily add more licenses as your team grows. The one-time implementation fee covers NetSuite's initial setup and integration into your business processes.

NetSuite’s pricing model is highly customizable. As your business expands, you can activate new modules and add users, ensuring you only pay for what you need. Depending on your business's complexity, additional fees for implementation services may exist. To obtain detailed pricing information and an accurate quote, you are recommended to contact NetSuite directly to discuss your specific needs.

Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages

• Mobility: NetSuite’s mobile app lets users view, enter, and update key customer and sales data directly from a tablet or mobile device. This enables users to manage everyday activities such as viewing calendar reminders, logging call notes, creating quotes, and submitting timesheets and expenses with easy snap-and-attach receipts, ensuring productivity on the go
• Scalability: NetSuite is designed to grow with your business. As your company expands, you can easily scale the system by adding more users and activating additional modules. This scalability ensures that your software can handle increased workloads and complex operations without requiring a complete overhaul
• Highly customizable: NetSuite offers extensive customization options that allow businesses to tailor the platform to their unique requirements. From custom fields and forms to tailored workflows and reports, NetSuite can be configured to align perfectly with your business processes and objectives
• Real-time sales data: With NetSuite, you can access real-time sales data and analytics. This feature lets you monitor sales performance, track opportunities, and quickly make informed decisions. Having up-to-date information at your fingertips helps you stay agile and responsive to market changes
• AI assistant: NetSuite leverages artificial intelligence to enhance its functionalities. The AI assistant provides intelligent item recommendations based on customer purchase history and buying patterns. This helps increase order size and frequency while also improving customer satisfaction by offering relevant product suggestions
• Extensive automation: NetSuite offers robust automation features for various business processes, including sales, marketing, and customer service. Automating routine tasks reduces manual work, minimizes errors, and increases overall productivity. Features like automated campaign management and lead routing ensure that your team can focus on high-value activities

Disadvantages

• Set-up fee: Implementing NetSuite comes with a one-time implementation fee that covers the initial setup and integration of the system into your business processes. This can be a significant upfront cost, particularly for small businesses or startups with limited budgets
• Cannot be purchased as a stand-alone product: NetSuite CRM is not available as a stand-alone product; it requires a license for the NetSuite ERP system. This means that businesses interested in only the CRM functionalities must also invest in the ERP platform, potentially increasing the overall cost
• Steep learning curve: NetSuite has a steep learning curve due to their extensive features and customization options. New users may require time and training to become proficient with the system, which can initially slow down adoption and productivity
• Could be costly: Depending on the specific needs and size of your business, the cost of NetSuite can become high. The combination of the annual license fee, optional modules, user licenses, and implementation services can add up, making it a significant investment. Businesses need to carefully assess their requirements and budget to ensure they can afford the ongoing costs

The Customer Experience

NetSuite is not accredited by the BBB but have earned an A+ rating, similar to their parent company, Oracle, which is accredited and holds an A+ rating. While NetSuite CRM does not have a standalone profile on customer review sites, the overall NetSuite solution is reviewed with a 1.6 out of 5 on Trustpilot, 4.0 out of 5 on G2, and 4.1 out of 5 on Capterra. Since NetSuite CRM lacks an independent review profile, many reviews below partly reflect experiences with NetSuite’s CRM, broader ERP, and overall platform.

Positive feedback

NetSuite receives positive feedback for its ability to provide personalized support and guidance. Users often note the platform's flexibility in adapting to their business needs. The customization options allow businesses to configure the system to align with their processes, which many find beneficial for managing various functions like financials and customer relationships.

In addition, customers appreciate the integration of NetSuite’s ERP, CRM, and other business tools into a single platform. This integration is valued for simplifying operations by reducing the need to work across multiple systems, which in turn helps businesses maintain efficiency. The platform's ability to provide real-time insights across different departments is another aspect that users find helpful in managing their day-to-day activities and making informed decisions.

Critical feedback

While NetSuite offers robust features, several users have noted some drawbacks. A common concern is the platform's complexity and steep learning curve, particularly during the initial setup and when customizing the system. This complexity can make it challenging for users without technical expertise to navigate and optimize NetSuite effectively. Additionally, some users mentioned that the system can be slow, particularly when loading pages or running reports, which can disrupt workflow.

Cost is another frequently mentioned downside, with users pointing out that NetSuite can be expensive, especially when adding new modules or customizing the system to fit specific business needs. The reliance on internet connectivity is also a potential drawback, as any disruption in service can lead to significant downtime.

Moreover, while NetSuite offers extensive customization options, some users feel that these options can be overwhelming and require ongoing maintenance, making it a resource-intensive investment.

Customer Service & Support Options

For customer support, you can contact NetSuite for general inquiries at +1.650.506.7000 and sales at +1.877.638.7848. You can also engage with their team through live chat on their website.

NetSuite also provides a support community where users can connect and share insights. To help users get the most out of their platform, they offer product demos, webinars, and a variety of blogs on their website.

Conclusion

NetSuite, founded in 1998 and acquired by Oracle in 2016, is a leading cloud-based enterprise software provider. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, they offer a versatile CRM platform that integrates seamlessly with their renowned ERP system. This integration allows businesses to manage customer relationships, streamline sales processes, and enhance marketing efforts within a single, unified platform.

NetSuite’s key strengths include their comprehensive feature set, real-time data access, high customization, and scalability. The platform grows with your business by adding users and modules as needed. Customer feedback highlights the platform’s flexibility, personalized support, and the benefits of a unified system that streamlines operations by integrating ERP and CRM. However, users often point out the steep learning curve, significant initial setup costs, and dependency on the NetSuite ERP system for CRM functionality as challenges.

Despite these challenges, NetSuite’s integrated, scalable solution makes them a strong choice for businesses aiming to enhance efficiency and drive growth. For those interested in revolutionizing their customer relationship management, NetSuite CRM’s features and benefits offer compelling reasons to consider them a strategic investment.

If NetSuite CRM isn’t the right match for your business, consider exploring our reviews of other top CRM providers and using our comparison tool to weigh your options. For additional insights and updates on CRM trends, visit our blog for the latest information.

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