The real-life benefits of Phocas for NetSuite users

NetSuite is an ERP with many benefits for its users. However, like most ERP systems, reporting from NetSuite can be time-consuming and lack the depth many businesses need. This is where business intelligence comes in.

With business intelligence (BI), NetSuite users can take their company data into their own hands, and analyze it to obtain actionable insight with the click of a button. Phocas provides best-in-class BI solutions, which many NetSuite users have already experienced the benefits of.

This blog will explore 3 ways in which real NetSuite customers have benefited from Phocas BI.

1. Be on the front foot

There is nothing more damaging to a business than constantly having to react to threats and problems. This leaves little time for strategy, development or improvement of internal processes. Businesses with a BI solution, however, are able to leverage their company data and identify trends before they become problems.

Perhaps a key account is showing the first signs of declining sales, or maybe a particularly expensive product line is about to become dead stock? With BI these insights are easy to pick up, and do not require hours or days of back and forth between yourself and the IT department to create custom reports. Simply set up a dashboard tracking relevant metrics, and start your day by having a quick look. If it seems there is anything of interest, click the widget and dive into the underlying data. Here you can quickly see what is driving the trend; is a sales rep not selling a particular product line, are sales declining in a key area, or perhaps the customer with declining sales needs a sales rep to visit.

In the words of Andy Taylor, IT manager at UK wholesalers Baylis & Harding, “[Phocas] allows us to be proactive and influence the business rather than having to react after the fact when it’s too late.”

2. Create meaningful reports

“While NetSuite reporting is good, it isn’t always easy to generate and access interactive reports quickly. The ERP’s reports are often static, meaning it will show you one thing, and one thing only,” said Terry Fagan, ICT operations manager, Hairhouse Warehouse. “You might see sales data and suddenly you’re more interested in a particular brand relating to that sales information. Just being able to drill down quickly and discover answers to off-the-cuff questions was a real advantage to us.”

With Phocas, any employee within an organization can be given access to data relevant to their job role. That way your territory sales manager can analyse data relevant to her territory, whereas your finance manager can analyse financial data relevant to him. The key is having access to data when you need it, where you need it, and with all the detail you need to complete your train of thought. A sales manager can dive in to a customers purchasing history on a tablet while on the train, and explore any trends, conduct a gap analysis, or discover what other similar customers are buying, all within minutes. Needless to say, this is far more useful than a static reports showing only overall sales figures month on month.

3.Empower your managers to be self-sufficient

A major way many businesses waste time is by going back and forth with IT to generate the right reports. Whether you need to go back because something you said was lost in translation, or whether you simply need more insights into the data behind another report, this process is time consuming for all parties involved. Executives and managers should spend their time in the areas where they can truly add value, not by sending emails or being on the phone asking for reports. Similarly, IT departments could be spending time on things like security, ensuring data quality and more, but are often spending hours or days each week fulfilling reporting requests.

With BI, managers and executives can be self-sufficient. With an easy-to-use solution like Phocas, generating reports and diving into the data is intuitive and can be done by those with minimal technological experience.

“Phocas gives users a visual, drag-and-drop way to develop complex reports rather than requiring them to write scripts and SQL commands to extract data from the ERP. You don’t need to know anything technical…just the fields you want to report on,” said Andy Taylor from Baylis & Harding.

Phocas for NetSuite

Phocas allows NetSuite users to use their business data to inform faster and better business decisions. With Phocas, you can integrate data from multiple data sources, such as your NetSuite ERP, other ERPs, CRMs, spreadsheets and more. This way, you can have all the relevant business data at your fingertips, without having to wait for reports to be generated by IT, or having to combine data in error-prone spreadsheets.