Dear [website], I have spent well in excess of £1,000 with you in the last 2 years. However, I am no longer prepared to waste my time waiting for your website to work and will now be buying all my stuff from [competitor website] who have an excellent website that works properly. The website hanging and not responding has been going on for months now and you must be losing £’000s of business while this persists.
customer – in response to a SuiteCommerce hosted website
This is a customer that took the time to write. But, the reality is most customers would not take the time.
This is the underlying problem with the Netsuite SuiteCommerce Advanced e-commerce platform. At its most basic, the technology works against your customers and business goals. Server latency, “Time to First Byte” and ongoing problems with javascript execution in the backend means your customers’ experience and journey is permanently negatively impacted.
A Netsuite SQL formula to summarise Sales Reports the easy way
A standard SQL search in Netsuite will deliver results by record. For sales reports that means search results that report sales by SKU. It is difficult that way to get an overview as to which styles sell. You end up having to manipulate the results in Excel; an unnecessary second step.
Utilising ‘Null’ values in Netsuite SQL formulas
For certain fields, the value in a matrix parent record is NULL whereas in the matrix child record the same field returns a value. A standard NVL({parent.field},{field}) formula will therefore report the child value where the parent has not value.
Where that is useful is the parent id and parent name fields: A child always has a parent, whereas the parent returns NULL for {parent.internalid} or {parent.displayname}.
Use summary saved searches in Netsuite SQL for summary sales reports
To get your sales figures summarised by style (ie parent), create a normal Saved Search and ensure your results fields are grouped like so:
This is the formula: NVL({parent.name} , {displayname} ). This is the magic sauce: Use this summary function and all other grouped fields on the search results are summed or grouped by style (parent) not child (SKU). The Summery Type has to be “Group” to ensure all other summarised fields are grouped by Style (parent).
The great thing is: This works for a Sales Report that contains Matrix items and non-Matrix items!
Here is a formula to total your sales by style, using this summary function
Formula: CASE WHEN {transaction.location} = {inventorylocation} and {transaction.account} = ‘2500 REVENUE : Sales’ and ({today} – {transaction.trandate}) BETWEEN 0 AND 90 then decode({transaction.type},’Cash Sale’, nvl({transaction.quantity},’0′),0) + decode({transaction.type},’Cash Refund’, nvl({transaction.quantity},’0′),0) + decode({transaction.type},’Credit Note’, nvl({transaction.quantity},’0′),0) + decode({transaction.type},’Invoice’, nvl({transaction.quantity},’0′),0) ELSE 0 END
The field has to be Summery Type “Sum”, ie summed up, in order to deliver the total by parent.
Note 1: Check which General Ledger Account you use > here the example is subaccount ‘2500 Sales’, which is a child account to ‘REVENUE’ > your finance team will know
Note 2: change {transaction.quantity} to {transaction.amount} and you get sales revenue instead of quantity
Note 3: ({today} – {transaction.trandate}) BETWEEN 0 AND 90 means that sales are summarised for the previous 90 days > change the date settings as you need them
Used with the above NVL formula, you get a sales report that summarises sales quantity or revenue by style and by time frame.
Oracle Netsuite is a cloud-based ERP system using a version of the SQL language to generate reports (known as Saved Searches). If you are unlucky and must use the Netsuite platform for your daily job, here are some hacks that hopefully will help you.
And the winner is? Hipsters with a small lifestyle store?! LOL.
Is Oracle Netsuite the solution for your cool SMB (Small Medium-sized Business)? The latest Oracle Netsuite imagery would like you to think so. Don’t be fooled by the marketing. This has #SuiteFail of your business written all over it.
It is hard to believe that a labour-intensive ERP system and a second rate ecommerce platform, setting you back (in reality) tens of thousands of pounds a year, are a solution that would do anything other than put this hipster store out of business.
It is rare that Oracle let’s things get so far that their poor quality of implementation and poor structure of their ERP solution are made public through a court case. But, that has just happened, involving an engineering business in the US.
“The software giant Oracle was sued by Worth & Company, a Pennsylvania-based mechanical contractor, over a failed enterprise resource planning (ERP) software deal.” – The Register reports.
That is of course our experience of the Oracle Netsuite ERP and Ecommerce SaaS platform as well: The implementation is delayed years, and when it does ‘go live’ it is riddled with technical problems.
[Here is a new Oracle Netsuite jargon for you: Coding errors that stop an ecommerce website from taking payments are ‘typographical mistakes‘ according the Oracle Netsuite international best practice team leader, not actual errors deserving a serious discussion about the damage that has done to revenue or evidence of poor quality workmanship! There, now you know.]
Welcome to our initiative, proudly dedicated to Small Business.
Our purpose? Systems, tools, solutions for Small Business! 🙂 Here is our snappy mission:
“Find IT systems to operate and grow (y)our Small Business, with affordable & scaleable cloud technology delivered by suppliers that treat small companies fairly.”
… and we promise to share what we learn!
This blog has grown out of the hard necessities of running a Small Business
Actually, this blog is more like a ‘fight back’.
We will look for cloud-based Small Business software solutions that are priced so a Small Business afford them, that can scale with the opportunities and challenges up [or down], and [importantly] where the tech company providing the services can be trusted. Small companies are a soft target for overzealous tech sales people!
That last point is hugely important: There are enough tech suppliers that will sell you something and take your money. There are very few that have pride in what they do, enough pride to care that the technology they provide matches the hype.
The reality is: We run a small business, and we have been let down once too often.
It’s time to share our experiences to avoid others getting involved with the wrong suppliers, and being let down by the same businesses that let us down.
The Start: Evaluate ERP & E-Commerce Solutions
Most recently, we’ve been let down by our ERP systems provider.
That story will keep on ‘giving’ for a good while to come: A truly rich source for blog post content! And, you will read here how we get on with them. At this point, we are not discounting that ERP systems provider altogether as a potential supplier, but they are working hard to eliminate themselves from being a good choice through their own conduct. More of that in time.
And, it is very sad really: We have been their customer for over a decade! We were one of their early adopters in the UK. We are even the subject of reference case studies!
In the meantime:
Our experience with them and others has given us the energy (and necessity) to go out and find an ERP and E-Commerce solution that helps us, and potentially other Small Businesses, to operate, succeed and grow.
No B*** S*** Guarantee
On the journey, we share with you what has not worked out well, and why we think that is. And, we will interview and evaluate alternatives.
The thing is: we are not advisers; what we say comes from the raw truth of running a small business, no b*** s***, just our take on trying to invest and grow on a small budget without being taken for a ride.
