NetSuite Reimplementation:
Why a Manufacturer Chose to Start Over
A manufacturer was ready to leave NetSuite. A simpler implementation kept the workflows the team needed and cut the cost of running them.
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Anonymized Client Case Study
By Jack Ring |
After three years on NetSuite, a manufacturer was ready to go back to QuickBooks. Its annual software cost had climbed above $120,000, and the team was still carrying the complexity of an implementation that didn’t fit the way it worked.
The question wasn’t whether NetSuite could run the business. It was whether the business needed everything it had bought.
The situation at a glance
- The challenge: Expensive software and workflows that were more complicated than the operation needed.
- The decision: Stay on NetSuite, but reimplement with a smaller software footprint.
- The result: Lower recurring costs, more predictable pricing and a system the team could run with less outside help.
Going live didn’t fix the underlying problems
I joined as a client-side resource after the purchase was signed. The company had bought advanced manufacturing, mobile manufacturing, warehouse management and several add-ons. It planned to carry standard costing forward and use work in process (WIP) and routings.
The team was engaged, but much of the knowledge about what the company could build, what it had on hand and what it could promise customers sat with one person. Bills of materials hadn’t been kept current, and the company went live without a fresh physical inventory count. Items the system said were available often weren’t there.
Those problems mattered in a warehouse that could ship more than a thousand packages a day in peak season. The warehouse and production manager retired just before launch, and I worked on-site with his successor and the team to help them through the transition. We got through go-live, but the company was still paying for a system that asked too much of its people.
What we kept, and what we stopped paying for
The company’s existing CFO knew the business well and was nearing retirement. With a second NetSuite implementation on the table, the new owners wanted additional finance leadership to help the team work through the system and accounting decisions. They brought in a fractional CFO to work alongside the existing finance team and me.
Under new ownership, the finance team and I made the case for reimplementing NetSuite instead of abandoning it. My condition for taking part was that we wouldn’t rebuild the same system.
We moved to average costing and simpler manufacturing with assemblies and work orders, without WIP and routings. We didn’t buy the warehouse management module again, but we kept the capability the warehouse actually needed: picking multiple orders efficiently. I built a wave-picking tool that printed the work in bin order, so pickers could follow a route instead of walking back and forth.
We kept Shopify and ShipStation. The warehouse already knew how to ship with ShipStation, and there was no reason to retrain everyone just to make the software stack look cleaner. We replaced the subscription-based integration platform with targeted connections that brought orders in from Shopify and sent shipment work to ShipStation.
A system the team could run without me
The company negotiated a lower-cost NetSuite agreement with more predictable pricing. It’s now in its second year on the new implementation. The fractional CFO who helped guide the reimplementation still supports the business. I’m available for development and improvements, but the team rarely needs me for day-to-day support.
That’s the outcome I look for in a reimplementation. This company didn’t need to give up on NetSuite. It needed to stop paying for complexity its people couldn’t use and keep the capabilities they depended on.
Client identity withheld. The hero image illustrates the workflow; it does not depict the client’s facility.
Do you need to fix NetSuite or start over?
Let’s look at what your team depends on, what’s costing you time or money, and whether a simpler setup would solve the problem.
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