Brightpearl’s retail operations platform is designed to handle peak trading, integrates with the full retail tech ecosystem, and is omni-channel native. Additionally, the vendor says their solution is the system of record for key trading data, provides real-time trading insights and is automated so users can stay in control and manage by exception. According to the vendor key differentiators include: Software and Service. Service is an integral part of Brightpearl's offer. The…
N/A
NetSuite ERP
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
NetSuite is a suite of ERP and accounting modules which is sold in various editions aimed at different size customers. The multi-country, multi-currency version is an additional module called OneWorld. Netsuite is a SaaS system and is not offered in an on-premise edition.
N/A
Pricing
Brightpearl by Sage
NetSuite ERP
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Brightpearl
NetSuite ERP
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Required
No setup fee
Additional Details
Brightpearl is for merchants trading $1M or above, or those that expect to be in the next 12 months. Pricing is designed to suit the needs of fast-growth and larger merchants.
Users subscribe to NetSuite for an annual license fee. The license is made up of three main components: core platform, optional modules and the number of users. There is also a one-time implementation fee for initial setup. New modules and users and can be added as a business grows.
We selected Brightpearl because we had experience with them from our other stores. Although they weren't perfect, they were manageable and agile to a certain extent.
With respect to NetSuite, Brightpearl is not nearly as powerful unfortunately. That being said, NetSuite is aimed …
It does a great job for small companies with one or two sales channels and minimal change in business processes. NetSuite is more robust for larger businesses but comes with some more headache in initial user experience.
We have considered moving to Xero, which would provide us with all the functionality that we receive from Brightpearl, it also integrates well with our CRM, which is a far better offering than Brightpearl's. It's only due to resource limitations that we have not made this …
Brightpearl was slightly cheaper and met my business requirements. That it was really well designed and pretty straight forward made it a no brainer to introduce to my company.
Bright Pearl is not as efficient or seamless. We have to also connect directly to our web host and a third party shipping so orders take longer to process. Also since we have to full, save and bill, there is opportunity for error/missed steps.
Most entry level ERPs are too simplistic to cover the requirements of many different brands - Brightpearl integrates well and is easy to use, compared to Sage. They have a more advanced concept of a product compared to Unleashed and Sage.
We scoped out so many ERP systems, and actually went very deep into launch and integrations with many, until we realized they were not a fit. This was due to currency capacities, global reach, manufacturing and process limitations, etc. We eventually finally bit the bullet and …
Brightpearl is very well suited for small-medium companies that are growing quickly and need a way to improve their operational systems and functionality to handle increasing volume of orders. Particularly if you use multiple SKUs, sales channels, and/or warehouses, the features offered by Brightpearl are excellently well suited to handle these types of needs. I don't believe Brightpearl would be very applicable for very small companies with a small number of SKUs, as many of the features offered would be unnecessary and underutilized.
NetSuite ERP is suitable for mid to large business organization. It has many in-built features that are not available in other ERP system. It is cloud based, that make it a plus. Easy to integrate with many leading application available in market. Easy to extract data from NetSuite ERP with multiple options. Performance is really good with more data volume.
Brightpearl tracks order changes and communications very well. It documents all activity in a feed that anyone can see, including status changes, notes made, emails sent, etc.
Brightpearl makes it incredibly easy to find orders fitting certain criteria through the use of statuses that you can customize. For example, as a multichannel seller, we can easily create statuses for each channel that we sell from, where our orders will (oftentimes automatically) land in. We also deal often with things like back ordered items; we can also create statuses for certain brands, so that when we expect a shipment in from that company, our back order specialist can easily sort through her orders that are waiting on that shipment.
Brightpearl makes it easy to take orders over the phone. Everything I need is right there on one screen; not often do I find myself needing to deviate to other tabs. The steps I take (from "new order" to finish) are straightforward and understandable, and go in steps that make sense.
Customizable Reports and Saved Searches allow much more maneuverability
Elimination Entries that are driven by advanced intercompany journal entries
Journal Entries can be entered in as basic or advanced intercompany to better represent the type of transaction occurred for reporting purposes
Training through the LCS module can help shed knowledge on a range of topics at a self paced learning basis
NetSuite ERP offers to all users a SuiteAnswers platform to pose frequently asked questions with answers generated from a combination of NetSuite ERP experts, users, and more recently AI based.
Supports only a small number of marketplaces and in a limited way only. When I signed up with Brightpearl they claimed that you could list directly onto eBay from within Brightpearl but this turned out to be untrue as Brightpearl did not support eBay postage policies (eBay's semi literate way of saying shipping tables).
Not only can you not list directly onto eBay, you cannot list directly from within Brightpearl to any marketplaces whatsoever. With other software you can list directly to all the marketplaces they integrate with.
Brightpearl is abysmal at VAT. Brightpearl calculates VAT on Channel Islands and Canary Islands orders even though there is no Vat in either of them. So when you pay HMRC you will be paying them a bit extra unless you check all your orders which makes the software somewhat redundant.
When I signed up they advertised Brightpearl as the software to automate your online selling. But it didn't really do that. A couple of years later at considerable extra cost they released an add-on app called Brightpearl Automation that does seem to deliver on automation. However other software offers that at no extra cost.
Brightpearl claims that it integrates with Amazon, but this is only partially true as they have completely ignored the new marketplaces that Amazon have opened. If you list on those marketplaces you have to input the orders manually and Brightpearl will not update the stock, putting you at risk of negative feedback. Other software integrates fully with all Amazon marketplaces.
Now that I am leaving it was suggested that I might benefit from read-only access so that we could easily double check things like warranty claims. They offered me a year's read-only access for £10,080 which is more than double my yearly contract for full use of the software. Now, if that isn't taking the mickey, I don't know what is!!!
Brightpearl has proved to work out for our company and we have no need or intention to let it go. Rather we intend to build on what we've accomplished and it will no doubt help us scale our business and meet our ambitions.
NetSuite is able to cover all of our needs, spanning multiple departments and managerial levels. We use it daily for a multitude of functions, including creating promotions, estimating inventory, pulling historical reports, forecasting sales, and more. Overall, we're very satisfied with NetSuite as an ERP solution and recommend it to medium to large businesses.
Brightpearl can be a little confusing to begin with, there are a lot of options to look through and working out the intricacies takes some time depending on what you would like to be able to do on it and what your account is set up to do. It is however very thorough and once you can work your way around it most of the functions are fairly simple to use and very detailed.
It's beneficial if you know what you're doing, but it can be very confusing to find what you're looking for, and many things seem overly complicated or require too many steps to accomplish a simple task - which can be overwhelming for someone accustomed to QuickBooks.
Brightpearl is always easily accessibly anywhere that you can find an internet source. I have checked our stock levels when we have been off site at Ham Rally's at home and on my way home or to work if needs be. That is probably one of the best features of this system.
It has been very reliable. I can only think of 1-2 times in 4.5 years that we have had issues getting in, and in each case were able to get back in within 1 hour. There has not been a major downtime
Brightpearl performs very well and integrates very well with our Metapak packing and despatch system. IT also intergrates very well with Amazon and we have used Ebay although there have been complications with Ebay and stock levels. We use Ebay mostly for second hand items of which we only have one so have skipped using Brighpearl for these products.
Most of the time the performance is very good. Pages load in a few seconds; financial reports take less than 5 seconds; basic searches take a few seconds. But performance can be sporadic throughout the day and cause the run time to triple.
Brightpearl was ALWAYS great at responding to us. Their customer service was quick and responsive. Unfortunately, the responses were often that "engineers were working on it" but nothing seemed to ever come of that. I realize that Brightpearl is a large company that a lot of businesses rely on. But when you can't hit "enter" when trying to search in the front-end POS, that type of behavior should be changed very quickly and it never was. Admittedly, small things, but those annoyances tend to ultimately affect the overall experience.
I would like to give 8 rating for NetSuite support and reason for that is below: Whenever we faced any technical or functional issues we tried to reach out to NEtSuite support but response was not immediate. We told them about the urgency of the issue but still we were not getting response on time. Then, we have to reach out to AE to get things resolved.
I had in person training for a day when first got the software. The training was good. The challenge was that there was a large gap between training and when we went live so we forgot quite a lot
The online training was very helpful in the areas we were shown and was implemented very well via a Skype call and an presentation done via the internet. However it was not thorough enough for all of our needs in certain areas. More training in person on site would have been very helpful.
Implementation was generally perfect, but if you are coming across from Sage I personally would recommend doing this as baby steps. We tried to import our entire Sage history in one batch and that was a bad idea hence the 9/10. That was mainly our fault and nothing on Brightpearl.
I felt NetSuite Professional Services did an excellent job of guiding us in the implementation. I also felt our internal teams were a little resistant to the change and engagement of new software. Had we performed better engaging and buying into the new software, I would be able to rate the implementation better. Therefore, the lower number should not be viewed as a deficiency with the software or the professional services teams, but as an reminder of how important complete buy-in from the local users is.
Initially we went with Brightpearl because it was an all in one solution. Salesforce CRM capabilities right out of the box far surpass Brightpearl's, but there's no inventory or accounting system pre-built in. We are currently moving away from Brightpearl for both CRM and accounting functions however.
In the past I always had a puzzle to assemble, with regards to data and management & ad-hoc reporting. With NetSuite ERP, as mentioned previously, everything is in one easy to retrieve place, and all the systems are there and cohesive. Although Workday Adaptive Planning and HFM are useful EPM systems, they lack the added functionality of being able to drill directly down into the details as they are not simultaneously, an ERP system. With those systems it is very often necessary to sign into the ERP (or whichever system, respectively). SAP Business Warehouse in my experience, was not at all user friendly in so many ways, in comparison. Creating dashboards, templates for predefined reports, as well as ad hoc reporting and analysis, are all very straightforward and very automatable in Netsuite, saving my team, as well as clients to whom we have deployed NetSuite ERP, so much time, effort, frustration, and in the end - money. From what I have learned collaborating with other departments, I believe they all would say the same. Perhaps not necessary to re-emphasize, but as mentioned before, it's not a one size fits all situation. I wouldn't recommend it for smaller businesses, such as fewer locations, departments, product lines, etc. to handle. The value for the money there, might not be as easily realized. Then again, it's all relative. There's no such thing as perfection. But my bias definitely leans towards NetSuite ERP in most cases (as well as the other Oracle products I have used in the past).
Brightpearl's ability to increase or expand its capacity and retain its performance levels to accommodate growth were acceptable but not fantastic. The program was constantly making changes which can be useful, but was also confusing & hard to keep up with since we were never updated that changes were about to be made or had been made.
We have been able to scale our business 25X without any major overhaul with Netsuite. Its dashboard setup makes onboarding new employees very easy and allows data to be shared across multiple offices. Its cloud setup does not put any pressure on IT to scale servers or other infrastructure. We have been able to become much more efficient in all aspects of the business.
