Esker offers their eponymous document automation platform, for paperless ordering and billing, and accounts payable / accounts receivable (AP / AR). It can be delivered as a cloud offering (as Esker on Demand), or on-premise (as Esker DeliveryWare).
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NetSuite ERP
Score 7.8 out of 10
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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.
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Pricing
Esker
NetSuite ERP
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Esker
NetSuite ERP
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Users subscribe to NetSuite for an annual license fee. Your 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. As your business grows, you can easily activate new modules and add users.
Esker On Demand is great for Sales Order Processing order creation. We use it with web services. It can make table read calls, test order creations (simulate order), and help with order creation. They are also working on change order management, but if you have multiple order entry methods or touch points, this feature may not be usable for your company.
NetSuite's scalability and ability to report on many enterprise processes and operations are my favorite features. NetSuite's user interface is straightforward. NetSuite is flexible and expandable, allowing us to save data and transactions fast. I appreciate the help establishing new workflows to improve system processes and procedures for the entire firm, and I love the customization options and shortcuts that make my team's work easier. NetSuite is one of the best resource planning tools, but like other Oracle technologies, it requires multiple training sessions to operate properly, and its subscription rates are too pricey for small organizations to utilize.
We can't enter credit memos in Esker. Need to enter in SAP and then link.
PO invoices that were trained to go into the PO bucket, route into the non-PO buckets.
Freight invoices that have had hundreds going into the non-PO bucket have a tendency to route to the PO-bucket because a PO number is referenced on page 7.
Support is not terrible but often works in different time zones and at different levels. It can be a challenge at times to resolve a problem but in fairness, we have never had a problem that wasn't solved.
Account management is an experience in growing pains. ALL, and I mean every one of our Account Managers has been world class. They have been willing to fight for our company and 'go to bat' for our needs. The one oddity from Oracle NetSuite is the number of times our Account Managers change position. They seem to always be reorganizing or employees are moving around within the company. I wouldn't consider it 'unstable', just a function of a hot company going through growth pains.
Documentation and training. One of the beauties of the software is the automatic and bi-annual upgrades to the service. There is no chance of looking up one day and finding out you are six releases back in your software. However, even though we have benefited immensely from these development cycles, the documentation and training for new resources seems to be several months behind. We have seen more than one instance where a new and glad-to-get feature has no documentation available or very limited documentation to explain the new features.
I am not the decision maker for this but I believe our company will be sticking with NetSuite for the long term. A CRM like this is a big investment and not something you move away from quickly and without a lot of planning. There is a lot of data involved and importing that into a new system is no easy task.
Esker does everything that it promises to do, but it is very hard to figure out. I am a very tech-savvy person, but I needed extensive training to be able to use the basic functions of Esker. Once you know what you're doing, it's not too hard, but I don't understand why they couldn't make it easier to use.
I give Netsuite [CRM] a value of 8 because it's very user friendly IF the user is properly trained and is dedicated to using the system as the administrator and company has intended. There are few items such as overall navigation that could be better but really that's splitting hairs as with any CRM, nothing's perfect.
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
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.
They have been very helpful and the online support site is awesome. They keep the site up to date with the latest changes and present challenges to keep learning the new updates to keep things entertaining. They are overall a great crew to work with
The high technical support is closer to a 9: they are very responsive and provide great examples for you to be able to replicate and resolve any scripting issue. The general support is about an 8: they address the issues relatively quickly and provide appropriate feedback although too often quoting NetSuite Support documents instead of providing relevant examples. For product enhancement issues it's a 5: very little feedback on when or whether they will happen.
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
Executive involvement is critical. Make sure you have a good handle on the metrics you would like to ultimately manage. Work as a team to document your business requirements. Whiteboard often. Understand NetSuite's best practice capabilities.
Have a central person identified to handle all report and analysis requests (ie - don't allow multiple people to create reports; have one person create reports and distribute them to decision makers via the NS dashboard or whatever form). Make sure you understand critical dates and develop the project plan accordingly
I have listed a few that we considered but there were many more in the initial assessment, Esker was priced well and had the best user interface. Was really easy to use and the implementation process was well designed. It was a system that could handle a two tiered delegations of authority for project expenditure and operational expenditure.
NetSuite, by far, offers the most customizable, intuitive and user-friendly platform compared with its competition. It's superior OneWorld offering for companies with multiple subsidiaries and direct integration with other areas of the business (sales, marketing, etc.) make it the best product out there in my mind. Its role-based permissions structure and detailed audit trail are also the best I have seen across the platforms I have used.
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.
We now have reporting available down to the individual field level (changes, errors, etc) and can calculate cost to serve.
It replaced on-premise hardware with cloud SaaS that is more cost effective and risk adverse.
It is more intuitive; we can put new hires on order entry and experience less user errors. As a solution owner who fixes problems and answers questions, I don't find myself having to "think" about Esker and it has become a smaller part of my job now that end-users are more self-sufficient.
While I can't quantify the ROI it has definitely made an impact on productivity when compared to older, outdated systems. Monthly closes can be coordinated across the company and completed in a much quicker time.
Another positive impact from NetSuite is much easier access to data. Doing searches and getting data from NetSuite is easy. It doesn't require programmers to do and you don't have to memorize T codes and wait long periods for your information to update.
