NetSuite ERP vs. Tableau Desktop

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
Tableau Desktop
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Desktop is a data visualization product from Tableau. It connects to a variety of data sources for combining disparate data sources without coding. It provides tools for discovering patterns and insights, data calculations, forecasts, and statistical summaries and visual storytelling.
$70
per month
Pricing
NetSuite ERPTableau Desktop
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Tableau Creator
$70.00
Per User / Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
NetSuite ERPTableau Desktop
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsUsers 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.All pricing plans are billed annually.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
NetSuite ERPTableau Desktop
Considered Both Products
NetSuite ERP
Chose NetSuite ERP
Flexibility to customize. Continuous improvements.
Chose NetSuite ERP
NetSuite is a best in class cloud base ERP solution for small to medium size companies. Cracks start to show in the software as business leaders have tried to add new features to make it a 360 solution. New features such as SuiteHR are often half-baked and seem to be used more …
Chose NetSuite ERP
Netsuite lacks in customization when compared to a lot of the alternatives. The communication and tasking is weaker when compared to other tools. The advantage for NetSuite is they are a complete platform so the best, total package, alternative is Zoho and Zoho books. They are …
Tableau Desktop
Chose Tableau Desktop
Oracle OBIEE.

The primary factors for choosing Tableau were the licensing costs; ability to view data from multiple data sources; the ease of infrastructure to setup; and ability for users to create and maintain their own worksheets without the need for IT assistance.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
NetSuite ERPTableau Desktop
Payroll Management
Comparison of Payroll Management features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
1.1
15 Ratings
147% below category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Pay calculation1.013 Ratings00 Ratings
Benefit plan administration1.010 Ratings00 Ratings
Direct deposit files1.39 Ratings00 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
9.2
74 Ratings
23% above category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
API for custom integration9.264 Ratings00 Ratings
Plug-ins9.647 Ratings00 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
9.3
81 Ratings
13% above category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Single sign-on capability9.362 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-based user permissions9.380 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
9.4
72 Ratings
30% above category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Dashboards9.471 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports9.470 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports9.470 Ratings00 Ratings
General Ledger and Configurable Accounting
Comparison of General Ledger and Configurable Accounting features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
7.7
258 Ratings
1% above category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Accounts payable8.3252 Ratings00 Ratings
Accounts receivable8.3233 Ratings00 Ratings
Global Financial Support9.526 Ratings00 Ratings
Primary and Secondary Ledgers9.628 Ratings00 Ratings
Journals and Reconciliations9.141 Ratings00 Ratings
Configurable Accounting9.535 Ratings00 Ratings
Standardized Processes9.537 Ratings00 Ratings
Inventory Management
Comparison of Inventory Management features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
8.9
48 Ratings
13% above category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Inventory tracking9.847 Ratings00 Ratings
Automatic reordering8.728 Ratings00 Ratings
Location management9.335 Ratings00 Ratings
Order Management
Comparison of Order Management features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
8.9
207 Ratings
14% above category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Pricing9.453 Ratings00 Ratings
Order entry8.1203 Ratings00 Ratings
Credit card processing8.637 Ratings00 Ratings
Cost of goods sold8.948 Ratings00 Ratings
Order Orchestration9.621 Ratings00 Ratings
Subledger and Financial Process
Comparison of Subledger and Financial Process features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
7.5
199 Ratings
1% above category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Billing Management8.3188 Ratings00 Ratings
Cash and Asset Management9.527 Ratings00 Ratings
Travel & Expense Management8.831 Ratings00 Ratings
Budgetary Control & Encumbrance Accounting8.627 Ratings00 Ratings
Period Close9.535 Ratings00 Ratings
Project Financial Management
Comparison of Project Financial Management features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
6.4
32 Ratings
17% below category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Budgeting and Forecasting5.926 Ratings00 Ratings
Project Costing5.923 Ratings00 Ratings
Cost Capture5.922 Ratings00 Ratings
Capital Project Management4.014 Ratings00 Ratings
Customer Contract Compliance9.613 Ratings00 Ratings
Project Revenue Recognition6.822 Ratings00 Ratings
Project Execution Management
Comparison of Project Execution Management features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
4.1
17 Ratings
50% below category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Project Planning and Scheduling8.614 Ratings00 Ratings
Task Insight for Project Managers3.311 Ratings00 Ratings
Project Mobile Functionality3.010 Ratings00 Ratings
Definable Resource Pools3.68 Ratings00 Ratings
Grants Management
Comparison of Grants Management features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
3.1
12 Ratings
84% below category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Award Lifecycle Management3.57 Ratings00 Ratings
Procurement
Comparison of Procurement features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
3.3
19 Ratings
71% below category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Bids Analyzed and Compared3.58 Ratings00 Ratings
Contract Authoring2.010 Ratings00 Ratings
Contract Repository3.58 Ratings00 Ratings
Requisitions-to-Purchase Orders Integrated3.613 Ratings00 Ratings
Supplier Management9.613 Ratings00 Ratings
Risk Management
Comparison of Risk Management features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
3.1
11 Ratings
71% below category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Risk Repository3.58 Ratings00 Ratings
Control Management2.011 Ratings00 Ratings
Control Efficiency Assessments3.57 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue Detection3.58 Ratings00 Ratings
Remediation and Certification3.58 Ratings00 Ratings
Logistics
Comparison of Logistics features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
3.0
17 Ratings
78% below category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Transportation Planning and Optimization2.89 Ratings00 Ratings
Transportation Execution Management2.88 Ratings00 Ratings
Trade and Customs Management2.88 Ratings00 Ratings
Fulfillment Management9.614 Ratings00 Ratings
Warehouse Workforce Management2.511 Ratings00 Ratings
Manufacturing
Comparison of Manufacturing features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
9.1
16 Ratings
19% above category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Production Process Design8.612 Ratings00 Ratings
Production Management8.714 Ratings00 Ratings
Configuration Management9.610 Ratings00 Ratings
Work Execution9.612 Ratings00 Ratings
Manufacturing Costs8.614 Ratings00 Ratings
Supply Chain
Comparison of Supply Chain features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
7.9
132 Ratings
9% above category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Forecasting8.017 Ratings00 Ratings
Inventory Planning7.4129 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance Monitoring8.714 Ratings00 Ratings
Product Lifecycle Management
Comparison of Product Lifecycle Management features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
3.8
13 Ratings
63% below category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Proposal Management2.610 Ratings00 Ratings
Product Master Data Management3.29 Ratings00 Ratings
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.5
167 Ratings
4% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports00 Ratings8.5139 Ratings
Customizable dashboards00 Ratings8.8166 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings8.2145 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.9
164 Ratings
10% above category average
Drill-down analysis00 Ratings9.0159 Ratings
Formatting capabilities00 Ratings9.0162 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages00 Ratings8.1122 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration00 Ratings9.3157 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.6
158 Ratings
3% above category average
Publish to Web00 Ratings8.7149 Ratings
Publish to PDF00 Ratings8.3149 Ratings
Report Versioning00 Ratings8.6116 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling00 Ratings9.2123 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings8.473 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.6
156 Ratings
7% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)00 Ratings9.0154 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization00 Ratings8.7149 Ratings
Predictive Analytics00 Ratings8.7126 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.8
142 Ratings
3% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings8.8139 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings8.3119 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings8.7129 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings9.03 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings8.977 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.4
135 Ratings
6% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings8.5124 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings8.097 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings8.8117 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
NetSuite ERP
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.8
64 Ratings
11% above category average
REST API00 Ratings8.756 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings8.551 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings9.049 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings9.246 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings8.453 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings8.746 Ratings
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NetSuite ERPTableau Desktop
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User Ratings
NetSuite ERPTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(356 ratings)
8.9
(194 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.2
(49 ratings)
8.9
(39 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(231 ratings)
8.6
(63 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(16 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(15 ratings)
6.1
(9 ratings)
Support Rating
7.1
(215 ratings)
6.9
(56 ratings)
In-Person Training
7.3
(2 ratings)
9.4
(4 ratings)
Online Training
6.4
(10 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
6.4
(17 ratings)
8.0
(34 ratings)
Configurability
8.7
(5 ratings)
8.1
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.3
(3 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(8 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
4.8
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
5.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
NetSuite ERPTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
NetSuite
Really in this hybrid environment, being up in the cloud and being able to securely access the data and work from anywhere, I think it's a real game changer for my team. So I really like the fact that NetSuite keeps up with security features and allows users to access it from anywhere.
Read full review
Tableau
Tableau Desktop is one the finest tool available in the market with such a wide range of capabilities in its suite that makes it easy to generate insights. Further, if optimally designed, then its reports are fairly simple to understand, yet capable enough to make changes at the required levels. One can create a variety of visualizations as required by the business or the clients. The data pipelines in the backend are very robust. The tableau desktop also provides options to develop the reports in developer mode, which is one of the finest features to embed and execute even the most complex possible logic. It's easier to operate, simple to navigate, and fluent to understand by the users.
Read full review
Pros
NetSuite
  • NetSuite does analytics very well.
  • They do reporting very well. I love the ability to have control over how the information flows through my NetSuite, my user roles, and my responsibilities. I can assign certain tasks to certain people, and they do that and then also have the control to approve that and make sure it's done correctly.
  • Just being able to drill down into a particular GL account or into a particular line item and see what really makes that up and what's driving our certain costs.
Read full review
Tableau
  • An excellent tool for data visualization, it presents information in an appealing visual format—an exceptional platform for storing and analyzing data in any size organization.
  • Through interactive parameters, it enables real-time interaction with the user and is easy to learn and get support from the community.
Read full review
Cons
NetSuite
  • Honestly, right now, my biggest pain point is kind of our own doing, but I would appreciate a little bit more support and help in the area of performance management and kind of understanding how our application is built, what are the best choices for customizing or solving a problem in terms of performance, because our company is rather large, we have a lot of data coming in and out, and that has been an issue for us recently.
Read full review
Tableau
  • Formatting the data to work correctly in graphical presentations can be time consuming
  • Daily data extracts can run slowly depending on how much data is required and the source of the data
  • The desktop version is required for advanced functionality, editing on [the] Tableau server allows only limited features
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
NetSuite
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.
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Tableau
Our use of Tableau Desktop is still fairly low, and will continue over time. The only real concern is around cost of the licenses, and I have mentioned this to Tableau and fully expect the development of more sensible models for our industry. This will remove any impediment to expansion of our use.
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Usability
NetSuite
I have given this rating due to below use cases: - Order Management - Advanced Revenue Management - Invoicing - Automated Billing - Inbound and Outbound Integrations with applications such as Salesforce, Zip, Stripe, Mavenlink, Avalara, Floquast - Project management and billing - Training -Customer Support - Knowledge Article Support
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Tableau
Tableau Desktop has proven to be a lifesaver in many situations. Once we've completed the initial setup, it's simple to use. It has all of the features we need to quickly and efficiently synthesize our data. Tableau Desktop has advanced capabilities to improve our company's data structure and enable self-service for our employees.
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Reliability and Availability
NetSuite
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
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Tableau
When used as a stand-alone tool, Tableau Desktop has unlimited uptime, which is always nice. When used in conjunction with Tableau Server, this tool has as much uptime as your server admins are willing to give it. All in all, I've never had an issue with Tableau's availability.
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Performance
NetSuite
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.
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Tableau
Tableau Desktop's performance is solid. You can really dig into a large dataset in the form of a spreadsheet, and it exhibits similarly good performance when accessing a moderately sized Oracle database. I noticed that with Tableau Desktop 9.3, the performance using a spreadsheet started to slow around 75K rows by about 60 columns. This was easily remedied by creating an extract and pushing it to Tableau Server, where performance went to lightning fast
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Support Rating
NetSuite
The account rep changes quite often, which requires restarting. Suite Answers is a very good tool but can be hard to use for somebody who is not fully confident with Netsuite. Asking questions that are not already answered in Suite Answers can be rough. Training is readily available, but most of the time stays on the surface and doesn't answer medium to more advanced questions.
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Tableau
I have never really used support much, to be honest. I think the support is not as user-friendly to search and use it. I did have an encounter with them once and it required a bit of going back and forth for licensing before reaching a resolution. They did solve my issue though
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In-Person Training
NetSuite
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
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Tableau
It is admittedly hard to train a group of people with disparate levels of ability coming in, but the software is so easy to use that this is not a huge problem; anyone who can follow simple instructions can catch up pretty quickly.
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Online Training
NetSuite
Online training is quite strong. I have used for specific pieces of functionality.However it is not sufficient in all areas.
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Tableau
The training for new users are quite good because it covers topic wise training and the best part was that it also had video tutorials which are very helpful
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Implementation Rating
NetSuite
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.
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Tableau
Again, training is the key and the company provides a lot of example videos that will help users discover use cases that will greatly assist their creation of original visualizations. As with any new software tool, productivity will decline for a period. In the case of Tableau, the decline period is short and the later gains are well worth it.
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Alternatives Considered
NetSuite
Well, the reason why I'm with NetSuite is because obviously it beats out those other options quite considerably. It gave us the whole ecosystem that gave us everything we needed. I didn't need a dedicated administrator whose full-time job is to deal with it like our current system would need to really be useful. I can find people or train people how to use it right away. So for us, that really beats it out compared to the Sage and QuickBooks where we were looking at it from a perspective of, yeah, we can find people who are experts in those fields. They don't scale up to the size that we need as we're going to really quickly go from R&D company into doing tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue and activities. So that's where it beats us out over say Sage or QuickBooks is it's got that complete scalability. We can go to multiple subsidiaries, foreign currency, not a problem. It's got that full functionality.
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Tableau
If we do not have legacy tools which have already been set up, I would switch the visualization method to open source software via PyCharm, Atom, and Visual Studio IDE. These IDEs cannot directly help you to visualize the data but you can use many python packages to do so through these IDEs.
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Scalability
NetSuite
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.
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Tableau
Tableau Desktop's scaleability is really limited to the scale of your back-end data systems. If you want to pull down an extract and work quickly in-memory, in my application it scaled to a few tens of millions of rows using the in-memory engine. But it's really only limited by your back-end data store if you have or are willing to invest in an optimized SQL store or purpose-built query engine like Veritca or Netezza or something similar.
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Return on Investment
NetSuite
  • Positive impact, again, it's our source of truth, so we are able to not have questions about how much money we have in the bank or do we have enough material to build this job. Being able to know those things immediately is super valuable.
  • I mean it's the grease that skids the wheels that gets us to accomplish the things that we do in our business.
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Tableau
  • Tableau was acquired years ago, and has provided good value with the content created.
  • Ongoing maintenance costs for the platform, both to maintain desktop and server licensing has made the continuing value questionable when compared to other offerings in the marketplace.
  • Users have largely been satisfied with the content, but not with the overall performance. This is due to a combination of factors including the performance of the Tableau engines as well as development deficiencies.
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ScreenShots

NetSuite ERP Screenshots

Screenshot of one view into the most critical business processes.Screenshot of Mobile-friendly design