National Business Advisory Firm Delivers Seamless NetSuite Implementation

The Client

Tenacity and Grit

This business advisory firm’s entrepreneurial spirit has allowed it to grow by leaps and bounds throughout the years. What started as a small start-up has quickly evolved into a national business that provides private equity firms and CFOs across various industries with solutions that allow companies to grow and optimize business performance.

The Situation

Out with the Old, in with the New

Addressing people, technology, and processes are key to long-term M&A success. Failure to take all three into account early on in the transition process can lead to issues like poor business performance, inefficiencies, and a loss of productivity down the line.

For this business advisory firm’s emission testing client, technology and processes were areas they had failed to account for in an M&A transaction a few years ago. More specifically, they were running the finance team’s reporting across two enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

The problem?

Because the emissions testing company was running on two ERP systems, it created a series of inefficiencies. Labor hours were lost on redundant processes that required employees to manually rekey the information in two locations instead of one.

More importantly, the emissions testing company didn’t have the visibility it needed for ongoing projects to make data-driven decisions. The company decided it was time for a change, as their legacy system took significant time and energy to update — halting future investments in their tools.

So they engaged the business advisory firm to help them find a solution that fit their needs. After speaking with the client, it was decided that the best solution would be to move both systems to NetSuite: a cloud-based solution that enables companies to manage all key business and financial processes under one platform.

While the business advisory firm is well-versed in developing and executing the strategy needed for anew software implementation initiative, they didn’t have someone on staff familiar with NetSuite. Specifically, an expert with hands-on experience developing custom solutions within a NetSuite environment.

The Solution

A Proven NetSuite Expert

Given the complexity associated with NetSuite implementations, it was important for the business advisory firm to find someone with at least six years of experience in NetSuite ERP/CRM.

Working with their Graphite account executive (AE), the firm defined the qualities they were looking for. The expert selected for the project would need to have deep expertise in developing custom technical solutions for user requirements, user profiles, transaction dashboards, and more.

With that information on hand, the AE reviewed over 75 profiles on the Graphite platform before hand-selecting one expert out of all others. Not only did this expert have over 20 years of experience working as a NetSuite consultant, but they had also worked for the ERP company itself.

To ensure the expert was the right fit, the AE connected with the expert via Graphite — reviewing and verifying their background before connecting with the firm. After speaking with the expert, the firm decided to move forward with them. The expert was also excited to get started.

“I enjoy NetSuite, so I’m very interested in the product and expanding my knowledge. They release two updates a year, so there’s a new version of NetSuite every six months, meaning there are always new things to learn,” the expert said.

Results

Deploying a Custom NetSuite Environment

A NetSuite implementation project has multiple phases, including configuration/design, validation/testing, and go-live support. During the configuration phase of the project, the expert met with the business advisory firm and the emissions testing company onsite to discuss what they needed the future state of NetSuite to look like.

They also walked through the requirements to generate the base configuration, which would be built in the NetSuite sandbox to test out the configurations for specific workflows (billing, project management, accounts receivable/payables).

Once the client confirmed the expert’s configuration, the project’s second phase was kicked off. To ensure it was a smooth transition, the expert provided the execution team with NetSuite’s requirements — allowing them to seamlessly move into the third phase of the project.

In the go-live phase, the expert worked with the execution team and the client to handle any issues post-launch. Throughout the engagement, Graphite’s customer success team held regular interactions with the expert and the firm to ensure the project’s success.

The business advisory firm and expert were pleased with the experience with Graphite as the platform enabled them to seamlessly track billable hours, automatically pay invoices at predetermined timelines, and make payments all in one location.

Since this engagement, the business advisory firm has onboarded and managed four additional experts on the platform. They’ve also retained the independent NetSuite expert on their bench for future NetSuite implementation projects. In doing so, the firm can continue delivering value to its clients at scale.