NetSuite ERP vs. Viewpoint Spectrum

Best suited for mid-market to lower scale enterprises (under 2,000 employees) especially if migrating from Quickbooks or another fragmented small business system. Also, multi-entity and global operational businesses are very well suited as there is robust functionality around multi-subsidiary, multi-currency and multi-tax controls. Finally, businesses with inventory & supply chain heavy businesses would find the functionality very useful as the system allows warehouse management, lot/batch tracking, fulfillment, etc. Not well suited for startups (a lot of functionality not needed) or very small businesses (under $3mm in revenues). Overkill in complexity and cost and implementation leg-work is necessary relative to the underlying operations of the business. Also, companies with a heavy manufacturing business (shop floor execution) lacks depth with true manufacturing ERPs like Epicor, Infor, etc. and companies expecting consumer grade UX feels like the interface isn't modern or very intuitive right out of the box.

Incentivized

The Installation team is amazing. They provide clear guidance at the beginning of the process regarding what is expected and what needs to be done. The implementation manager follows up monthly with you to make sure you are on track and if you need additional help. They are very helpful and responsive in resolving issues.

Incentivized

• It gives high flexibility to maintain different kind of financial data with ease. It also support 606 standard.
• Customisation is a key, whereas we can do as many customisation based on our critical financial need.
• It is cloud based and easily scalable.

Incentivized

• Job Costing - Viewpoint Spectrum handles job costing per project, per work order, per site, and gives us an up to date analysis of the project.
• HR - helps to keep all of the training certifications and HR incidents in a consistent and manageable order for all Managers to use.

Incentivized

• The area for the largest improvement needed is the implementation process. Especially when it comes down to an accounting based ERP setup rather than a CRM model. The experts should have accounting backgrounds in addition to the system knowledge for implementation.
• There should be more training focused on the Dashboards and the maneuverability of the data focused for each graph or report within the dashboards.
• The AP system is a little problematic with more complex company hierarchy. Due to the AP Invoice headers being driven by "main line" but the expense distribution being driven by journal entries - the AP aging is hard to verify the accuracy and can be distorted by different types of transactions.

Incentivized

• Support isn't readily available. You can submit a ticket and wait days before it's picked up. Even critical issues (system outages) can wait an hour or two before someone responds.
• Large companies will feel limited. This product wasn't designed to handle large amounts of data, and performance seems to slow when there are more than 80 concurrent users.
• The new developments are limited. HR Management is less robust than a third-party product specializing in HR Management. Viewpoint Analytics is nowhere near as robust as Power BI or Tableau.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The product is working for us and the cost to implement a new system does not warrant the expense.

Incentivized

NetSuite is a cloud tool, and is easy to implement for mid-sized organizations. It comes with standard forms/ printing layouts, and financial reporting (both summary and detailed), which are very handy for business users. In addition to these, with 99.99% service availability, NetSuite makes it one of the most reliable ERP tools available on the market.

Incentivized

There's a little bit of a learning curve, but once you've been working in the system for a while, it becomes second nature. I would say that out of all of the other software that I've personally used, Spectrum has been the easiest one to pick up and learn quickly

Incentivized

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

I've never seen Spectrum down

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.

Incentivized

For the most part the product is very reliable. Since we are hosted we sometimes have connectivity issues but I would say that is more our ISP than Spectrum.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The support has recently changed. Last year, you could call in and get an immediate response. Now that doesn't seem possible unless you have an urgent situation with access to the software, payroll or payables. I have found that using chat or e-mail works nicely for the most part, but sometimes I feel it would be easier if someone from support would jump on our site and take a first-hand look rather than going back and forth

Incentivized

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

Online training is quite strong. I have used for specific pieces of functionality.However it is not sufficient in all areas.

Our trainer was excellent and navigated the time zone differences expertly. She gave us test assignments to complete and was available for questions at any time.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

My only insight would be to take time in your implementation and training process; ours was six weeks from start to finish.

Incentivized

QuickBooks Online is, by far, a better and easier-to-use product for smaller companies. Only switch to Netsuite if you have to. We switched to NetSuite because we have numerous subsidiaries, and QuickBooks would not be able to handle the complexity.

Incentivized

I have previously used Sage Masterbuilder, another construction industry software. This has been a number of years ago. The company I am working for already had Spectrum and have been using it for as long as it has been around when it was known as Forefront. Based on conversations I've had with the personnel that were here at the time of purchase, Spectrum clicked off all the boxes they were looking for.

Incentivized

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.

You can grant user specific access which is nice. Project managers do not need all the same modules as Accounting. But Accounting does need access to PM modules as well

• NetSuite ERP has allowed us to see more clear details around where our business is financially which leads to smarter business decisions.
• NetSuite ERP has freed up time that was spent on certain functions in our old accounting software, leading to more efficiency.
• NetSuite ERP has given us more visibility across business divisions.

Incentivized

• [In my opinion,] it takes at LEAST twice as long to do our jobs now.
• [I feel like] we are paranoid about something not being printed correctly because of [what I believe are] buggy text fields.
• [In my experience,] we still have to refer to a physical file cabinet with paper, even though a main point of switching was to go paperless.
• [In our experience,] screens can now be "locked", so we can't see something if our coworker is also looking at it.
• [I believe that] the financial hit our company took from this switch was astronomical. [In my opinion:] Beware!