NetSuite ERP 2022.1 Release – Top 3 Business Growth Features

In 2022, rapid adaptation is critical to achieving lasting success. The world isn’t the same place it was a few years ago, and it’s continuing to evolve quickly. Fortunately for businesses, technology like NetSuite ERP can help them stay a step ahead of market changes – and their competition.

The 1990s were big for the tech industry. Linux, which runs internet servers and is the underlying platform of Android, was launched in 1991. Netflix was founded in 1997 and has since revolutionised how we consume entertainment content. And 1998 saw two cloud giants open their doors – Google and NetSuite.

As a company that’s been growing since the 90s, NetSuite has been through a significant evolution. This year, it continues its journey by helping its customers grow and adapt to ever-changing business needs. As an Australian NetSuite partner, the team of cloud experts at DWR are excited to see major updates in the upcoming 2022.1 release. Our team’s top priority is helping customers amplify success – now and in the long term. This update will further help us meet that priority and deliver even more value to every customer from their NetSuite ERP investment.

We’ll take a look at the top 3 highlights that will support business growth in a rapidly changing market. The release is packed with features to help your company better understand cash flow and financial forecasting. Project management and visibility also see substantial improvements. And, there’s a strong focus on boosting the efficiency of warehouse operations.

NetSuite cash flow and financial forecasting features

Cash flow has come into even greater focus since the pandemic hit. And while the immediate response of many CEOs and CFOs was to focus on financial survival, 2022 sees many moving from cash preservation to cash maximisation mindsets.

In uncertain times, additional cash flow can prevent a company’s financial resources from drying up. As Gary Wiessinger, SVP of product management at Oracle NetSuite, illustrates, “Insufficient cash flow is the main reason new businesses fail in the first five years, but despite it being such a critical area, many businesses struggle with cash management due to poor visibility and an inability to accurately forecast.”

Now, executives have more opportunities to manage and maximise cash effectively. NetSuite has recognised this and brings Cash 360 to the table. It’s an automated solution embedded within NetSuite that shows finance teams their cash balance, AP and AR in one real-time NetSuite dashboard. That single dashboard makes cash flow visibility crystal-clear, displaying current cash flow trends and a rolling six-month cash flow forecast that will enable more informed and agile decision-making.

“NetSuite Cash 360 turns a complex process into a simple one by giving customers everything they need to effectively manage cash flow to help ensure they have the cash reserves to maintain day-to-day operations, pay employees and suppliers, fund sales and marketing efforts, service debt, acquire capital equipment, and make other long-term investments.” Explains Wiessinger.

With Cash 360, accounting and FP&A (financial planning and analysis) teams can also add events including loan, asset purchase and receivables factoring, which are then added into the cash projection.

NetSuite also adds a new tool – Cash Flow Forecasting – which leverages multiple data points, including funding sources, planned expenditures, sales forecasts, and billing schedules to increase forecast accuracy. In addition, historical averages can be applied to current AR and AP transaction data to estimate collection and disbursement amounts.

Cash Flow Forecasting is a fully-configurable solution that allows companies to incorporate one-time cash inflows and outflows, like financing or capital investments, into the forecasting process. This improved flexibility creates a better projection of cash needs and greater clarity over the company’s liquidity position.

With greater clarity of cash flow and more accurate forecasting, NetSuite Cash 360 gives companies the financial confidence to focus on business growth initiatives.

Project management improvements to deliver projects on time and budget

For service companies that manage projects, visibility is key to keeping everything on track, billed, and managed correctly. Gary Wiessinger, SVP of product management at Oracle NetSuite, explains, “One of the biggest challenges facing services businesses is lack of visibility into project status, budget, and forecast, which hinders project managers’ ability to easily gauge project health and act if needed.”

NetSuite’s new Project 360 dashboard consolidates all project elements in a unified workspace. The dashboard delivers a real-time view of actuals vs budget, resource utilisation, and other crucial project KPIs. Exception alerts and focus pages for detailed KPI data further help project managers evaluate and make proactive adjustments to keep projects running efficiently. Consistent delivery of projects on time and budget is now more achievable than ever, especially when running multiple projects concurrently.

Wiessinger elaborates, “At NetSuite, we pride ourselves in delivering what we call ‘Suiteness’ for our customers, which is our unique ability to unify insights and actions across their entire business. Project 360 is a perfect example of this by providing customers with a unified view across projects, customers, employees, and financials, enabling project managers to be more proactive and take steps to keep projects on time and on budget.”

Additionally, Project 360 brings new, customisable invoice templates with line-item formatting to meet the specific needs of clients and projects. Granular backing sheets also include consultant time postings, subcontractor costs, and more. These customer-focused enhancements deliver greater project detail on invoices, leading to quicker approvals – and ultimately, faster payment.

Project 360 will help project managers to optimise projects through advanced project functions, including:

• Project Budget Analysis – Project Managers can see if there’s sufficient remaining budget for project completion through spend and allocation analysis. Project Forecast Estimate at Completion (EAC) also calculates if project delivery will happen within the original budget.
• Project Profitability – Analysis of whether profitability is being met on projects, taking recognised revenue and total costs to date into account.
• Project Resourcing – New visualisations of project resources in a “social view” with names and images of the project team, and visualisation of the Gantt chart and time spent by resources against project assignment totals.
• Project Billing – Project managers can easily correct and re-submit invoices to clients with a real-time view of currently billable and yet to be billed items.
• Project Health and Status – Faster access to specific project health and status information, including billing and revenue, budgets, resourcing and planning, and financials.

Project 360 will help service companies build a robust reputation for delivering projects on time and budget, and in turn, grow their customer base more rapidly.

More efficient warehouse operations with new mobile enhancements

For wholesale distributors and inventory-carrying businesses, stock management across multiple locations with many SKUs can be a manually-intensive, often chaotic process. Relying on static spreadsheets can result in increased errors, splintered data, and a massive amount of manual work that slows down stock turn.

NetSuite’s Warehouse Management System (WMS) optimises operations through advanced automation and warehouse features, including mobile RF barcode scanning, putaway and picking strategies, cycle count plans, and more.

Zone pick and merge functionality is an exciting addition to NetSuite WMS in the 2022.1 release. As part of single or multi-order picking processes, pickers can be assigned to optimised zones, then merged for staging. The zone pick and merge function can increase flexibility for varying numbers of pickers, reduce picker movement and cut down redundant work.

Productivity is boosted with new capabilities to find and print time labels from any screen with NetSuite WMS and quickly see order and wave picking statuses. Paperless wave filtering and single actions to release multiple waves also speed up processing significantly.

Finally, NetSuite Pack Station improvements allow unit weights to be changed quickly between pounds or kilograms, boosting accuracy and efficiency. Packing operators can now also check packing instructions before starting packing. Additionally, bulk pack and unpack allows “Ship As Is” items and individually-shipped items to be selected for bulk packing.

With NetSuite WMS and NetSuite Pack Station improvements, companies can significantly boost the efficiency of warehouse operations, increase stock turn, and grow faster.

Have you made the leap?

Rapid adaptation is how many companies will achieve lasting success in 2022 and beyond. As an Australian NetSuite partner, the DWR team is looking forward to the 2022.1 release that will help customers grow their businesses faster and amplify long-term success.

It’s impossible to predict how the year ahead will look. However, the highlights mentioned in this feature update will help companies better understand cash flow and financial forecasting, gain better visibility and management of projects, and boost the efficiency of warehouse operations.

If you’re yet to invest in a NetSuite solution, get in touch to learn how an award-winning NetSuite partner can help build your growth story this year.

DWR is an experienced cloud technology provider who brings the right ERP technology, process framework, and business experts together. Our team has executed 250+ projects with a reputation for delivering on time and budget. Our lasting relationships with customers are driven by our passion for consistently adding value to ERP implementations – new and existing.

Talk to a NetSuite ERP expert today. And take the next step to leap ahead.