Why is it so hard to get data out of NetSuite?

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems like NetSuite are designed to centralize your business operations, offering one platform for managing financials, customer relationships (CRM), inventory and more.

While this powerful tool offers many benefits, a common frustration for users is how difficult it is to extract data for reporting and analysis. This challenge can hinder your business’s agility, delaying important decisions and limiting your ability to get a complete view of business performance across different functional areas.

If you feel like you're trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle every time you need a report where all the pieces are mixed up in different boxes, you’re not alone. Many NetSuite users find it difficult to get the specific insights they need.

NetSuite’s complexity

One of the main reasons it’s hard to extract data from NetSuite is the system's complexity and how it's built. While NetSuite’s multi-module design (including CRM, Sales, Inventory, and Financials) is great for integrated operations, it often means that data is spread across different modules. This siloed setup makes it hard to connect information from different areas without a lot of effort.

For example, if you want to analyze how sales activities affect inventory levels, you have to navigate through separate modules and piece together the relevant data. This lack of smooth cross-functional reporting and analysis can really hold your business back, particularly if you’re trying to navigate volatile market conditions and need to make fast data-driven decisions.

The problem of data silos

Your business needs to see the connections between different datasets, but that’s hard when your data is siloed. Without cross-functional reporting and analysis, it becomes very difficult for different business functions to operate with a shared context; for example, sales teams might offer aggressive discounts without realizing the strain this puts on the profitability of the finance department, or the inventory demands it places on the warehouse. This disconnect means departments make decisions in isolation, potentially undermining overall business goals. To truly understand the impact of these decisions, you'd need to analyze sales data, financial data, and inventory data – often held in separate systems or modules – making it extremely challenging to gain a comprehensive view of how these functions truly interact.

Technical debt

Over time, NetSuite implementations can accumulate "technical debt." This includes unused customizations like saved searches, fields, roles, and workflows that are no longer relevant but still exist in the system.

For example, the ease with which users can create new saved searches can lead to a large number of similar searches, making it hard to find the right one for data extraction. As an organization evolves, the complexity of user roles and permissions can increase significantly, sometimes resulting in redundant or duplicate access controls. This not only contributes to technical debt but can also obscure who has access to what data, potentially hindering data extraction or even creating security vulnerabilities.

Obsolete custom fields can clutter forms, confuse users, and increase the chance of errors in data entry, which affects the quality of data available for extraction and analysis.

As a result, the quality of the data within the system suffers, making subsequent extraction efforts less valuable because the underlying information may be inaccurate or incomplete. Ultimately, the complexity introduced by technical debt complicates the entire NetSuite environment, making it more difficult for users to effectively navigate and extract the data they need. Keeping your NetSuite solution clean and well-maintained, free from unnecessary customizations, is essential for ensuring efficient data access and reliable reporting.

"Non-technical people don’t have the time to dig into NetSuite and learn all its nuances. They don’t want to deal with saved searches or SQL coding."

Dean Nicolaides, Senior Management Accountant at Zeder Corporation

How different data extraction methods work within NetSuite

Extracting data from NetSuite typically involves a multi-step process that often requires some technical understanding. The first step is identifying the specific data needed and determining which NetSuite module(s) it resides in. Once located, users must decide on the most appropriate extraction method. This might involve running and customizing standard reports, which can be limited in their flexibility. A more common approach for tailored data extraction is creating saved searches. This process often demands a good understanding of NetSuite's record types, the various fields available, and the specific search syntax required to filter and retrieve the desired information.

NetSuite’s data extraction methods

NetSuite offers several ways to extract data, each with its own features, benefits, limitations, and technical expertise. It’s important to understand these differences when trying to access your data.

Here's a breakdown of each method:

Third-party BI tools make data accessibility easier

Many organizations are turning to third-party business intelligence (BI) tools to streamline the processes of extracting and analyzing data directly within NetSuite. These specialized tools are designed with a focus on data analysis and often provide more user-friendly interfaces and advanced features compared to the native reporting capabilities of ERP systems. By integrating with NetSuite, these BI solutions offer a more efficient and accessible way to gain insights from business data.

A significant advantage of third-party BI tools is that they often come with pre-built connectors specifically designed for NetSuite. These connectors simplify the process of establishing a connection and extracting data, removing much of the technical complexity associated with methods like SuiteAnalytics Connect or SuiteTalk. Additionally, these tools often present the data in a more simplified and intuitive data model, making it easier for non-technical users to understand and navigate without needing in-depth knowledge of NetSuite's underlying database structure.

Beyond simplifying the extraction process, BI tools are excellent at consolidating data from multiple sources. This is particularly valuable for overcoming the data silos that can exist within NetSuite's various modules. By integrating data from CRM, sales, inventory, financials, and even external systems like Salesforce, BI tools provide a more comprehensive and holistic view of business performance. These tools typically offer advanced data visualization capabilities, allowing users to transform raw data into easily understandable charts, graphs, and dashboards. These visual representations can significantly improve data interpretation and facilitate communication of insights to a broader audience, including those outside of IT and finance.

Phocas Software: making data extraction easy

Phocas Software offers a specific solution designed to integrate smoothly with NetSuite and address the common difficulties associated with its native reporting capabilities. Phocas provides users with a fast, accurate, and self-service data analytics platform that combines NetSuite data with other relevant sources. A key advantage of Phocas is its rapid implementation timeframe. Unlike some providers that take months or even years, Phocas often achieves integration and delivers results within weeks, with their dedicated implementation team handling the heavy lifting.

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Phocas automates the consolidation of data directly from a NetSuite ERP system, including information from multiple subsidiaries, countries, and warehouses, into a single, unified source of truth within the Phocas platform. It can even integrate data from multiple ERP systems, providing a truly comprehensive view for businesses with complex systems. The platform is engineered to handle large volumes of data while maintaining fast and reliable performance, addressing potential slowdowns that can occur with NetSuite's native tools when dealing with significant datasets.

“As we have grown 3 times our size, the need for a single source of truth and the ability to manipulate and dig into the data has grown. We are on an aggressive growth path through acquisition, so seamlessly integrating data from a growing number of data sources to see the big picture is critical.”

Soulby Jackson, CIO at Resolute Industrial.

Security is also a priority, with Phocas providing robust data access controls, including employee-level security that finance teams can manage to protect sensitive information while still making data accessible to those who need it.

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Simplifying data analysis and reporting

For users who are new to data analysis, Phocas offers AI-assisted capabilities that allow them to ask questions in natural language, such as "Which customers declined last quarter?". This intuitive approach lowers the barrier to entry and enables users to quickly gain insights without needing to understand complex query languages or report configurations.

Empowering self-serve insights and beyond

Phocas excels in enabling smarter, self-serve reporting. Users can easily build and customize reports and dashboards from scratch or use pre-built templates. This includes the ability to create and automate financial statements like profit and loss (or income statement), balance sheets, and cash flow statements for various teams. The platform also allows for easy tracking of key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to specific departments, with options to save favorites and set up ongoing alerts. Phocas provides detailed visibility into data, allowing users to drill down from high-level dashboards to investigate data by various dimensions like branch, division, sales representative, product, and customer, all the way down to the individual transaction level. Furthermore, users can add various visualizations like charts, graphs, and sparklines, as well as calculations such as revenue plus gross profit per representative or days of stock cover, all of which update automatically without requiring any manual scripting or SQL knowledge.

Beyond reporting, Phocas also streamlines budgeting and forecasting processes with a familiar, spreadsheet-like interface and automated data feeds directly from NetSuite, improving accuracy and collaboration in financial planning. Additionally, Phocas offers specific functionalities to enhance rebates management and demand forecasting through automated calculations and analysis of historical data, demonstrating its ability to optimize key business processes beyond core financial reporting.

Bridging the NetSuite data gap

while NetSuite offers a robust platform for managing business operations, its inherent complexity and potential for data silos and technical debt can make data extraction a significant hurdle. However, the emergence of third-party BI and FP&A tools, particularly solutions like Phocas Software, offers an easy pathway to overcome these challenges. By offering user-friendly interfaces, pre-built NetSuite connectors, and advanced analytical capabilities, these tools empower businesses to take control of their data, enabling more informed decision-making and ultimately driving better business outcomes.