The new release of NetSuite just come in time in Feb 2021 to be part of the winning factor of the agile new growth action plan of our clients of various industries. Apart from optimizing financial and operational business processes, NetSuite 2021 Release 1 (or NetSuite 2021.1 Release) injects intelligence and automation into everything from financial and project management to multi-subsidiary operations and inventory management.
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Smart Financials & Operational Automation
- The introduction of centralized subsidiary purchasing and billing consolidates purchases across multi-subsidiary organizations and generates vendor payments from a single location. This can reduce purchase order volume and automate corresponding cross-charges. The payoff: better spend management and increased productivity.
- New expense commitments and budget validation functionality prevents overspending by validating purchase requests and orders against an organization’s available budget, ensuring that budgets are closely followed.
- SuiteApprovals now provides email approval which makes it possible to review, approve or reject transactions on the go by simply clicking on email links. Staff can use the accompanying email approval log to review and audit email approval actions before they are updated in the system. This leads to more flexible and quicker transaction approvals.
- With the latest global bank feeds feature, companies can now use the Bank Feeds SuiteApp to automate the importing of financial data from banks in Asia, Australia and New Zealand*, increasing efficiency and simplifying tedious reconciliation tasks.
eCommerce Enhancements
- Customers can easily reorder previously ordered items by viewing a MyAccount purchase history. The update also provides a personalized, simplified customer experience (CX) for repeat orders of the same item based on the shopper’s profile
Automated Inventory Management
- The NetSuite Pack Station is a new touchscreen packing solution that can be used to consolidate shipments, pack multiple cartons simultaneously, manage multi-level packing and scan weights from scales. This provides an extra layer of verification before orders are shipped, potentially preventing customer dissatisfaction and avoiding the cost of having to reship an incorrectly packed order.
- Warehouse management system (WMS) enhancements in NetSuite 2021 Release 1 include wave automation (for taking advantage of off-peak wave processing),tally scans (which improve picking by making bar code scans quicker and more reliable), cart put-away, bulk picking, added support of mobile status changes and automatic label printing.
- Channel allocation and reservation functionality enables order allocation by channel and lets you enter inventory reservation in advance of the sales order. This leads to better tracking of sales and operations activities. The new order management dashboard and enhanced sales reports provide improved insight into channel sales operations, and improved allocation and fulfillment translates to increased customer satisfaction.
- Finally, with the new supply allocation against blanket PO feature, location assignments are now based on earliest availability and required-by date. This means orders can be promised more accurately by using the best location recommendation to match those timeframes.
Autonomous Supply Planning
- New functionality automates supply planning by allowing the planner to designate criteria to repeat the planning process at a specific interval. The planner can also schedule a refresh of the planning repository and launch supply plans in off-hours to ensure the resource intensive jobs occur then. Planning repository data and the planning results data is now provided via Saved Search so the supply planner can perform ad-hoc analysis and share planning results. This lends a better view into the master production schedule of items that they must produce.
- A new date-based view in the Planning Workbench allows the planner to sort item and location based on time. Planners can set threshold levels for late demand for the item and location by date, which trigger color-coded alerts directly in the Planning Workbench.
- The supply chain snapshot now displays allocated quantities, blanket PO schedules and inbound shipment information to create better simulations of future demand and supply.
Platform and Analytics
- New application performance management (APM) dashboards monitor and analyze the health of REST web services-based integrations. Support for REST web services has also been enhanced.
- With new internationalization and localization tools and processes the NetSuite user and administrator experience can feel local for global businesses operating in any country. There is now native language support for SuiteAnalytics workbooks, a wide range of fields that can be localized, and the ability to extend support for analytics development and automation.
- SuiteScript APIs have been made more powerful and easier to use for application development and account customization projects, and the new secrets management feature set enables developers to securely manage authentication information.
- Developers are now able to work with significantly larger data sets by virtue of asynchronous coding techniques. They can also use native Chrome debugger support for SuiteScript to test and debug applications without leaving browser context.
Optimizing the Project Lifecycle
- NetSuite 2021 Release 1 brings the debut of SuiteProjects, a professional services automation solution built natively on NetSuite. SuiteProjects combines capabilities in project management, resource management, project budgeting and project accounting, providing complete visibility into, and control over projects and billable resources. When combined with NetSuite CRM, financials and SuitePeople, SuiteProjects becomes the finishing touch on a comprehensive single platform for running a services business.
- Project purchase automation and visibility functionality lets project managers initiate purchases directly from projects, providing project views of purchase transactions and enabling the routing of purchase approvals. Purchasing and project management staff can collaborate more effectively, and the simplified user experience lets project managers easily view how purchases are affecting projects.
- Expense report policies can be expanded to set limits for each expense line in a project, and additional filters allow for control of policies based on billable line items. The combination of controls and notifications ensures alignment with company policies and client contracts.
- By clicking the new “retract” button, employees can easily correct weekly timesheets before they’re approved, saving time for employees, approvers and administrators alike.
*Please call to check integration with banks in Hong Kong.
The preceding is intended to outline Oracle NetSuite’s general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, timing, and pricing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products may change and remains at the sole discretion of Oracle Corporation. For details please visit the official website of Oracle.