It’s Halloween and few things are scarier than . . . ERP challenges! (You thought we’d say ghosts or witches or maybe Excel Pivot Tables, didn’t you?) As much as ERP software is a powerful solution for synchronizing data from various applications, and provides a single source of truth for your entire team, there are also plenty of horror stories about ERPs. 

To be clear: ERPs themselves aren’t scary. They’re incredibly beneficial to businesses. But they do come with some horror stories that might have you hiding from the potential nightmares instead of planning to implement one in your own organization. 

Toil and Trouble

There are plenty of ERP challenges that could keep you awake at night. 

• Aging Technology: Sometimes organizations would rather stick with older tech than risk experiencing a terrifying ERP implementation process. But doing nothing with your current ERP can be far scarier, especially when the older tech has a hard time connecting to other applications across your organization, resulting in data blind spots and problems with visibility.
• Employee Training: Once you decide to implement a new ERP, you also have the mountainous task of training your teams to use it, and use it correctly. Because if your team isn’t confident or comfortable using the new ERP, they will either find workarounds or worse: They won’t use the ERP at all. And that’s a lot of investment gone to waste. Picking a user-friendly ERP can go a long way toward mitigating this fear. 
• Finding the Right Solution: Not all ERPs are created equal. Some are purpose-built for specific industries. Some are highly customizable while still others excel at connecting to third-party integrations for the best performance possible. Make sure the ERP you choose has the right features and tools for what you need to do. 
• Moving Data: Transferring data from a legacy system to a new ERP is a crucial and time-consuming process. Any disruptions in migration can cause service disruptions and lost revenue for the business. Don’t go it alone—make sure you have a good deployment partner on your side.

Haunting Experiences

Once you get the right ERP solution in place, there’s still a chance you could have a haunting experience. Here are a few nightmares we’ve encountered: 

Stuck in the CSV Data Loading Loop – ClearStar
While integrator.io by Celigo put ClearStar well on its way with NetSuite automation, the team still needed a better process solution for reporting and loading data into and then getting it back out of NetSuite. For the volume and complexity of data ClearStar teams needed to work with, the native CSV process was not quite fast enough. “We were using CSVs,” recalled Finance Transformation Lead Craig Halliburton. “As you know, if there’s something wrong with one piece, you have to start all over again and figure out what’s wrong.” For an organization loading thousands of records into NetSuite on a weekly and sometimes daily basis, they needed a better process—and fast. 

Filing Cabinet Nightmares – Noon International
For many years, Noon International functioned with a highly manual process. “We lived in filing cabinets,” CIO Michael Yasutake admitted. “We printed everything on paper, and then we would go to the filing cabinet and look at it. And let’s be real: That was terrible.” So in 2017, Michael began looking for ways to further streamline the business.

Never-Ending Data Consolidation – JLAM
Due to the nature of JLAM’s setup, Controller Ian Goodnenough must work not only with NetSuite data for reporting, but also with multiple outside systems that handle property-level financials for apartment and office buildings. Any attempts at centralizing reporting in NetSuite involved multiple data imports that were first entered into Excel templates and then uploaded natively into NetSuite via CSV imports. The time-consuming nature of the process was further extended due to the need to adapt the Excel data exported in a legacy format, which necessitated additional adjustments for compatibility purposes.

Omnichannel Sales Headaches – MacKenzie-Childs
Managing omnichannel sales across catalog, e-commerce, home shopping channels, major department store retailers, third-party resellers, and their own international flagship and independent retail stores, MacKenzie-Childs needed to consolidate reporting and transform its decision-making process with data-driven insights. Liz Rozwood, Chief of Staff for MacKenzie-Childs, helped spearhead this transformation through the implementation of NetSuite, but quickly realized that their reporting needs were more complex than NetSuite’s native tools could manage. This resulted in an intensely manual process using Excel templates that took up 20 hours per week and, for the company’s success, was ultimately unsustainable.

Make Your ERP A Treat and Not A Trick

Despite the horror stories of ERP challenges above, not every experience has to be the stuff of nightmares. In fact, CloudExtend is built on making your NetSuite ERP a dream come true through direct integration: ExtendInsights streamlines all your NetSuite reporting and import/export processes by letting you work right in Excel. Import data with a single click, refresh spreadsheet data automatically or on demand, and extend the value of the applications you already have.

Don’t feel haunted by manual reporting and uploading processes anymore. ClearStar has significantly changed how it updates NetSuite data with the help of ExtendInsights. “Every day I’m using ExtendInsights, updating thousands of records,” reports Craig. “I think it’s saved a whole year of my life . . . I can’t imagine doing my job without ExtendInsights.” Reporting capabilities have also freed up over 1000 hours per year at MacKenzie-Childs. “We’re not wasting 20 hours a week copying and pasting,” said Liz Rozwood. 

Say goodbye to ERP challenges: Try ExtendInsights for yourself, completely free, for two weeks. (That’s like finding the house that’s giving out the full-size candy bars!) Get started here.