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Your CFO got sold ... twice. Concur and NetSuite are both enterprise level software that a company with 50 FTEs does not need. NetSuite is a never ending money

Your CFO got sold ... twice. Concur and NetSuite are both enterprise level software that a company with 50 FTEs does not need. NetSuite is a never ending money pit with varying results. I dealt with a very similar situation, in which a project manager("VP") talked our owner into using NS, but it was over $100k/year and commitments were 2 years per seat at something like $5k. He ALSO wanted to do the roll out himself. 6 months later, it was still not functional. I got pulled onto the team to help. We made _some_ progress and I hired and managed 4 remote programmers to write all the plugins and customizations we would need to make it work with our model (multi-channel e-commerce, multiple warehouses/locations). It was a nightmare all-around and completely unnecessary. PM/VP left the company because he couldn't do the job and we were stuck with a half-assed implementation at that point. It's been around 4 years since the first day, I am no longer with that company, and I am sure they are still struggling with NS and employing multiple developers to keep things going. Good for the devs, bad for biz. I am willing to bet it's never returned a single dollar on the investment and cost them far more than they wanted to spend. If you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel at this point, cut your loses, and don't get another "solution-in-a-box".

brianwawok 7y ago
Hah this story sounded familiar. Makes sense.
wpietri 7y ago
Weirdly, almost exactly 20 years ago, I sat next to somebody at a wedding who had an almost-identical story about cleaning up after an SAP rollout, but all of the numbers had an extra zero or two. It amazes me that what the SaaS shift appears to have achieved is that now much smaller companies can get stuck in the same "solve everything" money pit. But I guess the fundamental problem hasn't changed: executives want to believe in magic solutions that give them all the feelings of control with none of the actual work. With no regard for actual operational efficiency, and no need to hold themselves to the ROI standards they'd demand of others.
- zbentley 7y ago
  > executives want to believe in magic solutions that give them all the feelings of control with none of the actual work Corollary: R&D wants to believe they can build magical solutions that solve all the problems--solutions that will scale better and cost less to keep up than off-the-shelf ones made by people with extensive domain expertise--in a week or two, promise. As with most things, the problem is complicated, deeply human, and answers lie somewhere in the middle.
  - abakker 7y ago
    I agree with this wholly. I very much doubt that many people are building tools in bad faith to consume money. It’s just that in the end, “solve everything” means implementing 10:1 weird hacks for edge cases vs actual features that companies all have in common.
    - com 7y ago
      That works both ways. 70% of features are common with other businesses, but the feature set is pretty diverse. My experience is that internal folk with a good understanding of the business hit 90-95% of the requirements without implementing the 200% of non-relevant broader industry requirements. YMMV.
  - CuriouslyC 7y ago
    The off the shelf solutions are designed to fit everyone, while bespoke solutions are designed just for you. A lot of the complexity in off the shelf software is that generality that might never be needed.
    - frankzinger 7y ago
      So true but very rarely expressed. And often the features you need are much easier to implement than you might have expected and, due to the generalisation complexity, hacking on the off-the-shelf product often much more difficult.
- 7y ago
acwan93 7y ago
Unsurprisingly this is a similar story from our customers who switch away from us, and then come crawling back due to the implementation nightmare from NetSuite/SAP. Usually it's a high level executive who wants the name recognition and the "no one got fired for picking X" mindset.
- tomhallett 7y ago
  Where do you work?
  - acwan93 7y ago
    A small family-run company building an ERP solution for wholesale distributors. (www.mastersystem.com)
outside1234 7y ago
This reminds me of something someone told me about "build vs. buy" for SAP. When you build, you can solve for your business model. When you buy, you have to fit your business model to what you buy. The insinuation was that trying to buy and customize SAP to your business was a fools errand.
- jdmichal 7y ago
  On the other hand, you are now beholden to the treadmill of your business' ever-changing demands as their processes change. You are devoting engineering resources (not cheap) to products which do not directly make money. For a group that is already typically organized as a cost center, this is not a great look.
narrator 7y ago
>NetSuite is a never ending money pit with varying results. IMHO, this describes any Oracle product. Usually what happens is a great little enterprise software company that gets a lot of happy customers gets bought by Oracle and then they start sucking the money out of everyone through nickel and dimeing on absolutely everything and make moving off the platform impossible and integrating with it difficult.
yellowapple 7y ago
We're in similar situations with a lot of our software vendors, NetSuite included. We've had maybe one vendor with which I've at least been reasonably happy (and, naturally, we're halfway through replacing that vendor with a different vendor that's significantly worse, because reasons). Same deal with nearly all my previous companies. I guess it's normal for enterprise software vendors to be absolute trash.

brianwawok 7y ago

Hah this story sounded familiar. Makes sense.

wpietri 7y ago

Weirdly, almost exactly 20 years ago, I sat next to somebody at a wedding who had an almost-identical story about cleaning up after an SAP rollout, but all of the numbers had an extra zero or two. It amazes me that what the SaaS shift appears to have achieved is that now much smaller companies can get stuck in the same "solve everything" money pit. But I guess the fundamental problem hasn't changed: executives want to believe in magic solutions that give them all the feelings of control with none of the actual work. With no regard for actual operational efficiency, and no need to hold themselves to the ROI standards they'd demand of others.

zbentley 7y ago
> executives want to believe in magic solutions that give them all the feelings of control with none of the actual work Corollary: R&D wants to believe they can build magical solutions that solve all the problems--solutions that will scale better and cost less to keep up than off-the-shelf ones made by people with extensive domain expertise--in a week or two, promise. As with most things, the problem is complicated, deeply human, and answers lie somewhere in the middle.
- abakker 7y ago
  I agree with this wholly. I very much doubt that many people are building tools in bad faith to consume money. It’s just that in the end, “solve everything” means implementing 10:1 weird hacks for edge cases vs actual features that companies all have in common.
  - com 7y ago
    That works both ways. 70% of features are common with other businesses, but the feature set is pretty diverse. My experience is that internal folk with a good understanding of the business hit 90-95% of the requirements without implementing the 200% of non-relevant broader industry requirements. YMMV.
- CuriouslyC 7y ago
  The off the shelf solutions are designed to fit everyone, while bespoke solutions are designed just for you. A lot of the complexity in off the shelf software is that generality that might never be needed.
  - frankzinger 7y ago
    So true but very rarely expressed. And often the features you need are much easier to implement than you might have expected and, due to the generalisation complexity, hacking on the off-the-shelf product often much more difficult.
7y ago

acwan93 7y ago

Unsurprisingly this is a similar story from our customers who switch away from us, and then come crawling back due to the implementation nightmare from NetSuite/SAP. Usually it's a high level executive who wants the name recognition and the "no one got fired for picking X" mindset.

tomhallett 7y ago
Where do you work?
- acwan93 7y ago
  A small family-run company building an ERP solution for wholesale distributors. (www.mastersystem.com)

outside1234 7y ago

This reminds me of something someone told me about "build vs. buy" for SAP. When you build, you can solve for your business model. When you buy, you have to fit your business model to what you buy. The insinuation was that trying to buy and customize SAP to your business was a fools errand.

jdmichal 7y ago
On the other hand, you are now beholden to the treadmill of your business' ever-changing demands as their processes change. You are devoting engineering resources (not cheap) to products which do not directly make money. For a group that is already typically organized as a cost center, this is not a great look.

narrator 7y ago

>NetSuite is a never ending money pit with varying results. IMHO, this describes any Oracle product. Usually what happens is a great little enterprise software company that gets a lot of happy customers gets bought by Oracle and then they start sucking the money out of everyone through nickel and dimeing on absolutely everything and make moving off the platform impossible and integrating with it difficult.

yellowapple 7y ago

We're in similar situations with a lot of our software vendors, NetSuite included. We've had maybe one vendor with which I've at least been reasonably happy (and, naturally, we're halfway through replacing that vendor with a different vendor that's significantly worse, because reasons). Same deal with nearly all my previous companies. I guess it's normal for enterprise software vendors to be absolute trash.