SC Corner E6 Part 02: Limits of Solutioning

Okay, well, this is actually part two of a two part episode. So if you haven't listened to part one yet, we definitely recommend going back and listening to that.

And so that. I think that's an important thing when you're architecting because inevitably, you know, we're focusing this podcast for like solution consultants. It's very easy as a solution consultant. And I've been guilty and there are probably people out there be like, yeah, Miller, like guilty. Like you're the. Yeah, you know, you're the Stalin of making something and throwing it over the wall. You know, half thought out and doing that. I actually hate doing that. You know, I always want to make sure that I've thought out the things so that when we, when we close a deal and a customer's looking for it, that, that, you know, we're not just really selling them like a bunch of fields and records, we're selling their hires to do a job. Like there's a job that they want this thing to do. And that's what we want to. This is what we want to give them. Not, not three records and X number of fields and three saved searches. And so I know I try to never lose sight of that and make sure that we. That's kind of like at the end of the day, that's what we want them to have.

I feel like that's actually a lot of really good actionable advice. Like as an SC NET suite is really good at customizations. If you want to get better at it as an SC and actually just be a better scale, understand the limitations of those customizations. And the best way to do that is to then get into the code and actually start playing with it a little bit. So I feel like. And like I. That's not something that I've done. So I feel like that's something I could go be better at.

Oh yeah, yeah, you. You pick it up really, really fast.

I have the other classes I've taken, so.

No, no, the. The other side is like people who worked with me that will be like, I will think like as we do this, they'll be like, now Chris, you customize everything like you business stuff and.

And there's customize within reason though. Like you use a lot of the building blocks to customize.

Yep, that's exactly right. And that's kind of getting to the. There's like where, where we had just talked about, there's the transactional, like the accounting piece. We want to stay that. But one of the things that's really important is people really like to see. What's the right word they're looking to get resonance with. Like, there's something they see and when they see it and it's like their world and their piece, they're like, ah, that's it, that's what I'm looking for. And you don't always hit it, but you always try. And that's really where I'll spend a lot of the customization time. So in Discoveries and evely, they'll talk about this something, this record, or this or this sort of something. And when that comes up, then I will always try to customize to that so that they can get a vision.

And you think that's okay? Like as an sc, that's not like putting the implementation like a tiger spot?

No, I think that's required. In fact, even if. Because even if implementation is like, whoa.

Whoa, you gave him five new records?

Yeah. You did this. At the end of the day, when you. They're not like, just like made up things that I was just doing because I was bored, like, these are things that I heard that they said, this is really important to me. So.

So it's something that would probably need to happen on the implementation side anyway.

It's exactly it. And the way they decide who they trust to go through this with are the people that are like, ah, you understand what I'm trying to do. And so if you can show that to them, then they do that. But that's where again, it comes back to. Sometimes you can get the perspective of five records, three safe searches. That's what I'm delivering instead of I'm delivering you this thing that can do this job for us. And many of the times those are what are necessary to actually do the job that they want to hire NetSuite to do.

And so you're customizable ERP, not something that like a customized ERP that I've already like out of the box prevent, like presented a couple fields for you.

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. And that's one thing that I've always, I think we've done a good job, but we always. That's the thing we're always trying to figure out is, you know, how much do we bring into, like, do we save and how much is like really like job by job uniqueness. The one thing, you know, that I will tell, that I would say for scs and like, again, I think you've done a great job of this is nothing's ever wasted. Like, even the person who needed the most whacked out thing. And you're like, well, I'll never do that again. It won't be long before someone else shows up wanting that whacked out thing. Or you're like, you know what, you're not going to believe this in a different industry, but some dude asks for something just like this one time. Yeah. And so I feel like that comes.

Up with like less or leases and loans all the time. There's so much overlap and they're like, well, I lease out my things but it actually looks exactly like a loan.

Yeah, that's exactly.

I feel like I see that all the time and kind of the overlap. Again, it comes down to the GL impact. Are you recognizing interest? Are you like looking to be able to split things out and have different fees associated?

Right.

There's just different products that do things different.

Yeah, exactly. And sometimes you find, probably find yourself saying, okay, we call it this, but you call it this.

So we'll just change the name on the record, but we're going with this one.

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what.

And then it just comes up to the confidence. If you come in confident, we have a solution, you're not going to like the names, but it's going to work.

Yep, that's exactly. It's going to do exactly what you want. We'll change the name. So that's fun.

I love it. Well, I guess if you like just to kind of wrap up. If you're like an SC at netsuite and you're like our product is fantastic because of customization, what are the like maybe key three things that like why customization matters, like why as a client you care.

Gotcha. The. Okay, so the top three reasons, because there's a whole bunch of them. But let me.

Well, you can. Yeah, I mean I can come up with some myself.

But my main, the main reason why they should care is, is every business is unique and the same. And what you want is you need to figure out the things that are the same for a well run company and then be able to add your uniqueness on top of that. And in many ways netsuite becomes the canvas that lets you do that. And when people really get that vision and they understand what it is, then you start using NetSuite to do all kinds of things that you would ever do. So again, we go back to the jobs. When I was a customer, I used to tell people, well, let's see if we can hire netsuite to do that. And what that meant was, is there something we could build out that bring it inside of NetSuite. So, for example, I had a doctor, he was older, and he actually, they let his medical license expire. So you can imagine the panic that went up and down the entire organization, this medical company. He didn't do anything wrong. It was just literally, we were like, we got to get to the bottom of this. And all the medical license dates were being kept on an Excel spreadsheet on the paralegal's computer. And it got. And so I was like, okay, let me see if I can fix this. And so it took me a day back then, but I built like a little tiny app that was essentially the legal department could see. But it was in effect, you know, oral surgeon expiration date, you know, NIH number this. And when you are within three months of your expiration, out goes the email to the center administrator. It shows up on their dashboard. When it's 60 days, it goes to the heads, the head of all center.

Administrators like you, as A user of NetSuite can do that.

That's exactly right. And now you would never hire QuickBooks to do that. You would never hire, you know, intact or even Oracle Fusion to do that. NetSuite's the only system that NetSuite, the platform turns it from just an accounting system into like an execution system, something.

Used for the operation. It's like you go in and say, well, I know how to create a custom record. I know how to add fields to that custom record, and I know how to set up a safe search with an email notification based off of it.

That's exactly right. And now you've just created something that actually does real work in your office. So all this talk about where we hear about AI and automation and robotic process automation, all that stuff, quite frankly, all of that you can do in that you've been able to do that Nestle for years by writing a saved search with some criteria and then saying, send out an email when this happens, then notify me. Yeah, notify me and then make a record that has, you know, a due date for somebody to take some action on. And, you know, yada yada, you've got quote, unquote, AI with robotic process automation. But in a way that's much easier for people to understand because that's really.

Well, I think it's important as an SC to have an example like that in your back pocket. So if someone says, like, okay, but how am I going to customize this for me? Well, here's an example of how someone set this up.

Yep.

Yeah, I think that's important.

Yeah. The second thing that I think is that the customization does. So the first is like, you turn netsuite into an execution. It really can drive results because of the platform being done. The second thing is that people can put in their unique. You know, I probably mentioned a couple of times, but I really want to emphasize that everyone has what makes them unique, their differentiators as a company, that they want their customer to have this experience based on that and that you can institutionalize and bake all that into netsuite how you want using the platform. What kind of information do I collect? How do we respond to you? All of that comes from a well designed NetSuite implementation. That really comes from the platform because again, you don't get customer experience from QuickBooks or Intact or any of these other systems. The third thing is that netsuite now is more of a. Everyone talks about platform, platform platforms, but often these platform companies and softwares, they're like a solution in search of a problem. They're like, hey, you know that like people look and go, well, here's a.

Specific, like software that is for a specific industry with a specific set of needs and they've created a solution and now they're looking for companies that like, fit that problem.

That's exactly it. That's exactly it.

And so netsuite's more of a blank slate.

Yeah, it is, it is, it's. It's a blank slate. But it, but it allows you to focus. To focus and be able to kind of like really create what you need. But the problems come to netsuite and then you use a platform to create the solution. A lot of times people will have a platform.

Yeah, I see that all the time. They're like, well, we've looked at like five different platforms. I haven't found anything. So now we're here on NetSuite and we need to customize the crap out of this. Yes, do what we need.

Yep, that's exactly right. But they're like you're, but they're like, you focus it because it's like, here's the accounting. Because everything that you do, your entire business has to only come down under these three pieces of paper, you know, that run these reports. And so as we reduce it down, netsuite already has that there versus, like, if you try to do a platform, what are they trying to do? They're usually trying to talk in to say, solve this problem. And then, oh, well, what about this and this? And they're like, I don't know, we'll.

Bring in another platform, connect them and it'll work great.

And that's what I've always loved about it, is you can do, if you think it through, all aspects of a problem that people are looking to solve can be done. The reporting, the operations, the, you know, procurement, you know, raw materials, whatever you need to do. We can you, from start to finish, you can solve it all in this one system that's like aware of everything that's going, that's gone upstream and downstream. And I, you know, that's a really cool way. And that's the way I, when I think about how I want to design something, that's exactly how I think what I want it to look like. The last thing is, if you are a, you know, if you're an SC or that netsuite, there are two things. The first is like, if you're a software company, the platform netsuite is the ultimate proving ground for every product, like every product that we made that's very successful. I have absolute confidence that we could take it out of netsuite into the wider world and have it work. Because we've proven how you got to interact with it, how you got to do this, how other things. You look at some of the other software things and what do they do? They'll make something and then they'll introduce thing. Guess what? Now we do journals. Well, we've already had to solve that problem from day one, interacting with how we wanted to come through netsuite. And so you get this.

It's accounting focus.

Yeah. And it's like, really, if you can make an app that's successful in NetSuite, I guarantee you it'll be successful outside.

Because now it does the core function.

Because now it does the core function.

To push out a journal entry at the end of the day.

Yep, that's exactly it. And it almost becomes easier. The other thing is for SCS is as you get wider experience in industry, kind of comes back on the same thing. What is like this or like that? You'll find that you don't need to have that many brilliant, unique ideas, you need just a few. And they'll get repurposed time and time again. You know, you can even see it here where we'll talk to the product guys and they'll be like, we're never doing that again. You wasted our time. And then was it a month later I got a customer just like them back here for you again. Good thing we did that.

That's true. You see things repeated whether or not you believe it or not.

Yeah. And that really becomes. And then the better you get, the sharper you get, the more you can really hone it down to what they want. Because people don't need you to build everything for them and do the implementation. What they need is you to get in their world enough that you can create a vision that's like a bridge that says, I'm really scared to come over here. I hope this is going to work. And they're able to see enough to say, ah, okay, I see how. What's going to happen here? And that's what gives them the confidence to say, let's, let's go with netgame, let's go with netsuite.

I like that.

All of those. And that's the. That's really, at the end of the day, kind of what makes the platform really special.

I love that. I feel like that kind of wraps up the whole kind of episode, because it's basically like, if you are pushing the limits of solutioning inside of NetSuite, do it to the extent that your client can envision themselves using the product. And if that's going all the way to scripting, or if it's getting into code a little bit, or if it's just creating custom records and fields, like, that's the point you're going for. And so that's when you're like, that's the limit you're pushing.

Yep.

Yeah, I think that's great.

Awesome.

Well, thanks, Chris. This has been a great episode. Very helpful for me.

Oh, well, now you know this really well, Becca, so I'm glad to be able to share it. But yeah, I think, you know, I think this is something that the SC should not be afraid of.

Don't be shy of it.

You know, you can get gun shy and be like, well, I don't know this, I don't know that, but you'd be surprised. You know, a lot more than you think. And a lot of times just get in the cutter's head and think, if I was over on the other side and I was the AP person, if I was the guy driving the forklift, what would I need to see? What would I need to do? What would make me feel good about my job and you'll end up just fine. I mean, that's, that's, that's honestly kind of where I start is, is that it's no, like, know the industry. Yeah, yeah, it is. There's. It's no, like, we did a whole episode on that. Yeah. If I went to MIT and, you know, was a nuclear physicist, how would I want to see it? Like.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I wouldn't do that. So I couldn't do that if I wanted to. So. But that's the. That's kind of really the thing. So. Yeah, I really like how you summed it up is. Yeah. Take it to paint the vision, help them move over, and then that's where you stop and hand it over to the rest of the devit implementation.

Takes it from there. Well, thanks, Chris.

You got it, Becca. Thank you.

I'm Becca Smith, and I've been joined by Chris Miller. Thanks so much for listening to SC Corner. You can find us on any of your preferred streaming platforms, and you can always look up our products at NetGain Tech.