The lack of a coherent set of answers to common SaaS questions has been a topic of continued complaint in AccMan stories. That might just be changing.
Over the holiday period I read Tom Foydel’s NetSuite OneWorld Implementation 2011 R2 paper. It runs to 368 pages and while I wont pretend to have consumed it all in detail, I picked up plenty of gems. If that fazes you then try NetSuite for Dummies (which I’ve also read) as a solid introduction to what that company offers and how it works. More generally I’d advise anyone considering a NetSuite investment to read through both these books to get a feel for what you’re likely letting yourself in for but before you sign any contracts.
Tom’s book does three things I’ve not seen anywhere else:
- Addresses the broad implementation challenges for customers based upon the experience of implementing many NetSuite systems, providing insights into the impact of different styles of implementation and why the NetSuite/Foydel approach is superior to others. It is convincing.
- Carefully separates the customer responsibilities from those of the implementer as a way of framing an implementation roadmap. This is important in understanding the relationship you’re about to embark upon.
- Provides a detailed discussion of the due diligence and security issues that dominate many pre-contract conversations.
Just to clear up any thoughts that I might be going vendor soft in my old age. It is important to understand that an implementer has a much more intimate relationship with the customer than the service vendor and especially during the implementation phase. It is in the implementer’s economic interests to ensure customer success because that is how they get paid. The vendor has less of an incentive because they are paid for access to services whether customers use them or not. Of course I’d like to see flexibility and innovation there but then arguing those points is what I do.
It is Tom’s latter point about due diligence which is most interesting to me because in doing so, he highlights things that are not immediately obvious when visiting the NetSuite site. For example:
- Access to Your Data
While we securely manage your information for you in our data center, it is always your data and your data alone, and you always have the ability to export your data into an IIF file (tab delimited format recognized by various applications) or a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file from our applications. We created this export capability because we know it is important for you to have the option of retrieving your data at anytime, from anywhere you want. - Service Level Agreement
We know that downtime is not an option in your business. This is one reason that our service agreement guarantees 99.5% uptime outside the scheduled service windows. We guarantee 99.5% uptime across the entire NetSuite family of production applications for all our customers. A credit is available if NetSuite does not deliver its application services with 99.5% uptime.
These statements meet two key criteria in my assessments of SaaS solutions. Having Tom highlight them as part of a broader due diligence discussion is extraordinarily helpful. Recommended.
