NetSuite vs. Salesforce - What’s the right solution for your organization?

Both NetSuite and Salesforce are customizable solutions that can be tailored for your business’s specific challenges and goals. 

NetSuite and Salesforce can both function as customer relationship management solutions, otherwise known as CRMs. CRMs help you store data, including customer and lead data, all in one central system. Salesforce is widespreadly used among small-businesses, which make up 49% of Salesforce’s customers. NetSuite’s largest customer group is mid-sized companies with 50-200 employees.

But that doesn’t mean growing businesses should overlook NetSuite, either. By choosing NetSuite as a budding organization, you keep future growth in mind and eliminate the need to later migrate to the solution. 

The main difference between the solutions is that NetSuite is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that includes a CRM, whereas Salesforce is only a CRM system.

Because Salesforce is a specialized CRM, you won’t be able to perform 360 business functions with it. Salesforce is limited to managing sales, marketing, and customer services on its platform.

On the other hand, because NetSuite is an ERP, it functions as an end-to-end business solution, offering accounting software, financial management, enterprise performance management, inventory management, warehouse management, and more. 

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Business Advantages of NetSuite

NetSuite has a single unified platform where you can manage all of the above and combines CRM, ERP and e-commerce functionalities.

NetSuite has integrated ERP capabilities, which means financial, inventory, and order management can all live in one place. Other business processes can also be managed, including customer relationship management for customer interactions, sales opportunities, and customer support tickets.

NetSuite has built-in business intelligence and reporting tools available in the system, which users can directly analyze data without having to export data into third party systems.

NetSuite is also extremely customizable. Customization features are available and easy to use without requiring any coding or support from the IT department. 

Admins can customize each user's experience according to their preferences. Users can add key performance indicators, prioritize the display of certain information, set data ranges that are important for their analyses, filter for specific subsets of data, set up notifications for when certain conditions are met, and much more. 

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A Closer Look at Salesforce

Salesforce won’t let you manage your entire business like NetSuite can. However, if your organization is looking for a specialized CRM, Salesforce will get the job done.

Salesforce offers cloud-based contact management and allows you to share data, including campaigns, insights, or documents across your organization. 

You can also view a contact’s behavior and timeline through lead management. As one of Salesforce’s key features, opportunity management shows the activity of a contact and the different stages of a deal to help you decide on next steps. 

Like NetSuite, Salesforce is also highly customizable. Your organization can easily drag and drop charts, filters, fields, and groupings to add to sales forecast reports so you can track the information that matters to you. 

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Which solution should your organization choose?

Which solution your organization should choose depends on your business’s specific needs.

If your organization only needs a specialized CRM for managing contacts and reporting on relevant data, Salesforce is a good choice. 

If your organization wants a top of line end-to-end business solution, including contact, lead, financial, order, supply chain, and inventory management, NetSuite is the better option for you.

NetSuite’s comprehensive suite is more suitable to keep up with companies that have complex operational requirements. 

NetSuite also has robust financial management capabilities, including accounts payable and receivable automation, billing and invoicing, revenue recognition compliance, comprehensive reports, budgeting and planning, and much more. 

You should also keep your business’s long term success in mind. Many different, unintegrated systems can become difficult and tedious for your employees to gather information from. 

NetSuite has one single, unified platform which allows employees to access and manage data in one central place without having to transfer data from several disconnected systems, which can lead to errors. 

Because NetSuite is a unified platform, it’s much easier to get a comprehensive view of the organization. Decision makers can easily track key metrics and gain insights into various aspects of the business. 

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Conclusion

Choosing the right solution for your organization can be an overwhelming and daunting task, especially when the future of your business relies on making the right choice. At Para Business Systems, we take the guesswork out of digital solutions. We offer free initial consultations to get you started on your journey to a better digital landscape. Claim your free consultation, now.