Seems some customers of NetSuite’s on-demand business software are a little less than happy at the sales tactics, the product delivery and the customer service. Some customer comments include;

NetSuite is a catastrophe: sales people promise the moon but there is little flexibility, no support, and no willingness to help solve problems. My firms is small and we almost went under because of the delays and costs of dealing with NetSuite. We had to junk the entire solution and start over from scratch. Avoid NetSuite at ALL costs!

And this one;

We signed the deal back in the Febraury/March time and had an agreed delivery date of 1st September but by the time Septmber rolled round, they’d pretty much done nothing. I was horrified to find they needed to write scripts. At first it was two but ended up as eight. About a week after delivery in the October, they pretty much dumped me. That was around the time things started going badly wrong. They never cleaned up the test data they used and we can’t get it out the system. In the end we had to come off NetSuite.

One disgruntled customer has even set up a website to tell of their displeasure at their NetSuite experience.

The problem here (other than for those who have bought NetSuite shares) is that NetSuite is seen as a bit of a figurehead in the on-demand world. While Salesforce is arguably the king of CRM. NetSuite is the perceived leader in putting it all togteher. This sort of press is not only really bad for NetSuite, but bad for SaaS as a whole.

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

3 Comments
  • If people look a bit further than the sensationalism, these problems are characteristics of poor software companies in general, and not just SaaS. Agreed they’re not good, and they reflect poorly on NetSuite, but it could be the case of a vocal minority creating some noise.

    Conversely, look at how little criticism SaaS companies such as Xero gets here. Their CFO and head of sales left without anyone questioning why – could it be a sign that they’re not performing? Are there disgruntled customers out there scared to say anything in typical “low profile” Kiwi fashion?

  • Thanks for the comment Mark – only Xero themselves could comment on the reasons for the departures. As for their performance – the regular exchange reports should cover that for us all.

  • Although I agree no software, including NS, is 100% perfect, let’s realize that humans are involved with any system. Sure there are software problems, however if humans are not willing to accept change, and work within any software system via the “normal” processes, humans may be more to blame than the software itself? I’m not saying humans are dumb, but any software system can have a steep / long learning curve, and many humans are not patient enough to “wait it out”. We’ve worked with many companies (and humans) on NS that were ready to leave NS, however we were able to help them resolve many of their main issues, so they could move forward and see more value from NS. Let’s also remember that many companies (humans) try to implement NS on their own – “self implementation” and for any ERP system that can be potentially dangerous, especially with such a complex and “new to many humans” system. Again, the blame should not lie with the software vendor for that decision.

    I’m very willing to talk with those that are not happy with their NS system, and help to find ways to resolve issues. Contact me at nshelp@baacoffice.com

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