Businesses are relying more than ever on analytics to make data-driven decisions. The NetSuite 2020 Release 2 provides updates to SuiteAnalytics that make it even easier to build the right reports and analytical views. With its drag-and-drop style, visualization of ERP data is intuitive and easier to use. Here are a few of the highlights from this release:
Multiple Datasets in Workbook
Because a single report often contains information from various sources, SuiteAnalytics Workbook now brings support for multiple datasets in a single Workbook. This means that a single Workbook can contain several pivot tables or charts, each sourced by a different dataset. Want to have information about support cases in one chart and a project load for a specific support team in another within a single Workbook? That's exactly what multiple datasets allow. This makes SuiteAnalytics Workbook an even more comprehensive report that can be shared or put on the dashboard.
In order to select the dataset, use the "Connect Dataset" option when adding a new table or chart within Workbook.
The result of using multiple datasets within one Workbook may look like this:
Easier Data Discovery
Finding the right data for business reports is the most important step in decision making. Sometimes there are too many fields and options when you are creating standard financial reports. For this scenario, SuiteAnalytics Workbook proactively offers high-impact fields on the top of the list to make them more prominent.
Among such crucial fields, users can find Location, Amount, Item Account Name and others like Transaction Line, Accounting Line and Account Records.
Workbook displays these crucial fields within the dataset field list when you use search. For example, here is how the preferred fields are visualized on the top if you search for "Account":
Custom Calculated Fields Improvements
If you want to calculate things like cost of goods/items in Workbook, then you should use the calculated fields known as "formulas fields." Workbook recently added error handling visualization for better and faster building of complex formula fields.
The formula builder contains a refined set of function examples that can be added for testing and editing. All examples are fully functional out of the box, which should help users who are not so familiar with the Oracle SQL coding required to build calculated fields.
New Filter Options in Pivot Tables and Charts
Often in business and financial reports, Workbook reports need to be filtered by a date or date range. And usually it's attached to calendar quarters, fiscal quarters or fiscal decades. Workbook pivot tables and charts have been extended with a "Date Range" filter that allows one-click actions such as "last fiscal quarter."
Together with the date range filtering, pivot table and charts now also have the ability to create conditional filters on percentages and numeric values. This makes Workbook more useful in scenarios such as "Opportunity amount by sales rep for opportunities with a likelihood to be won over 80%" or "Sales by item for items where quantity is greater than 100."
Enhanced Dashboard with Table View portlet
NetSuite dashboards are widely used as a go-to-place for the most important ERP data. Each department usually has at least one dashboard with all the major KPIs and report previews. NetSuite dashboards can visualize data from all NetSuite modules including SuiteAnalytics. With the NetSuite 2020 Release 2, dashboards portlets now support Workbook table views. To add one, you need to have at least one Workbook with a table view stored and then go to dashboard -> personalize -> select Analytics -> choose table view from the Workbook you need.
New template content
Templates in SuiteAnalytics are a great way to get started with analytics for most industries. Users simply select a standard report and fine-tune by custom fields or filters. For NetSuite 2020 Release 2, there is a new template focused on "Subscriptions and Recurring Revenue." In order to find this new Workbook on the Analytics home page, you just need to enable two features in NetSuite called: "Subscription Billing" and "Advanced Subscription Billing."
Learn More About NetSuite 2020 Release 2
These are just the highlights; there's much more for software companies in NetSuite 2020 Release 2 than can be covered in a single blog post. For more specifics on the complete list of new features, be sure to read the Release Notes.
New to the release process? Learn more about it here.
Finally, be sure to request access to your Release Preview account. There, you can test and see how the new features will work with your own data and get a jumpstart on maximizing the impact of NetSuite 2020 Release 2.