One might think business decision-making is getting easier. Companies amass troves of data and leverage advanced analytics technologies to confirm assumptions and surface new insights on their customers, business performance and market trends. However, a recent Gartner survey tells a different story, with respondents stating that 65% of their decisions are more challenging to make than two years ago.

Relevant and reliable data quality is essential to an agile decision-making process that delivers clarity and improved outcomes.

NetSuite 2022 Release 2 enhancements for the NetSuite Analytics Warehouse specifically target that need by significantly reducing the technical hurdles and costs associated with blending relevant data sets for improved decision confidence. Users can now easily blend standard NetSuite transactional data with custom data and an expansive collection of third-party sources. Additionally, enhancements to pre-built visualization capabilities allow decision-makers to quickly see KPIs and identify trends and new data relationships.

Simplifying Custom Data Management

Transaction data is not the only source of business insights. Some companies take an innovative approach to data collection for unique customer insights. For example, a retailer may track weather and satellite images of store parking lots, then couple it with proprietary customer data to predict purchase activity. Your company’s unique data sets can become a difficult-to-replicate strategic asset. First, you’re not looking at the same reports as your competitors and coming to the same conclusions. And, you’re feeding machine learning models with high-quality, diverse training data. The result: Insightful, customized forecasts on market patterns, customer preferences and process automations.

However, there are challenges in compiling the data sets that power such insights.

The Custom Attribute Mapping Editor allows users to bring in data from various sources with just a click.

Custom data, because of its volume and format variety, can be immensely difficult and expensive to bring into a data warehouse. In fact, its complexity and cost are top impediments to most data warehouse migration initiatives. NetSuite 2022 Release 2 addresses both. With just a few clicks of the Custom Attribute Mapping Editor tool, a business analyst can select the custom data to flow from NetSuite into the data warehouse on the next scheduled refresh, as well as its placement in a subject area data snapshot: finance, purchasing, inventory, sales and more. No coding is required.

New Data Visualizations and Bundling Capability

2022 Release 2 expands the existing collection of pre-built subject matter data snapshots and key metrics for ready access to role-specific business insights. The following enhancements are now available as part of the standard daily refresh:

  • Financials snapshot: Revenue Commitment, Revenue Commitment Reversal, Revenue Arrangement
  • Sales snapshot: Opportunity and Commission
  • Inventory snapshot: Inventory Cost Revaluation, Bin Transfer and Bin Put Away Worksheet

New out-of-the-box dashboard visualizations supporting the retail industry include Gross Margin, Spend and Financials.

Customers often use these pre-built capabilities as launchpads to further customize visualizations to support their unique business focus.

The Content Bundles feature in 2022 Release 2 makes it easy to export content from one NetSuite Analytics Warehouse instance to another. For example, a user can create a Workbook and dashboard in a sandbox account, then use Content Bundles to export it into a production account. This adds efficiency and flexibility as companies experiment and grow in their pursuit of insights and answers to critical business questions.

Vertical Application Expands to Services

NetSuite Analytics Warehouse is delivering insights and decision confidence in industries like manufacturing, retail, warehouse and distribution, apparel and footwear, and food and beverage. 2022 Release 2 expands vertical functionality to service-based companies with a new subscription-centric project management module to optimize revenue management.

Personalized dashboard visualizations of key metrics and charts to track and forecast Services revenue.

The pre-built dashboard collection has expanded to support this vertical, with ready access to key metrics, graphs and reports. There are now six data visualization canvases on Charges, with new Charge Stages and Forecasts in Weekly and Monthly views. And, there are now 11 data visualizations on Spend, including new additions Spend Analysis, Spend Overview and Supplier Spend.

Discover How NetSuite 2022 Release 2 Can Help You

These are just some of the notable features in this release. For more information on the full list of features and how to use them, be sure to check out the release notes (opens in new tab).

Most importantly, don't forget to request your Release Preview (opens in new tab) test account for hands-on access to see how new features will work with your data, workflows and customizations.

The preceding is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, timing and pricing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products may change and remains at the sole discretion of Oracle Corporation.