One of the key struggles of running a business is gaining (and maintaining) supply chain visibility, and nowhere is it more apparent than retail.
In particular, retailers have difficulty obtaining visibility into their supply chain, resulting in late orders and issues with customer satisfaction, personalizing customer experiences, delivering analytics to both executives and front-line staff and keeping e-commerce websites fresh and functional. NetSuite 2019 Release 2 offers a number of enhancements that address these issues and will help merchants deliver superior customer experiences.
End-to-End Supply Chain Visibility
Obtaining real-time visibility across all tiers in the supply chain can significantly increase speed to market, reduce capital expenditures and manage risk. NetSuite’s Supply Chain Control Tower, available in the 2019 Release 2, provides a single view of the state of the supply chain, offering:
- Targeted alerts identifying supply chain issues that require attention.
- Pre-configured supply chain KPIs to track overall health.
- A Predicted Risks feature that identifies purchase orders where delivery may be in jeopardy.
- “What If” scenarios that enable retailers to simulate the business impact of inventory changes across their global supply chain.
- A Commitment and Allocation Engine that allows retailers the ability to match inventory to customer orders across varying customer types and timelines.
The insights provided by the Supply Chain Control Tower will provide retailers with more control over their inventory, increasing on-time delivery and optimizing efficiency in the process.
New SuiteCommerce Extensions
NetSuite’s SuiteCommerce extension framework offers a way to easily add capabilities to your SuiteCommerce website that will give customers the experience they desire. Capabilities include:
- Grid ordering
- Infinite scrolling on category pages
- Inventory display on an item’s Product Detail Page
- Side-by-side product comparisons
- Displaying order status on website
- Displaying product lead time for out-of-stock items
- Signup for email notification for out-of-stock items
Gaining More Efficiencies With Merchandise Hierarchy
NetSuite 2019 Release 2 continues to improve the Merchandise Hierarchy capability. It’s easy for Merchandizers and Inventory Planners to set merchandise attributes such as color, size, pattern, fabric, model number, etc. on items quickly and easily from the hierarchy manager user interface.
By enabling out-of-the-box merchandise hierarchy filters in standard sales Workbooks, retailers can quickly and easily access sales and inventory insights at a granular level via merchandise hierarchy data without manually adding merchandise hierarchy fields to the Workbook.
Lastly, the merchandise hierarchy access is being extended to other industries such as Wholesale Distribution and Manufacturing by providing merchandise hierarchy support for additional item types such as Non-Inventory, Kit, Service, Assembly, Item Groups and Other Charge.
Sell More With SuitePromotions’ New Quantity Discounts
Promotions are the holy grail for merchants. They are a great way to attract customers and earn their business. In NetSuite 2019 Release 2, retailers using SuitePromotions have more flexibility and can specify the quantity of items that a shopper needs to purchase to qualify for a promotion or a discount, whether a discount can be repeated and where the discount should apply.
Personalized Catalog Views
As part of the 2019 Release 2, NetSuite introduces Personalized Catalog Views for e-commerce websites. This toolset allows merchants to segment customers and deliver personalized access to a determined set of products. If a retailer wants to show curated products only to VIP shoppers or a manufacturer who produces machine parts for certain customers, for instance, Personalized Catalog Views enables this process without the heavy cost of running and managing a variety of websites and increases customer satisfaction and conversion rates by enabling customers to primarily view and buy items related to them.
Robust Reports Deliver Actionable Insights
Retailers rely on data to make informed business decisions, and NetSuite 2019 Release 2 offers increased opportunities for reporting and mining key data inputs.
With new improvements to the SuiteAnalytics Workbook solution, queries are faster and more efficient than ever, and new pivot capabilities enable users to query, analyze and visualize key metrics with greater ease.
Plus, two new SuiteAnalytics Workbook reports will provide better insights into the searches happening on your site. The “Top Searches” and “Top Searches With Zero Results” reports will help you analyze your most popular products as well as anticipate potential demand for products that aren’t already stocked.
NetSuite 2019 Release 2 Delivers Personalization, Visibility for Proactive Decision-Making for Retailers
The features available in the latest version of NetSuite will give retailers the ability to proactively manage their supply chain, further improve the customer experience, personalize offerings for various types of customers and easily mine a broader range of business insights.
Be sure to check out the release notes for a full list of benefits that NetSuite's latest release can bring to your organization and the blog highlighting(opens in new tab) new functionality for all organizations.
Finally, for a hands-on primer, be sure to access your included preview account as soon as it's available. There, you'll be able to see how the new features will work with your own data and get a jumpstart on maximizing the impact of NetSuite 2019 Release 2.