For GEODynamics, a manufacturer of oil and gas drilling engineering technology, adding a new services line to its business meant new revenue opportunities, but also new complexities in its processes.
Fortunately for the Millsap, Texas-based company, it had already begun working with NetSuite’s Advanced Customer Support (ACS), a supplemental support service, to optimize its use of the business management platform.
GEODynamics was first introduced to ACS, while attending SuiteWorld in 2018. Before any actual services had been delivered, GEODynamics held two full days of meetings with the ACS team, providing a clear picture of how the company was using NetSuite. GEODynamics was well aware there were ways it could optimize its NetSuite environment. Meeting with ACS made that clear.
"What came out of that was that we were under-using NetSuite on our manufacturing side, which was not a surprise," said JoAhnna Massey, the company's former controller who has transitioned into the role of ERP business process manager, said during a recent NetSuite Webinar.
What was particularly encouraging, she said, was that there wasn't a single time in which the ACS team suggested that something couldn't be accomplished. The rest of the GEODynamics team may not have been convinced yet that ACS would make a difference, but Massey was.
ACS consultants started getting immediate results and the skeptical mindset shifted. Right away, the ACS team helped GEODynamics view inventory items differently and generate partial receipts of expenses.
Then the team jumped into more ambitious projects, starting with simplifying the creation of sales opportunities and automating a particular process to require approval at a certain stage. This took a couple of months, but when staff found they could finally use NetSuite to do more than enter sales orders, they were convinced of NetSuite's value.
"Our sales team was absolutely thrilled," said Massey. "Doing this project showed them that NetSuite was capable of doing much more than they thought it was."
Expanding the Business Model
Then there was the little matter of tweaking NetSuite to support GEODynamics' new services business. A critical part of this involved the company's use of reusable parts — called "subs" — that connect drilling components that don't otherwise fit together, or that perform special functions. The company needed to track how often these parts were used, and where they were at all times, with a goal of refurbishing them and then returning them to the field as quickly as possible.
"We knew the parts would have to be serialized, but we weren't sure how to track these subs through the entire process," said Massey.
The solution took three or four months to complete, but the company ended up with a two-step process that customized the inventory item itself, enabling it to be counted each time it was sent to the field for use, and then reclaimed via a return merchandize authorization process. This enabled GEODynamics to efficiently track where subs were at all times, as well as the labor needed to refurbish them sufficiently.
In fact, the solution, which replaced a paper/pencil/spreadsheet process, proved so effective that the company is now using it to support other serialized components. Massey estimates that it would have taken a year to achieve the same objective internally.
And, she added, "The solution we'd have come up with probably wouldn't have been as clean."
Additional Resources at Your Fingertips
Not surprisingly, Massey and her team have become big fans of ACS.
"It's like having another employee," she said. "I am not a NetSuite developer, and I can't do this stuff by myself. ACS has been great at picking up some of the more technical stuff I can't do."
She said it's important to remember that everybody needs extra resources at some point because we can't all be adept at everything. Having access to such help has proven critical to GEODynamics getting the most out of its NetSuite investment.
Watch a video on how Las Vegas’s Downtown Project optimized its NetSuite implementation (opens in new tab) with ACS.
