No Time Like the Present: Beeline Loans Discovers That It's Never Too Early to Deploy ERP

Barney Beal, Former Content Director

October 22, 2019

Founded in late 2018 and slated to launch in early 2020, Beeline Loans is seeking to revolutionize the mortgage lending landscape by enabling loan-seekers to apply and get approved for mortgages without having to leave their sofas.

The company's founders knew they wanted the right financial solution out of the gate, and their search led them to a clear decision: Either go with a lending industry-specific app, or choose NetSuite's more flexible cloud-based platform. Ultimately, NetSuite's potential to support Beeline's unknown future paths was too much for the industry solutions to match.

"The biggest thing I was afraid of was that we would limit ourselves to a system that was specifically designed for one industry, in case we wanted to broaden the financial products that we deliver to customers," said Cyle Brodeur, Beeline's financial controller. "We wanted to hit the ground running rather than trying to climb up a wall two years down the line."

ERP Implementation in Three Weeks

Actually, the running started before Beeline even hit the ground, with a NetSuite rollout that required only three weeks, thanks in large part to the SuiteSuccess Starter Edition. It certainly helped that, as a startup, Beeline had no data to import. Most of the work during the implementation was focused on showing Brodeur and his team how to best work with the system.

Once they had grasped the flow of NetSuite, said Brodeur, "we just took off and started going with it."

For instance, Brodeur immediately got to work on NetSuite's robust reporting capabilities, including understanding what they're capable of. He said he wants to use reports to replace some of the manual data entry that's necessary.

"The system basically self-generates its own accruals based on what type of criteria are entered," he said. "That's one big thing we've been trying to do."

Also on the reporting front, Brodeur is looking to tap the KPIs provided by NetSuite and build an executive summary report to keep company leaders abreast of what's happening, and also provide better visibility into the future.

Beeline also has been implementing new workflows thanks to NetSuite, such as one for expense report approvals. Since NetSuite went live, Beeline has made sure all of its employees have an app on their phone that lets them take pictures of receipts and submit them exactly as they would with an expense system such as Concur or Expensify, only it's all done exclusively in NetSuite.

Integrations and Beyond

Brodeur is also looking at whatever integrations make sense. One that did was MineralTree, an accounts payable vendor Beeline has made its standard for invoices and related documentation, with NetSuite triggering resulting payments.

"We’re just trying to integrate as much as we can into the system and really keep the accounting staff as small as we can," said Brodeur. "The system can actually get rid of a lot of the manual entry errors that can occur."

Down the line, Brodueur wants to explore integrations that would result in Beeline's operational systems generating data and feeding it into NetSuite automatically, allowing staff to simply analyze to ensure that the data will flow correctly. He also wants to add NetSuite Planning and Budgeting for its added reporting power.

As Beeline has gotten more experience with NetSuite, Brodeur has started feeling as if there's no end to what the software can enable.

"It's to the point where we start digging more and more, and then we start realizing, 'Hey, we can do this with this, and we can do that,'" he said. "We've probably only scratched the surface."

Learn more about NetSuite SuiteSuccess Starter Edition(opens in new tab).

NetSuite has packaged the experience gained from tens of thousands of worldwide deployments over two decades into a set of leading practices that pave a clear path to success and are proven to deliver rapid business value. With NetSuite, you go live in a predictable timeframe — smart, stepped implementations begin with sales and span the entire customer lifecycle, so there's continuity from sales to services to support.