Businesses with field service operations get game-changing field services management capabilities in NetSuite 2024 Release 1, letting them manage another piece of their business in one system. This, along with enhancements such as added flexibility to tweak manufacturing and fulfillment processes, will help businesses iron out kinks in their operations that generate time and cost savings.
Manage field services in NetSuite
Any company with a field services component knows that timely and effective coordination and communication between office and field workers is a major challenge. NetSuite Field Service Management(opens in new tab), announced at SuiteWorld 2023, mitigates many of those challenges to save employees valuable time and help them complete more jobs faster.
NetSuite Field Service Management lets office staffers create work orders in NetSuite tied to cases, sales orders, or projects. Jobs are dispatched to the technician with the right skills and in the nearest location using the system’s schedule board. Managers can filter jobs by region, labor costs, and job type within the scheduler, and color coding makes it easy to see the status of every job at a glance. Dispatchers can quickly modify job schedules and assignments with drag-and-drop functionality.
The system alerts technicians to new jobs through a mobile app, where they can check their schedules, see customer and asset history, and even get directions to their next stop. After arriving at the job, they can log any products they use in the app so those are removed from available inventory and record notes and summaries. The office can track the status of jobs in real time, with no need to text or call field employees for updates.
This new application, which came through NetSuite’s recent acquisition of Next Technik, helps boost first-time fix rates and the productivity of your field workers. And since all this information flows into NetSuite, you can monitor field service metrics including worker utilization and profitability by job, customer, and technician.
Supply chain apps adapt to how you work
Additional configurability across NetSuite SCM Mobile apps including Warehouse Management System (WMS), Ship Central, Manufacturing Mobile, and Quality Management lets businesses tailor the applications to the way they work. The new release includes these improvements across all SCM mobile apps:
- Admins can disable the quantity or units of measure fields (inches or kilograms) in SCM Mobile apps to prevent errors when recording information.
- Admins can also control whether dynamic text in the app, such as shipping rates within Ship Central, automatically updates. Constant update requests can slow application performance and incur unnecessary costs for API services that charge for calls.
- Data tables that may show pick or ship tasks can now link to images, work orders, or other information stored in NetSuite or another system.
Here’s a breakdown of other new features by app:
NetSuite WMS
- Companies that use wave picking can now let pickers ship an order after picking one wave rather than waiting to ship it until all waves have been completed. This flexibility can help sellers get orders out the door faster and increase customer satisfaction. It also helps prevent partially filled orders from piling up between the picking and packing stages.
- Warehouse managers can now set minimums and maximums for the number of orders or order lines in one wave when picking. They can also choose a default picking type and wave status for new waves and block specific bins from picking.
- January is peak returns season for many sellers, and it’s now easier to manage returns that need to go back to the vendor, such as damaged items or those under warranty. These items can be sent to a vendor return bin for staging and picking, where NetSuite WMS(opens in new tab) will create fulfillment tasks for them. This helps get products back as quickly as possible for faster refunds and resolutions.
- Pickers and packers gain better visibility into products in transit within the warehouse in NetSuite 2024.1. The system can track individual products or lots as they are loaded from one or multiple bins onto a transfer cart, moved, and put into one or multiple bins in another location.
- Warehouse leaders can configure the WMS to skip certain screens that aren’t relevant to their workflows, saving employees time.
NetSuite Ship Central
- NetSuite will help sellers avoid surprise fees and fines charged by carriers for residential deliveries marked as nonresidential by displaying warnings on residential orders.
- Sales reps and managers can now find the lowest-cost shipping option that meets their needs for sales and transfer orders in NetSuite Ship Central(opens in new tab).
- Reps and managers can also choose to insure a shipment to recoup the cost of lost, stolen, or damaged packages. They can also request delivery confirmation when creating labels in Ship Central.
- Operations managers can set Ship Central preferences at the subsidiary and location level to meet the particular needs of specific regions or facilities.
NetSuite Manufacturing Mobile App
- Manufacturers can more accurately calculate the amount of time and labor it takes to complete a work order and identify bottlenecks on the shop floor with the ability to start, stop, pause, and restart each step in the process in the Manufacturing Mobile app. They can classify this time as a setup or run activity.
- Manufacturing Mobile can automatically remove components included in the bill of materials from available inventory as factory employees build products. This means production workers don’t have to spend time manually entering each inventory item and quantity as they build items.
- Factory workers can now include work instructions within the manufacturing app. These can include text, images, files, and URLs.
NetSuite Quality Management
- Employees in factories and warehouses sometimes need to inspect noninventory items such as machinery, packing accessories, or a work floor setup. You can now schedule and complete these inspections for items with no inventory quantity in NetSuite Quality Management(opens in new tab).
- To help reduce the number of unsatisfactory products that make it into customers’ hands, staffers can assign different quality statuses to separate lots or serial numbers in the same inspection queue rather than them all receiving the same quality status.
- Production results or completed work orders in NetSuite Advanced Manufacturing can now trigger quality inspections.
- Operations managers can now choose whether different types of orders generate a certificate of analysis. Certificates of analysis are documents that verify a product meets a company’s promised specs.
Learn more about all the updates in NetSuite 2024 Release 1
This is simply a short summary of some of the game-changing features in NetSuite 2024 Release 1. Read more about what is in the release on our Sneak Peek page(opens in new tab) or dive deep into 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 that will show you 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.