NetSuite Integration Partners: What to Look for?
Looking for help with a NetSuite Integration project? No, this guide may not be able to help fix your problem. However, it will tell you how the right team for the job. And how you can be sure they will get the job done right for you first time.
When it comes to NetSuite integration partners, the experience is key. Information on NetSuite customization and development is not easy to come by. So in particular with NetSuite development projects, you will NEED someone who is heavily experienced with real-world projects. Otherwise, there will be mistakes, small and large, that will cost you down the road or immediately. The right NetSuite integration partner, for you, will have experience with the issues your dealing with and knows the optimal way to fix them.
So, now that we know what we are looking for lets talk about how we can identify it. A great NetSuite integration partner will have experience with the tools available, the relevant API’s, and experience in creating solutions that scale.
Experience with the Tools Available
Today’s NetSuite Integration landscape is much different than even a few years ago. The NetSuite cloud platform has taken off. Such that, established brands have begun to move into the NetSuite-specific integration space and fight to solve tough integration challenges. This competition has naturally sweetened the pot for NetSuite users. Now they have multiple, reliable integration options from forward-thinking companies. Increasingly with NetSuite integration projects, you no longer have to reinvent the wheel. Often enough, your business use-case is simple enough that a solution has already been developed to solve it. It is usually a matter of tweaking a few things to fit your exact needs and a partner who knows the tool already exists. Before this “templated” approach to enterprise integration, developers had to hand-write every line of the application. This was a much more costly and inefficient process in general. Now that these developers have some tools at their disposal, the costs should be going down for NetSuite users.
Of course, they have to know how to use the tools tool! Depending on your needs, your project will require: a pre-built template called a “Connector,” a large scale integration platform that allows you to create templated connectors, or a completely custom piece of code. You’ll want the developers you hire to know which tools are optimal for your project so they can use them effectively to save your resources.
Experience with API’s
API’s (Application Programming Interfaces) are how software applications communicate; in the cloud or wherever they need to exchange information. API’s are not all the same and how they communicate is similar to a spoken language. NetSuite so happens to speak two languages, REST and SOAP. Depending on the application you want to integrate with NetSuite, you may need to use one, the other, or both.
You will also have to know which API the application you are trying to integrate with NetSuite uses, as well. Depending on the application, it may have a built-out and robust API, or it could have no API at all. If no API is the case, you’ll need to have a developer build an API from scratch and essentially teach the application how to talk to NetSuite, manually. This is difficult and will take time. An experienced integration team can churn this out quickly and painlessly for the client, an inexperienced team will struggle and create many more hours than needed.
Experience with NetSuite Solutions that Scale
Perhaps the main factor that separates great NetSuite integration partners from average ones is their ability to understand how an integration solution will work for a company in the present and the near future; a solution that will incorporate growth and scale. Well-planned integration solutions save you much more resources than poorly planned solutions.
One of the main benefits of well-planned solutions is they require less infrastructure restructuring. Enterprise infrastructure restructuring is heavy-lifting and risky. Crashing an ERP or CRM for a day for some businesses could grind their whole world to a halt. Always needing to go under the hood and reconfigure how critical applications communicate risks catastrophic shutdown or, at minimum, a massive headache for all areas of the business affected. You can find a NetSuite integration partner who is so experienced with the industry, and how your business would/could scale, that they will recommend you an optimal solution for not only now, but for 5-10 years down the road.
If you do not believe how much of a deterrent this type of risk can be, I will leave you with this. Consider how long it took for businesses to get on board with the cloud in the first place. A more efficient technology (the cloud), met stiff resistance, in part, due to the risk related to moving all the critical data around, people had to be sure it was 100% worth it. A proper search for the right NetSuite integration partner can help you can avoid catastrophic risk and headaches and build solutions your business can grow with.
