Oracle NetSuite 2022.1 Release: enhancing visibility to aid efficiency and flexibility

Our NetSuite consulting team has been getting under the skin of the latest enhancements to NetSuite, which will be coming soon in the 2022.1 Release. New kid on the BrightBridge block, Daniel Davis, has taken time out of his schedule to summarise some of the best new features. Over to you, Dan…

As businesses and organisations across a multitude of sectors continue to navigate challenges and strive to capitalise on the opportunities that a post-pandemic landscape presents, it’s never been more pertinent to be flexible. Adapting to continually shifting conditions, having the visibility of important business functions and finances, and creating efficiencies that can make a tangible impact on the bottom line are crucial in today’s business climate.

So, Oracle NetSuite’s latest release gives more than just a nod to those areas, with new functionalities to boost visibility and efficiency across multiple business practices. To offer you some of the highlights from this first update of 2022 from Oracle NetSuite, I’ve included a round-up of some of the best functionality updates that may soon have you wondering how you ever managed without them.

Data analysis enhances visibility to aid true flexibility

Whether you’re a manufacturer, wholesale distributor or in professional services, having a 360-degree view of the cash position of the business is vital. You need to ensure that there’s adequate funds available to meet the needs and goals of the business, and of course to fulfil commitments. The new Cash 360 Dashboard within NetSuite provides a real-time enhanced view of the cash position and forecast, using transactional data combined with collection projections and in-progress disbursements.

The update also delivers the Project 360 Dashboard – which brings together all aspects of a project in one dashboard. This puts key information into the hands of project managers and makes it visible to them in one single workspace, ensuring optimum visibility of project data. Aiding the project management process is also the introduction of Project Invoice Presentation Templates. The all-new presentation templates makes it easier than ever before to customise project invoices – a handy feature to meet the requirements of businesses in a variety of service sectors.

While for warehouse operations, NetSuite Analytics Warehouse has been boosted with 18 more pre-built transaction types – including for employee and banking – and the addition of three historical snapshot datasets for Work Orders, Inventory and Expense Reports. With six new dashboards giving analysts more insight into the metrics, wholesale distributors will be armed with the visibility they need to adapt to changes in what is an increasingly fast-paced industry.

Meeting evolving demands within distribution

Oracle NetSuite’s updates to the Warehouse Management System (WMS) will further aid players who hold and distribute stock to better serve the growing online shopping demand and meet expectations around delivery lead times. The new zone Pick and Merge function, which assigns pickers to specific zones within the warehouse, not only maximises productivity but helps to minimise crowding – a real consideration in the quest to address social distancing. Each zone’s pickers will only receive pick tasks for that zone. Furthermore, the restriction of movement within the warehouse will reduce the duplication of pick entries. Once the picking is complete, warehouse managers can merge picks into a common staging area, meaning multi-pick orders can still be packed and shipped as one.

The NetSuite Pack Station, which debuted almost 12 months ago, has also received some updates. Packers can now bulk pack and unpack ‘ship as is’ items – such as those that are fragile or breakable, and should be sent separately. Users can now view the packing instructions for an item from their station, and also change weight units when weighing packages.

Within operations, employees also have access to a consolidated report, allowing them to better trace order lots with ease. New filters mean information can be sorted easily and quickly when needed.

In retail, the first expired first out (FEFO) allocation feature, added to the order fulfilment functionality, means the job of operations staff in this sector is made much easier, as they can easily designate lots to items with the lot number.

Helping manufacturers manage supply chain challenges

One of the major legacies of the pandemic has been supply chain disruption, hitting many sectors. The latest Oracle NetSuite update helps manufacturers increase predictability with improvements to the supply planning workbench – a feature debuted in 2020 to help companies ensure availability of parts and materials to meet delivery dates and make adjustments as needed.

The updates to this feature mean production managers can now filter information within their workbench so they only see what is relevant to the work they oversee – increasing efficiency. They can save multiple templates so they are able to switch between different views, while retaining one default view.

Manufacturers need reliability of supply, and the new vendor performance scores introduced in the latest NetSuite update provides a vendor confidence rating based on historical data, enabling better planning and purchasing decisions to minimise supply chain disruption.

As with all updates from Oracle NetSuite, there’s an array of new features too comprehensive to cover here in depth, so we advise you to request your Release Preview account when your time comes, and get hands on it! Of course, we’re always here to assist and our customer roundtable webinars will continue to explore and explain various functionality throughout 2022.

If you’re looking for further information and advice on how NetSuite can help your business achieve its goals, get in touch with our expert team today.