Solution Design & Architecture: How to Keep Your Business From Outgrowing a NetSuite ERP

As your company evolves, it may require more than your current NetSuite ERP provides. Our solution design and architecture service molds the system to fit your changing business.

What Is Solution Design and Architecture?

SuiteDynamics' solution design and architecture service involves planning and structuring your company’s existing NetSuite ERP software to meet changing needs. This work covers the system design, including its modules, configurations, integrations, workflows, and customizations, to ensure optimal performance and efficiency.

“Architecture” refers to the software’s overall design, including the infrastructure, data model, integrations, security measures, and scalability considerations. When we craft architecture, our experts create a robust, scalable solution that supports your current needs while allowing for future expansion.

The solution design portion of the service is more focused. It involves analyzing your processes, workflows, and data structures to find ways of improving and optimizing the ERP system. We also define the scope of your NetSuite expansion, determining the modules and features to add and mapping out how these components support your operations.

For example, many businesses want to adjust their NetSuite software to include technological advances like automation. Deloitte reports that surveyed organizations expect intelligent automation to reduce costs soon by 31% on average.

Our clients are no different. Many want more automation built into their systems. We expect more solution design requests to feature automation in the coming year as clients strive to keep up with the evolving business landscape.

SuiteDynamics experts can discuss these features during your free consultation and help create a more comprehensive and efficient NetSuite ERP system that streamlines your processes, improves data visibility and accuracy, and enables better decision-making across your organization.

What Is the SuiteDynamics Solution Design Process?

Our production process involves a high level of communication to identify your needs and sufficiently deliver the appropriate solution design. We complete each task in eight steps.

1.  Free Consultation

Our team will meet with your organization to discuss your needs and how SuiteDynamics experts can help your business reach its goals. This initial discussion will last approximately 30 minutes.

2.  Discovery Process

You’ll sign a contract for a SuiteDynamics Discovery Process. During this phase, our experts will examine your current configuration. We’ll map out a system baseline to best decide where to fit your customizations, integrations, and automations.

We’ll also create a Baseline Solution Architecture document that your team will review to confirm our assessment’s accuracy.

3.  Level of Effort Document Review

After establishing the baseline, our experts will define your project’s scope and estimate the required hours and associated costs. We’ll compile this information in a formal Level of Effort (LOE) document that itemizes our prescribed solutions.

Your team will have a chance to review our suggested solutions and their cost, compare them to your budget, and add or subtract tasks as needed.

4.  Project Plan Formalization

Once we’ve established the project’s scope, you’ll sign a contract engaging our services and expertise. 

5.  Execution

We’ll distribute the workload across our various teams based on the kind of expertise required. Our finance team will craft financial solutions, our implementation team will begin module and feature implementations, and our development team will start crafting bespoke software.

As the solution design process continues, we’ll meet weekly to review the progress. 

6.  Quality Assurance

At SuiteDynamics, we only deliver the best possible solutions. Therefore, after our software experts have completed their portions of your project, our quality assurance team goes to work.

7.  Client Approval

Once our QA team has signed off on the solution design, your company can review it through your sandbox. You can either accept the improvements or request adjustments.

8.  Launch

When the solution meets your needs and passes our rigorous quality tests, we’ll move it from your sandbox environment to your production account. At that point, your team can use it to improve daily operations and meet new goals.

Ultimately, we want to help your NetSuite ERP to evolve with your organization. Start step one and schedule your free consultation today.

How Can Your Company Support the Process?

Any NetSuite project requires collaboration. We know it would be nice to request a customization or integration, forget about it for a while, and then receive a fully formed solution design in your production account shortly. Sadly, that’s not how it works.

Our team needs sufficient communication to provide the best and most efficient results possible. You’ll need to designate staff liaisons who can answer questions from our staff and send documents whenever necessary. Otherwise, your project may stall if your team can’t provide timely information.

You’ll also need to compile and send documentation on your current system. This includes design documents and statements of work that can tell us how your system is configured so we can best improve it. We can give you a full list of needs shortly after your free consultation.

Case Study: Studentreasures Publishing

Before teaming up with SuiteDynamics, Studentreasures Publishing grappled with tedious manual procedures. The company needed methods to swiftly extract data from various pricing tiers and locate all estimates associated with specific customers. Unfortunately, its collaboration with another ERP implementation partner failed to deliver the solution design.

Frustrated, Studentreasures contacted our experts for a customized NetSuite ERP solution and identified these issues as its primary concerns.

Our development team engineered software solutions that:

• Automated the manual pricing process within the company.
• Compiled all estimates pertaining to a single customer into a well-organized, printable format.

These innovations reduced processing time for Studentreasures with each customer.

“Their contributions have significantly streamlined our quoting process within the platform,” Steve Dillon, Studentreasures Director of Software and Business Intelligence, writes in a Google review. “By customizing functionalities that align with our sales workflows, they have empowered our sales team to generate accurate and comprehensive quotes quickly, improving our overall sales efficiency and customer satisfaction.”

Dillon also says our team navigated issues proactively and quickly adapted to challenges, ensuring the project’s progression and success.

We’re ready to do the same for your company. Schedule your free consultation, and our experts will evaluate your current system to determine how it can be improved. We’ll ensure your business operates with the best ERP system to increase sales and reduce overhead costs.

Maximize Your NetSuite ERP System

A NetSuite ERP platform can spur unprecedented growth for your company. However, as your business expands, it may outgrow the very tool that helped it thrive.

We want to ensure your ERP system meets your needs no matter how your organization evolves. SuiteDynamics Managed Service Plans offer access to experts who can maintain the system and craft solution designs that maximize its potential.

Schedule a free consultation to discuss the features and capabilities you need, and we’ll develop a plan that turns your NetSuite ERP into a powerhouse system that fuels your success.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens if business requirements change during the solution design process?

Business requirements often evolve during implementation projects, and our methodology is designed to accommodate these changes. We implement a formal change order process where new requirements are documented, analyzed for impact on scope, timeline, and budget, and then presented to you for approval before implementation. Our agile approach allows us to incorporate changes while minimizing disruption to the overall project. We prioritize transparency in this process, ensuring you understand any implications of requirement changes before decisions are made.

How does SuiteDynamics approach data migration when redesigning an existing NetSuite implementation?

Our data migration approach during system redesign balances preserving historical information while ensuring data quality in the new architecture. We begin with a comprehensive data assessment to identify what needs to be migrated, transformed, or archived. We typically develop specialized scripts for redesign projects that restructure existing NetSuite data to align with the new solution design rather than extracting and re-importing it.

This approach preserves record history and relationships while conforming to new business rules. We implement a phased migration strategy with multiple test migrations before the final cutover, allowing your team to validate data integrity throughout the process. Our quality assurance protocols include data validation reports highlighting potential issues before they impact your operations, ensuring a smooth transition to your redesigned system.

How does SuiteDynamics handle integrations with third-party applications during the solution design process?

During solution design, we take a comprehensive approach to third-party integrations. We start by assessing your current integration landscape and future needs, evaluating each integration point for reliability, performance, and business value. Our team then designs a robust integration architecture that may utilize NetSuite's native connectors, SuiteTalk API, RESTlets, or middleware solutions, depending on your specific requirements.

We prioritize real-time, business-critical integrations while implementing batch processes for less time-sensitive data transfers to optimize system performance. Our integration designs include detailed error handling, monitoring, and logging capabilities to ensure operational stability. Throughout implementation, we collaborate closely with your third-party vendors to address technical requirements while maintaining a single point of accountability for the overall solution, ensuring seamless data flow across your business ecosystem.

We pull information from NetSuite material, SuiteDynamics experts, and other reliable sources to compose our blog posts and educational pieces. We ensure they are as accurate as possible at the time of writing. However, software evolves quickly, and although we work to maintain these posts, some details may fall out of date. Contact SuiteDynamics experts for the latest information on NetSuite ERP systems.

Disclosure: This article was developed with the assistance of Claude, an AI created by Anthropic. Our editorial team used Claude as a collaborative writing tool, carefully reviewing, editing, and fact-checking all AI-generated content. The final text has been thoroughly vetted to ensure accuracy, clarity, and alignment with SuiteDynamics' editorial standards. We take full responsibility for the content presented in this article, maintaining our commitment to providing reliable and informative insights to our readers.