iPad First Impressions

You’ve read countless other reviews of the iPad on countless other sites, so I’m not going to rehash all the same stuff.

What I will say, however, is this little device officially signals a paradigm shift in the way we interact with our machines, our media, and the internet.  it isn’t flawless, and it is far from from perfect.  Like any other “new” item, iPad v1.0 is no doubt a paid beta version for early adopters.  We’ll tinker, tiptoe, mangle and tweak, providing feedback along the way.  The announcement of the forthcoming iPhone 4.0 will no doubt give us a glimpse of what we’ll be able to do in a few more months.

But it is the beginning of the end of the old way.  This may be the single most important device for the future of cloud computing.

I’m already counting the dollars we’ll save by eliminating phone calls from the field bothering busy office staff simply to get customer purchase history or the status of their account.  I’m already spending the budget for IT support and Windows users licenses elsewhere.

If your company is not seriously exploring this platform in some manner, you need to be.

iPad Antici….

…pation.

Dammit.  UPS showed up while I was in the shower.  Of course, the one time they show up early or on time.  Can’t redeliver until Monday when I won’t be around.  Can’t pick it up at the dispatch until Tuesday for some reason.

You’re on my list, Brown.

iPad Shipping Confirmation

Just received it via email from Apple.  I pre-ordered on Day 1.  Scheduled delivery 4/3/2010 as advertised.

Implementation Questionnaire

Read through the implementation questions yesterday during a 3-hour flight.  Keeping true to the PowerPoint aesthetic, NetSuite managed to cram 25 pages worth of questions in to a mere 70 pages.

Complete and total waste of space and paper aside, the questions are very concise and force you to think about your business processes prior to implementation.  If your business is anything at all like mine – small, growing, with individuals wearing many hats – you might not have very many roles precisely defined.  I don’t necessarily see this as a bad thing, but it isn’t how NetSuite is set up to work.  Roles within NetSuite are precisely defined out of the box, and the questions are geared toward fitting your square peg in its round hole. Luckily, having been through the admin training already, I know I can customize these roles all the way down to the individual user, creating overlap and/or eliminating access where necessary.

All that being said, however, now is the perfect time to sit with your employees and identify where you are being inefficient.  There’s simply no way one person in any organization can know the answers to every question asked, unless you’re a one man operation… in which case, why are you paying for NetSuite?  Get key people together and have them answer questions with you.  You will learn something new about your business (and your employees or co-workers) in the process.  Someone, somewhere, in every business, every day, is doing something so mind-numbingly ridiculous you’ll want to gouge your eyes out with a Garden Weasel when you discover it.  And remember: you’re paying them to do it.

Now is the time to get this ass-hattery eliminated.  Automated redundant, unnecessary practices on the cloud are still redundant and unnecessary practices.  For example, somewhere along the line some key people here convinced themselves you literally can’t invoice unless it is printed, in triplicate, on multi-colored spool-fed paper through a 1980s era dot matrix printer, stuffed in an envelope, and mailed for $.47.  How often do you receive a pink or yellow invoice?  Automated email invoices completely eliminate the costs associate with printing, separating, stuffing and stamping an envelope.  On top of that, they’re time-stamped on the customer’s desk about the same time their order is leaving the warehouse.

Take this opportunity to brainstorm, identify, then methodically hunt down and kill the antiquated processes your employees are clinging to for no good reason.  I don’t care how efficient they’ve become at whatever it is they think is necessary: it is not necessary and it is costing you money.  I have already estimated that the annual cost of NetSuite is going to be offset by the annual savings by eliminating things done the old way.

And while I’m at it, here’s my mini-intervention for the week: it is time to get rid of your fax machine and extra phone line.  Just make the plunge already.  There are dozens of quality services out there to bring your communication technology in to the 1990s.  Unfortunately, we made the move a while back (before NetSuite was on the radar) and have a service that is not directly compatible with NetSuite.  Do your due diligence on this ahead of time and you can automate faxes directly from within NetSuite for things like order confirmations, invoices, etc, for those customers and vendors you have that are still throwing bones at obelisks.

NetSuite Admin Training: Day 5.1

Was able to watch at least most of the demos today, but not join in on any of the hands on portion.  We have 90 days access to the sandbox account and training materials available in PDF are readily available for me to play catch-up.  Tip of the hat to the folks at NetSuite.  That’s some of the best software training I’ve ever received, online or otherwise.

It’s a boatload of information in 5 days.  Assume six to seven solid hours every day, with 30-60 minutes for lunch (sometimes depending on class vote).  There’s a decent amount of time for breaks throughout the day if you’re able to complete the exercises faster than your classmates, which I was when I didn’t get stuck on stupid or lose myself in the directions.

The course covers pretty much the main functionality of the out-of-the-box NetSuite setup.  No modules (like light manufacturing, advanced inventory, etc.)  A brief flirt with ecommerce gives you an idea of the capabilities.  Perhaps if more people in the class were utilizing the ecommerce portion there would have been a longer emphasis on it, but I don’t think anyone in the group of 12 was implementing it right away.

I don’t know if NetSuite would ever go for it, but this training would be a great sales tool for potential new customers.  If they would allow shoppers to sit in on classes (but maybe not interact) it would really help people get a clearer idea of the power of the tools.  Had I seen what I saw this week, I would have cut the check months ago.

Can’t wait to set up custom reporting and records, although it looks pretty daunting right now.  Being able to tailor all the bells and whistles to your own company’s workflow is invaluable.  Outside of that, for some reason I’m really looking forward to the data scrub from Act covering four salespeople, R&D and 2000 contacts and 4000 bill of materialses in Dynamics.  I can’t tell if that is incredibly dorky, incredibly morbid – or both.  Whatever.  GIGO.  I’m running a business, and bad info costs me more money than good info makes me.

Looking forward to starting the implementation in the next few weeks.  Need to let the brain heal over the weekend, though.  Either that or pour beer directly on it.

NetSuite Admin Training: Day 5.0

Fifth day of training is a continuation of data migration, import, and management, and the customer support and issue resolution process.  Pretty straightforward if you’re familiar with the concepts.

Unfortunately, something came up for me today (so the post will be very short) and I’m unable to pay real close attention to the class demo.  Gold star to NetSuite, though: they’ve agreed to let me sit in on Day 5 of next week’s session to catch up if necessary.

NetSuite Admin Training: Day 4.0 (plus speakerphone etiquette)

Yay!  It’s customization of fields and forms day!  Nerdgasm.

This is where any CRM and ERP program really start to shine for your company.  So far, NetSuite’s implementation looks very powerful and very simple – which is far too unique of a pairing in the land of computers.  Somewhere along the line the engineers and devlopers forgot that 99% of software users aren’t engineers or developers.

If you’re familiar with Act’s imoplementation of custom fields & forms, you’ll see where this is going right away.  Buttons and widgets are a little different, but the concept is nearly identical.  We’re just touching on this so far this morning, but I can see where it is going and will add more later.

Learned some speakerphone etiquette the hard way today.  Turns out if you don’t set your phone to mute eveyone in the class can hear you swearing when your internet connection drops out.  Who knew?  Also turns out not everyone is quite as appreciative of my colorful vocabulary as others.