Better NetSuite Saved Searches

There are tens of thousands, if not millions, of records held in a typical NetSuite ERP. Because of that, if you’re a NetSuite user, you’ve likely found that Saved Searches are essential to filter results to create lists, dashboard visualizations and other elements.

But if you’ve been using Saved Searches for a while, you might find you want to get more from them. Perhaps your searches are taking too long, or even timing out because of the volume of data returned. Or you’re finding that you have to persist a Saved Search to get another three-hour window for it to finish running. If your searches regularly time out, you have some options – you can run them in as a background process with email notification when completed. Or you can apply additional parameters to your search criteria, or reduce table joins to cut down on the volume of records returned.

Unfortunately, these workarounds aren’t always effective. And even if they are working for you now, your data volumes will eventually get to the point where Saved Searches are too unwieldy to run.

Combining NetSuite and Other Data

Of course, even the most optimized Saved Search isn’t going to help if you need to see other non-NetSuite data combined with it. You can’t access that data directly in a Saved Search, so the workaround is going to involve manipulating an Excel file to combine the data you need. That can introduce some risk, from spreadsheet errors or from using outdated Excel files.

Organizations that have reached this point typically take the next step, which is to add a business intelligence platform that can consolidate their NetSuite ERP data with other data sources. There could be lots of these data sources, for example, legacy financial information that may have been held in a product like QuickBooks. Or supply chain data like inventory, pricing or procurement data from a partner.

But currently, enormous manual effort is required to use the data from Saved Searches in a BI application. NetSuite enables you to schedule an extract to run on a regular basis to pull the data you need. But getting this data set into your BI tool may not be a simple process. Files need to be uploaded manually into the BI application. It’s impractical (and risky) to undertake this kind of manual effort every time a file needs transferring. And transferring Saved Search files over 10MB or larger is in many cases not even possible.

A Solution to NetSuite Saved Searches Challenges

There is a solution for this, however. It incorporates several components. First, a data pipeline tool, one that can natively connect to NetSuite, is needed to move the data from NetSuite. A database is needed to hold this data. That of course requires building, hosting and managing the database, whether on-premise or cloud, and regularly loading to it via an ETL tool. Only then can a BI tool report against the data. Not surprisingly, managing all these multiple components makes reporting on NetSuite and other data almost unsupportable.

An additional complication is that most BI tools on the market cannot satisfy all types of reporting needs that modern organizations require. They often showcase analytics capabilities, but don’t enable critical business functionality like transactional, operational or financial reporting.

Orbit Reporting and Analytics is an end to end solution for reporting on NetSuite and all your other data, without the headaches of manual processes. Learn how in our new whitepaper Elevate Your NetSuite Reporting and Analytics. Or, see it in action in a Request Demo with a product expert.