There is an old joke that goes: how do you know when your SAP implementation is finished? It's when you run out of money!
Companies used to have to spend millions of dollars on ERP in order to achieve the benefits of running the business in one system. The benefits of buying, selling, planning, and reporting within a single platform had to be weighed against the substantial cost of implementing and running the ERP. It required teams of consultants to gather requirements, consolidate processes between departments, and be physically present to configure the processes in the ERP system.
The internet democratized knowledge, technology, and ERP. There is no need to pay millions when you can rent a robust ERP like NetSuite for an affordable price per user per month. There is also no need to employ a team of consultants when a strong administrator can control a worldwide deployment from a home office; we will be exploring how an administrator can do so in the remaining chapters.
NetSuite has thousands of customers and has built features and processes to solve business problems you don't even know you have. Leveraging these tools is an effective way for an administrator to demonstrate value to the business, so we will start by examining them in Chapter 2, Exploring NetSuite Tools.
