NetSuite ERP vs. Viewpoint Spectrum

NetSuite suits a mid-sized company best where the organization uses multiple currencies in its day-to-day transactions. NetSuite is ready-to-use for businesses that follow financial standards. The more custom business processes there are, the more implementation is required. I would not recommend NetSuite to a large organization due to its performance issues. Additionally, the in-house bank reconciliation tool is not user-friendly for business purposes.

Incentivized

Viewpoint Spectrum would be fine for small to medium-sized companies. It would be great for transitioning from an in-house paper-based process, especially since it's designed with small construction companies in mind. They're making it even easier for smaller companies by offering additional features that you'd normally have to find in other products. However, companies can easily outgrow this system. We have about 15 years of data in the system, over 300 active jobs, and nearly 1,500 employees. In the past 3 years we've noticed slower performance and frequent locks in the system that require intervention from a system administrator. We moved to the cloud about 2 years ago and this has made troubleshooting even more difficult as we don't have the same access that we did before to resolve performance issues.

Incentivized

• Customizable Reports and Saved Searches allow much more maneuverability
• Elimination Entries that are driven by advanced intercompany journal entries
• Journal Entries can be entered in as basic or advanced intercompany to better represent the type of transaction occurred for reporting purposes
• Training through the LCS module can help shed knowledge on a range of topics at a self paced learning basis
• NetSuite ERP offers to all users a SuiteAnswers platform to pose frequently asked questions with answers generated from a combination of NetSuite ERP experts, users, and more recently AI based.

Incentivized

• Dashboards make navigating to the crucial information quick and easy.
• The layout with what we affectionately call the job info bar helps our project teams to quickly get where they need to go in the system.
• Crystal reports are easily managed and integrated with Spectrum, giving us great flexibility in custom reports.
• With a little training, and I mean a little, Spectrum is user friendly. Easy to create favorites/shortcuts for ease of use.

Incentivized

• Some of the customization options are really complex and can be difficult to figure out without NetSuite ERP direct support.
• The usability is a bit less intuitive than Quickbooks.
• The cost to give someone a license to even just view information in NetSuite ERP is pretty high.

Incentivized

• Subcontract Kiosk can be glitchy - allows subs to overbill on subcontract billing items
• Document Imaging can be glitchy - often says users do not have adequate security to view/add documents, but they do - if they sign out and back in, it works fine
• At times, support can be lacking - sometimes case responses are delayed or you get an incorrect answer

Incentivized

I am not the decision maker for this but I believe our company will be sticking with NetSuite for the long term. A CRM like this is a big investment and not something you move away from quickly and without a lot of planning. There is a lot of data involved and importing that into a new system is no easy task.

It checks all of our boxes at the moment.

Incentivized

It's beneficial if you know what you're doing, but it can be very confusing to find what you're looking for, and many things seem overly complicated or require too many steps to accomplish a simple task - which can be overwhelming for someone accustomed to QuickBooks.

Incentivized

Some things in Spectrum are NOT that intuitive, but I think knowledge of the software just comes with time. There are still some things I need assistance with in Spectrum but I'm very comfortable with my day to day items now that I've been using it for years. However, if there is something I don't do often or haven't done before, I don't find the software to be that intuitive, I actually find the logic on some things to be a little weird but it's fine once I know how to do it.

Incentivized

It has been very reliable. I can only think of 1-2 times in 4.5 years that we have had issues getting in, and in each case were able to get back in within 1 hour. There has not been a major downtime

Very little down time. They host our system.

Incentivized

Most of the time the performance is very good. Pages load in a few seconds; financial reports take less than 5 seconds; basic searches take a few seconds. But performance can be sporadic throughout the day and cause the run time to triple.

Incentivized

For the most part the product is very reliable. Since we are hosted we sometimes have connectivity issues but I would say that is more our ISP than Spectrum.

Incentivized

I would like to give 8 rating for NetSuite support and reason for that is below: Whenever we faced any technical or functional issues we tried to reach out to NEtSuite support but response was not immediate. We told them about the urgency of the issue but still we were not getting response on time. Then, we have to reach out to AE to get things resolved.

Incentivized

The support has recently changed. Last year, you could call in and get an immediate response. Now that doesn't seem possible unless you have an urgent situation with access to the software, payroll or payables. I have found that using chat or e-mail works nicely for the most part, but sometimes I feel it would be easier if someone from support would jump on our site and take a first-hand look rather than going back and forth

Incentivized

I had in person training for a day when first got the software. The training was good. The challenge was that there was a large gap between training and when we went live so we forgot quite a lot

Online training is quite strong. I have used for specific pieces of functionality.However it is not sufficient in all areas.

Our trainer was excellent and navigated the time zone differences expertly. She gave us test assignments to complete and was available for questions at any time.

Incentivized

Implementation was fine but could have gone quicker.

NetSuite provided me a implementation guide who I did not think was very knowledgeable.

I recommend that you make sure the organization knows how they are going to use the software and come up with an implementation plan before importing all of the data.

It is important to have a strong implementation partner. It made the transition from our old system to the new system easier.

Incentivized

NetSuite by far is the most expensive; However, compared to the 3 systems notated, the overall functionality, capability and reporting advantages make it my top choice for companies experiencing exponential growth across all departments. Its a best in class solution for just about any user.

Incentivized

Spectrum, when compared to Simply accounting, is better. It has more options, and it is easy to navigate. Spectrum meets our needs better. Spectrum, when compared to Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate, is better. Spectrum has better connectivity between its project management system compared to Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate. Spectrum, when compared to CMIC, I believe they are equal. CMiC has a better project management system, but Spectrum has an easier accounting system to navigate.

Incentivized

We have been able to scale our business 25X without any major overhaul with Netsuite. Its dashboard setup makes onboarding new employees very easy and allows data to be shared across multiple offices. Its cloud setup does not put any pressure on IT to scale servers or other infrastructure. We have been able to become much more efficient in all aspects of the business.

You can grant user specific access which is nice. Project managers do not need all the same modules as Accounting. But Accounting does need access to PM modules as well

• NetSuite ERP data is used for material reporting. That is like balance sheet and profit and loss reporting. It plays a key role in financial data management.
• Too many customisation become hard to manage in over a period of time.
• High cost licensing.

Incentivized

• Viewpoint Spectrum has allowed us the opportunity to be proactive in analyzing the costs for a project in time to make a difference in the outcome of the project. It has allowed us defense in supporting our communications with the project owners.
• Viewpoint Spectrum has allowed us to become more productive with its accounting software and the cohesion between the modules. It has definitely streamlined the processing necessary to account for the business.

Incentivized