Power BI vs. Tableau

Although leading data visualization tools offer data transformation capabilities to ensure more powerful analytics, customers fail to recognize the necessary effort to build out an effective NetSuite data model to deliver industry-specific and strategic analytics beyond NetSuite’s current reporting capabilities.

With Tableau Software and Microsoft Power BI leading the pack in delivering extended analytics to the NetSuite customer, it is not uncommon for organizations to connect these powerful business intelligence tools to their ERP.

NetSuite ERP Data Transformation with Tableau and Power BI 

NetSuite customers are very fortunate to have powerful persona-based dashboards, reporting and analytics with the delivery of SuiteSuccess solutions. They provide customers with pre-packaged analytics based on leading practices developed over two decades of industry experience.

On day one, NetSuite customers can accelerate a solid Business Intelligence (BI) foundation to establish a comprehensive BI strategy that will grow with their business.

As customers grow with NetSuite and their BI Maturity has reached a level where more complex analytics move beyond standard ERP reporting, understanding the underlying data structure of NetSuite becomes a key component in successfully implementing an enterprise BI solution.

Understanding the nuances of the NetSuite data schema and designing a flexible data model that can adapt to the diverse needs of businesses is critical in leveraging the powerful data visualization tools in the marketplace.

Although leading data visualization tools offer data transformation capabilities to ensure more powerful analytics, customers fail to recognize the necessary effort to build out an effective NetSuite data model to deliver industry-specific and strategic analytics beyond NetSuite’s current reporting capabilities.

With Tableau Software and Microsoft Power BI leading the pack in delivering extended analytics to the NetSuite customer, it is not uncommon for organizations to connect these powerful business intelligence tools to their ERP.

NetSuite ERP Data Transformation with Tableau and Power BI

Many ERP customers will skew their evaluation of Tableau Software and Microsoft Power BI on their ability and flexibility to deliver powerful visuals of their data.

Although the final product ends with useful visuals, the journey and the data transformation tools to ensure the best data analytics are available must be integral to building out a successful BI strategy for an organization’s BI platform.

Tableau Prep Builder and Microsoft Power Query are both powerful analytics tools for data preparation and transformation offered up by Tableau Software and Microsoft Power BI respectively. However, there are some key differences between the two that might make one more suitable for certain tasks than the other.

Tableau Prep Builder is part of the Tableau Suite of tools delivered via a visual interface empowering users to create data cleaning and transformation workflows. Tableau Prep Builder is particularly good at handling large, complex data sets and provides a lot of flexibility in terms of data preparation.

It also allows users to preview their data transformations in real-time, which can be helpful in identifying errors or issues.

Alternatively, Microsoft Power Query is an integrated functionality available with Power BI. It allows users to connect to a wide range of data sources and apply transformations to the data before loading it into Power BI (and Excel as well).

Power Query is highly customizable, with the ability to create custom functions and scripts for more complex transformations.

Data Transformation Challenges with NetSuite

While NetSuite provides robust reporting capabilities, many businesses face challenges when it comes to transforming their data into actionable insights.

Due to the limitations in joins and directly accessing NetSuite tables, customers are often faced with exploring alternative options to deliver more flexible business analytics with their ERP data and with other important data sources (e.g. CRM, WMS, eCommerce, etc.)

Here are some of the common data challenges NetSuite customers experience

Complex Data Schema

NetSuite's data schema is complex and can be challenging to work with. The system is highly configurable, and businesses can customize it to suit their needs. However, this can result in complex data structures that are difficult to understand and may require more involved scripting solutions.

Limited Data Transformation Capabilities

NetSuite's data transformation capabilities are limited, and businesses may struggle to transform their business data into the format they need.

While NetSuite offers Saved Searches and other reporting capabilities to transform the data, these features are limited to single joins and basic functionality delivered out-of-the-box.

Data Volume and Velocity

Although NetSuite customers can generate a large volume of data for an ERP system, business users may experience performance issues better handled by a data warehouse solution designed for NetSuite.

Additionally, some businesses may require real-time data transformation capabilities, which cannot be achieved with NetSuite.

Integration with External Reporting Tools

Integrating NetSuite seamlessly with other reporting BI tools (such as Tableau and Power BI) typically requires heavy data transformation and a data migration strategy.

Businesses may need to use multiple analytics platforms to transform their data and ensure that it is accurate and complete or leverage a solution with a pre-built data model to accelerate this process.

Lack of In-House Expertise

Transforming NetSuite data requires specialized expertise, and many businesses may not have knowledge or resources to efficiently build a useful data model.

Leveraging a NetSuite partner with BI and data warehouse experience can mean the difference between a successful and failed BI project.

To learn more on how GURUS Solutions can help you with your Tableau or Power BI connection to NetSuite, check out Business Intelligence for NetSuite (BI4NetSuite) designed specifically for NetSuite ERP.

NetSuite vs. SAP: The Main Differences

Cloud-Based

NetSuite is truly a leader in the Cloud tech space, with over 16,000+ customers running on the same multi-tenant cloud.

SAP Business One, on the other hand, is just now making the transformation to a hosted cloud deployment model, and has minimal ERP customers on any of its cloud versions to date.

For those looking for a cloud-based system that can guarantee functionality and security, NetSuite’s experience and expertise in that realm, make it a key clear winner over SAP.

Upgrading Your System

Because SAP is a hosted SaaS solution, customizations and custom script may/may not carry forward with future upgrades, which may potentially require development to reinstate those customizations.

With NetSuite’s cloud-based system, all customizations carry forward with each NetSuite update, which happens twice a year.

In the end, future-proofing your ERP investment will save your company a lot of time and money.

Reporting Drill Down

With NetSuite, you can get down to the nitty, gritty details of any custom search. NetSuite uses a consistent data model and database for all its information, which means that, even as you’re building out customized reports and dashboards, you can still drill down and drill through from summary level info to detailed levels.

SAP Business One, on the other hand, requires additional reporting software (called SAP Crystal Reports) in order to get customized reporting. Unfortunately, Crystal Reports does not provide drill down / drill through capabilities.

Analytics & Reporting

To expand on reporting, both solutions offer full reporting functionality, using KPIs and dashboards.

NetSuite’s Suite Analytics is arguably much easier to use than the SAP alternative. Suite Analytics is user-friendly, and allows you to generate real-time reports that offer a 360-degree view of your business. NetSuite also automates calculations, provides continual revenue recognition tracking, and offers complete support for all main revenue recognition rules.

SAP’s analytics module offers similar functionality to NetSuite’s Suite Analytics. However, many of SAP’s advanced analytics tools require a separate license, which adds to the overall cost of the software.

Interface and User Experience

When it comes to user interface, NetSuite made a big change to its dashboard during its 2019.1 update. This update provided users with a clean, modern and consistent user interface throughout the entire application.

SAP Business One is moving toward a modern and consistent user interface, called Fiori. But, it still does not utilize the products in its portfolio at the same level of functionality that NetSuite does.

Customization

Both software options provide users with the ability to add user-defined fields and manipulate their interfaces.

With NetSuite, users can easily customize using point-and-click functionality, so you don’t need to edit the code to directly customize forms, records, KPIs, and visual interface.

If a particular type of customization is not already available in the NetSuite interface, you can easily find a third-party add-on, or partner, that can do what you need, or customize using a custom script.

With SAP, directly editing code will restrict the user’s ability to upgrade the system and apply bug fixes. SAP Business One needs a separate tool for customization (MS Visual Studio), and often requires professional services for even minor changes.

NetSuite or SAP: Which ERP Is Right for Your Business?

You’ve seen the facts, the pros, and the cons - have you decided which software is the best fit for your business?

If NetSuite ERP is the right choice for your business, contact our NetSuite pros for a free assessment!

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