HAS YOUR BUSINESS OUTGROWN XERO? - NetSuite Singapore
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HAS YOUR
BUSINESS
OUTGROWN
XERO?
Copyright © 2018, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Page 1
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HAS YOUR BUSINESS
OUTGROWN XERO?
Since its launch in 2006, Xero has become Drawing on Oracle NetSuite’s experience,
the default accounting platform for many as one of the leading cloud-based,
small businesses, but can its platform enterprise resource planning providers,
support the growth of your business? this white paper will help to identify five
common pain points that may indicate your
If you subscribe to Xero’s cloud-based business is outgrowing Xero’s capabilities.
accounting platform, that’s a question you
should ask yourself before it’s too late. We’ve distilled these pain points from
While being in the cloud brings benefits years of conversations with our customers,
like accessibility, it does not necessarily many of whom have successfully made the
mean it will be able to support the levels of transition from small businesses thriving
business complexity that come with success. organizations in multiple markets– often
with major changes to their financial and
Xero’s capabilities focus squarely on accounting platforms in the process. We
the small business market. While it often hope this insight will help you assess
supports the needs of early-stage or your own company’s present and future
single entity businesses, many business business application needs as you pursue
owners find that they need something your growth aspirations, here and abroad.
more sophisticated as they increase their
workforce, enter new markets and add to
their product offerings. They are fearful
that if they stress their existing business
applications any further, “something will
break.” So how can you know if, and when,
it’s time to consider an alternative to Xero?
Copyright © 2018, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Page 21.
YOU’VE OUTGROWN
ACCOUNTING
As small businesses grow, so too does their comprehensive inventory, warehouse
business model and processes. They might and distribution management; or a
have more products and complex inventory manufacturer may need to manage and
needs, more employees, more channels, automate their core shopfloor manual
more customers and customer types processes to support their growth. To what
degree does your accounting software
At some point, accounting software’s support your industry-specific functional
limited configuration capability, will be requirements? Do you still have challenges
unable to deliver the functionality required managing your inventory, manufacturing
by a complex business. In order to deliver or services? If you have had to incorporate
that functionality, organizations turn to third party industry solutions, have they
departmental, third party applications and provided you with leading practices to
spreadsheets until most of functionality successfully support your growth?
is performed outside of core accounting
software. If you find yourself in this Accounting software, designed for small
situation, ask yourself this: How hard will businesses, simply cannot deliver the
it be to adapt your accounting software financial management requirements of
and associated applications when your larger businesses. Financial capabilities
business requirements change? Is such as multi-location, multi-entity / multi-
your business becoming error prone? books, consolidation, support for multiple
How much effort is spent maintaining forms of depreciation, budget roll-ups and
workarounds by your finance team? total-organizational budgets, subscription
billing, credit limits for customers/suppliers
Accounting is often the first software are all examples of where traditional
package small businesses purchase. It is accounting software falls short. Is your
a substantial improvement from running business at a point where the amount
a business on spreadsheets. As small of exceptions, workarounds and manual
businesses grow, they need to address interventions you have put in place to help
industry-specific challenges beyond your accounting software are restrcting
accounting. For example, a business in flexibility and growth? Is accounting
retail or manufacturing might want to open creating unnecessary overhead and
a new ecommerce channel, a business introducing errors and unpredictability?
that has stock may need to consider
Copyright © 2018, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Page 32.
YOU DON’T HAVE THE
NECESSARY VISIBILITY TO
MAKE INFORMED DECISIONS
Business growth rarely proves a linear The data complexity increases. As the
journey. Charting that path involves number of applications integrated into
ongoing trial and error, analysis of data accounting software increases, so does
and adapting how you run the business. the potential to form data islands, which
When small businesses begin their prevent a unified view of the business.
journey, using standard reports from an
accounting system such as Xero, once As the delta increases between the
a month probably provides sufficient reporting that is provided by accounting
business insight, but as businesses software and the insight that a business
grow, there are three points to note: needs, it is faced with a decision to
continue plugging the gaps with third party
The business model and process business intelligence tools, spreadsheets,
complexity increases. As business workarounds or even reconsidering the
models become more complex, leaders business application strategy entirely.
need customized reports by role and How long can your business continue
quality data to deliver deep and detailed with reporting that does not deliver the
analysis. Business owners also want to see depth of insight you need, is not easily
reports more often so that they can have accessible and is likely inaccurate?
the necessary insight at the right time.
The business entity complexity increases.
Accounting software such as Xero is a
geared towards single entity businesses.
As a business adds more stores, outlets or
other entities, each will receive a separate
instance of Xero. Delivering real-time insight
across the business using unintegrated
accounting reports is near impossible.
Copyright © 2018, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Page 43.
YOU SPEND TOO MUCH
TIME JUST KEEPING
SYSTEMS RUNNING
Business growth will impact operations in The more applications that are added
many ways. The growth across transactions, beyond the base accounting package
departments, channels and customers exacerbates the situation until a dead end
can strain an accounting platform to the is reached whereby either the application
point where performance is degraded or architecture breaks or degrades to a point
workarounds are designed to circumvent the that is unsustainable for the business to
limitations of the software. Is your accounting operate and grow. Have you invested
package keeping up with your performance in other applications to compliment
requirements, or are you forced to change Xero, and is that application architecture
your operations or build process exceptions meeting your functional and non-functional
to shield it? Is all that effort worth it? requirements? Is your application and
integration architecture forcing you to
IT architectures within growing businesses spend an abnormal amount of time and
evolve based on changing requirements effort just to keep the environment stable?
often without sufficient foresight into how it How quick can you make changes across
will affect operations. For example, a move your applications and integrations to
to an accounting package such as Xero respond to your evolving business?
probably resolved the data nightmares,
manual processes and compliancy issues Application architectures that grow in
associated with running a business complexity due to successful business
on spreadsheets. But, at some point a growth introduce application integration
business might want to manage stock mismatches. Businesses are faced with
more effectively (and across multiple sites either living with the imperfect integration,
and warehouses), or optimise their human employing developers to address the
resources operations, or improve their integration deficiencies through code, or
customer relations and associated sales, introduce workarounds which could be
or extend into ecommerce. To respond manual. So, does your business and your
to such requirements, many businesses applications get the right data when it is
buy and integrate bespoke applications needed it, in the format that is digestible?
to meet the new functional requirements. Or are you spending too much time
This continual application acquisition and reconciling data between systems?
integration creates a hairball that is difficult
to maintain, keep stable and performing.
Copyright © 2018, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Page 54.
YOU WANT TO EXPAND
TO NEW MARKETS
For many small businesses, growth Multi-currency
opportunities lie in new markets. To
unlock these opportunities, whether Are the currencies of customers
through opening new locations, and vendors you do business with
establishing a foreign presence, supported? Is multi-currency management
selling to intermediaries or directly to available throughout the accounting
customers via channels like ecommerce, software you are using, or just parts,
businesses need to understand, support such as expense management? Are
and comply with the unique needs currencies converted in real time?
and requirements of each market.
Multi-entity
From managing different currencies to
Does your accounting software support
abiding by foreign regulations, these
the creation of multi entities and the
needs can quickly overwhelm small
consolidation and reporting of those
businesses. How is your accounting
entities? How easy is it to set up, manage
software, that is designed for a small
and report? Or have you deployed a fresh
business, supporting your growth?
instance of accounting software for each
What kind of operational friction are you
of your entities because of the limitations
experiencing and what workarounds
of multi-entity management? What
have you developed or applications
impact do multiple instances have on the
have you have acquired to fill the gaps?
operations and insight of your business?
So, what do you need to look out for?
Tax and Accounting Regulation support
Multi-language
Does your accounting software support
For your employees to be as effective as
tax, financial and accounting regulations
possible, they should be able to work in
in the states/provinces and countries
their native language. Does your platform/
that you want to expand to? Is the
system support all the languages in the
capability comprehensive and reliable?
locations where you want to do business?
Copyright © 2018, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Page 65.
DOWNTIME IS DEADLY
Time is of the essence for all businesses, As your business grows and becomes
but especially so for smaller businesses. more reliant on your business applications,
What small businesses lack in size they you become more reliant on support
can make up for in agility, responding to for those applications. Support is
new opportunities or customer demands often overlooked during the software
much faster than their larger competitors. purchasing decision, but is often the
To do so effectively, however, means that catalyst for replacing the software.
fast-growing small business need equally
responsive, accessible and detailed service Market-leading small business software
when they encounter issues – particularly accounting firms, including Xero, face
with the business-critical processes that criticism over their availability, accessibility,
keep their operations running. In our responsiveness and depth of support.
always-on economy, downtime could These firms often rely on user guides,
result in irreparable damage to a business community forums, their partners, or
through loss of sales, brand damage some form of email support. Support
and even compliancy breaches. bound by service level agreements tied to
customer escalations, and 24/7 telephone
support is often limited or non-existent.
Copyright © 2018, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Page 7CONCLUSION
Many small businesses start off using With 20 years of experience serving
Xero for their accounting needs, but growing businesses NetSuite provides,
successful, expanding businesses can the industry depth and leading practices
outgrow the capabilities of the platform. to support their evolution, from automating
When that happens the frequently asked accounting to running their core operations.
question is: What next? Some fast-growing It provides the necessary functional depth
businesses choose to persist with Xero by to support complex business models and
using spreadsheet workarounds and other processes, and the configuration ability to
applications to meet their new business allow customers to perform deep levels of
requirements. This approach creates greater tailoring to their business requirements.
application and integration complexity that
will inhibit the business scaling further. Many of the world’s successful global
companies turn to NetSuite as the number
Oracle NetSuite, as an alternative, is the 1 ranked cloud ERP for the midmarket.
perfect platform for small, successful
businesses to use as a catalyst for their If you are looking to grow your small
growth. Its platform delivers financials, business, consider proactively investing
customer relationship management, in a platform that will seamlessly support
inventory and warehouse management, your success. While low-cost, entry-
professional services automation and level accounting software like Xero
ecommerce capabilities in a single solution. may fit your current needs, investing
This approach supports small businesses in an integrated and functionally rich
interacting with their customers in new platform will put your small business on
ways, it contains the integration complexity the fast track from local to legendary.
associated with additional applications
and provides unsurpassed insight across
all functional capabilities through a unified
data model and search and reporting.
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