Oracle NetSuite is a cloud-native standalone enterprise application built from the ground up for ERP and related functionalities. FinancialForce has built a series of ERP and business management solutions that sit on top of Salesforce’s Force.com Platform. As a Salesforce Gold Implementation partner and an Oracle NetSuite Alliance Partner, we’re uniquely capable to discuss the primary differentiators between both systems to help you make an informed and unbiased decision for your organization.
Stating The Obvious
Salesforce is the world’s #1 CRM and customer engagement platform. As such, it was not built with finance and accounting workflows in mind. FinancialForce has done an excellent job in hacking the platform to be built into a very capable cloud accounting and ERP suite, which is a massive accomplishment that’s made them very successful, however, the platform that it’s built on top was not meant for ERP. This means that if and when you dig deep enough, you will find some cracks in the foundation that a true ground-up accounting and financials suite like NetSuite may not have.
Functionality & Customization
NetSuite offers more out-of-the-box functionality and SuiteSuccess provides pre-built industry-specific modules that you can simply “turn on” to tailor your instance to your business needs. SuiteApps can also be leveraged to provide even more customization. For even more customization, NetSuite leverages declarative configuration options, as well as Suite Scripts and Javascript options. FinancialForce was built with Apex programming language which is Force. com-specific. This makes FinancialForce slightly more difficult to customize for each individual business’ needs. Also, it’s worth mentioning that the large majority of Salesforce Consulting partners are not accounting or ERP specialists, which means they won’t have the level of understanding and industry expertise when developing your ERP platform as the Oracle NetSuite network of partners.
Think about it this way; if you want to hire someone to administer and continue ongoing innovation on your FinancialForce ERP platform, most Salesforce Technical Architects will not be familiar with your primary use cases: Accounting and Finance. On the other side of the fence, almost every NetSuite certification requires a baseline of financial knowledge. At Plative, we even have CPAs on staff as full-time NetSuite consultants.
Reporting
For reporting within FinancialForce users must purchase the FinancialForce Reporting App, which doesn’t offer the same level of declarative reporting that users of Salesforce have come to know and love. Oracle NetSuite includes a full range of reporting and analytics tools, like easy-to-use dashboards, packaged reports, and the option to create tailored real-time reports. What’s more, if you go with SuiteSuccess, you will also receive a set of pre-configured reports and dashboards based on your industry.
Both platforms are capable of integrating with analytics and BI suites such as Looker, Tableau, or PowerBI.
Integrations
NetSuite is built to be integrated with other applications. There are standard integrations available for many business applications and if you need an integration that doesn’t already exist, those applications and integrations can be built for you. Due to the way FinancialForce is built, it requires integration tools for integrating anything other than Salesforce. If your organization has other applications in place (think: Avalara, Stripe, Nalpeiron, etc…), an additional tool would be required to integrate with FinancialForce.
Planning & Budgeting
As a native cloud accounting platform, NetSuite was built from the ground up for finance organizations. This includes the native capability for organization-wide, subsidiary-specific, and departmental financial planning and modeling. FinancialForce is not built to stand up for this level of task, particularly within multi-subsidiary and global organizations. In fact, some FinancialForce users report having to build financial statements in Excel with FinancialForce exports, rather than running in their accounting ERP.
Built for a Global Organization
NetSuite is localized for more countries, better supports local accounting standards and provides stronger multi-currency support. It can manage, invoice, and recognize revenue for projects across multiple currencies, tax jurisdictions, languages, and time zones. FinancialForce also offers a multi-currency structure but does not have multi-language availability outside of English.
The flexibility and integrations that NetSuite offers make it a scalable solution that will grow with your business. If you are considering other platforms, make sure to check out the rest of our blog series covering Microsoft Dynamics and Sage Intacct, or feel free to get in touch with our team of experts to learn what platform is the best fit for your organization!
