NetSuite Connector - Dangers of Automation

Automation is a wonderful tool in the business of e-commerce and a necessary one when you plan on utilizing more than one platform. That’s why NetSuite Connector exists; it was originally created to help companies stop the process of manually pulling files from E-Commerce Marketplaces and manually putting that data into NetSuite. Of course, as businesses grow, margins grow thin, and volume increases, automation becomes a necessary part of any operation.

As with most manual tasks, one advantage is that you can catch mistakes before they become too prevalent to affect your business processes. Perhaps, another advantage is you are simply too slow to create too many problems. Not so with automation. With automation things can go very bad, very quickly.

Here are some of the things we’ve seen or heard of:

• Delisting of entire product catalogs from marketplaces.
• Incorrect mappings causing prices to be incorrect on storefront causing losses.
• Unchecked order duplication causing additional inventory being sent to customers.
• Refunds being issued en masse when no refunds were due or appropriate.
• Oversell issues due to incorrect inventory syncing, or listings showing out of stock despite having stock available. 
• Order errors due to incorrectly configured settings/mappings leading to an order backlog and delayed shipments. 

When things go bad with automation it takes significant resources to correct. The biggest challenge isn’t just down time while syncs and configurations are fixed, it’s the reversion and consolidation of data back to the appropriate instance that consumes the most amount of time.

Another issue we have seen at YCS is the setup of a connector not following best practices. Often this arises from clients completing an in-house implementation of NetSuite and NetSuite Connector, but we've also seen it with partners that aren't as familiar with NetSuite Connector. This can absolutely work, especially in a single use case, but this can spell trouble in the future when clients change their business objectives or want to add features. Then we have to make more difficult decisions on how to proceed. Should we correct and clean up the data and syncs or patch in a solution that works until the next change? Often the latter ends up being the choice but not the ideal one. 

These types of considerations are where a third-party consultant that specializes in connectors can provide invaluable assistance to ensure proper setup and deployment of your integrations. This is true for any type of automation solution, but at YCS-Consultants we think it’s especially true for NetSuite Connector. NetSuite Connector is quite robust, but many configurations and options are layered behind complex mappings and settings that require deep knowledge of the product and whose settings are not widely known or available in documentation.

This is the value that we hope to bring with YCS-Consultants. We are composed of former FarApp leaders to know this product better than any other consultant or partner does. We can guide clients through the process of correctly and safely implementing their NetSuite Connector integration. If you would like to know more please reach out to us here and we can set up a quick call and evaluate what we might be able to do for you.