Achieving success in project delivery with NetSuite project management

David Bailey
6 min readMay 12, 2024

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Project management is essential for all businesses.

Whether juggling tight budgets, deadlines, unknown variables, setbacks, or overseeing third-party vendors poses significant hurdles. The key to success lies in employing the appropriate project management software.

Integrating essential components, such as NetSuite’s project management capabilities, not only ensures triumphant project management but also opens up a world of possibilities for your business. The benefits of NetSuite project management are numerous and can significantly improve your project delivery.

NetSuite project management provides complete visibility into project data and metrics, crucial for identifying issues and keeping stakeholders informed.

Fortunately, NetSuite’s project management capabilities and customisations, which are expertly implemented by a top-tier NetSuite consultancy like Jacopo, allow you to navigate this complex landscape seamlessly.

Time management issues in project delivery

According to a Gartner survey, 82% of employees do not feel productive. This isn’t for lack of trying, as the study also revealed that employees want to be more productive. However, they think they lack a work environment promoting productivity.

Project managers must work to promote time management and productivity among their teams. A crucial component of project management is time management. The success or failure of a project may depend on how well you can manage your time as a project manager.

Project management involves planning, scheduling, and executing projects. Work assignments must be completed on schedule, within budget, and to the satisfaction of all stakeholders.

Time is one of the most valuable resources in project management. Effective time management is crucial to success. Project managers are tasked with:

  • Mitigating risks
  • Managing the budget
  • Distributing resources
  • Establishing timeline
  • Setting priorities

Project management tools like NetSuite are essential for effectively managing project resources, including team members, equipment, and materials. These tools help allocate the right resources to the right tasks at the right time, ensuring successful project delivery.

What are Project Management Tools?

Despite the name, project management tools are for more than just project managers. For example, the NetSuite Project Management Module’s customisable features cater to teams of varying sizes and objectives. Basic projects benefit from simple checklists, whereas complex ones demand meticulous planning, task coordination, deadline setting, and resource monitoring.

The NetSuite Project Management Module excels in creating and managing project plans, which includes setting up standard delivery templates, assigning tasks to team members, improving communication, and updating and editing project details within a project management tool. This fosters team collaboration, ensuring managers stay abreast of project status through real-time data. This proactive approach allows companies to anticipate potential scope or budgetary issues. Staff and vendors quickly access their responsibilities and communication requirements and track vital metrics like inventory levels and impending deadlines.

NetSuite’s cloud-based solution is a game-changer, enabling stakeholders and relevant parties to access it from anywhere. This is particularly beneficial when you have multiple locations (including international ones), field offices, project sites, and more.

What is NetSuite Project Management?

With its user-friendly interface, NetSuite Project Management fosters team collaboration and aids in project planning. It defines project scope, goals, and deliverables and provides real-time status updates for proactive issue identification.

NetSuite’s cloud-based solution ensures stakeholders have comprehensive visibility and control, allowing them to monitor and report project status from anywhere.

With the help of NetSuite consultants, you can achieve enhanced project completion records, increased client satisfaction, and reduced nonbillable work hours.

NetSuite Project Management is designed to ensure successful project management by providing the tools and insights needed to manage projects effectively.

Key Issues NetSuite Project Management Module Can Remedy

  1. Limited Visibility of Project Status: NetSuite provides easy access to updated KPIs and customer data through project dashboards, reports, and Gantt charts.
  2. Manual Project Setup: NetSuite streamlines operations with automated job creation, project templates, and seamless integrations for enhanced efficiency from project initiation to final payment.
  3. Inefficient Tracking: Using NetSuite, project management consolidates calls, activities, tasks, and events, linking them to specific projects for real-time resource monitoring.
  4. Unreliable Project Budgeting: NetSuite’s P&L, automated job creation, and progress reporting empower managers to assess project profitability based on actuals.
  5. Inconsistent Resource Assignments: NetSuite’s project management module automates accurate time and expense allocation to projects, ensuring timely tracking of impending deadlines and precise assignment of resources, including team members, equipment, and materials.

What are the features of the popular NetSuite Project Management Module?

A NetSuite consultant can help explain several excellent features, such as which and why to use them. Below are the frequently requested ones we at Jacopo advise our clients on.

Project-Based Milestones

Project milestones are critical points throughout a project’s life cycle. They include completing a building foundation, delivering a crucial resource, or completing the code for a unique software feature. These milestones help set billing dates and ensure the completeness of work. NetSuite allows you to track and monitor project-based milestones with dashboards, alerts, and automation for improved visibility and control.

Project Billing

NetSuite project management allows you to bill projects based on the completion of project work, successfully passing milestones, by schedule, and more. You can also utilise billing forecast capabilities to predict when customers will be billed.

Project Tasks

NetSuite facilitates the creation of project tasks with multiple predecessors, supporting various relationship types such as finish-to-start (FS), start-to-start (SS), finish-to-finish (FF), and start-to-finish (SF). Additionally, tasks can incorporate lag time between them and adhere to a Finish No Later Than (FNLT) constraint.

Project Dashboard

NetSuite’s project dashboard gives project managers a visual, graphical analysis of specific statuses. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are readily visible, enabling managers to determine which projects are on schedule, within budget swiftly, and poised for success.

Project Templates

NetSuite offers reusable project templates, allowing your organisation to initiate complex projects quickly, save time and headaches, and ensure that best practices are followed.

Gantt Charts

NetSuite’s project management features include Gantt charts, which provide better visibility into project schedules. Gantt charts assist with project scheduling, tracking progress, and visually representing specific tasks’ start and finish dates.

Automate Job Creation

You can easily automate job creation using NetSuite by identifying service items requiring a job. Sales orders for those items go into a queue where you can assign an ID and a project manager. You can also bulk-create numerous jobs with one click.

Timesheets

Managing personnel is a complex aspect of project management. NetSuite’s Timesheets feature enables project staff to input and submit weekly timesheets effortlessly. As a cloud-based and mobile-friendly platform, NetSuite facilitates accurate time tracking and submission from any location worldwide. Moreover, you can tailor your timesheet approval processes to align with your business requirements.

Payroll Expense Allocation

NetSuite’s project management software offers a streamlined solution for tracking job labour costs with just one click. Earnings are effortlessly assigned to the respective jobs based on employees’ timesheet entries for the pay period. This process reduces manual effort and enhances financial reporting accuracy, particularly in assessing job profitability.

Organise Tasks and Activities

NetSuite can also organise tasks, calls, and events, which can be linked to projects and records. Keeping data on communications, events, projects, and clients in one place makes resource tracking more accurate and reliable.

Getting started using Netsuite project management tools with Jacopo

Through its project management functionality, NetSuite offers a vital service. It facilitates efficient business process management and seamless collaboration across teams. You gain insights into progress and potential issues by utilising and analysing real-time data, enabling proactive resolution before they escalate.

At Jacopo, we offer top-notch NetSuite implementation solutions designed to enable the simultaneous management of various project types. We conduct a comprehensive overview of finances, covering cost estimates, profits, work in progress, and more. In short, our NetSuite Project Management Services facilitate the seamless handling of all your business operations.

Originally published at https://jacopo.ee on May 12, 2024.

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David Bailey

CEO @Blu_Mint | Content Writer | Feminist | Rockstar Daddy to 3 sons | Recovering chocoholic