Exploring the NetSuite Dashboard and Report: How to Get Quick Access to Useful Data
Information is only helpful if it's accessible.
One of an ERP’s most important features is its ability to organize and display data. What’s the point in collecting information if there’s no easy way to read and analyze it? Fortunately, NetSuite offers some simple methods for interacting with data. Let’s explore the NetSuite dashboard and reports.
A Quick Summary of Data
A dashboard is simply a screen inside the NetSuite program that displays frequently used information updated in real-time. It often includes features called “portlets.” Portlets are moveable objects within your dashboard that show business data. You might see some of the following portlets on your dashboard:
- Analytics
- Calendar
- KPI Meter
- KPI Scorecard
- Reminders
- Report Snapshots
- Trend Charts
- Saved Searches
- Tasks
You can also opt for a kind of analytics portlet called a “workbook.” This feature displays information but is more interactive and can manage multiple data sets. Think of workbooks as toolkits that allow you to create, analyze, and share data assets such as reports and charts.
One of a dashboard’s many benefits is that a user can access it from anywhere and on any device, so you always have the data you need to make crucial decisions. You can also drill down into any information on your dashboard, quickly navigating from a summary of yearly finances to the pertinent details of a single transaction. The tool is designed to keep all business data at your fingertips.
Reflecting Your Role
One of a NetSuite dashboard’s best features is its flexibility. Even a mid-sized company includes many different roles that cover a variety of responsibilities. So, all employees don’t need to see the same information. That’s why NetSuite offers drag-and-drop customization for dashboards. It allows every user immediate access to the reliable information they need.
For example, an administrator's dashboard will look fairly different from a warehouse manager’s. The administrator may have shortcuts to billable projects, incomplete projects, and resource allocations on their screen, along with a KPI meter for new leads.
On the other hand, a warehouse manager’s dashboard may have shortcuts to inventory along with a portlet for monthly inventory trends and another comparing sales orders to customer returns and gross profit average.
Examining What Happened and Why
Dashboards may provide you with snippets of information, but a report dives deep into your data. NetSuite offers pre-built reports that help convey data quickly but are also customizable to suit your needs. These no-code, industry-standard tools save you the hassle of inefficient manual reporting. And, just like dashboards, they allow users to drill down into information, revealing minute details about a business.
Many people also confuse reporting with analytics. But there’s a significant difference. A report tells you what happened within your business, and analytics explain why. For example, suppose a call center experiences an average of 100 abandoned calls. A report will tell you how many people hung up and how long they waited before doing so.
But you would turn to analytics to find out why this happened. You would look at staffing levels and call volumes and examine when those abandoned calls occurred. This information would help decrease wait times, so fewer people would quit their calls.
NetSuite SuiteAnalytics provides in-depth reporting and well-rounded analytics so you can examine each facet of your company and find ways to improve. It consolidates various spreadsheets into one database, so all employees work from the same information. It also offers KPI tracking and workbooks to measure and analyze your performance.
Or, if you’re interested in specific analytics, you can create a saved search and attach it to your dashboard. A saved search creates a real-time list of results that offer quick peeks into your business analytics. You can use this feature on essentially any record, so you will always have the information you need at your fingertips.
Learn how to create a custom dashboard in our quick tutorial, and increase your NetSuite IQ!
Empower Your Staff with NetSuite
A NetSuite ERP can feel intimidating at first. It’s a massive system with a million moving parts, and it seems impossible to master. But trust us, it’s not.
We know your staff wants to conquer this system, and our SuiteDynamics experts are ready to help you. Our training programs teach everything from loading journal entries via CSV files to customizing dashboards and more.
We know you’ve got the right team to run NetSuite successfully. Let us prove it to you.
We pull information from NetSuite material, SuiteDynamics experts, and other reliable sources to compose our blog posts and educational pieces. We ensure they are as accurate as possible at the time of writing. However, software evolves quickly, and although we work to maintain these posts, some details may fall out of date. Contact SuiteDynamics experts for the latest information on NetSuite ERP systems.
