Why LS Retail is better than NetSuite as a Retail ERP

Discover why LS Retail with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central smashes the competition out the park!

Arm wrestle - LS Retail Netsuite

Retail ERP Systems

Many retail management solutions will claim to do the same things for example:

  • Give you unity of data in a single system
  • Act as an end-to-end solution that manages all your retail process from financials through to inventory management, the store experience and ecommerce
  • Provide reporting and analytics capabilities

However, when comparing the marketing bumf online, you’d be hard pressed to discern any true differentiators. It makes you wonder if there is any real difference between retail management solutions? The only thing that seems to stand out is price. In our experience, when we’ve gone up against competitors such as NetSuite, that’s the only real advantage they may have. But, be warned! The old mantra ‘buy cheap, buy twice’ resonates only too true for many of those who have tried the more lightweight solutions on the market.

Sadly for many companies who choose our competitors, such as NetSuite, it’s only once the implementation is underway that it becomes clear there was a lot of smoke and mirrors and there is often a significant gap between what they say they can do and what they can actually deliver.

Why choose LS Retail with Business Central over NetSuite?

The retail management solution LS Central is an all in one, cloud based, extendable solution which provides an accurate, integrated experience, and crucially, is built on the tried and tested strength of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Sitting on Microsoft Azure and linking seamlessly with Office 365 and Power Platform, it provides an intuitive user experience that ultimately fosters a more productive working environment.

This integrated stack delivers a more robust solution than NetSuite. It’s a proven solution with a reliable reputation and loyal customers in fact it’s used by over 80,000+ stores, retail chains, pharmacies and fuel stations across the world. With the addition of LS Insights, out of the box, Power BI Dashboards, previously disjointed businesses can access the data and the intelligence to be more efficient with their supply chain and better understand what their customers want and how to deliver that experience. Having a properly connected, integrated retail management solution for the whole business is invaluable. Chris Luther, Van Hage Garden Centres, considers their use of Dynamics with LS Central to be a ‘no-brainer’. He says, ‘if we didn’t have an integrated POS system, we wouldn’t be able to run our business. If we didn’t have LS set up and linked to stock, we’d be overselling all the time. The reporting available - down to groups and subgroups - means we can optimise our shop floors and sales’.

Because LS Central is built on the leading Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central platform it is about as future-proofed as any modern solution can be. So, as your business grows, the solution has the infrastructure to expand and evolve, enabling you work smarter and accommodate the changing needs of your customers. A more lightweight solution simply can’t scale up and work smarter like LS Central can.  We’ve seen this time again where businesses have decided to implement NetSuite as their retail ERP, lured by grand promises and low prices, only to be searching for a replacement retail management solution a couple of years down the line to fulfil their business’s expanding needs and growth ambitions.

Questions to ask when selecting your Retail ERP

When selecting your retail ERP you should seriously dig into to the vigour of the solutions you are considering; can they really deliver the functional and growth capabilities that you will need as your business scales up and the market evolves?  Have they got references from customers that can testify to those capabilities?  Are there going to be additional costs, for integration, as you grow or to deliver future functionality or is it all part and parcel of the solution that you sign up to with the original implementation?  These are the sorts of questions to ask when you are selecting your retail management solution.  Sure, go ahead and check that they’ll provide the functionality that you require – reporting functionality, a unified omnichannel platform, replenishment capabilities, unity of data etc - but the majority of the leading retail ERPs will provide all these things as standard.  The more revealing questions to ask are in the detail of how the solutions scale up, evolve with your business, and allow it to grow.

The most important thing to consider when choosing your Retail Management Solution!

Our final word of advice is that picking your solution is only half, in fact, probably less than half of what really counts when you are deciding your retail management solution. What really matters is who you do all of this with. In fact, searching ‘LS Central vs NetSuite’ often won’t reveal how crucial this factor is in the decision-making process.

You could find the most perfect system for your business, but if the partner you’ve chosen is not a good match for your business, you’ll get nowhere. You want honesty and realism – not a repeated claim of what you might ‘want’ to hear. Rob Brewill, Selco’s Finance Director says, “What a difference a great partner can make - we have achieved more in the 18 months since we moved to The NAV | 365 People than we did in the many previous years!” Our Alternative Guide to Buying ERP explains how the choice of partner is as important, if not more so, than the product. A quality team, with both a breadth and depth of knowledge, alongside a cultural fit of people, is absolutely crucial to the continued success of whatever solution you choose to deploy.

So when selecting your retail management solution don’t put the partner at the bottom of your requirements list – put it right there at the top!