Anyone who knows Bi101 knows that we’re evangelists for NetSuite, our partner for helping software and professional services companies take control of their finances and negotiate regulatory issues like revenue recognition. There’s no question that we’re big fans, but it’s always nice to see when others see the light.

Recently, G2 Crowd, which bills itself “the world’s leading business software review platform,” did a rundown of the best enterprise resource planning (ERP) suites. Guess which platform came out on top overall?

The NetSuite difference

G2 Crowd put 19 different ERP offerings onto a grid determined by customer satisfaction and market presence, and NetSuite stands out among the “leader” category as the strongest combination of customer satisfaction and market presence. The offerings that compete directly on scale—PeopleSoft and SAP—can’t match NetSuite’s stronger customer satisfaction, and many others, like Sage 100c or Infor ERP, can’t compete on either front.

Beneath the leaders are high performers, which are highly rated, but are much smaller when it comes to marketshare and scale, and it’s not unsurprising that the smaller offerings have the strongest average customer ratings. If they scale, they’ll likely begin to see shifts in how their customers perceive the platform. Up next are contenders, which have lots of scale but aren’t very well-liked.

The satisfaction rating is based on overall satisfaction of different attributes based on user reviews, and also the quality of reviews received. More recent reviews are also favored, as well as satisfaction with administration-specific concerns.

The market presence score is affected by the number of employees use the specific product that the vendor created, how many reviews they received, and the social impact based on a number of factors.

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These are combined together to create a “G2 Score,” a composite score that is normalized for each comparison, and is relative to any other given score. NetSuite takes the top spot there as well, and it’s not surprising, given that it has stronger reviews compared to offerings of a similar size. Not a bad vote of confidence for those who might be looking into a new opportunity to take control of their finances with cloud-based ERP.

The next steps

The article ends by examining some of the considerations one needs to take into account when researching and potentially purchasing a new ERP system. As mentioned, businesses need to do the necessary legwork to determine which features/models they actually need, so that they’re not spending more than they need to or wasting time on unnecessary customization. They run through the different deployment methods—cloud, hybrid, or on-premises—and while each have certain advantages and disadvantages, we’ve certainly seen more people leaning toward the cloud for their answer to a new ERP deployment. The cloud also reduces the concern over scalability.

What’s my take, as the head of a company that works closely with NetSuite? We’re not surprised at all to see our ERP partner at the top of the heap, but having success on NetSuite isn’t always as simple as signing up and throwing all your information at it. If you want to actually reduce the complexity of a brand-new ERP roll-out, and you want to make sure you’re not setting up yourself for confusion or failure later, a managed services provider (MSP) can make all the difference. It means having a partner that cares about your success, and it means spending less time dealing with IT complexity and more time pushing your business forward.

Want to try out the best-in-class ERP suite? Our 14-day free trial could be just what you need to jumpstart your business.