Question for Netsuite Functional Consultants: An organization isn't ready to go to full implementation on Netsuite but there is a need for Netsuite's CRM capabilities. The need doesn't quite justify Salesforce type capabilities. Is it prudent to recommend using the CRM capabilities of Netsuite to manage and meet this need given that there is already a significant investment in terms of time and resources to a Netsuite implementation?

Long-time NS consultant and biz apps. Here's my $0.02 - if your org has ANY sales function, use SFDC. SFDC can grown with your org and expand in complexity as you need to. NS CRM is not what I would consider "Best in class" and you will spend more on it to "work" like SFDC than just buying SFDC. NS is really good for Accounting, Inv Mgmt , and Sales Ops to a certain extend. But no one buys NS solely for CRM.

As someone whose upper management has used both. They defined NetSuite's CRM as "it sucks" versus using SalesForce. It all depends on whether you want the gold standard or not I guess.

Thanks @suitetastic for the insight. I do understand that CRM is not Netsuite's area of strength so I'm not even thinking along the lines of "best in class" but more in terms of a solution that will work to meet the specific need of determining of the x amount of customer who took the time to submit a credit app, how many actually followed through to order product? At this point I am trying to determine whether it is a good move to go ahead and let the users use the CRM portion of Netsuite for simple tracking of communication and follow through knowing that it will be x number of months before the organization is fully implemented and transitioned into NS from an existing legacy ERP system.

I’m not sure what your industry is specifically but I would think these “credit apps” are essentially leads. Even if a prospective abandons an application, that data needs to be stored for future campaigns or lead generation. Perhaps you’re looking for something light weight. If you are inclined to use NS for just the CRM piece, there are still configurations for CRM that could potentially impact other NS configurations for actual sales ops and revenue functions , specifically items. For NS CRM to work, you need at least the items configured (even if it’s temporary) so they can be put on an opportunity object. In SFDC vanilla, you do not need an item. I presume you’ve already purchased NS? What is the causing the implementation delay? Feel free to DM me if you care to share/brainstorm.

One of the big things to bear in mind with NetSuite is that CRM and accounting need to play nice together if you plan to implement both. I've seen clients implement both successfully. And I have seen clients try to implement both and couldn't get both groups to play nice together.

Yes that’s the plan. Full Netsuite implementation is the goal except right now the ERP portion is not yet ready.