This Business and Moment...

[Martynt74]

That’s brilliant.

We’re part of a very large global software group and are a sub group of a sub group.

The one benefit is that a few other groups have already switched to Netsuite and because we operate in similar markets and have the same reporting requirements/setup (it’s an efficient structure whereby each entity has the same COA and reporting templates) that some others have done the initial work and the hope would be to take their base and tweak for our needs.

The main benefits would be to consolidate a lot of 3rd party systems such as Concur and bring everything in house and consistent. That would make my life a lot easier!

We do have Salesforce but would consider using the Netsuite CRM possibly as a phase 2.

We’ve recently had a €100k quote to set up a contract billing module in one of our companies so moving to Netsuite which could handle it in house would help a lot. Especially as it’d be beneficial to other companies in the group.

I get the whole get the system setup right first time part. My previous company was Manufacturing based and Netsuite wasn’t equipped for it. We then made loads of customisations to do what we wanted but it then meant we couldn’t take advantage of new features/updates because they weren’t compatible.

 

[MichaelAwkward]

That’s brilliant.

We’re part of a very large global software group and are a sub group of a sub group.

The one benefit is that a few other groups have already switched to Netsuite and because we operate in similar markets and have the same reporting requirements/setup (it’s an efficient structure whereby each entity has the same COA and reporting templates) that some others have done the initial work and the hope would be to take their base and tweak for our needs.

That'll help massively - hopefully they've already created a bunch of workflows, saved searches, roles, custom forms, etc so you can just replicate it easily.

The main benefits would be to consolidate a lot of 3rd party systems such as Concur and bring everything in house and consistent. That would make my life a lot easier!

We do have Salesforce but would consider using the Netsuite CRM possibly as a phase 2.

That's my next goal - at the moment nothing is integrated with NetSuite and our sales team is wedded to Salesforce and committed for another 4 years so getting an integration that just ensures our master data is the same, and potentially pushes opportunities from SF into NS using products with a fixed price book with the correct units so that we can start using Analytics Warehouse is probably a year ahead.

We’ve recently had a €100k quote to set up a contract billing module in one of our companies so moving to Netsuite which could handle it in house would help a lot. Especially as it’d be beneficial to other companies in the group.

This is one area where I've found NS to be pretty limited. Out of the box it can't do a lot - there's a bunch of optional modules; Advanced Billing and SuiteBilling, Billing Groups, Customer Aggregation as well as Advanced Revenue Management which are pretty complicated to set up but quite powerful. Currently we've got to the point of using billing schedules and basic automation of invoicing but moving to SuiteBilling with an API integration from our other systems is the next step towards full automation. ARM in particular can be tricky to get to grips with and needs constant care and attention I've found otherwise it'll quickly go wrong. Thinking out your item set up so that revenue recognition is correct at source is an easy win rather than trying to fix it afterwards.

I get the whole get the system setup right first time part. My previous company was Manufacturing based and Netsuite wasn’t equipped for it. We then made loads of customisations to do what we wanted but it then meant we couldn’t take advantage of new features/updates because they weren’t compatible.

Yeah I've heard a lot that NS isn't great with manufacturing. We're SaaS and I can see the potential of NetSuite but it's going to take a lot more work and money to get to where we want to be so currently it's a case of balancing that against other priorities. Just having someone with the right attitude and patience to work these things out internally is incredibly valuable as otherwise you're paying ££££ for a third party to do the work.

 

[NotAGolf]

I never have days where I don't do anything but certainly I have some days that are pretty quiet. I'm in a weird sort of role where I don't have a lot of day-to-day responsibilities and not a huge number of tangible deliverables so my day tends to be driven by what meetings I have, what emails/IMs come in plus obviously some longer terms strategic stuff. I've come to realise this is good and bad:

+It frees me up to add a lot of value on specific things, I'm pretty good at reviewing stuff others have come up with and pointing out enhancements, pitfalls and such like in a well-reasoned and constructive manner, making suggestions on how we can do things better etc. I'm not bogged down with a relentless schedule and endless tasks like I have been in other roles that has prevented me from providing my pearls of wisdom. I can't think of the best way to describe this without sounding arrogant but feedback suggests I provide a lot of good insight, my written comms are excellent and people value my opinions on things.
-This makes me feel like a bit of a charlatan at times in the sense I look back and think "what have I actually physically delivered in the past week/month?!?" I've basically helped steer things in the right direction but tangible outputs directly coming from me? Not a lot.
-It puts me in a bit of a malaise at times whereby because I don't have that pressure hanging over me, I take my foot off the gas. There will be days I let drift by perhaps only doing 4hrs proper work, if there's nothing that particularly motivates me. I have this sense of unease that this will catch-up with me eventually because I've allowed too many plates to slow down their spins too much.

edit: I guess to put it into numbers, I had a job in the past where a 50 hour week wasn't even enough to keep my head above water, that would just be dealing with the most pressing stuff in a quick and mediocre fashion. Whereas now 25hrs is probably enough to get things done on a 'normal' week giving another 10hrs to ensure I do things to a good standard, add value / innovate / slack off depending on my mood.

What is your role if you don't mind me asking? I'm a senior QA engineer and all your thoughts ring very true to me, especially the fear about it eventually catching up with me!

My last role was a bigger team and I was more senior than a lot of the other QAs so spent a lot of time hands off and helping others. My new role is a smaller team so I'm more hands on, but I'm not as busy so can sometimes smash through my day's work in a few hours, then feel guilty for the rest of the day!

 

[jon86]

What is your role if you don't mind me asking? I'm a senior QA engineer and all your thoughts ring very true to me, especially the fear about it eventually catching up with me!

My last role was a bigger team and I was more senior than a lot of the other QAs so spent a lot of time hands off and helping others. My new role is a smaller team so I'm more hands on, but I'm not as busy so can sometimes smash through my day's work in a few hours, then feel guilty for the rest of the day!

Why not just pick up more work? I've never had just a "day's work" to do; there's always been more work than time to do it in.

 

[HangTime]

What is your role if you don't mind me asking? I'm a senior QA engineer and all your thoughts ring very true to me, especially the fear about it eventually catching up with me!

My last role was a bigger team and I was more senior than a lot of the other QAs so spent a lot of time hands off and helping others. My new role is a smaller team so I'm more hands on, but I'm not as busy so can sometimes smash through my day's work in a few hours, then feel guilty for the rest of the day!

I'd prefer not to say on a public forum but I guess you could describe it as middle-management in a fairly technical function. If I do a good job of things it makes it easier for technical teams to deliver. If I don't then I could become a bottleneck at some point or otherwise lead us down a suboptimal path. I tend to prioritise my work based on removing blockers for others and generally having a good sense of how important / urgent things are on a holistic level that seems to be less apparent to the 'boots on the ground'. In some ways having someone in my role that isn't massively overloaded is a good thing because it does give me the freedom and autonomy to make sure we do the important things well, I can pivot rapidly based on emergent opportunities and threats.

 

[NotAGolf]

Why not just pick up more work? I've never had just a "day's work" to do; there's always been more work than time to do it in.

Sometimes I do, sometimes I can't (e.g. some kind of blocker), sometimes I do some personal development or pickup some random tech debt that I fancy doing instead, sometimes I just have a break and go for a run or some jobs around the house.

I'm not complaining, I enjoy the flexibility and the work/life balance is great. I just don't bust my balls - I've come to realise life is too short for that.

I pull my weight and get good feedback, so I don't think anyone views me as a slacker, but it's hard to avoid that pang of guilt when I do something that 'I'm not supposed to'.

 

[OspreyO]

Dunno if it's a modern thing. All the above rings bells with me. I'm increasingly stopped by what I call institutional road blocks from being productive. Constantly waiting on approvals or decisions or things to be assigned.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

Employed someone via agency as a water hygiene technician. He seemed nice enough, answered my technical questions well enough. He started last Monday.

Monday this week, no show. 11:30 I get a text - "sorry I had an appointment".

Tuesday no show again, 13:00 a text message "I'll be back in tomorrow".

Today, no show. I text him, call him, no response. Eventually I speak to the his agency and cancel his employment, so the agency obviously calls him to tell him.

Not 5 minutes later I get a call from him. Now he's got a cold. I tell him I've cancelled his employment and this begins an afternoon of text messages basically apologizing and begging and how much he loved working here and yadda yadda.

I've cancelled his pass and informed security, he can come in tomorrow to collect his tools and be off with it.

Shame really as he seemed like a nice enough chap, but I really can't be arsed chasing people who can't be bothered to turn up for work.

The old thing of - if you’re ill just say and be ill… certainly don’t play battleships.

Got this job and the VC interview and I apologised about sounding ill. That afternoon test positive for covid - communicated that and when the agent phoned for good news I was in bed sounding like Barry White.

What I can’t fathom is people not communicating.. even if ill. Hospital I can understand..

Just catching up on this thread, this cracks me up.

I've had a friend doing some landscaping at home - new patio, trellis, and a few other bits. He's extremely reliable and hard-working when he's doing something, but weirdly getting him there in the first place seems a challenge.

Start last Monday. Worked Monday and Tuesday, got everything prepared for the patio to go down. Calls the equipment hire people, they can't collect til Friday. So work stops until Friday. Skip is also full, they give some vague collection date. Wednesday and Thursday, too rainy to work apparently. Friday, I eventually manage to get in touch with him and he does half a day.

Monday comes around. His fiancee had dumped him probably 6 months ago and the Saturday was supposed to be his wedding day, so I can understand him being a bit weird, but I didn't hear from him til about 3 PM. He's got food poisoning and his "phone died." It was ringing, so definitely didn't die. I can't comprehend how you would be ill and not, first thing in the morning, let your "employer" know. Tuesday, same ****. Still ill, very late notice. Wednesday, finally manage to get him to turn up. He lays most of the patio, so a very good day. Thursday, don't think he worked, can't remember why. Friday, another half a day but the skip goes. Started in the afternoon for some reason, found 3 broken slabs so he needs to get some more - easily could have done that in the morning. Comes back Saturday, does another half day almost finishing the patio, but he hasn't got the materials for the trellis and some bricks for somewhere else.

I sort of don't mind all this stuff because he's doing it quite cheap and this only really impacts him - we aren't going to use our garden now. But in two weeks, he's done five days of work at a reduced rate. With a tiny bit more forethought and organisation, he could have done all this stuff in a week (weather permitting). I want to help him out and he sounded very enthusiastic about it, and I started writing a business plan for him, but he didn't even look at it so I just decided I'd not give him any advice or anything. If he comes and asks for advice, then I'll give it.

I just can't comprehend how he runs his business like this. It's nuts. A little communication would have gone a long way.

Anyway, he's coming back on Sunday!

 

[dirtychinchilla]

I never have days where I don't do anything but certainly I have some days that are pretty quiet. I'm in a weird sort of role where I don't have a lot of day-to-day responsibilities and not a huge number of tangible deliverables so my day tends to be driven by what meetings I have, what emails/IMs come in plus obviously some longer terms strategic stuff. I've come to realise this is good and bad:

+It frees me up to add a lot of value on specific things, I'm pretty good at reviewing stuff others have come up with and pointing out enhancements, pitfalls and such like in a well-reasoned and constructive manner, making suggestions on how we can do things better etc. I'm not bogged down with a relentless schedule and endless tasks like I have been in other roles that has prevented me from providing my pearls of wisdom. I can't think of the best way to describe this without sounding arrogant but feedback suggests I provide a lot of good insight, my written comms are excellent and people value my opinions on things.
-This makes me feel like a bit of a charlatan at times in the sense I look back and think "what have I actually physically delivered in the past week/month?!?" I've basically helped steer things in the right direction but tangible outputs directly coming from me? Not a lot.
-It puts me in a bit of a malaise at times whereby because I don't have that pressure hanging over me, I take my foot off the gas. There will be days I let drift by perhaps only doing 4hrs proper work, if there's nothing that particularly motivates me. I have this sense of unease that this will catch-up with me eventually because I've allowed too many plates to slow down their spins too much.

edit: I guess to put it into numbers, I had a job in the past where a 50 hour week wasn't even enough to keep my head above water, that would just be dealing with the most pressing stuff in a quick and mediocre fashion. Whereas now 25hrs is probably enough to get things done on a 'normal' week giving another 10hrs to ensure I do things to a good standard, add value / innovate / slack off depending on my mood.

I often do something similar to this. My days aren't bogged down with endless meetings or whatever and I need to be proactive. I often see myself as an enabler; stuff you do makes other stuff happen at a higher quality. But that's often what people do in management positions. With my bosses, I'll deliver a presentation that they've asked for, say, and they give feedback on how that message can better fit what the company is doing, can be enhanced, call out irrelevant bits etc. What I'm trying to say is that this is a valuable skill and I would never see it as time wasting.

 

[HangTime]

But in two weeks, he's done five days of work at a reduced rate. With a tiny bit more forethought and organisation, he could have done all this stuff in a week (weather permitting). I want to help him out and he sounded very enthusiastic about it, and I started writing a business plan for him, but he didn't even look at it so I just decided I'd not give him any advice or anything. If he comes and asks for advice, then I'll give it.

I just can't comprehend how he runs his business like this. It's nuts. A little communication would have gone a long way.

Sounds a bit like a tradesman my dad insists on using because he's feels the work is done to a good standard at a reasonable price. He is incredibly disorganised, a few examples:

• His cashflow must be all over the place. Sometimes he won't collect payment for work until months after it was completed (yes, a builder that you have to pin down in order to give them money!). This is the weirdest one, who does work but then doesn't get paid for it? I don't think he's smart enough to be trying to minimise tax via manipulating the dates or whatever, it's just bizarre.
• He does a lot of work in the local area so sometimes stores things at my dad's property, he doesn't mind much but it's kind of taking the mick if stuff is kept in his shed for months
• He gives dates of when he will come round and doesn't show up. Then a rescheduled date, doesn't show up.
• Sometimes he'll agree to some work but not actually get round to it until a year or two later.
• Conversely he'll turn up on my dad's doorstep and ask for something at short notice, whether that be payment he wants to collect same day (my dad isn't the type to keep hundreds or thousands in cash under the mattress), wanting to borrow my dad's ladder for a job round the corner, etc

I'm not sure why my dad perseveres with him another than them having a friendly relationship, I'm sure there must be more than one decent builder in the town he could get a recommendation for.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

Sounds a bit like a tradesman my dad insists on using because he's feels the work is done to a good standard at a reasonable price. He is incredibly disorganised, a few examples:

• His cashflow must be all over the place. Sometimes he won't collect payment for work until months after it was completed (yes, a builder that you have to pin down in order to give them money!). This is the weirdest one, who does work but then doesn't get paid for it? I don't think he's smart enough to be trying to minimise tax via manipulating the dates or whatever, it's just bizarre.
• He does a lot of work in the local area so sometimes stores things at my dad's property, he doesn't mind much but it's kind of taking the mick if stuff is kept in his shed for months
• He gives dates of when he will come round and doesn't show up. Then a rescheduled date, doesn't show up.
• Sometimes he'll agree to some work but not actually get round to it until a year or two later.
• Conversely he'll turn up on my dad's doorstep and ask for something at short notice, whether that be payment he wants to collect same day (my dad isn't the type to keep hundreds or thousands in cash under the mattress), wanting to borrow my dad's ladder for a job round the corner, etc

I'm not sure why my dad perseveres with him another than them having a friendly relationship, I'm sure there must be more than one decent builder in the town he could get a recommendation for.

That's great. I suppose all this weird stuff your dad allows enables him to get good prices and get stuff done at short notice or at least he trusts the guy. I know with my friend, I can absolutely trust him. He has a back door key at the moment - 100% trust from me and I've actually had to convince him he can come in and use the toilet or make tea or coffee or even eat our food if he wants. But the only thing he's done inside is plug in an extension lead!

Honestly, I think the absolute trust is worth its weight in gold. I'm happy (ish) to wait for this shambolic stuff knowing everything will be done eventually, cheaply, and to a decent standard.

The payment thing is very strange though. My friend's cashflow is also messed up. He charged us upfront for hire and materials - no problem with that at all. On Saturday he said he'd send us the labour + extra bits invoice on Sunday. He's not sent that, so in effect he hasn't been paid for two weeks. How the hell does that work? Fortunately, he's 26 and lives with his parents, so he's not needing to pay a mortgage or really any bills. But still!

In terms of his business model, he charges the customers his cost prices for everything - doesn't retain any discount he has. He doesn't have any fudge factor, like if he breaks anything it comes out of his salary. He's basically selling himself on being the cheapest, which I don't think is the best way to do things.

 

[Freefaller]

Random question. A friend of mine is looking to join a more media-related role, but they have asked before employment to give them access to all of her social media logins... now I'm not a social media person other than this forum and linkedin but even then I wouldn't want someone to access my LinkedIn. I can help but feel that that would break the TOS from LinkedIn or the various social media companies? Why would a company ask for that?

 

[Freefaller]

Dunno if it's a modern thing. All the above rings bells with me. I'm increasingly stopped by what I call institutional road blocks from being productive. Constantly waiting on approvals or decisions or things to be assigned.

Yes... so much this - so much lack of autonomy and lack of accountability causes so many delays and invariably drives up costs.

 

[ChrisD.]

Random question. A friend of mine is looking to join a more media-related role, but they have asked before employment to give them access to all of her social media logins... now I'm not a social media person other than this forum and linkedin but even then I wouldn't want someone to access my LinkedIn. I can help but feel that that would break the TOS from LinkedIn or the various social media companies? Why would a company ask for that?

Never heard of that before, if that is a thing it would be a massive no from me!

Edit:

Job interviews and being asked for access to your social media accounts

This is something I'm hearing about more and more: being asked for social media account access in a job interview, whether that be directly for the password or for you to log in in front of them. I was asked recently elsewhere if it was illegal for a company to ask this of their staff or candidates.

www.linkedin.com

 

[HangTime]

What's their justification for requiring their login details? Validating her character?

Perhaps she should say "Sure, but first can just send over your corporate banking login details so I can validate that you have the funds to pay my wages please?".

It seems the ICO frowns upon this sort of thing: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/mar/26/employers-warned-facebook-login-details

 

[manic111]

Random question. A friend of mine is looking to join a more media-related role, but they have asked before employment to give them access to all of her social media logins... now I'm not a social media person other than this forum and linkedin but even then I wouldn't want someone to access my LinkedIn. I can help but feel that that would break the TOS from LinkedIn or the various social media companies? Why would a company ask for that?

Surely they must have meant details of their account (account name or URL) so they can check them out? Requesting their login details seems insanely invasive, would (I expect) cause a number of privacy issues (for example, what about messages from people who have written to your friend expecting their correspondence to be confidential?), and in the round would be a huge red flag.

I imagine that your friend may have misunderstood the request, or that the company phrased it badly, but if the company really wants their login details I'd be telling them to do one, regardless of the job.

 

[HangTime]

It's actually a thing, companies asking for usernames an passwords. I wouldn't want to work at such a place.
If its just the public facing account name, then I'd have less of an issue with it, as you should assume some employers might research this anyway.

 

[Freefaller]

Surely they must have meant details of their account (account name or URL) so they can check them out? Requesting their login details seems insanely invasive, would (I expect) cause a number of privacy issues (for example, what about messages from people who have written to your friend expecting their correspondence to be confidential?), and in the round would be a huge red flag.

I imagine that your friend may have misunderstood the request, or that the company phrased it badly, but if the company really wants their login details I'd be telling them to do one, regardless of the job.

That's what I thought, but I checked, she's shared the email from the hiring manager, it clearly states they want access to it! Her profiles are locked down other than LinkedIn....

The justification from what I gather is to get a feel for the person's behaviours outside work - but to me that's none of their business... if you're going to a conference, you're "at work" so why do you need to know if that person likes to post funny cat videos?

I've told her to reject the job as personally that feels like an invasion of privacy.

 

[Maccy]

Username and passwords to social media accounts? Hell no, and I'd be posting about that on Glassdoor and naming and shaming on LinkedIn.

 

[HangTime]

Depending on the nature of the media business they might argue that her behaviour could reflect badly on their organisation, e.g. when TV personalities post stuff online that's deemed offensive that's frowned upon.
However, having actual logins to the various systems goes beyond that as e.g. you would get access to private messages that could include all manner of private information that the individual could reasonably have assumed would remain private. This could include sensitive information about children, medical issues, sexuality, financial discussions, political/religious beliefs etc etc some of which are classified as highly sensitive under GDPR and have no relevance on an individuals competency to do a given job.