Like a vehicle, the aftermarket automotive parts industry has many moving pieces. All parts must be locked together and work together to move in the right direction.
Holding inventory is expensive and on-time shipments need to be — well, on time. But it doesn’t end there. Automotive parts businesses must take control over processes such as sourcing materials, shipping and receiving, core charges and returns, marketing, sales, and much more.
Having one or two of these functions out of alignment can severely impact a business. NetSuite ERP is the definitive all-in-one solution to grow your automotive business through:
- All-in-one cloud-based data integration
- A multi-channel buying experience for your customers
- Real-time inventory visibility
- Streamlined order management
- Facilitating core charge process & returns
- Personalized customer engagement
- Enhanced sales and marketing efforts
Let’s take a look at how each benefit can contribute to the growth of your automotive company.
NetSuite ERP: All-in-One Cloud-Based Data Integration
NetSuite ERP provides a unified platform that integrates multiple aspects of automotive businesses, including sales, finance, inventory, customer relationship management (CRM), and more.
By consolidating data from different departments into a single system, automotive businesses can gain better visibility and control over their operations. This centralized data management enables efficient decision-making, improves team collaboration, and eliminates data silos — working together to stimulate your automotive company’s growth.
Omnichannel Buying Experience for Your Customers
NetSuite ERP connects all sales channels through an integrated platform— ecommerce, physical stores, or direct sales. Break into new pockets of customers and markets of the world by seamlessly integrating your products with resale partners and global marketplaces like Amazon and eBay.
This allows businesses to provide a seamless shopping experience to their customers regardless of how and where they choose to shop.
Orders from all sales channels are integrated, allowing for efficient order processing and giving your customers the flexibility to, for example, buy a product online and pick it up in-store.
RF-SMART: Real-time Inventory Visibility and Warehouse Management for Your Automotive Parts
By leveraging NetSuite with RF-SMART, automotive parts manufacturers can optimize inventory management, enhance warehouse operations, and achieve higher levels of accuracy and efficiency.
The combination of real-time visibility, mobile scanning, advanced barcode capabilities, and seamless integration helps streamline processes, reduce errors, and improve overall inventory control, ultimately driving operational excellence and customer satisfaction.
Real-time Inventory Visibility
NetSuite ERP integrated with RF-SMART provides real-time visibility into inventory levels, locations, and transactions. RF-SMART’s mobile scanning devices enable warehouse personnel to update inventory data instantaneously, ensuring accurate and up-to-date information in NetSuite to avoid stockouts or overstocking and improve overall inventory control.
Warehouse Efficiency
RF-SMART streamlines warehouse operations by providing mobile scanning capabilities for tasks like receiving, put-away, picking, packing, and shipping. Warehouse employees can use handheld devices to scan barcodes, automatically updating inventory data in NetSuite ERP. This eliminates manual data entry errors, reduces paperwork, and enhances warehouse efficiency.
Advanced Barcode Scanning
Take advantage of advanced barcode scanning capabilities, such as scanning multiple items simultaneously or in bulk. This accelerates the scanning process, reduces labor time, and increases productivity in the warehouse.
Cycle Counting and Physical Inventory
Simplify cycle counting and physical inventory processes. Warehouse personnel can perform cycle counts by scanning items and locations, with the data seamlessly updating NetSuite in real time. The system also supports periodic or ad-hoc physical inventory counts, streamlining the reconciliation process. This improves inventory accuracy, reduces discrepancies, and minimizes disruption to warehouse operations.
Bin and Location Management
Enhance bin and location management within NetSuite. Using RF-SMART’s mobile scanning capabilities, warehouse staff can easily identify, label, and organize bins or locations. This streamlines put-away, picking, and replenishment processes, reducing errors and optimizing space utilization in the warehouse. Accurate bin and location management results in efficient inventory tracking and improved order fulfillment.
Order Allocation and Fulfillment
The integration of RF-SMART with NetSuite enables intelligent order allocation and fulfillment processes. The system can automatically direct warehouse staff to the optimal locations for picking items based on proximity, availability, and order priorities. RF-SMART’s mobile devices guide pickers to the correct locations, ensuring accurate item selection and efficient order fulfillment.
Real-time Data Validation
RF-SMART performs real-time data validation at the point of scanning, reducing errors and ensuring data accuracy in NetSuite ERP. The system validates item numbers, quantities, and locations, preventing incorrect data from entering the system. This helps maintain the integrity of inventory data, minimizes mistakes, and increases operational efficiency.
Enhanced Traceability
Track and trace inventory throughout the supply chain. This is particularly important for automotive part manufacturers dealing with serialized or batched items. The integration allows businesses to capture and record crucial information, such as lot numbers, serial numbers, or expiration dates, ensuring compliance, facilitating recalls if necessary, and maintaining full product traceability.
Streamlined Order & Shipping Management
By leveraging NetSuite’s comprehensive order management capabilities, automotive parts manufacturers can streamline their order processing, improve inventory allocation, secure on-time shipping, enhance customer communication, and gain insights into order performance.
Streamlined Order Processing
NetSuite automates order processing workflows by setting up predefined rules for order validation, credit checks, pricing, and discounting. This automation reduces manual effort, minimizes errors, and ensures that orders are processed accurately and on time.
Ecommerce Integration
NetSuite ERP integrates seamlessly with its SuiteCommerce software, allowing automotive parts manufacturers to synchronize online orders with their back-end system, no matter what channel you’re selling through (e.g., direct sales, ecommerce website, resale partners, etc.)
This integration ensures that orders placed through the ecommerce platform are automatically captured in NetSuite, eliminating the need for manual data entry.
Order Tracking and Communication
Once an order is processed, manufacturers can update the order status, provide shipping updates, and share tracking information directly from the system. This transparency improves customer service, enhances the overall customer experience, and reduces customer inquiries regarding order status.
Pricing and Discount Management
NetSuite ERP supports complex pricing structures, including customer-specific pricing, volume-based discounts, and promotional pricing. Businesses can automatically set pricing rules, apply discounts, and ensure accurate pricing calculations during order processing.
Customer Self-Service
NetSuite’s customer self-service portal empowers customers to manage their orders independently. The portal allows customers to place new orders, view order history, track shipments, and access invoices — reducing the burden on customer service teams while enhancing customer satisfaction.
Analytics and Reporting
NetSuite ERP offers robust reporting and analytics capabilities to gain insights into order performance and trends. Businesses can generate reports on key metrics, such as order volume, revenue, order cycle time, and customer buying patterns. These insights help manufacturers identify opportunities for process improvement, optimize order fulfillment, and make data-driven decisions.
Integration with Shipping Carriers
NetSuite integrates with carriers such as UPS, FedEx, and USPS out-of-the-box. The system can automatically calculate shipping costs, generate shipping labels, and provide real-time shipping rates. This integration simplifies shipping operations, reduces manual effort, and improves order fulfillment efficiency.
Core Charge Process & Returns
Managing core charges and returns is critical to the automotive parts industry. NetSuite ERP, powered by Paper Street’s Core Charge tool, helps businesses streamline returns and manage Return material authorization (RMA) liabilities more effectively. The Core Charge tool also helps you manage interchangeable parts without leaving NetSuite.
You can now plan for refunds the business is liable for any given time frame — allowing you to plan your inventory properly. By automating the tracking and managing of core returns and RMA liabilities, businesses can reduce manual labor, minimize errors, and ensure that core returns and RMA liabilities are tracked and managed accurately by accounting.
This saves time, money, and resources and contributes to a more efficient and customer-centric business model.
Boosting Customer Experience and Loyalty with NetSuite
Moving from operations to sales and marketing, NetSuite ERP offers powerful CRM tools and marketing features that enable businesses to boost customer engagement and foster long-lasting relationships, ultimately driving growth and profitability.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
NetSuite’s CRM module allows automotive parts manufacturers to centralize customer data, interactions, and preferences. This comprehensive view lets businesses personalize customer engagement by understanding their needs, preferences, and purchase history.
Sales and customer service teams can access this information to provide personalized recommendations, tailored offers, and efficient customer support.
Marketing Automation
NetSuite allows businesses to segment their customer base based on demographics, purchasing behavior, and other criteria. By leveraging these segments, manufacturers can send automated and targeted emails, personalized promotions, and relevant content to specific customer groups, enhancing engagement and driving conversions.
Next Step: Rev Up Your Automotive Business with NetSuite ERP
If you’re ready to harness NetSuite ERP’s powerful and comprehensive solution for your automotive businesses, let’s get a customized demo on the books.
We’re a certified NetSuite Solutions Provider specializing in the automotive industry, meaning we’re officially recognized to select, implement, and support your specific business with NetSuite’s solutions. Our white-glove approach to implementing NetSuite ERP is focused on your goals and empowering your entire team with the tools it takes to get the most out of your NetSuite investment.
