The 3 Most Common ERP Performance Failures (And How to Fix Them)
ERP performance problems drain revenue and slow teams down. Here are the three most common causes, along with a practical path to restoring speed, accuracy, and confidence.
ERP problems don’t always scream. Sometimes… they whisper
ERP issues don’t usually show up with alarms or flashing alerts. Instead, they slip in quietly. Maybe a report is late, a team slows down, or someone creates a spreadsheet workaround that eventually becomes the norm. It seems minor at first, but it can turn into a big problem.
Over time, these small inefficiencies add up. You lose time, waste money, and execution slows down. For companies with $10M to $100M in revenue, facing these ERP problems is almost expected.
The good news is that most ERP breakdowns fit into just a few categories. Once you identify them, you can fix them, and the return on investment can be significant.
Let’s look at what usually goes wrong, what it costs, and how you can fix it for good.
1. The integration headaches that drain revenue
High-growth brands usually rely on a network of systems. Shopify or Amazon drives demand. NetSuite handles accounting and inventory. A 3PL ships the product. And a tool like Celigo ties it all together.
At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.
When one of those connections breaks, chaos follows. Orders get stuck. Inventory data becomes unreliable. Your team shifts from scaling to firefighting. And while the stress is visible, the real cost often isn’t.
Take one retailer we worked with. They were losing 2% of annual revenue—$400,000 on a $20M business—because Amazon and Shopify orders weren’t syncing with NetSuite. Their team just called it “system issues,” but it was really a revenue leak.
Contrast that with Softies, a DTC brand that cleaned up its order flows. By stabilizing their integrations and cutting 10 manual order-entry roles, they unlocked $2.3M in new revenue and saved over $500K annually.
When integrations break, the ripple effects hit every team:
Finance gets unreliable numbers
Ops loses trust in inventory data
Customer support gets buried in tickets
Leadership starts making decisions in the dark
Fixing this starts with visibility. You need to run a real diagnostic: map out your data flows, find where things are breaking, and link those issues to business outcomes. Then, rebuild your system based on how your business actually works today, not how it was first set up.
With a scalable integration strategy, you can protect revenue, save time, and grow without adding more staff.
2. Reporting that’s slow, outdated, or flat-out wrong
Let’s be honest: reporting problems aren’t just a finance issue. They affect every team and every major business decision. When ERP reports are late, messy, or inconsistent, the whole company feels the impact.
We’ve worked with businesses where the month-end close took more than 10 days. That kind of delay isn’t just frustrating. It’s expensive. In one case, we helped a client reduce it to 4 days, saving more than $57,000 in annual productivity costs.
Why does this happen so often? Usually, the root causes are pretty clear:
Messy or inconsistent data coming from upstream systems
NetSuite modules that aren’t configured correctly
Bloated transaction volumes that overwhelm the system
When leaders stop trusting the data, they start to hesitate. Inventory purchases get delayed, forecasts become less accurate, and strategic plans turn reactive. In short, everything slows down.
The solution isn’t to work harder; it’s to clean up your data environment. This means tightening data flows, reviewing accounting structures, and automating routine tasks such as reconciliations and report preparation.
SMYTHE is a great example. They were spending hours manually reconciling Shopify data. We automated that flow and saved them more than $10,000 annually. But more importantly, their team started trusting their data again… and that trust translated into better, faster decisions.
3. Manual workarounds are costing you more than you think
When ERP systems can’t keep up, people fill in the gaps. Someone builds a spreadsheet, another person manually fixes a field, and everyone insists it’s just temporary.
But six months later, it’s the new normal.
Manual workarounds kill profitability quietly. Here’s how:
Time gets wasted on tasks that should be automated
Orders move more slowly, delaying revenue and cash collection
Labor costs rise for low-value work
Human error increases and impacts customers and partners
In many product companies, up to 15% of orders need human intervention. If you process 20,000 orders a year, that’s more than $62,000 wasted on time alone.
It gets worse when teams start to see the system as fragile. They stop trying to improve it, and minor optimizations feel risky, so manual work continues.
That’s why automation needs to be intentional. Begin by mapping your end-to-end processes. Find the repeated manual steps that take a lot of time and don’t add strategic value. Once done, rebuild those flows in NetSuite and your integration tools so they run automatically.
Don’t just assume things are better. Instead, track the impact with real numbers… error rates, time saved, and revenue gained. Automation builds efficiency and confidence at the same time.
Why these ERP problems keep happening
If it feels like you’re constantly battling the same ERP headaches, you’re not alone. These issues aren’t unique to your company. We’ve seen them across dozens of industries… from eCommerce and retail to wholesale and manufacturing.
Most ERP challenges come down to the same root causes:
The system was built for where your business was, not where it is now
Your internal ERP owner left or is stretched too thin
Integrations were duct-taped instead of being properly designed
Reporting was built around short-term needs, not long-term architecture
Your vendors focused on tasks instead of business outcomes
The result is a system that works most of the time, until it suddenly doesn’t.
That’s why we believe in a structured, repeatable approach. We've seen it work with all of our clients, and it leads to faster results, fewer surprises, and clearer ROI.
How to fix your ERP without blowing it up
The best part? You don’t need to rebuild everything from scratch. In most cases, the foundation is solid so you just need to realign it to today’s business.
Here’s the four-step approach we use with nearly every client:
1. Run a quantified diagnostic
Start with the facts. Our clients on AlturaCare start with a comprehensive system HealthCheck that shows where things are failing, how much it's costing, and where the biggest returns are. It also helps get leadership aligned around fixing it.
2. Align systems with how you operate today
Your ERP should match how your business actually runs today, not how it was first set up. That means aligning it with your current financial setup, inventory flow, sales channels, and how your teams really work.
3. Rebuild automation around scale
Eliminate as much busywork as you can. Focus on automating tasks… like forecasting, reconciliation, and order fulfillment. The goal is to keep operations running smoothly even as your business scales—preferably without adding more people.
4. Build in continuous improvement
Your ERP isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it system. The best-run companies treat it like a living asset that evolves with the business. That’s why they rely on embedded partners rather than one-and-done consultants.
What happens when you get ERP right
When your ERP starts supporting the way your team actually works, everything gets easier. Month-end gets wrapped up faster. Orders move with fewer errors. Revenue climbs without hiring more people. Costs drop. Teams spend less time putting out fires and more time moving the business forward. And leadership gets the visibility they need to make smart decisions.
That’s when your ERP stops holding you back… and starts helping you grow.
What could that look like for your business? Take a look at our NetSuite Optimization Services. And if you need data to help make the case internally, Gartner’s ERP benchmarks are a great place to start.
Growth shouldn't come with operational chaos. Let’s fix what’s slowing you down so you can scale faster, smarter, and with more confidence.
See what your ERP can really do. Book a call with us today and start uncovering the ROI you have been missing. Ready to run faster and scale smarter? Talk with our team about AlturaCare and get a plan built around your business.
The 3 most common ERP performance failures
ERP systems don’t usually fail overnight—they slow down, pile up errors, and quietly drain productivity. This post breaks down the three patterns Altura Innovation sees most often in underperforming NetSuite environments and how the right optimization strategy restores speed, accuracy, and control.
These are the top 3 performance failures NetSuite customers make and what you can do about them.
Tailoring the robust NetSuite ERP to fit your specific requirements promises enhanced efficiency and a competitive edge by automating manual steps incorporation validations, and integrating your business systems like Shopify, Salesforce, BigCommerce with Celigo. To ensure your NetSuite environment thrives, do these 3 things.
1. Beware of Poorly Written Scripting and Customizations
The power of NetSuite lies in its flexibility, including the tremendously powerful use of scripts, such as programmatically updating a Sales Order Record while it's saving with value added information. However, this flexibility can be a double-edged sword. It's common for so many use cases to be added, that the scripts become bloated and sap the performance from your system. Loading many scripts/workflow is less efficient than using one per request type. Combine them and eliminate anything that doesn't add value. Requests that don't need to be synchronous on order save should be moved to MapReduce scripts.
2. Avoid Poor Integration Design and Performance
Integrating NetSuite with other systems is a common practice for expanding its capabilities and ensuring seamless data flow across your business ecosystem. Integrations that are not thoughtfully designed, considering data volume, sync frequency, and error handling, can lead to poor performance, and reliability issues. Use event based integrations where there is a performance need, and state based where near real time will do. Consider using an iPaaS software like my favorite Celigo to make it much easier to get a performant solution that checks all of the boxes.
3. Do Not Underestimate the Importance of Proper Data Management
An often overlooked aspect of NetSuite customization is the strategic management of data within the system. Having a thousand custom fields in the system with drop down lists that have an insane number of choices will sink your performance. Inadequate data management practices, such as creation of unnecessary records, failing to archive old data or not maintaining data integrity across records, can significantly slow down your NetSuite environment. Efficient data management ensures that your system can quickly access and process the information it needs, without being bogged down by irrelevant or outdated data. Thoughtful design of the data structure, regular data audits, and the use of data archiving or purging mechanisms are essential steps in maintaining a high-performing NetSuite system.
If you are already experiencing system performance or Integration pain in your NetSuite environment, you can improve it with tips like what I shared above or grab time with me to review your tech stack.
Together, we can review your system, identify potential improvements, and unlock the full potential of your NetSuite investment.
Top 5 benefits of integrating ecommerce & NetSuite
When eCommerce and NetSuite operate in sync, operations scale smoothly instead of straining under order volume. This post explains how integration improves accuracy, speed, and visibility across fulfillment, inventory, and finance—giving mid-market brands the efficiency edge they need to grow.
These are the top 5 ways integrating your BigCommerce or Shopify, ecommerce Store to NetSuite will transform your Operations and Accounting.
Orders placed on your website will be automatically imported into NetSuite. Products that are dropped shipped from vendors will have the Purchase Orders automatically created and sent to the preferred vendor. As a sweetener you can use the Shippers API and your ID to pull your order shipment information from your vendor and update the order fulfillment and shipping information.
Your fulfillment and shipping information including Advanced Shipping Notice will export from NetSuite into your Ecommerce Platform to keep your customer support team and customer informed on the shipping updates.
All of your Product Detail updates can be syndicated to your site. No more updating all of the sites individually.
Payout Reconciliation streamlines the reconciliation process by auto-matching the payment gateway settlement transactions against the NetSuite outstanding transactions (such as payment, cash sale, cash refund, customer deposit, or customer refund). It also provides you details about the unreconciled items, transactional, and non-transactional fees charged by the payment gateway.
All of your inventory levels for products will stay synchronized between your distribution centers and 3PLs. This eliminates stockout situations, speeds re-orders, and maximizes customer success.
Celigo's Integration Applications for Ecommerce makes doing all of this easy. You can get on our schedule to get this configured and then cross this off the list before Summer and you'll be the envy of all of your friends in the National Retail Federation this holiday season.