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.
5 ways eCommerce integration with NetSuite drives real efficiency
Manual updates, slow fulfillment, and disconnected data are growth killers. Learn how eCommerce integration with NetSuite eliminates daily bottlenecks, gives your team full visibility, and creates the stability you need to scale fast. Real results, not theory — see how brands like Smythe built efficiency that lasts.
Efficiency grows when every system moves together
If your team spends more time fixing sync errors than fulfilling orders, you’re not alone. Most growing eCommerce businesses hit the same point — sales channels keep expanding, but backend systems can’t keep up. What used to work with one storefront and a small operations team starts to break once the data volume spikes.
That’s when integration becomes the difference between growth and gridlock. Connecting your eCommerce platform with NetSuite doesn’t just automate data flow. It gives you a cleaner, more reliable foundation for everything that happens after a customer clicks “Buy.”
Here’s how smart integration drives measurable efficiency across your entire operation.
1. Real-time data sync eliminates manual rework
For most teams, reconciliation isn’t a monthly task — it’s a daily grind. Orders get stuck in queue, inventory counts don’t match, and finance ends up chasing down missing records.
When systems talk to each other in real time, that cycle stops. Each order, refund, and shipment updates instantly, so finance, fulfillment, and customer service are all working from the same source of truth.
According to Gartner, companies that automate operational data flow can cut manual rework by up to 70%. For your team, that means fewer spreadsheets, faster closes, and no more “where did that order go?” moments.
2. Faster order fulfillment, because the handoffs finally work
Most fulfillment slowdowns start long before the warehouse. They happen when orders fail to post correctly from your eCommerce store to NetSuite — maybe a new promotion created a mapping mismatch or a SKU field didn’t sync.
With a well-built integration, those bottlenecks disappear. Orders flow straight through to fulfillment, inventory adjusts automatically, and your team can spot and fix any exceptions within minutes instead of days.
That’s how you stay ahead during high-volume periods: by keeping the flow stable, not by adding more hands to the problem.
3. Clear visibility from checkout to close
Disconnected systems make it nearly impossible to trust your numbers. Operations sees one version of inventory, finance sees another, and by the time data is clean, it’s already outdated.
Integrated eCommerce and NetSuite environments change that. You can see true order status, cash flow impact, and shipping performance in one place — no more hunting across systems to answer a basic question.
Our Celigo integration services help companies connect their sales channels, ERP, and fulfillment tools into a single, transparent flow. The result is confidence in every report and faster decision-making across teams.
4. Stability when it matters most
Peak season is when weak integrations show their cracks. File queues slow down, connections time out, and teams scramble to push orders through manually just to keep up.
A stable integration eliminates that chaos. When transactions sync automatically and errors are caught before they snowball, operations stay calm even during a flash sale.
It’s exactly what Smythe achieved when they streamlined their tech stack. By automating key data flows between Shopify, NetSuite, and their warehouse system, SMYTHE reduced recurring integration errors by 50% and cleared hours of manual reconciliation per week. Read how SMYTHE tailored its tech stack.
5. Scalable growth without adding headcount
Every company wants to grow. Few want to double their operations team just to handle the volume. A strong integration strategy lets you scale orders, channels, and fulfillment without adding layers of manual work.
We’ve seen clients add new marketplaces or 3PL partners in days instead of weeks — all while keeping their NetSuite environment clean and stable. That’s the real ROI: growth capacity without overhead.
See what’s possible when your systems actually work together
If your current setup feels like it’s holding you back, start by fixing the flow between systems. The impact is immediate — fewer manual fixes, faster fulfillment, and better visibility across every part of your business.
Explore our Celigo integration services to see how we help eCommerce teams stabilize their NetSuite environments and scale with confidence. Then see what’s possible when your systems are truly seamless.
Because when data moves right, so does your business.