The Real ROI of NetSuite Managed Services
How managed services turn NetSuite from a cost center into a growth engine
For most mid-market companies, NetSuite is both indispensable and underperforming. It’s the system that runs your finances, inventory, and reporting, yet it's too often a bottleneck rather than a growth enabler.
Many leadership teams accept inefficiency as the cost of doing business. But when your ERP is delivering incomplete data, manual rework, and daily exceptions, the real cost isn’t the software. It’s the missed opportunity.
That’s where managed NetSuite services change the game. By shifting from reactive fixes to proactive optimization, managed services transform NetSuite into a measurable driver of ROI. With AlturaCare, the focus isn’t just on keeping your system running… we make sure it’s driving performance, efficiency, and profitability across your organization.
The hidden cost of “good enough”
Most internal teams do their best to keep NetSuite stable. The problem is that "stable" doesn't equal "optimized." When your ERP is just functioning rather than performing, hidden costs can erode as much as 5% of your margins over the course of a year. These stealth costs compound quietly, often going unnoticed until they significantly impact the bottom line.
A single full-time NetSuite administrator can cost more than $120,000 per year including benefits. If that person leaves or splits time across multiple systems, expertise gaps emerge that slow everything from reconciliations to reporting. Meanwhile, teams fill the gaps with spreadsheets and manual workarounds. In fact, research shows major ERP-ROI erosion occurs in process inefficiencies rather than licensing alone.
Consider a typical scenario for a $50M retail or wholesale company:
Month-end close: Currently 10 days instead of 4, costing roughly $57,000 per year in lost productivity.
Manual order handling: 15% of orders require human intervention, wasting $62,500 annually in labor.
Integration issues: Routine integration failures causing a 2% revenue loss on $20M in annual sales—$400,000 in missed revenue.
These are not theoretical numbers. They’re pulled from real mid-market companies using NetSuite every day. Once you add turnover, inconsistent data, and rework costs, “good enough” quickly turns into a six-figure drain.
What managed services really mean
Managed services are often misunderstood as glorified support contracts. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
Traditional support is reactive—it fixes what breaks. Managed services, especially through AlturaCare, are proactive. They continuously analyze performance, implement automation, streamline integrations, and identify strategic improvements that pay measurable dividends.
Think of it like this:
Support fixes errors.
AlturaCare prevents them… and builds efficiency while doing it.
This model aligns directly with business performance, not just system uptime. Every hour saved in finance, every workflow automated, and every integration stabilized is tracked, measured, and converted into ROI you can show to your board.
The measurable impact of optimization
It’s one thing to claim efficiency. It’s another to quantify it.
Softies, a fast-growing eCommerce apparel brand, partnered with Altura to overhaul its NetSuite environment. Within months, automated workflows replaced manual order entry, unlocking millions in new annual revenue and eliminating labor costs in the mid-six figures.
Smythe, a wholesale distributor, reduced Celigo errors by 50% and automated their available-to-ship reporting. The result? A faster sales cycle, fewer customer delays, and hundreds of hours recaptured for their team every quarter.
These results are consistent across industries because AlturaCare uses proven playbooks, refined through years of solving the same operational challenges for similar-sized companies. Whether your business sells apparel, manages multiple warehouses, or assembles custom products, the outcome is the same: stronger visibility, faster processes, and better margins.
Turning data accuracy into profit
For CFOs, ROI isn’t about soft metrics—it’s about the P&L. Every data error or manual process has a quantifiable cost.
When NetSuite data isn’t synchronized with your eCommerce or 3PL systems, you lose more than time. You lose customer trust, revenue accuracy, and decision-making agility.
A finance team spending an extra two days reconciling orders because of data mismatches isn’t just wasting labor hours. It’s delaying insight that could drive pricing strategy, purchasing decisions, or cash flow management.
AlturaCare focuses on eliminating those delays because companies that base decisions on real-time data outperform peers in profitability and productivity. Automated reconciliation, real-time integration health checks, and custom dashboards ensure that every stakeholder—from accounting to operations—has reliable, up-to-date data.
That data integrity directly drives ROI because it allows leadership to act faster, with confidence.
Why in-house teams can’t match managed ROI
Even with a skilled NetSuite admin or a small internal team, it’s nearly impossible to replicate the breadth of expertise managed services bring.
AlturaCare clients benefit from:
Access to specialized NetSuite, Celigo, and reporting experts across accounting, operations, and integration domains
Established best practices proven to reduce manual work and error rates
Ongoing system health checks and KPI reporting
Continuous improvement initiatives designed to scale with growth
For most companies, hiring even half that level of expertise internally would require multiple full-time salaries, not to mention the ongoing costs of training and retention. Managed services deliver that same (or greater) impact at a fraction of the total cost.
And this isn’t just a niche trend. The global managed services market is projected to more than double by 2030. That surge reflects how companies across industries are increasingly relying on managed partners to close capability gaps, streamline operations, and drive measurable ROI.
Calculating your own NetSuite ROI
Here’s a simple way to quantify the impact of inefficiency. Multiply the hours spent on manual, error-prone work by your team’s average hourly rate.
| Operational Issue | Estimated Annual Cost | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Manual order entry (5 min × 20k orders × $25/hr) | $62,500 | ||
| Integration errors (2% revenue loss on $20M) | $400,000 | ||
| Extended close time (4 days × 3 staff × $50/hr × 8 hrs) | $57,600 | ||
| Data corrections and rework | $45,000 | ||
| Total Annual Impact: | $565,100 |
If your company faces even half of those issues, your NetSuite ROI is being cut in half. AlturaCare helps reverse that loss by eliminating redundancy, tightening integration performance, and keeping your system optimized year-round.
You don’t need another consultant. You need results you can measure.
Managed services and scalability
ROI doesn’t stop at efficiency. Managed services enable scalability without proportional cost increases.
When your systems are stable, automated, and working together, growth doesn’t put pressure on your operations. Adding sales channels, product lines, or new warehouses becomes a strategic choice rather than a risk.
One AlturaCare client expanded into two new retail channels without hiring a single additional NetSuite admin. Their existing workflows simply scaled because automation was built to handle it.
That’s what a scalable ERP investment gives you: confidence in your operations that supports growth instead of holding it back.
Partnership over project work
Another key ROI driver is partnership continuity.
AlturaCare isn’t project based or a bucket of hours. It makes us an extension of your team. That means your business goals, seasonal demands, and integration priorities are included in our plans. The result is fewer surprises, faster decision-making, and a consistent push toward measurable performance.
Clients often say, “We wish we’d chosen Altura from the start.” The reason is simple: the right partner delivers results that keep adding up over time, not just completed projects.
Read next: 5 reasons mid-market companies outsource NetSuite management
The bottom line
When you view NetSuite ROI solely as a cost question, you miss the full picture. Managed services like AlturaCare turn your ERP into a profit driver by bringing together technical expertise, operational insight, and measurable business outcomes.
ROI isn’t just about doing the same work for less money. It’s about cutting out wasted effort, using smart automation, and growing faster than your competitors.
Your NetSuite investment can already deliver this level of performance. It just needs a partner who knows how to make it happen.
Talk to us about your NetSuite ROI.
Want to see where your ROI is hiding? Try our quick NetSuite Optimization Self-Audit to identify performance gaps in 30 minutes or less.
