The five most common post-implementation mistakes
Most NetSuite problems that surface 18 months after go-live were created at go-live. Here are the five mistakes we see most often.
Post-implementation problems rarely come from nowhere. They're almost always the delayed consequence of a decision made at go-live — a configuration choice, a customisation shortcut, a process compromise. The problems surface 12 to 18 months later, when transaction volume has grown and the compromises have compounded.
The first mistake is over-scripting. Implementations under time pressure default to scripts because scripts are flexible and fast to write. The resulting account has 40 deployed scripts, no documentation, and no one who understands what all of them do. Three years later, a script that was written for a process that no longer exists is still running on every transaction — consuming performance and creating mystery errors.
The second is under-documenting roles. Roles built during implementation get modified incrementally for the next three years. Nobody documents the changes. The current role matrix reflects three years of permission drift rather than a deliberate design. SOD conflicts accumulate silently.
The third is not completing training. Implementation training is almost always compressed — a few hours for a team that will use the system for years. The result is a team that knows how to complete the specific tasks they were shown, not how the system works. When a new requirement appears, they don't know whether NetSuite can handle it natively, so they build a workaround or ask for a script.
The fourth is skipping the pilot period. Systems that go live without a parallel-run or pilot period have no baseline for comparison. When the system produces unexpected results — a miscoded transaction, an approval that routes incorrectly — there's no reference point to confirm what correct looks like.
The fifth, and most consequential, is not having a post-go-live review. The health of a NetSuite account 90 days after go-live tells you almost everything you need to know about what needs fixing. Most implementations have no formal 90-day review. The first structured review happens during an external audit two years later.