Getting high quality NetSuite training is difficult to find because of how fast the software is changing. There are constant updates to keep up with which means the online courses NetSuite provides are almost always out of date. Plus they have a high price tag! This article discuss's both online NetSuite training and in person NetSuite training options.
What is the cost of the NetSuite courses?
NetSuite defines the cost of their courses by their estimate on how many days they think it takes to go through the material. They break it down quite a bit so it is really focused content with not a lot of extra insights. The cost for a 1 day online course is $800 by NetSuite. Most courses are multi-day which means the cost reaches into the thousands of dollars.
What are some NetSuite Training options other than using NetSuite (3rd Party)?
There are a small amount of training options made by 3rd parties but there are limited and most of them are taught by an instructor with English as their second language. Youtube also has limited video tutorial content for specific tasks. They basically just have navigation videos for a tutorial. Other than that, NetSuite flags 3rd party content for YouTube to remove so I wouldn't expect for that video content to improve.
Anchor Group provides online courses for large topics ranging from $100-$800 and course content ranging from 1 - 4 weeks duration. They are packed with a lot of lessons, tutorials, and real NetSuite examples. Most of the time, all these courses are offered for Free to Anchor Group clients, but the cost is really cheap for outsiders too (i.e. people looking to become a developer/consultant). To get a taste of the quality of the courses, you can check out the free NetSuite training for beginners.
What is the cost of in person NetSuite training?
You can expect to be paying an hourly rate for in person training plus travel expenses. Obviously, you can reduce the cost of in person training by finding someone nearby but that isn't always an option. Let's assume some numbers to help get an estimate on the training cost for NetSuite.
Hourly Rate: $130 - $250 per hour
Plane: $700 round trip (4 hour trip each way)
Hotel: $150 per night
Most companies will also change for the travel time in the plane, but this can sometimes get waved or reduced depending on the duration you will have someone onsite.
Let's assume that you are able to at least reduce the hourly rate in half for travel time.
Travel Time: $65 - $125 per hour
Now let's do some math for the cost of 1 week of training onsite.
Training Hourly Cost: $5200 - $10,000
Plane: $700
Hotel: $750
Travel Time: $520 - $1000
Total: $7,170 - $12,450
Obviously this is a higher cost than most of the courses but at least you can ask a lot of questions to the on site consultant to help figure out business specific questions. There are a lot of advantages to onsite training but you should expect to pay this amount to get a Senior NetSuite Consultant onsite to train. Once you start paying less, you will likely not be getting a Senior NetSuite Consultant for the training.
You can also consider using in-person training remotely. This is more like jumping on a web conference and screen sharing the training. You would likely be able to drop the cost considerably.
If you went this route, you would be paying only the hourly cost which would bring a 40 hour training session to $5200 - $10,000. I would argue that you don't need 40 hours back to back and that you can organize training for each person's role individually.
The Perfect NetSuite Training Solution:
I have found that for small to mid-sized companies, it is best to use a combination of NetSuite training resource options. You can purchase an online course to expose the employee to the problem solving techniques, then you can bring in a consultant in person remotely or onsite to give business specific training. Once your employees have been exposed to the system and how NetSuite generally works, they won't spend all the training time asking basic questions. This approach will optimize their training time to give your employees the most benefit while reducing the training cost.
Published May 11, 2020
Hopefully, this post gives you something to work with while trying to understand NetSuite and what it can do for your business. If you have any questions and want some free consulting advice, feel free to contact our team at Anchor Group.
