I’ve been testing NetSuite Next in one of our client’s accounts since early August. The new interface and more interactive screens caught my attention right away. After years of working in NetSuite, it is exciting and sometimes a little uncomfortable to see familiar ways of working change.
What interests me most is how this could change our daily work. Can users find information more easily? Can finance teams spend less time gathering numbers and more time understanding them? And can experienced users still move through their work quickly?
The experience has continued to change during my testing. These are my first impressions, including what I’m excited about and what I’d like to see improved. Availability can vary by account. NetSuite’s Monthly Release Notes are worth following as the product develops.
Ask Oracle: a new starting point
No doubt the most revolutionary new product added is Ask Oracle, a natural language AI assistant. Users can ask questions in their own words, find information, and explore business data without needing to be a NetSuite expert. For someone who knows what they need and how the system should work, using Ask Oracle could make a big difference.
For example, a user might start with, “Which customers have overdue invoices?” The next question could be, “Can you use the Mail Merge function and draft a reminder email to this customer with the total overdue amount?” At SuiteWorld, Joav Bally, the Group Vice President of Product Management & Engineering at Oracle, emphasized the importance of keeping a human in the loop. When Ask Oracle drafts a reminder email for the user to review, edit, and confirm or reject; it’s the user who decides whether the email is ready to be sent. It’s easy after that to have it send the email from the same canvas.
The part I would pay close attention to is context. “Show me sales” sounds simple, but do we mean sales orders or invoices? Which subsidiary, currency, and period? We still need to ask clear questions and review what the answer actually includes.
You can also use Skills and Agents in Ask Oracle now, which adds more possibilities to the conversational experience.
A Skill provides reusable instructions for a particular type of work. Instead of explaining the same approach every time, you can apply a skill to guide how Ask Oracle analyzes the information and presents the results. For example, developing a payment prioritization skill can help rank vendor bills based on due dates, available credits, and cash constraints, and explain its recommendations. An overdue customer analysis skill can help review unpaid invoices and identify customers to prioritize for follow-up.
An Agent provides capabilities for supported business workflows. Depending on the agent, it may help find information, analyze business data, or carry out supported steps in a process. Some work directly through Ask Oracle; others guide you to the relevant NetSuite page to continue. Selecting an agent does not automatically mean the whole process will run on its own — the available actions depend on the agent, your account setup, and your role permissions.
Skills guide the approach, while an Agent brings capabilities to help perform the work. They can complement each other: instructions help define how a task should be handled, and the available tools and actions determine what can actually be done. A recommendation about which bills to pay, for example, is different from creating or submitting a payment.
What interests me is the potential to make recurring work more consistent. We could spend less time rewriting instructions and more time reviewing the results and handling exceptions. You can choose an available skill or agent from the + menu in Ask Oracle before submitting your request. I would start with one familiar task, compare the results with your usual process, and build confidence from there.
Tip: You can set the search bar to open Ask Oracle directly in NetSuite Next.
Improvements that could make a difference
Reports and saved searches: getting more out of what we already have
Reporting is one area where I see real improvement in day-to-day usability. Sometimes users simply need a different set of columns or a narrower list of transactions. Making those adjustments easier can save time and reduce the need to build a separate saved search for every small request.
In the transaction lists I’ve tested in NetSuite Next, Manage Columns lets users add or remove available columns directly from the list. The search and filter bar at the top also helps narrow the results using the available filter options. For a quick review, that can mean getting the information you need without opening the Saved Search editor.
Ask Oracle gives us another way to explore the data. Users can describe the information they need in their own words and ask for a list or summary. We can also build on the work we already have: years of saved searches with business-specific criteria, formulas, and definitions. A collections team, for example, could point Ask Oracle to its existing overdue-receivables search and ask it to summarize the results and highlight customers who need follow-up.
For me, these improvements serve different needs. Flexible list views help users make quick adjustments, while Ask Oracle helps them explore and interpret information. Saved searches and reports still have an important role when we need consistent definitions, complex logic, or a repeatable output. Searches and reports can also be used within Skills, but we’ll cover that in another post.
That also makes the quality of the underlying search important. If its criteria include the wrong transactions or its formulas do not reflect the business definition, a well-written AI summary will not fix that. Good reporting design gives us a stronger foundation for useful answers.
Tip: Ask Oracle can provide download links for supported results.
Dashboards: helping users decide where to look next
A good dashboard should help users understand what needs attention. In the past, making a decent dashboard with all data required significant time and effort. I’m interested in how the redesigned experience can make that easier, especially when a user wants to move from a high-level number into an interpretation.
NetSuite Next now offers AI Portlets, where users can describe the analysis they want in everyday language and generate dashboard content such as charts and summaries. This gives users another way to build a view around a business question, with less manual setup.
For example, a sales manager might start with a request such as, “Show this quarter’s invoiced sales by customer and highlight the largest decreases compared with last quarter.” I would include the subsidiary, currency, and comparison period in the request so the intended scope is clear. NetSuite gives an example of comparing actual sales with the projections in a marketing proposal, which shows how a portlet can be built around a specific business need.
Best practice for requests: be specific about your scope. Include:
- Subsidiary
- Currency
- Comparison period
What interests me most is the opportunity to make dashboards more personalized. A finance leader and a sales manager may look at the same business from very different angles. Being able to describe what they need could make useful dashboard content easier to create and adjust as their priorities change.
I would still compare the generated results with a trusted report or saved search before relying on them. The real value is having a view that helps users recognize what needs attention and decide where to investigate next. That is what makes a dashboard useful in daily work.
Tip: You can add up to 10 AI Portlets to a dashboard.
What I’d like to see improved
Recent Records: small shortcuts matter
Recent Records is one of those everyday functions that can look minor until you depend on it. When troubleshooting, I often move between several related records and need to return to something I opened a few minutes earlier.
My wish is for that path to stay obvious and quick in the new experience. Even when a function is available, making it harder to discover or adding extra steps can interrupt the flow of work. Those small details matter to users who spend most of their day in NetSuite.
Button/menu accessibility
The new interface also changes how we navigate menus and access everyday buttons. In the version I’ve been testing, users need to click through each menu level, while the previous interface let us hover to reveal the next set of options. I found that helpful for exploring the system and seeing how different functions fit together. Searching for a menu option works well when you already know what to look for, but newer users may find it harder to get that same view of the system’s structure.
Another small but noticeable change is the Save button. On the record pages I’ve tested, it appears only at the top, so users need to scroll back up after completing a long form. Having a Save button at the bottom, as in the previous interface, made that last step more convenient. These may seem like small details, but they affect how smoothly users move through their daily work.
Final thoughts
The AI era is already changing how we work, and NetSuite Next is a significant step in that direction. I’m excited about the opportunity to make information more accessible and reduce some of the effort involved in analysis and follow-up.
As a consultant, I also see how much the fundamentals still matter: clean data, clear processes, useful reporting, and users who understand their work. These are what help us ask better questions and judge whether the answers make sense.
My first impression is a mix of excitement and adjustment. I want to keep testing it against real daily tasks and see where it saves time, where it needs guidance, and where the experience can improve. That is where its value will become clear.
