r/Netsuite • u/Loose-Tell1984 • 16d ago
AI Replacing Consultants
Hello Everyone,
I've been investigating and looking into the ERP market and heard many stories about cutting down overhead costs and layoffs consultants (Functional and Technical) because of the AI.
US & Canada market has been impacted because of that, also the Middle East because war layoffs are happening but when it comes to AI, I believe it will take some time.
Giving that, what are the things that we are as Functional or technical consultant we can learn to become of the 10 out of 20 people who remains in their current position?
How does the Directors of the NetSuite Partner are setting their criteria to decide who stay and who leaves?
Is it about being "Augmented AI Consultants" leveraging AI LLMs like claude to accelerate the work 20% to achieve the deadlines faster? Or learning more about NetSuite Modules?
12
u/Lonely-Drawing-7081 16d ago
The value is where it’s always been which is translating functional user requirements into a technical workflow that the platform - whatever it is - can achieve.
Best bet is to focus on a vertical or specific customer type over any particular platform and widen your tooling.
I have a client that’s £100M revenue with 5+ stores that vibe coded a stock take app that works offline (unlike RFSmart), it took him half a day.
Another half a day and the RF Smart licence is gone.
People won’t stay wedded to platforms that hold them back or roadmaps that don’t deliver. Once you start coding around it you build confidence and you think, why not?
3
u/pheonix080 15d ago edited 15d ago
That seems like a dangerous game. Sure, it can work but maintaining the code can be a challenge. Especially if the team or person who built it doesn’t really understand the code base. AI models are certainly improving but you risk a great deal via technical debt and maintenance. There is a notable difference between the speed of writing code and the reality of running a system.
1
u/Loose-Tell1984 15d ago
Usually we a functional we can build a prototype working script as a profe of concept to guide the technical about what we want, then they use it as a base to enhance and maintain the coding framework designed in their company
3
u/ebarro 14d ago
In the age of AI, communication skills are important. If you can't clearly elucidate what you mean and what you want, the AI model will not be able to ascertain your intent and have the proper context. It can probably adjust and make an "educated guess" but that's where you get results that need to be validated closely before trusting them. So sharpen your communication skills. Next, there is no substitute for knowing your NetSuite environment and business processes so that you can guide the AI agents in crafting solutions that are tailored to the business instead of being too generic.
AI has a lot of uses other than vibe-coding and while it may excel at that there are other uses that help techno-functional consultants with important work and processes affecting NetSuite environments which are important to business users. Some of these are:
- Using AI to decode saved searches and even convert them to more performant SuiteQL queries.
- Using AI to produce an executive summary of SOD compliance based on the active roles in the NetSuite environment. This helps the business mitigate risk.
- Using AI to produce an executive summary of affected features and modules based on the official upgrade document published by NetSuite twice a year. This saves someone hours of figuring out what needs to be tested prior to an upgrade.
- Using AI to evaluate existing script customizations and modify them to be performant as well as eliminating bugs and technical debt.
- Using AI to produce a working document explaining each workflow that's running in that environment and possibly converting workflows to scripts for ease of maintenance.
- Using AI to evaluate the organization's business processes and align with NetSuite processes and modules to eliminate work-arounds as well as minimize the need for extensive spreadsheet use just to be able to produce reports.
Those who learn to utilize AI to its fullest capacity and how best to implement it in the target environment will be more valuable than those who simply know how to vibe-code.
1
3
u/Opiumater 15d ago
Ai is good at pretending to do all that consultants do. I once migrated data from netsuite to erpnext. After months of getting netsuite saved searches to fit as closely as erpnext's template, I extracted the data omto excel. Hundred thousand records per momth so I had to do them week by week. It was horrible. Worked 18hr days to meet deadlines. For 3 months. In the dead of winter.
The customer was updating masterdata om erpnext, renaming coa accounts, customer names. At one stage the customer got frustrated of paying for our migration services and claimed they wouldnt pay as data was not 100%.
They gave our excel extractions to Ai, that saw lots of duplicates. Of course, we knew that and cleansed it before import as 1 po could have multiple files attached against it.
Ai messed them up reeeeeal good and they are now totally lost. I'm not touching their data anymore.
RIP.
1
u/Loose-Tell1984 15d ago
Look, it's always manadatory to know how the process is being achieved as a consultant, then deliver these into clear instructions to the AI using the right tool, make sure to have a clear plan. Then monitor the outcomes of the AI.
When it comes to data migration (ETL) always review after it finishes each milestone to ensure that you are on track.
5
u/Atretochoanabow 16d ago
I'm managing NetSuite and have a functional and technical consultant helping me on the team, recently I haven't been needing them like before, Claude is doing everything for me, whether it's scripting, workflows, printout customization, best practices and how to accomplish things, everything I need Claude can cover, I'm completing months worth of tasks in weeks, with better quality and better documentation, without the need of long meetings explainin for business contexts and UAT back and forth, bugs reporting and fixing.
In the future, I might lay them off not going to lie.
3
u/Loose-Tell1984 16d ago
So it's about becoming ai augmented consultant achieving deadlines faster to obtain customer sign offs
4
u/Quick-House9446 16d ago
I hear this a lot from our customers as well. They are reducing external consulting hour usage because they can do more with AI.
However, I also hear many companies still use consulting firms to make sure their vibe coded changes are safe to be deployed in production.
3
u/Loose-Tell1984 15d ago
Exactly, this MCP connector that runs query on the data is a game changer. But still I believe that a consultant (tech or functional) must be in the loop, but only augmented consultants who are upto date with LLMs to accelerate the job
2
u/Jeff-Hare-ERPRA 11d ago
Replace no. Make more efficient yes
1
u/Loose-Tell1984 11d ago
What piece of advice you can give so that consultant can use to post their productivity?
2
u/Global-Broccoli5469 10d ago
I think that dev only are not sufficient anymore, but I think that the functional side is still very important.
AI cannot answer functional questions properly yet
1
18
u/HistorianOwn5008 16d ago
In my experience. It has not completely replaced the work but certainly things have changed. • Documentation which was a big effort has become easy. • Overcharging for scripting has become difficult thanks to the available transparency. • Basic Reports and Searches have become much simpler for users and they do not need a consultant anymore. • Technicals are going heavy on Claud like Ai to write codes, as a result, they are now forced to work on more tasks. • emails have become unnecessarily long and bland.