I wonder who owns your data  if you cannot get access to it? One thing I learned from [my experience with NetSuite] is that he who owns the data, or access to the data, basically owns you.
The first big problem I had with NetSuite was their business practices. Once that was resolved, we had a huge problem getting access to our data. We hired an "expert" who said he had NetSuite experience, and he was not able to get a full extract of our data in one shot after six-plus months.
As I was doing the research for this post, I decided that before I condemn NetSuite for their data-access and backup policies, I should see what some of the other CRM vendors do for data backup. I currently have full admin access to Salesforce.com, NetSuite and Zoho CRM.
Salesforce.com gives you a weekly export function; it is free. I just did an export on the account that I manage, and it is indeed a FULL export. Each record has a relational ID as well as the attachments. A moderately talented database developer could easily make sense of this information. (More information on the Salesforce.com export functionality can be found in their online help section.)
The Zoho CRM Export All Data option costs $10. It is a full relational export, including attachments and transactions. Again, just about any Craigslist database guy could figure it out. (More information can be found on Zoho's Web site.)
NetSuite gives you a "Full CSV Export." This is pretty much useless, as it contains no relational data and is basically a collection of your reports in a .csv format. I have not verified this, but according to Ray Tetlow of Skyytek, the relational option for NS is $4,000, and you may have to purchase the ODBC option as well. I just tried to do a Full CSV Export three times now on our current NetSuite account, and it threw an error once, and then it quit at the part where I had to download the file. Like I said -- useless.
I tried to look up "data export," "data backup," and "export all data" in the NetSuite online help system, and received zero (0) relevant results. In fact, the only information I could find was under a search called "full csv export." And it contains this somewhat humorous and ironic subtitle: "The Full CSV Export option in NetSuite does not currently export ALL data as CSV files. The name of this option will soon be changed to CSV Export." (continued...)
© 2010 Adam Stone, D-Tools Blog under contract with YellowBrix. All rights reserved.
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