10 Questions You Should Actually Ask a NetSuite Consultant Before You Hire One

Every intro call I've been on opens with the same question: how fast can you get this done. It's a fair question and it's the wrong one to lead with. Fourteen years on the other side of that call, here's what I'd ask instead.

1. What's outside your wheelhouse?

Nobody asks this. Ever.

Nobody does all of NetSuite well, and anyone who says they do is selling. When a project needs functional work, I say so and bring in a functional consultant I trust. Would you hire a mechanic to paint your house? Could he do it? Sure. It'll take ten times as long and it won't look like a painter did it.

A good consultant has a real answer here and knows who they'd call. One who says yes to everything is a mechanic who also paints houses.

2. What can we give you to make your job easier?

Almost nobody asks this one either.

Documentation. The history of why a field was set up the way it was. A recording of the meeting where somebody decided to skip the sandbox. The name of the person who built the thing three years ago. Any of that shortens the project and cuts the surprises. If you want a cleaner engagement, hand over context.

3. When did you last tell a client no?

NetSuite gets you about 90 percent of the way out of the box. The last 10 percent, the scripting and integrations that make it work the way your business actually runs, is where the money and the risk live. A lot of consultants claim that's what they do. I've spent most of my career cleaning up after them.

Here's the catch. If they come back immediately with a story about telling a client no, be cautious. My clients rarely hear the word no. What they hear is, "That's not the best way to do this, here's a safer path to the same place." The answer you want isn't a no. It's an alternative.

4. How long will this take?

Ask it, but listen for how they answer, not what number they give.

A good consultant either shows you they understand what's involved, or asks for more detail before they'll estimate. It's rare a client gives me everything I need on the first call. Usually it's the call and a follow-up email. A hard number right off the rip can be dangerous. What I do instead is give a wide ballpark on the call when it comes up, then narrow it once the details come in over email.

And if your number and mine are way off, say you're thinking three weeks and I'm thinking six, I'll walk you through my thinking. Usually it's one of two things: I overcomplicated a piece, or there's a piece you hadn't thought of. Either way, that conversation makes the quote better.

5. How should we report a problem, and what should we include?

Nine times out of ten, my first response to a ticket is the same: can you send me a link to an example record, the internal IDs, the file you imported, the results file, and the link to the import you used.

That round trip costs a day. Ask the consultant up front how they want issues reported and what to include, and you'll get fixes back in hours instead. A good one will hand you a short list. Mine is: a link to the record, what you expected, what you got, and anything you uploaded or ran to get there.

6. Who else do you work with?

Question 1 asks what they don't do. This one asks who covers it.

Every good consultant has a handful of colleagues they trust and have worked with before. A functional consultant, an integration person, somebody who lives in the reporting side. Ask who those people are and how long they've worked together. If the answer is a name and a story, good. If the answer is "we have a team" with no names, ask who's on the hook when something breaks at 7 a.m. on a Monday, and whether that person has ever seen your account.

I'm not against subcontracting when the person is capable. I'm against finding out who the subcontractor was after the fact.

7. Are we building this in a sandbox?

If you have one, the answer should be yes. You'd be surprised how often it isn't. I've picked up integrations that were only ever built prod to prod, live data flowing both directions from day one, and weeks of it before anyone could tell what was real and what was test. Cleaning that up costs more than building it right would have.

Some of my clients don't have a sandbox, and that's fine. It just changes how the work gets done: smaller batches, more checkpoints, and a way to back out. What you want to hear from a consultant is that they asked.

8. What are you going to hand back to us?

When the project ends, what do you have? Documentation, a backup of the scripts and workflows, a clear map of what was changed and why. Without documentation, the next person is navigating without GPS. They can do it, but it's going to take a lot longer. If the only place it lives is the consultant's head, you're renting, not buying.

9. What does go-live weekend look like?

Things go sideways on go-live. Data is bigger than anyone thought, a record type nobody mentioned shows up. Ask who's online that weekend and how you'll hear from them. I've spent more than one weekend getting a client back to business as usual by Monday. The fix gets forgotten. Being reachable doesn't.

10. What do you do that other consultants don't?

Every consultant has a pitch. Listen for whether it's about you or about them. Mine is short: we're not going to sugarcoat anything, we're going to give you a straight answer, and we've been around long enough to know the difference between an answer that sounds right and one that is.

Two bonus questions

What do you do when you don't know the answer? NetSuite is big enough that nobody knows all of it. The honest answer is some version of "I'll find out," followed by actually finding out and coming back with what they learned. Be wary of anyone who never says "I don't know." They either aren't listening or they're making it up.

How do you handle mistakes? Everybody makes them. What you're listening for is whether they own it, tell you before you find it yourself, and fix it without a fight about whose fault it was. The mistake matters a lot less than what happens in the hour after it.

The short version

Ask what they won't do. Ask what you can hand over. Ask what they do instead of saying no. Ask who they bring in. Get straight answers to those four and the timeline conversation gets a lot shorter.

Mike Pagani runs Adaptive Solutions Group, a NetSuite consulting firm focused on the last 10 percent: SuiteScript, integrations, and the custom work that makes an instance actually fit the business.