A plain-language account of what our NetSuite system does on its own, what still requires people, where the operational risk sits, and what the system costs in management attention.
The two commercial engines of the business operate as complete, closed loops inside the system. Each box below is a step the system links automatically; the counts are actual documents processed in the last twelve months. Nothing re-keyed, nothing carried between systems by hand.
Two very different businesses share the same automated rails. Wholesale/distribution produced $1.06M — 88% of trailing-twelve-month revenue — from just 17% of sales transactions; the retail stores produced the remaining 12% from 83% of transactions. The system's economics work in both directions: it handles the stores' high-frequency small tickets and the distribution centers' large orders with the same process and the same people.
| Channel | Revenue (T12M) | Transactions | Avg. size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles Distribution Center | $636,183 | 114 | $5,580 |
| Miami (wholesale) | $420,201 | 47 | $8,940 |
| San Francisco Store | $91,639 | 463 | $198 |
| New York Store | $55,008 | 336 | $164 |
The positive reading: very little of the accounting is hand-typed, and the growth of the last four months required no new manual process.
| Exposure | Plain-language description | Posture |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor dependence | Roughly 95% of the system's automation and custom structure is vendor-supplied (asset management, bank payments, tax, shipping, retail suite). We benefit from their maintenance — and inherit their upgrade timing and defects. | Accepted; monitored at upgrade windows |
| Customer concentration | 88% of revenue flows through two wholesale channels and 161 transactions. This is a commercial exposure the system makes visible, not one it creates. | Visible; commercial matter |
| Key-person concentration | Administration and change deployment are concentrated in a small number of individuals. Continuity depends on documentation, which is actively maintained. | Partially mitigated |
| Credential hygiene | One in-house integration was found storing a supplier credential in plain text. Identified in internal review, August 2026; remediation flagged to management. | Flagged; remediation open |
| Small in-house footprint | Genuinely custom, in-house-built components are few. This limits both maintenance burden and the risk of undocumented logic. | Strength, not exposure |
The system's attention cost is modest and concentrated where it should be: reviewing exceptions the system surfaces, timing vendor module upgrades, and maintaining documentation against key-person risk. Volume growth of 55% arrived without a corresponding rise in manual work — the strongest evidence the automation is real.
The funding ask: bring the sales pipeline into the system. It is the one commercial process the ERP cannot currently see, and — given that 88% of revenue rides on a small number of wholesale relationships — it is also the process where early visibility matters most. Everything downstream of a signed order is already automated; the gap is everything upstream of it.