Just as an airport control tower would monitor air traffic, NetSuite’s control tower monitors the flow of goods, materials and information across your supply chain in real time.
Let’s take a look at the technical aspects of the module and what it all means for day-to-day supply chain operations.
What Is NetSuite Supply Chain Control Tower?
A cloud-based supply chain management tool, NetSuite’s Supply Chain Control Tower centralises supply chain data and planning processes within NetSuite ERP. It does this by automatically collecting real-time data on inventory positions, orders, production and shipments across locations, then presents this information through interactive snapshots and dashboards. This provides a 360-degree view of supply and demand – from procurement and manufacturing to distribution and fulfillment – all in one place – so managers can quickly identify issues and opportunities across the network.
In short, NetSuite’s Supply Chain Control Tower is the answer for businesses seeking enhanced visibility, predictive insights and coordinated decision-making in their supply chain operations.
Key capabilities of NetSuite Supply Chain Control Tower
NetSuite’s Supply Chain Control Tower is packed with features that empower supply chain and operations teams to plan, analyse and act proactively.
Here are some of its key functionalities and capabilities, and how they work.
Supply chain snapshots to see into the future
NetSuite’s Supply Chain Snapshots simulate future inventory levels by pulling in real-time supply and demand data. This presents a clear, day-by-day view of how inventory is expected to change – before it happens.
What’s included in a snapshot?
Each snapshot consolidates all relevant transactions for a given item and time period, including:
- Sales orders
- Purchase orders
- Work orders
- Transfer orders
This creates a running inventory balance that shows whether you’re on track to meet demand – or heading towards a stockout or overstock.
Interactive, accurate and automated
Snapshots are delivered as an interactive grid or report, showing:
- Incoming supply
- Outgoing demand
- Projected inventory on hand for each day or period within the forecast window.
They work for both standard inventory and complex assembly items (like BOMs), including those with lot or serial tracking. And because NetSuite automates snapshot updates – on a set schedule (e.g. nightly) or on demand -you’re never relying on stale data or manual input.
Real-time alerts and dashboard
Users can configure custom alerts to trigger warnings for risks like stockouts, supplier delays, or demand spikes. These alerts can be delivered via dashboards, email notifications, or pop-ups, ensuring no issue goes unnoticed.
Intelligent predicted risks – AI and ML
A standout feature is NetSuite’s use of machine learning to anticipate delays and issues.
- The system analyses historical transaction data – up to two years of POs, transfer orders and sales orders – to build predictive models.
- Every day, new transactions are run against these models to predict whether an order will be late, by how many days and with what confidence level.
- The Predicted Risks portlet then surfaces these predictions, for example flagging a purchase order that is 75% likely to be 10 days late and even suggests a remedy such as adjusting the order date or quantity.
This AI-driven system doesn’t just highlight late orders—it recommends corrective actions, such as expediting an order or switching suppliers, allowing planners to act before issues escalate.
What-If scenario planning
Users can leverage the control tower to perform what-if analyses by creating manual snapshot simulations. For instance, a planner can manually add a hypothetical supply order or adjust a demand quantity in a simulation to see how it would impact inventory and other orders. This allows companies to evaluate different scenarios – like a surge in demand or a supplier delay – and develop contingency plans. By running scenario analyses with predictive analytics, managers get insights and recommendations on how changes or external factors could impact the supply chain.
Multi-level supply/demand visibility
The tool doesn’t just look at top-level finished goods – it goes deeper. For assembly items, the snapshot considers component demand and assembly supply. It can show work order component demand and how production plans will consume sub-assemblies or raw materials. Although snapshots are item-specific, running them for each component allows visibility into lower-level inventory needs as well. This multi-level view is essential for manufacturers to ensure that making one product doesn’t unknowingly starve another production line of components.
Comprehensive transaction coverage
NetSuite’s control tower covers a wide range of transaction types across the supply chain. It looks at sales orders, purchase orders, transfer orders, intercompany transfer orders and work orders in its calculations. Both firm orders and planned orders are included. In fact, the snapshot will display released orders – like approved sales orders, issued work orders – as well as planned supply orders from the planning system. Even sales orders that are pending approval can be taken into account for a forward-looking view that ensures no aspect of supply or demand is overlooked in the simulation.
Filtered and customisable views
The Supply Chain Snapshot results can be filtered and customised to suit user needs. Planners can filter the data by location to focus on a specific warehouse or region
or view an aggregated picture across all locations. The snapshot grid can be tailored – just like a saved search in NetSuite – users can add/remove columns, highlight certain criteria or export the data for reporting. Because snapshots are based on saved search technology, companies can also schedule them or use scripts to refresh data, ensuring the latest information is always at hand. This flexibility allows each role to see the slice of information that matters most to them.
Interactive actions and updates
From the control tower interface, users can take direct actions. For example, if a snapshot shows a projected stockout next month, a planner could drill down to the underlying transactions and expedite a purchase order or create a new transfer order. The system’s recommendations might guide the user to reschedule or source from a different location.
Use cases and benefits for businesses
NetSuite’s Supply Chain Control Tower can drive significant benefits for businesses across various industries – from manufacturers and distributors to retailers.
Just-in-time inventory management
Companies looking to minimise carrying costs and avoid excess stock can use the control tower to practice just-in-time principles. The snapshot simulations help planners time inventory arrivals to match actual needs, so you receive products only when needed. This reduces overstock and holding costs while still ensuring materials are on hand in time for production or sales. The benefit is a leaner inventory with less cash tied up, without sacrificing the ability to fulfill orders.
Preventing stockouts and backorders
Ensuring high service levels is a top priority for many businesses. The control tower’s proactive alerts and visibility help avoid stockouts that lead to missed sales. For example, if demand is projected to exceed supply for a key SKU next month, planners get an early warning and can order more or reallocate inventory to cover the gap. By balancing inventory levels with demand forecasts, businesses can fulfill customer orders on time more consistently. This translates into higher customer satisfaction, better reputation and potentially increased revenue (since you’re not turning customers away due to lack of stock).
Responding to supply chain disruptions
In an era of frequent supply chain disruptions – port delays, supplier issues, sudden demand spikes – NetSuite’s control tower provides the agility and flexibility to respond quickly when disruptions occur. For example, users can reroute inventory when a distribution centre is shut down, expedite alternate suppliers if a primary vendor fails to deliver or reallocate stock between stores/warehouses in response to regional demand shifts. The benefit is mitigating the impact of disruptions – keeping operations running and customers satisfied even when external problems arise.
Multi-location inventory optimisation
For businesses with multiple warehouses or retail locations, deciding how much stock to keep at each location is challenging. The control tower can be used to gain visibility into inventory positions across all locations and transfer stock proactively. For example, you may want to analyse a snapshot to see that Warehouse A will have excess of Product X while Warehouse B will be short – then create a transfer order to balance that inventory. This ensures optimal inventory distribution, reduces unnecessary purchases and cuts down on emergency inter-warehouse shipments.
New product introduction & end-of-life planning
When launching a new product or phasing out an old one, planning inventory is particularly tricky. The Supply Chain Control Tower’s simulation capability is useful for introducing new products or managing end-of-life phases. For example, a company can simulate different demand scenarios for a new product launch to ensure they aren’t overproducing or understocking. They can also closely monitor the sell-through of a dying product and adjust final production or purchasing to avoid leftover inventory.
Improving supplier performance and negotiations
With the control tower collecting data on purchase order delivery times and fill rates, businesses can analyse supplier performance easily. For instance, a purchaser can pull up the Control Tower’s vendor performance metrics to see average lateness or variability for each supplier. This information can help in negotiations by holding suppliers accountable to lead times or seeking better terms, and in sourcing decisions by shifting volume to more reliable suppliers.
Capacity and production planning
Manufacturers can use the control tower in tandem with capacity planning. A production planner might use the snapshot to identify when projected orders will exceed production capacity – by seeing work orders or demand piling up in a given week – and then adjust the production schedule or labour allocation accordingly. Additionally, the control tower can highlight when all materials for a given production run will be available, so the planner can sequence production optimally. The benefit here is maximised production output with minimal downtime, since all required inputs are aligned and any capacity bottlenecks are foreseen and managed.
Cross-functional collaboration and decision making
A softer use case but very important – the control tower serves as a collaboration tool for different departments. For example:
- Sales and operations planning (S&OP) meetings can revolve around data from the control tower – reviewing the latest demand projections, supply plans and inventory positions.
- Finance teams could use it to understand if inventory is building up or if service levels might impact revenue.
By using the control tower data, teams have a single version of the truth. The benefit is faster consensus and coordinated actions across departments, since everyone can see the impact of decisions on other parts of the supply chain clearly.
Customer satisfaction and reliability
Ultimately, many use cases tie back to keeping customer commitments. With NetSuite’s Supply Chain Control Tower, businesses can ensure customers get the right products at the right time and place.
Whether it’s meeting a delivery date for a large order, having the right product assortment in stock for a seasonal promotion or simply maintaining high on-time delivery rates, the control tower helps companies be more reliable. Which translates to improved customer loyalty and service reputation. For example, an eCommerce retailer can avoid the scenario of an item being oversold and then out of stock by monitoring the real-time inventory available and incoming supply through the control tower, thereby only promising what they can fulfill.
Is NetSuite Supply Chain Control Tower right for you?
NetSuite’s Supply Chain Control Tower module offers a comprehensive, real-time command centre for managing supply chain operations within the NetSuite ERP environment.
If you want to make more agile decisions, run leaner inventories, anticipate issues before they escalate and ultimately deliver better results to your customers and bottom line, it’s definitely worth a look.
NetSuite supply chain management with Annexa
Annexa are experts in comprehensive ERP inventory management solutions. We help organisations throughout Australia and New Zealand streamline their processes.
Contact us now to start a conversation about how we can help you get the efficiency you need.
Learn more:
- A deep dive into how NetSuite transforms supply chains for ANZ businesses >
- How NetSuite streamlines supply chain operations – end to end >
- How NetSuite transforms inventory into a competitive advantage >
- Make procurement a source of competitive strength with NetSuite >
- Real-world use cases of NetSuite Demand Planning >