The client is an integrated healthcare delivery system that includes two hospitals, more than 40 medical specialties, and primary care, and provides comprehensive medical care throughout North Central Washington. With over 300 physicians and 170 advanced practice providers, this organization is the major medical provider between Seattle and Spokane. The client came to Esonus after selecting NetSuite as their ERP system and AvidExchange for automated bill payment.
Challenge
As a major medical provider in Washington, the client has vast numbers of vendors and bills to process with great frequency. As part of their payables workflow, they wanted to merge the services of AvidExchange accounts payable platform and NetSuite utilizing the Avid For NetSuite (AFN) product.
AFN would allow the client to integrate AvidExchange data into NetSuite and process large batches of vendor bills using NetSuite. The client also wanted to extend the process with NetSuite’s custom scripting capabilities (SuiteScript). This would allow them to alter the AFN processing of bills to meet their business process needs. During the customization process, the client experienced errors that prevented AFN from processing any records.
Functionally, the client relies on AFN to connect the NetSuite ERP platform and AvidExchange for processing vendor bills and payments. AFN would create records in NetSuite.
Technically, AFN uses a batch process within NetSuite (Map-Reduce) to convert AvidXChange data into NetSuite vendor bills. The batch process would generate an error on each attempt to create a single vendor bill. The client also had secondary NetSuite scripts that ran in response to the vendor bill creation, and these scripts could not complete because of the batch error. These scripts were created by the client in an attempt to customize the creation of a vendor bill.
Solution
Esonus deconstructed the Map-Reduce script and introduced various lines of debug code. Esonus relabeled suspect fields in NetSuite so the debug output log would be clear. Based on the output, Esonus determined certain fields were not being mapped from AFN to NetSuite and that certain NetSuite fields had mandatory requirements not being met by the AFN to NetSuite mapping.
Esonus temporarily removed mandatory requirements in the NetSuite sandbox and used a debug configuration to re-run batch processes in quick iterations to attempt various mappings and mandatory settings for fields on the vendor bill record. This pinpointed the issue and allowed Esonus to offer three separate options for solving the problem.
Esonus implemented each option and ran the batch process, and submitted each option with samples and successful outputs to the client to review and test.
Benefit
The most impactful advantage to the solution was the speed at which Esonus was able to identify the root cause which resulted in a minimal delay in onboarding the client on the AvidXChange platform. Functionally, vendor bills can now be successfully created and customized.
Finally, the client has a better understanding of the AFN process and Esonus provided them with the choice of several options for addressing the issue, all minimally invasive methods solved at the root level with no code and consequently, no maintenance.
Results
1. Onboarding
With vast experience and engineering best practices, Esonus can diagnose and replicate issues in rapid succession. In this instance, this allowed the client to select the best solution to resolve their issue and AvidExchange to successfully complete their onboarding schedule and enable them to onboard the next client.
2. Product Value Add
AvidXchange can now demonstrate expertise in NetSuite and AFN product onboarding and onboarding confidence will increase with Avid’s new knowledge regarding NetSuite and AFN products. AvidXChange’s ability to troubleshoot similar onboarding challenges has increased as well as their capacity to enlist Esonus engineering assistance for challenges outside of their knowledge base.
3. Scheduling
AvidXChange can have fewer disruptions to the onboarding workflow and avoid a backlog. Getting more customers onboarded and ensuring the AFN reputation opens the door to client upgrades for additional AvidXChange products and services.
Summary
The client was in the process of onboarding the AvidXchange AFN product, and during this process, they encountered an issue with the functionality of the AFN product and their NetSuite custom scripts that affect records created by the AFN product. These customizations were necessary to the vendor bill creation in NetSuite. Through a process of engineering and script review, Esonus was able to provide solution options so that the client’s AFN product and custom scripting could work in sync to enable them to continue with their onboarding process.
