From Spreadsheets to Real-Time Intelligence

Kern Laser Systems has been building industrial laser systems in Wadena, Minnesota for nearly 40 years, with close to 2,000 machines in the field. They built their NetSuite instance around a custom record called a machine card — tracking every unit from build day through every owner, service event, and laser replacement. The data was all there. Getting it to work together was a different story: NetSuite's native saved searches couldn't connect the machine card to transaction data in any meaningful way.

CFO John Muehlberg's workaround was to export two separate saved searches, join them in Excel on a shared sales order number, build pivot tables, and repeat from scratch every month. On the service side, an annual laser performance review meant pulling RMA records, machine card data, and case history from separate exports and combining them manually — about a week of work. By the time it was finished, new data had already come in.

Kern implemented NetSuite Analytics Warehouse with support from us, building three core workbooks: a laser system profit analysis joining machine cards with sales transactions; an RMA and case analysis for tracking field failures and warranty trends; and a laser lifetime performance workbook for quality and service tracking.

The central unlock was NSAW's ability to join multiple data sets simultaneously — something saved searches simply can't do when one of those data sets is a custom record.

The monthly Excel rebuild is gone, and a service review that used to take weeks now runs in real time. Shortly after go-live, a spike in output window failures surfaced — a pattern that previously would have taken six to eight weeks to appear. It turned out to be the same customer; Kern found a solution and stopped the failures entirely, meaning fewer unnecessary laser replacements and lower warranty costs.

Leadership felt it too. Pricing conversations that used to require prep time now happen in the room, with live data rather than a promise to follow up. Geographic sales analysis, trade show planning, and laser annual performance tracking are all on the roadmap.