Data analytics is both art and science when it comes to extracting meaningful insights from a large amount of information. It helps leaders make informed and timely decisions, and to understand more about both their business and their customers.

Building a data-driven culture means that decisions move from being based on gut feelings to being supported and directed by data-driven facts. For example, an executive can study key figures such as revenue or profit, results from advanced analytics models, or even qualitative data when making a decision.

Since data sources tend to be optimized for storage and not analytics, digesting data in a meaningful way comes with its own set of challenges. Fortunately, accounting and finance executives have quarterbacked data transformation and automation initiatives over the past decade or so to help build the right tech stacks for supporting data reporting and analytics.

Transforming NetSuite’s Top Use Cases

Modern ERP solutions such as NetSuite are one of the most effective ways to modernize and support a solid data analytics infrastructure. Since NetSuite is cloud-hosted, it provides organizations with real-time data access, improved collaboration, and seamless integration with plenty of applications and tools that provide even deeper insights than NetSuite can on its own power.

One such application is CloudExtend’s Excel integration app, ExtendInsights. This easy-to-install app requires little to no training, working directly in Excel to the delight of many accounting and finance professionals.

Curious as to exactly how accounting and finance teams are using Excel integration through ExtendInsights? Check out this list of the top ten use cases.

Top NetSuite Finance Team Use Cases for ExtendInsights:

Use Case	Core Function
Manage Vendor Price Lists	Bulk update pricing instantly.
Return Authorizations	Process and sync RAs efficiently.
Journal Entries	Create and upload high-volume Journal Entries in Excel.
Aging Reports	Generate dynamic, refreshable AR/AP reports.
Deposits	Quickly enter and manage deposit data.
Purchase Orders	Streamline PO creation and tracking.
Financial Statements	Build custom, refreshable financial reports.
Manage Credit Card Statements	Simplify reconciliation and expense entry.
Upload and Manage NetSuite Budgets	Upload new NetSuite budgets directly from Excel.
Cash Sales	Fast entry of daily cash sales transactions.

 

Getting NetSuite Data into Excel . . . the Old Way

Maybe ExtendInsights doesn’t excite you quite yet—we’re confident it will. Let’s look first at the native way of getting data out of NetSuite and into Excel:

The traditional process involves multiple steps and plenty of opportunity for errors to creep into CSV imports. Errors include file size limitations, complex data matching, translation issues, and non-digestible formats.

And that’s why we built ExtendInsights.

Never Leave Excel Again: The Power of ExtendInsights

With ExtendInsights, you never have to leave Excel to create streamlined reports and dashboards in real-time.

ExtendInsights is a must-have for NetSuite business users because it enables you to:

• Combine one or more Saved Searches and create multiple joins to visualize your business data on-demand.
• Run reports in the background for near real-time visibility into KPIs.
• Choose to see your data and dashboards in Excel or link to powerful BI tools such as Power BI.

CloudExtend’s ExtendInsights app has been life-changing for finance and operations at Barstool Sports. It’s so much better than CSV imports, because not only do you need to build a template, you have to map everything. When uploading data with ExtendInsights, errors don’t fail the entire import.” Jason Lerman, Director of Operations, Barstool Sports

Before implementing ExtendInsights, the team at Barstool Sports struggled with CSV imports. However, once they added ExtendInsights Excel integration to the mix, intuitive processes meant data was updated and accessed more regularly for analytics without having to drastically interrupt a workday. On the whole, Barstool Sports was able to become more data-driven than ever before.

Getting ExtendInsights for Yourself

ExtendInsights installs from the Microsoft Office store in seconds and rarely involves any training. End users can access and edit their NetSuite data directly from within Excel, allowing them to work from anywhere. NetSuite admins can rest easy knowing that roles and permissions are enforced by CloudExtend, offering accountability for CRM record updates.

If you’d like ExtendInsights, simply go to the Microsoft Office Store. Not quite ready to commit? Try ExtendInsights FREE for up to 14 days with no obligation. Get started here.