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. So it’s no surprise that there are plentiful use cases of this technology for supporting finance and accounting teams. 

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, for example, is hosted on the cloud, 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, and exactly how powerful it can be for a finance team? We thought you might be. Check out this list of the top ten use cases. Click on your favorite—or your own top challenger—for a short video that walks you through exactly how ExtendInsights can transform your process. 

Use Cases for Accounting and Finance Teams from ExtendInsights:

• Manage Vendor Price Lists
• Return Authorizations
• Journal Entries
• Aging Reports
• Deposits
• Purchase Orders
• Financial Statements
• Manage Credit Card Statements
• Upload and Manage NetSuite Budgets
• Cash Sales

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. That’s a long process with a lot of steps, and plenty of opportunity for errors to creep into CSV imports, errors like file size, matching, translation (data), values, missing data, and non-digestible formats. 

And that’s why we built ExtendInsights. 

Never Leave Excel Again

With ExtendInsights, you never have to leave Excel, you can learn how to create easy-to-use streamlined reports and dashboards in real-time. 

ExtendInsights is a must-have for NetSuite business users. Why? It enables you to create reports and dashboards in a streamlined and easy-to-use format. Combine one or more saved searches and create multiple joins to visualize your business data on-demand to run in the background for near real-time visibility into KPIs. You choose: You can see your data and dashboards in Excel or link to powerful BI tools such as PowerBI.

“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 and as a result, were not referencing their data on a regular basis. However, once they added ExtendInsights Excel integration to the mix, the team’s processes instantly improved.

Using features like Burst Mode for large groups of data, finance and operations teams were able to cut back the time spent on imports by 50%. 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. When finance teams sign in to ExtendInsights, all of their customizations and templates are immediately available. 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 to get ExtendInsights. Not quite ready to commit? We get it. Try ExtendInsights FREE for up to 14 days with no obligation. Get started here.