HubSpot is already a useful, comprehensive tool for marketers. Not to mention, it comes stocked with built-in reporting tools to uncover insights from marketing and sales data. But despite these reporting tools, many still find the interface difficult to manage and customize, which ends up making it more challenging for users to get the insights they need from their data. In the end, many turn to Excel spreadsheets to run their HubSpot reporting.
Even then, static spreadsheets are not the best answer: Reporting processes in Excel are time-consuming and intensely manual. So why does everyone still default to Excel reporting? And perhaps more importantly: Is there a way to make it better?
Using Excel to Report HubSpot Data
Many marketers will defer to building their HubSpot reporting in Excel because of its flexibility. First, while spreadsheets might be most commonly associated with finance, many marketers and users in other departments across the organization have a broad knowledge of Excel and how to use things like custom formulas, pivot tables, and ETL (extract, transform, load) functionality, which is available with Excel’s Power Query function.
But perhaps the biggest power behind using Excel for HubSpot reporting is the ability to include data from multiple different systems in order to create a unified view of the data across systems and departments. Still, this is an intensely manual process.
Unless you choose to use integration.
The Power of Integration
Integration isn’t an indication that an original tool is lacking in and of itself. Rather, integration reflects the opportunity to make a tool even more powerful when connected than it can be alone.
This is especially true when considering integration between HubSpot and Excel. While HubSpot reporting has great capability in its own right, you may be reaching capacity on reports that can be built and hosted in HubSpot, attempting to build a report that simply isn’t possible within the scope of the native HubSpot reporting tools, or need to share a report with stakeholders who don’t have (or won’t use) a direct HubSpot login. These are perfect examples of where an Excel integration can make HubSpot reporting even more powerful.
Here are some specific examples of where you could choose to leverage HubSpot and Excel integration for the reporting you need:
Form Submission Results
Using a HubSpot to Excel integration, you can report on form submission results across multiple forms in one export. Then cross-reference the submission data with metadata on the contact record, such as state, country, or company size. Accessing this information only in HubSpot without the Excel integration involves navigating to the specific form and clicking on the submissions tab to view who has submitted a form.
View Data in Power BI
Want to pull data into visual dashboards that are easy to share across the organization? Pulling HubSpot data into Excel automatically using integration positions Excel as the perfect go-between to support data in Power BI.
Multi-Dimensional Pivot Tables
Spreadsheets are incredibly powerful tools. Excel’s multi-dimensional pivot tables allow users to analyze data across several variables simultaneously. For example, a pivot table could allow you to look at sales performance by product by region by month, a critical deep-dive into your business metrics. Pulling HubSpot data into Excel automatically via integration creates endless possibilities for parsing data.
Analyze and Merge
What happens when you need to analyze HubSpot data and merge it with other sources to get the full picture of the business landscape? That is a project for Excel. Use integration to automatically import the most recent HubSpot data and ensure the reports are as accurate and up-to-date as possible.
Consolidate Multiple Data Points
Integrating Excel with HubSpot allows users to consolidate multiple HubSpot data points into a single dashboard. Some of the data you could view in a single dashboard includes total sales, win rate, average days to close, pipeline, and projected sales.
Coming Soon to CloudExtend: HubSpot + Excel Integration
You might wonder why the CloudExtend team is talking about HubSpot to Excel integration when traditionally our focus has been on NetSuite to Excel integration. We’re glad you asked. Over the past several months, our engineering team has been hard at work expanding our integration capabilities to include more of the platforms you use every day across the organization to effectively run and report on your business. And yes, HubSpot is one of those integrations.
The big announcement won’t drop until July, but you could be first in line. Get an exclusive sneak peek with a FREE early trial!