Barstool Sports Leveraged ExtendInsights to Reduce Time Spent On CSV Imports by Over 50%
Industry:
Digital Sports & Media
Headquarters:
New York
Products Used:
ExtendInsights for NetSuite
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 the CloudExtend ExtendInsights app, errors don’t fail the entire import.
Director of Operations, Barstool Sports
About
Barstool Sports is a digital media company that produces content focused on sports and pop culture. Founded by David Portnoy in 2003 in Milton, Massachusetts, the company’s two primary investors are The Chernin Group and Penn National Gaming. David Portnoy has described the site’s topics as “sports/smut.” The site contains a mixture of podcasts, blogs, and video series featuring company staff in what has been described as a sort of online reality show: Every office argument and personal-life development was written up and fed to a growing legion of “Stoolies.”
Background
Barstool began in 2003 as a print publication that was distributed in the Boston metropolitan area and offered gambling advertisements and fantasy sports projections, but later expanded to encompass other topics. It launched on the internet in 2007. In April 2014, AOL announced that they would be airing exclusive online content from Barstool Sports. On January 7, 2016, Portnoy announced in an “emergency press conference” in Times Square that The Chernin Group had purchased a majority stake (51%) of Barstool Sports and the site would be moving its headquarters to New York City. Chernin Group president of digital Mike Kerns appeared on the inaugural episode of Portnoy’s podcast, The Dave Portnoy Show, to discuss the acquisition. During the appearance, Kerns and Portnoy detailed the beginning of their talks, when Kerns was put into contact with Portnoy via mutual friend and former University of Kentucky quarterback Jared Lorenzen. After an initial phone call, Kerns took a private plane from San Francisco to Boston in order to have dinner with Portnoy, discuss vision for Barstool and the future of the brand, and begin preliminary talks of an acquisition.
The Challenge
Barstool Sports was using CSV imports before Jason Lerman, Director of Operations joined the company. They were trying to update a lot of data at one single time, and many members of the team found the process cumbersome. As a result, not many people referenced the data on a regular basis. There were a lot of CSV imports, going back to square one, and having to recreate the CSV from NetSuite saved searches to make sure the mapping was completely accurate. CSV imports are often wrought with errors, and Lehrman wanted Barstool Sports to say goodbye to CSV imports.
Burst Mode is a very cool feature for large groups of data. We can just let it run in the background and it doesn’t stop what you’re doing. You have the power to organize your computer desktop and you can refer back to all of your workbooks without interrupting your day.
Director of Operations, Barstool Sports
The Solution
Director of Operations Jason Lerman had worked with the ExtendInsights app prior to joining the Barstool Sports team. He immediately suggested ExtendInsights as a solution, and Barstool found a better way to update their data. Using features like burst, teams like Finance & Operations were able to cut back on the time spent on imports by 50%, and as a result, Barstool Sports became more data-driven. Making the process more intuitive empowered employees to access the data more regularly without interrupting their workload.
The Bottom Line
Many CloudExtend customers become customers for life, after trying our products that are designed to save time and resources. CloudExtend products are so easy that not a lot of training is required and implementation takes minutes. Return on investment is immediate. In addition, the CloudExtend support and training staff is available at any time to help customers as they discover new ways to automate processes. Features like the data management tool and burst upload give NetSuite users the power of knowledge. Because the product is so easy to use, Barstool has found that they use CloudExtend products more regularly and morale has improved as a result.
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