In our last blog, 5 Reasons to Add Emails to NetSuite, we covered the challenges surrounding getting comprehensive and accurate information into the NetSuite CRM, along with five major reasons every organization should address to ensure that emails, files, and events integrate with NetSuite. Any organization or user of a CRM, such as NetSuite, knows it can only be as good and accurate as the data in the system. Despite this, it’s often a struggle to ensure the information in the CRM is complete and up to date. The reasons for this are wide-ranging, including time constraints, difficulty working within the UI, lack of integration with other applications, accessibility, and user adoption. If it takes a long time or requires a lot of steps to add data to the CRM, users largely will not do it. Business users in sales, marketing, customer success, finance, and other departments, often have multiple priorities competing for their time and attention, and data entry typically is not high on the list. 

There are several ways to change this and ensure that NetSuite becomes, or remains, the single source of truth within your business. This blog outlines some of the steps companies can take to get started and ideas on how to keep employees in the company involved.

1. Communicate the Value of Adding Data to the CRM Early and Often

The NetSuite CRM should be the foundation of essential decisions that get made at the organization every day. Communicating this with users in the business initiates the process of making them part of building that accurate repository of information. Admins or CRM managers could start by sharing the duration required to complete a particular process without the necessary information in the CRM versus how much faster and easier it could be with integrated information. To gain buy-in, business users need to see how their daily tasks can be improved by taking part in integrating emails with NetSuite, along with events, files, and more.  

Depending on the size of the company or the stage in the journey to improve CRM data, NetSuite admins can take on the project themselves or appoint a cross-functional committee to share best practices regularly and monitor the progress and data quality.

2. Set Up Processes to Ensure that the Data is Accurate and Complete

Once a committee or an administrative group is set up, there are multiple measures and checks that can be put in place to help enhance NetSuite CRM information. One example is naming conventions; this can apply to how the company, campaign, opportunity names, and more, are recorded in the CRM. This allows users across the business to work faster by quickly glancing at data to understand immediately what it references. It also helps prevent duplicate data by creating a standard for data entry that can be checked before adding new data to the database. 

Another example is utilizing a mechanism to append data in the CRM. This could come in multiple formats, an internal person or team dedicated to finding more information about companies or contacts, or if budget allows, a technology or service that integrates with the CRM and checks for missing data, such as job titles, industry, sub-industry, or company size. 

Finally, regular checks for duplicate data are essential to maintaining the hygiene of the database. This can also be done internally or through integrated technology. If the inverse is true, where not enough data is added, such as a large company that should have a lot of contacts, but only has one or two, this is a good indicator to check in with business users across the company to find out why they are not adding more information or activity to the CRM.

3. Automate Tasks to Make it Easier to Add Data to the CRM

Often employees at a business spend the majority of their day working in applications other than the NetSuite CRM. For the marketing team, it could be a marketing automation platform, for sales it could be the email inbox, and for finance, it could be Excel or another BI application. Requiring different departments to move out of the application(s) they typically work in can decrease productivity and create inefficiencies in their daily tasks, especially when adding or editing contacts, accounts, and information into the CRM is manual. If doing that is a slow process, then making sure emails, files, and events get added would be even more unrealistic. 

There are multiple options to make this easier for users. CloudExtend offers a solution that integrates Google Workspace and Microsoft Outlook with NetSuite: ExtendSync. This application allow users to add emails, events, and files to NetSuite directly from their inbox, eliminating the requirement to navigate to the NetSuite UI. ExtendSync includes Autopilot 2.0, which takes email communication based on an entire thread or contact and automatically syncs it to NetSuite. This allows users to work much faster and ensure that all important information makes it into the CRM.

4. Consider Incentivizing All-Stars

Once steps to ensure data is more comprehensive and accurate have taken place, companies can consider adding incentives to users who help champion the standards. A leaderboard can be created to track the number of contacts, emails, accounts, or events added by individual users. Our team at CloudExtend has our own leaderboard and metrics to track usage within our business.  

Another option is to have monthly, quarterly, or annual contests to get users in the business excited about taking part in this business goal. A recognition program could also be created to drive up usage among business users.

Integrating Emails with NetSuite to Improve Data Accuracy

There are numerous reasons to make the hygiene of your CRM data a big priority for your business. It not only enhances your investment in NetSuite, but it also improves productivity and efficiency across the whole organization. If users in your company would like to be able to automatically add emails, files, events, contacts, and more directly to NetSuite from their inbox, try ExtendSync for free today.