The holidays are coming, the most wonderful time of the year for a retailer’s bottom line. Sales abound and consumers buy with near reckless abandon: In 2022, shoppers spent $1.12 trillion online during the holiday season. Here in the US, 196.7 million Americans did holiday shopping in-store and online during Cyber Week alone. If you haven’t started working on your holiday sales and communication plans, you risk starting the 2023 season on a back foot. 

For some, the mere thought of managing holiday sales with constant pricing updates and email communications even with the help of NetSuite puts a damper on jolly spirits. 

But what if you could work in the familiarity of Excel and your email inbox and still run bulk pricing adjustments, inventory management, and even automated communication tracking for all your holiday sales? 

Using just email and Excel, you could have a significant advantage over other retailers this holiday season, whether you operate online, in brick-and-mortar locations, or both—especially during high-demand periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Here’s how.

Manage NetSuite Data and Updates from Excel with ExtendInsights

Excel integration via ExtendInsights empowers users to update, track, and analyze NetSuite data from the comfort of Excel, leveraging NetSuite as the single source of truth. 

Bulk Price Adjustments
One of the biggest advantages of ExtendInsights is the ability to adjust prices quickly. During holiday sales, businesses frequently change prices for big events and promotions. Using ExtendInsights, users can mass update prices across multiple items and add promo codes, reducing the time and potential for error as compared to manual adjustments.

Inventory Management
Product demand can be unpredictable at best during holiday sales events. ExtendInsights lets you quickly review and adjust inventory levels, ensuring that the most current information is reflected in NetSuite. This helps avoid both over- and underselling.

Sales Forecasting and Analysis
Importing sales data into Excel allows for advanced analysis and forecasting. This is particularly valuable when preparing for peak holiday sales periods to ensure adequate stock levels and make informed purchasing decisions.

Bulk Order Processing
With an influx of orders during peak holiday sales periods, processing can become a challenge. Using ExtendInsights, businesses can efficiently handle and update orders in bulk, ensuring faster processing and shipment times.

Track Customer Communications and Improve Service Right from Your Inbox

Visibility into important communications is crucial to a successful customer experience, especially during holiday sales. Using ExtendSync with Outlook or Google Workspace for NetSuite, your teams can automatically connect emails and files to NetSuite CRM records from inboxes with a single click. 

Email Communication
As the volume of customer communications increases during holiday sales periods, ExtendSync ensures that every email—be it an order confirmation, query, or credit memo request—is captured and attached to the relevant record in NetSuite. This centralized storage means that all team members have a full view of customer communications, reducing misunderstandings and improving service quality.

Efficient Customer Service
Customer service teams often get inundated with requests and queries during big sales, and especially during the holidays. By integrating Outlook or Gmail with NetSuite, service representatives can quickly access customer records, order details, and previous interactions. This integration reduces response times, improving customer satisfaction.

Managing Returns
Especially after Black Friday and other holiday sales, there’s a spike in returns and exchanges. Email communications related to these returns—often containing crucial information like credit memos—can be attached directly to customer records in NetSuite using ExtendSync. This streamlines the returns process and ensures that credits are issued promptly.

Email and Excel: The Best-Kept Secrets to Easy Holiday Planning

By integrating tools like ExtendInsights and ExtendSync with NetSuite, your business can achieve a seamless flow of data between your primary ERP system and the tools your teams use daily. This integration becomes especially crucial during peak holiday sales periods, where efficiency, speed, and customer satisfaction can make the difference between a successful sales season and a missed opportunity.

Take a deeper dive into successfully using email and Excel integration for all your holiday sales tracking and update needs in NetSuite in this free, on-demand webinar, “Unwrap Your Best NetSuite Holiday Season Yet.” Listen in while there’s still time.