79% of organizations claim that data democratization has improved their decision-making capabilities.
However, only 33% of businesses surveyed have a strategy in place to make data accessible to all.
So, even though businesses know how important it is to make their data accessible, they fail to implement it.
And for eCommerce in particular, making data accessible can be challenging, considering the multiple channels a business operates on. From sales to marketing to CRM, the complexity is undeniable.
In this blog, we’ll discuss how eCommerce data democratization and management can help ensure that your data-driven decisions are accurate and positively impact your bottom line.
Let’s get into it!
What is data democratization in eCommerce?
Agility is a crucial parameter in eCommerce, where customer preferences and market trends change rapidly.
Data accessibility allows teams across the organization to make data-driven decisions quickly and independently without being hindered by bureaucratic bottlenecks or reliance on specialized data analysts
This autonomy is crucial for eCommerce businesses to capitalize on fleeting opportunities and respond to emerging challenges proactively.
With broad access to relevant data, teams can easily analyze real-time insights and find actionable opportunities.
For example, a merchandising team could use up-to-the-minute sales data combined with customer behavior analytics to adjust product assortments or pricing strategies. This responsiveness allows them to improve inventory management and deliver personalized experiences that resonate with customers.
Moreover, data accessibility creates a culture of data-driven decision-making, encouraging teams to base their actions on factual insights rather than assumptions or gut feelings. This data-centric approach minimizes risks and reduces biases, as decisions can be backed by verifiable data points.
Why Data Accessibility Matters in eCommerce?
Let’s discuss how accessible data helps eCommerce businesses improve their sales and operations:
1. Taking insight-driven actions with autonomy
Data accessibility equips eCommerce teams with the autonomy to analyze data and extract insights independently, accelerating decision-making processes.
With self-service access to relevant datasets, teams can quickly identify trends and respond to market dynamics without relying on IT or data specialists.
For instance, your marketing team could use real-time customer behavior data to dynamically adjust ad targeting and campaign strategies, optimizing engagement and conversions.
2. Enabling cross-functional data integration
In eCommerce, data often resides in silos across various functions, hindering a comprehensive understanding of performance and customer journeys.
Making data accessible allows eCommerce businesses to integrate and compare data from multiple sources, enabling cross-functional collaboration and holistic decision-making.
Let’s say you’re an online retailer. With Graas, you can create custom dashboards by combining customer data, inventory information, and marketing campaign performance to identify opportunities for personalized promotions or optimized fulfillment strategies.
3. Improving data security and governance
Traditional data silos can pose security risks due to limited access controls and inadvertent data sharing.
For example, if you’re using spreadsheets to analyze your data, there’s always a risk of errors with multiple people handling it. Even if the data of one cell is changed by mistake, the analysis might give you a completely false insight. However, with platforms like Graas that integrate data directly from the source, there’s no risk of errors.
Data accessibility, when coupled with robust governance measures, which Graas does effectively, ensures that only authorized individuals can access specific data sets. This mitigates the risk of data breaches or misuse.
eCommerce platforms like Graas implement granular access controls, data masking, and auditing mechanisms to safeguard sensitive customer and financial information while enabling authorized teams to leverage the data they need.
4. Enabling cross-functional alignment and collaboration
Success in any business, let alone eCommerce, depends on how seamlessly your cross-functional teams collaborate, as teams from marketing, product development, logistics, and customer service must work together to deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Providing shared access to data creates a collaborative environment, enabling teams to align their efforts based on a common understanding of customer behavior, operational metrics, and market trends.
For example, a fashion eCommerce brand could leverage accessible data to coordinate product development, inventory planning, and targeted marketing campaigns, ensuring a cohesive and customer-centric approach.
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How can data management help make eCommerce data accessible?
Now that we know how crucial it is for eCommerce businesses to make their data accessible, let’s find out how you can go about it with proper management:
1. Manage data from multiple sources
Data in eCommerce flows in from many sources, including sales channels, marketing platforms, customer databases, and more. Integrating and consolidating data from these disparate sources can be a challenging task, as each channel may provide reports in different formats, structures, and terminologies.
Running analyses on siloed data sets will not yield a comprehensive overview of the business, making integration an indispensable step for data democratization.
AI-based eCommerce platforms like Graas offer a seamless solution by automating the data integration process without any human intervention.
These platforms ingest data from various sources and intelligently convert it from heterogeneous to homogeneous formats, ensuring consistency and alignment.
For example, if your definition of revenue is sales after discounts, the platform will automatically calculate revenue accordingly rather than relying on the total cost of products sold.
2. Ensure data accuracy and completeness
Data accuracy and completeness are paramount for effective decision-making, and data management is crucial in ensuring these qualities.
Traditional manual data integration and transformation processes are prone to human errors, potentially leading to inaccurate or incomplete data sets. However, with AI-based eCommerce platforms like Graas, the entire process is automated, eliminating the risk of human errors.
These platforms directly integrate data from the source systems, ensuring that the data being analyzed is complete and up-to-date.
By automating the data ingestion and transformation processes, these platforms maintain a single source of truth, reducing inconsistencies and enabling widespread access to data across the organization.
Accurate and complete data is crucial because it enables teams to make well-informed decisions based on reliable insights. By eliminating the need for manual data wrangling, teams can dedicate their efforts to analyzing data and extracting valuable insights instead of spending time on data preparation tasks.
3. Optimize data security and compliance
Data security and compliance are critical considerations in the eCommerce industry, where sensitive customer information and financial data are involved.
Effective data management plays a crucial role in optimizing security and compliance measures, allowing organizations to make their data accessible while maintaining strict safeguards.
AI-based eCommerce platforms like Graas implement robust security protocols, such as role-based access controls, data encryption, and auditing mechanisms. These measures ensure that only authorized individuals can access specific data sets, mitigating the risk of data breaches or misuse.
Additionally, these platforms facilitate compliance with industry regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), by providing tools for data anonymization, masking, and secure data handling.
By integrating data management and security measures, eCommerce businesses can confidently facilitate data access, improving collaboration and data-driven decision-making while maintaining the highest standards of data protection and regulatory compliance.
4. Leverage data for actionable insights
The ultimate goal of making data accessible is to provide teams with actionable insights that drive business growth and success.
AI-based eCommerce platforms like Graas leverage advanced analytics capabilities to extract valuable insights from the integrated data, providing teams with real-time, data-driven recommendations.
For marketing teams, these platforms analyze campaign performance, customer behavior, and market trends to recommend actionable strategies for increasing conversion rates and average order values. These insights extend to granular levels, such as optimizing ad creatives and targeting for maximum impact.
On the business front, these platforms help identify in-demand products, popular geographical regions, and emerging trends, enabling informed inventory management, product development, and market expansion decisions.
By continuously monitoring data streams, these platforms can identify potential threats and opportunities proactively, allowing businesses to stay ahead of the curve.
With democratized access to these actionable insights, cross-functional teams can align their efforts, collaborate effectively, and make data-driven decisions that drive growth, improve customer experiences, and maximize profitability.
Book a demo with Graas today to experience how AI-driven data democratization and management impacts your eCommerce business.