“Know More and Sell More”
I am not saying this, but rather this is the latest tagline of all new Magento Analytics which is currently the buzzword in the market. Magento acquired RJMetrics Cloud Data Analytics platform and the news has been published this August through a Press Release. Magento is claiming that with this new technology you as a merchant will understand your customer, website performance and merchandising in more in depth.
Anyone who knows about a bit of Business Intelligence knows that BI Tools fetch data and show trends in a Graphical Format, like two dimensional reports and dynamic dashboards. I did bit research on RJMetrics and finds out that it can show amazing things for an organization like:
- Analysis of Growth, from Customer Acquisition, Growth in Conversion Rate to Growth in Loyalty Programs
- Analysis of Abandon Carts and Churns, if a customer abandons shopping cart or churned after visiting a page, understand the behavioral trend based on which this is happening
- Analysis of Advertising Channels, which bringing more new and returning customers
- Analysis of revenue, product, country, region, category, customer group and many other factors to consider
- Email List updation based on customer purchase behavior
- Volume and Period Sales on Holidays detailed analysis on performance
- Order Fulfillment metrics, which type of product’s order fulfilled quickly, which one is taking time. This can be based on Product, category, region from which it is ordered, etc.
So you will get many reports, dashboards to show you Trend, Dynamic Data showing Purchasing Behavior, etc., but have we consider the fact that the data shown might not be correct!
Let’s understand this, Magento Analytics, delivered by RJMetrics- Story of missing data
I am not saying that Magento Analytics will have less capability, obviously this must be an awesome tool and I recommend everyone to take a trial at least and check it in detail. But please understand, any BI Tool needs proper data to show the 360 Degree view of a business. 360 Degree view can only be achieved if data of the ERP system used in that organization be synced and available to eCommerce and moreover to Analytics tool to show accurate reports and dashboards. Below are few examples:
- Customer Acquisition – Analytics will show only Customer Acquired in eCommerce, while if ERP Customers data be updated in eCommerce, it can show customers who might get acquired in an event or through other offline means.
- Loyalty System – Analytics can show accurate data of Customer Loyalty if it can get Loyalty Data from POS Systems as well and most often POS systems are integrated with ERP, like iVend for SAP B1, Lightspeed for NAV.
- Analysis of revenue – This type of reports and dashboards can show more accurate data if Offline Orders placed through email/phone get synced to eCommerce. This scenario often exists in B2B.
- Order Fulfillment – All Order Validation Checks, Shipment & Pick Pack, Invoicing is mostly done in any organization within ERP, so if ERP is not integrated with eCommerce, then there might be chances that some Order Fulfillment Data are not accurate within the Analytics.
So above are just some examples that though BI tool can help to get business insights, but if your systems are not connected, then the data source of DI might contain incomplete data and thus might show incomplete reports/dashboards.
APPSeCONNECT Magento Integration with SAP Business One ERP
APPSeCONECT Magento Integration with SAP ECC ERP
APPSeCONNECT Magento Integration with MS Dynamics NAV ERP
Source – RJMetrics , Magento Products Analytics
