Corporate data refers to any data maintained by a company including but not limited to, sales, finances, customers, and suppliers. It holds a lot of information that you can use to make better business decisions and help differentiate your company from the competition. Data can be used in every aspect of your business, whether it be eCommerce, marketing or your finances you can use your data to determine next steps. In this post, we’re going to discuss the importance of clean data for your entire company and communication with your eCommerce website. We also talk about the best way to keep a backup of your important information and provide a few extra bonus tips on migrating your data from system to system.
Corporate Data and Your Business
We've discussed before a few ERP Sales Reports that are great examples of how automated reporting is important for business management. But remember that each business model is different, and you’ll need to do a deep analysis of your data to determine what information will provide a profitable return. The best place to start is by asking yourself this question: What is the problem you are trying to address? Once you know what the problem is, you can then determine which report has the correct information you need to address the issue. As mentioned above, be mindful of the fact that your data can be used in any area of your business. For example, you can look at financial reports like Income Statements to determine profit and loss, use the information on quantities of inventory in your warehouse to determine “deadstock” (product not being moved) or determine what types of customers are buying from you. You can then use this information to determine where you need to make some changes. Qualitative or quantitative, the value of data will constantly change as your business grows. Data analytics is an ongoing process, and you should be constantly thinking about the different ways to use your data.
Corporate Data and eCommerce
You may have heard of the term “clean data” before which refers to the state of your existing data. Before you even begin to design your eCommerce site, you’ll need to look at the state of your current data and if you haven’t already, find a system that has the capability to store the data needed. For many companies, data is stored in an ERP solution such as Blue Link ERP. ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning and is a software solution that manages all aspects of a company’s operations including automatically providing the data to your website or other marketing platforms and storing data received from your website such as sales orders from your customers. This communication between your ERP system and eCommerce site sounds confusing – and it is – but you can leave the confusing stuff to your vendor and integration team. Instead, focus on analyzing the data your current system is providing you and determining what information you need to feed through to your website.
The state in which your data is stored directly affects how data is passed and received from your website. For example, the information on your website may look different than the information in the ERP (field names), but the process of passing and receiving information should be seamless. Once your website is up and running and the data is flowing seamlessly, it’s now time to use the information to uncover patterns and trends that will allow you to make better business decisions and promote growth.
Keep a Corporate Data Backup
How bothersome would it be if you put all this work into cleaning your data and setting it up to use every day just for it to crash and disappear forever? Well, in order to avoid this issue, you need to ensure your data is backed up in the most secure way possible – through the cloud. The great thing about backing up your data through the cloud is the fact that your vendor is the one who is managing it as opposed to an on-premises solution where your in-house IT team would be responsible for it. A lot of companies are still unsure about the cloud but it does provide security by lessening the odds of a data breach and it was actually found that 95% of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault. At Blue Link, your data is always safe with us. Our servers are protected in buildings with biometric entrance, 24-hour surveillance, robust disaster recovery place, fire protection… and the list goes on. To learn more, visit our page: Blue Links Data Centre features.
BONUS: Helpful tips when migrating data from system to system
- Make sure you have valid data in the correct fields of your existing software
- Check for duplicate content
- Improve the quality of your data. Are you happy with the existing product codes?
- Determine if you have multiple solutions in which you will need to extract data. For example, you may have accounting systems, warehouse systems, eCommerce platforms etc..
- Remember that the cost will depend on the time it takes to migrate the data including the time it takes to clean it up
