What are eCommerce Business Intelligence Services? Why Do We Need Them?

Actionable insights in a business require agile responses to get what the business needs.

Business intelligence is all about knowing or collecting all the actionable insights from different sources, and responding to them in order to meet the targets of the business.

There are basically 4 action-demanding dimensions within any eCommerce business-

• Sales
• Online Public Interaction (Ecommerce: Chatbots)
• Logistics
• Inventory management

In the case of eCommerce business, we get public interactions happening via chatbots and need to take actions as per the query generated by the users over it. Now, when we know the action-demanding dimensions, let us move on to what business intelligence has to do and then the reasons to use business intelligence software, especially in the case of an eCommerce business?

What does business intelligence do?

A business intelligence tool would help in collecting data from different dimensions using internet connectivity and would represent in a highlighting manner the areas that demand actions in specific priority order.

Just suppose, we got-

1. A request from Sales automation with the last date to take action was mentioned with it.
2. In parallel, we get 2 chatbot queries to answer that require a real-time response or it would be a loss of 2 potential users who have shown interest in our business.
3. In addition, there was an alert notification from the inventory management software generated last week, which is not yet responded to as it has to be.

Now, what business intelligence does here-

It would prioritize the actions required in order and highlight the action demands with colors or in any manner that would make it easy to comprehend by just seeing. For example-

• Chatbot queries- Red-colored, as they need to be responded to immediately.
• Sales automated request- Orange colored, as it has a date to expire on.
• The notification of Inventory management could be green colored.

The red color is defining the urgency however, the green color is for those that have leverage or are less important.

What does business intelligence do in an eCommerce business?

E-commerce is a sector that has 3 ground-level aspects that demand actions. They include digital marketing, the tech-end for website improvisation, the designers for more interactive infographics required within eCommerce software solutions, etc.

Having such challenging as well as, result-influencing aspects on the side, business intelligence becomes even more important as it would never let the website down because of usual reasons. It will make sure that the traffic of the website stays in the range, alerts for any need to escalate the range of the users can be present in the website or for any page that might be facing issues on being loaded, etc.

Business intelligence would ultimately help eCommerce businesses realize their deficiencies before they start getting affected due to the same.

What are different Business Intelligence Services/functions?

1. Reporting & Managing
2. OLAP (Online Analytical Processing)
3. Data Mining
4. Benchmarking
5. Margin analysis

• Reporting & Managing

Business intelligence is not just about collecting data, but it is more than setting them in priority order.

Business intelligence in an eCommerce business is about extracting relevant insights by using the required tools to gather data from different sources. Once the data is collected, we can spot business problems with the help of BI and manage them using reports generated by it only.

Inventory reports, Sales reports, Marketing reports are easily manageable and created with the help of BI.

• OLAP (Online Analytical Processing)

Business intelligence is often confused with analytics. However, it is completely an aspect of another time frame.

BI helps in predictive forecasting but has a thin line that differentiates it from analytics.

That means the analytics and insights are used to predict the future by using the data of what has happened in the past. However, business intelligence is all about using the same data to solve problems or fulfill probable demands that were generated meanwhile the operations.

However, we have things within the eCommerce sector that are worth being analyzed, and they are-

1. Customer interaction rate
2. Website’s bounce rate (of each page)
3. Customer retention rate
4. Public review & testimonials, and much more.

You may hire an eCommerce software development company to get such an eCommerce website solution, that has all the sc

• Data mining

Collecting data isn’t all that is needed. The collection of data is useless unless it is organized in a pattern as per its use. Thus, data mining is one of the main functions of BI in the case of eCommerce.

• Benchmarking

Benchmarking becomes easy with business intelligence tools as we can compare data metrics to the available industry standards without investing much time in the traditional process. It is done to compare costs, time, and quality between different companies and departments within the same industry.

• Margin analysis

When you want to figure out the profit generated separately by each of your products, a business intelligence tool would help in doing margin analysis.

It will help look into the data about profit margin and in fact, the entire process can be seen, of how the margin is applied over various entities including accounts, locations, channels, etc.?

With BI tools, you, as an eCommerce business owner could focus more on your potential clients and customer areas.

Stats on Business Intelligence in E-commerce

The explosion of online shopping provides e-commerce companies with an opportunity but not all businesses will be able to rise to the occasion.

However, even the most successful e-commerce businesses are already facilitated by BI in some dimensions.

1. Decision-making

Business Intelligence allows e-commerce businesses to make decisions based on statistical facts, rather than guesses. For example, a company could see how many customers abandon their cart and analyze data to understand why.

2. Revenue Generation

BI gives access to sales trends based on customers’ preferences, reactions to promotions, online shopping experiences, purchasing behavior, and other patterns and trends that impact sales. All of this information can help e-commerce stores maximize revenue.

3. Operational Efficiency

Business intelligence looks at all types of data and can help e-commerce businesses uncover errors and quality issues that result in lost productivity in sales, customer attrition due to call center dissatisfaction, higher bounce rates, and so forth. This data makes it easier for companies to uncover and fix bottlenecks.

4. Gaining a Competitive Advantage

Data helps companies understand what strategies work and what doesn’t. Using reports and benchmarking, e-commerce businesses can uncover opportunities for improvement, providing them with a competitive edge.

Why do we need Business Intelligence in Ecommerce?

BI is all about accumulating the data available and processing it with the objective of supporting strategic decisions. By providing data-driven responses, it can help eCommerce businesses especially to take even better and customer-friendly actions.

It would be wrong if one suggests that business intelligence is for large-scale enterprises only. However, it can be implemented by any organization to comprehend the marketing, as well as Sales, and other data-developing dimensions of a business.

Once you successfully deploy business intelligence into an organization, it brings competitive opportunities to your organization. The only thing it requires is adequately trained employees. If you also desire to move parallel with smarter organizations, make sure you involve an adept enterprise software development company with adequate experience in implementing BI with the business solution.