It’s clear that all CPG manufacturers should harmonize their datasets. However, this isn’t something that a company can implement overnight. Let’s go over some of the essentials required to perform data harmonization properly, starting with the main tool you need to invest in: the right software company. This partner is going to do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to the harmonization process, from moving data out of the original data sets to the actual work of harmonization. It’s important that the software has the capability to handle the following aspects:
- Managing original datasets
- Data transformation
- Scaling as your business grows
- Presentation
- Analytics
Many companies invest in software that specializes in one of these areas, only to find out that it can’t perform well in the others. This ultimately keeps data harmonization from being as useful and efficient as possible.
When the data harmonization process actually begins, the first step, is to move everything into a common database.
This is the data integration process and it has three steps:
- Extraction reads the data in the original data set
- Transformation converts the format
- Loading writes it into your new database
Then the data is centralized into one, key location. While data integration gets things physically in one place, centralization blends all the information together. This is generally accomplished with machine learning.
Another step of the harmonization process introduces new custom classifications, like those specifically for eCommerce. Think of these as the name for fields of each of your data, making it possible for you to segment/filter it in detail.
For example, say that your company was rolling out a summer marketing promotion for a new food product line, including promotions on Facebook and YouTube. On Facebook, you may have labeled the relevant data as “Summer2020MarketingRollout”. On YouTube, it might be “MarketingPlanSummer2020”.
These may all be under the same umbrella, but without a clear point of reference, it can be difficult to interpret. Therefore, you would need to change the classifications to only one so all the data could be organized together. That said, you can also introduce new classifications to filter things down even further, like “Summer2020Marketing-YouTube” and “Summer2020Marketing-Facebook”.
After this, the data is audited for any misleading or inaccurate information. This will keep a single bad piece of data from spoiling the entire set.
Lastly, everything is converted into a set of synchronized, relational data points. This means that whether the data is covering products, time, consumer segments, or geographies, all data points easily correspond to each other.
Take the next step toward data harmonization.
If you’ve been on the search to find out how to analyze data with a simple yet insightful process, look no further than TABS Analytics’ suite of tools for data harmonization. Our cohesive solution provides a holistic view of market performance in order to help you make smart business decisions.
Want to see our data harmonization tools in action? Request a demo today!
