What are the Benefits of Using Big Data in B2B Ecommerce?

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Here are five things to know about the benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce:

Big data that flows through your B2B e-commerce organization is more than just numbers. It can provide actionable insights into your business for decision-making and problem-solving.
Identifying trends and patterns in this data will generate real-time intelligence about B2B e-commerce processes such as customer service, customer retention, financial management, inventory management, and logistics.
Moving big data from separate computer systems to a target destination such as a data lake or warehouse makes it easier to identify trends and patterns in that data. You can then run big data through business intelligence (BI) tools like Tableau and Looker and generate analytics.
Moving data between data sources can be a challenge. E-commerce retailers need to be aware of data governance and data quality issues. Data integration often requires coding and data engineering knowledge, making the process difficult for smaller companies.
Integrate.io is a data warehouse integration solution that makes it easier to move big data to a target system for analytics. It can integrate data sets via ETL, ELT, ReverseETL, and super-fast CDC, helping you realize the benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce.

The world produces 2.5 quintillion bytes of big data every single day. However, this data is meaningless without insight and context. B2B e-commerce companies like yours need to identify trends and patterns from this information; otherwise, data is little more than numbers on a spreadsheet. In this guide, learn the benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce, the challenges of moving data to a target system for analytics, and how a data warehouse solution like Integrate.io streamlines data integration.

Integrate.io is the new data warehouse integration solution with deep e-commerce capabilities. Used by B2B and B2C companies alike, Integrate.io moves big data from siloed sources to a target system for deep data analysis. Integrate.io's developers have removed all the jargon usually found in data integration software, allowing users to operationalize data in a no-code/low-code environment through a drag-and-drop, click-and-point interface. E-commerce data integration has never been this easy—email hello@integrate.io to learn more about the benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce.

What Is Big Data in B2B E-Commerce?

Big data refers to all the large, often complex, data sets that exist in your B2B e-commerce organization. It can include all the data you use to carry out day-to-day tasks such as prospecting and communicating with B2B clients in your niche.

Big data in B2B e-commerce might consist of:

Contact information of B2B clients
Transactions and financial records
Documents and multimedia files
Web server logs and streaming data
Social media and email data
Sales and marketing data
Inventory management information
Employee data such as payroll information

Typically, these data sets are so large that it can be difficult to get any value from them. Big data might exist in several "siloed" computer systems that don't communicate with each other, making it difficult to operationalize and analyze that data.

Say you own an e-commerce company that sells products to other businesses. You might have contact information in a business customer relationship management (CRM), accounting and financial data in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, transactional data in a transactional database, and so on. You need all this big data to run your e-commerce business, but you can't do anything with this data because it exists in so many different systems and software programs. By operationalizing data, you can improve business workflows and generate valuable insights into your e-commerce operations.

Benefits of Using Big Data in B2B E-Commerce

There are many benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce. By combining data sources, you can generate insights into every aspect of your enterprise:

Engage With Business Customers on a Deeper Level

One of the benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce is advanced knowledge of the business customers that interact with your organization.

When you move data to a warehouse or lake and then run it through BI analytics tools, you can generate the following insights about B2B clients:

Understand purchasing trends and behaviors and how customers interact with your e-commerce organization. For example, learn which customer cohorts are most likely to purchase your products and services and at what times.
Learn the best ways to reach business customers across channels and devices. For example, discover which social media channels are most effective for customer outreach and use this information to optimize your omnichannel marketing strategies.
Discover what products and services are the most popular with business clients. You can use these insights to improve product recommendations in marketing materials and online store pages and generate more revenue from customers. Knowing which products and services resonate the most with clients can also improve upselling and cross-selling opportunities for sales and customer service teams.
Generate customer insights from BI tools that use artificial intelligence and machine learning to truly understand the business customers that interact with your brand.

Understanding your B2B customers on a deeper level through data analysis helps you improve brand loyalty, enhance customer retention, reduce customer churn, and move more clients through your sales and marketing channels. Data analytical methods like predictive analytics let you forecast future outcomes in your e-commerce business so you can improve the customer experience and provide better-quality service. The best BI tools provide intelligence about customers, such as average revenue per account, customer lifetime value (CLV), and net promoter score (NPS).

Reduce Fraud

Another one of the benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce is fraud detection. By running data through BI tools, you can detect activities like money laundering in real time and identify any fraud risks that might jeopardize your business. This process can help you verify B2B clients and prevent millions of dollars in losses.

Benefits of Using Big Data in B2B E-Commerce: Improve Inventory Management

Inventory management is one of the most difficult processes for B2B e-commerce retailers. Companies need to manage supply and demand for products throughout the year and ensure goods are available for sale when working with B2B clients. When you run data through BI tools, you can achieve the following goals:

Analyze historical and statistical data about purchasing habits and patterns and minimize "out-of-stock" situations.
Predict overstock with forecasting data and prevent losses to your e-commerce organization.
Monitor inventory levels in real-time and improve cost-effectiveness and warehouse space.
Discover your most popular products at different times of the year and optimize inventory control.

Enhance Marketing Activities

One of the biggest benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce is better marketing. When you crunch big data in a BI platform, you can discover your most effective marketing channels and methods and improve future campaigns. Here are some of the ways to accomplish these goals:

Use data analysis techniques such as prescriptive analytics to make better marketing decisions from raw data.
Segment business clients based on factors such as age, location, interests, and other demographic information for personalized marketing opportunities that increase click-throughs and conversions.
Discover the periods when business clients are most responsive to your marketing campaigns. For example, you might learn that clients are more likely to convert during the weekend.

Learn More About Your Sales Teams

BI tools produce all kinds of metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) that tell you more about the people who work in your B2B e-commerce organization. You can use data analytics to:

Discover which sales reps convert the most business clients over time.
Learn the sales techniques most likely to turn prospects into bonafide customers.
Determine which tools and technologies are best for moving clients through sales funnels.

The benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce can even expand to administrative functions such as payroll and benefits administration. BI tools can provide in-depth insights that help you streamline HR and business management tasks for more successful employee outcomes.

Improve the Online Experience

Your website or online store is typically the first thing B2B clients see when learning about your products and services. Now you can improve the shopping experience with big data and develop new strategies that keep clients on your pages for longer. BI tools can provide you with actionable data that helps you:

Reduce shopping cart abandonment.
Improve the time it takes for clients to purchase a product or service.
Make adjustments to e-commerce sites and online stores that improve the customer experience.
Add new features that increase sales and engagement.
Integrate your website with social media platforms and other channels.

Optimize Pricing

Another one of the many benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce is the ability to learn more about pricing trends in your industry. You can compare the prices of new products and services with competitors and develop new pricing strategies that increase sales. You might also use pricing data to create loyalty programs and product discounts that boost engagement and revenue.

Develop Better Customer Service Outcomes

Big data can reveal what business clients are saying about your e-commerce company on social media and review websites, helping you gauge brand perception. Use this information to identify strengths and weaknesses in your customer service strategies and improve the customer experience.

Benefits of Using Big Data in B2B E-Commerce: Get Supply Chain Insights

E-commerce involves sourcing or manufacturing products and working with partners, suppliers, and logistics partners. One of the benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce is 360-degree visibility into these supply chain processes, helping you manage the flow of goods in your network. With the latest supply chain insights from data analysis, you can:

View production, manufacturing, and distribution processes in dashboards, charts, graphs, and other data visualizations.
Reduce customer order cycle times.
Learn more about suppliers and third-party service providers.
Improve customer service.

These are just some of the benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce. As BI tools become even better equipped to handle data, you might discover new ways to grow your business, connect with customers, and generate insights about your e-commerce activities.

Integrate.io is a new data warehouse integration solution built for B2B e-commerce companies like yours. Its drag-and-drop interface makes it simple to move data from e-commerce platforms to a data warehouse or lake for in-depth analysis that powers your teams. With its out-of-the-box native connectors, you can optimize data management even if you lack coding and data science experience. Email hello@integrate.io to discover the benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce in your organization.

How To Use Big Data in E-Commerce

To achieve the benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce, you need to combine data sources in your organization. There are numerous ways to do this:

Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) is a data integration method that extracts e-commerce B2B data from different sources, cleanses the data and transforms it into the proper format for analysis, and loads it to a data warehouse like Snowflake, Amazon (AWS) Redshift, Google BigQuery, Microsoft Azure, or IBM Db2 Warehouse‍. At this point, you can run data through BI tools like Tableau, Looker, and Power BI.
Extract, Load, Transform (ELT) is another data integration method that extracts your big data, loads it to a warehouse or lake, and transforms it into the right format for analysis. ELT suits unstructured data sets that might exist in your organization, such as emails and social media posts.
ReverseETL involves moving B2B e-commerce data from a warehouse to an operational system like Salesforce. This data integration method is beneficial if your e-commerce team wants to use a particular system for analytics rather than a BI tool.
Change Data Capture (CDC) involves combining two or more databases, allowing e-commerce retailers to track changes made to those databases.

All of the above data integration methods require coding and data engineering knowledge. You'll need to build complex big data pipelines that move data between different locations and learn skills like scripting and data processing. These processes can make it challenging to realize the benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce. That's why it's a good idea to invest in a tool that automates data integration, allowing you to focus on other tasks in your company. These tools enable you to move data between sources without lots of code or programming, typically through native data connectors that do all the hard work for you.

A data integration platform can also eliminate the pain points of combining B2B e-commerce data sources. The best integration tools adhere to all major data governance principles, allowing you to move data between locations without breaking the law. You can also reduce the likelihood of data loss and degrading data quality during the integration process.

Look for a data integration platform without a steep learning curve that allows you to move data to a target system for analytics without any stress. Tools that have drag-and-drop interfaces make it easy to automate data pipelines and move data to your chosen destination in mere minutes.

Recommended reading: The Ultimate Guide to E-commerce Integrations

How Integrate.io Can Help You Achieve the Benefits of Using Big Data in B2B E-Commerce

The benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce include improved online experiences, enhanced marketing activities, streamlined inventory management processes, and better customer service outcomes. However, you need a reliable data integration tool to achieve these benefits. Integrate.io is a data warehouse integration solution that moves data between sources and a target system for analytics. It does this in a low-code/no-code jargon-free environment, meaning you don't need advanced programming or data engineering knowledge. Integrate.io's native connectors help you combine data sources while adhering to data governance legislation, helping you avoid penalties for non-compliance with frameworks such as GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA.

Integrate.io can combine data sources via ETL, ELT, ReverseETL, and super-fast CDC. Built for e-commerce, the platform removes the bottlenecks of data integration, helping you gain the benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce. Other Integrate.io benefits include automation, a simple pricing model, excellent customer service, and superior data security.

Do you want to experience the benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce? By moving data from disparate sources to a centralized target system, you can run big data through your favorite BI tools and generate insights into your e-commerce operations. Integrate.io's native connectors make data integration simple, making it a valuable tool for B2B e-commerce companies lacking coding and data engineering experience. There's no jargon or complicated programming, just a data integration solution you can trust. Email hello@integrate.io or schedule an intro call to learn more about the benefits of using big data in B2B e-commerce.

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What Are the Benefits of Using Big Data in B2B Ecommerce?

What Is Big Data in B2B E-Commerce?

Benefits of Using Big Data in B2B E-Commerce