What is data harmonization? A quick guide
Get a solid understanding of data harmonization and what it can offer consumer packaged goods businesses.
Table of Contents
Data harmonization at a glance
Why is data harmonization important?
How data harmonization enhances your business
Why your CPG company needs data harmonization software
How to choose the right data harmonization software for your business
TELUS TABS Analytics
Data is like water – it’s everywhere and it takes many different shapes. When collected and stored properly, you have a clear and easy to navigate data lake – where you can swim in incredible insight. But things get a little murky when there are formatting issues, duplicates, junk and missing data. Suddenly your crystal clear data lake becomes a stagnant data swamp full of disorganized raw data.
In a data swamp, you can’t easily see all of your raw data or make sense of it. You can’t glean good insights. So how can you clean up the swamp? The answer is simple – data harmonization.
Data harmonization at a glance
Let’s start with the basics. Data harmonization enhances the quality and integrity of your business’s data by creating a single source of truth through data processing.
How data harmonization works
Data harmonization makes your business data “analytics ready” by bringing together disparate and various data sources, verticals, file formats and naming conventions into a single database and then reorganizing it all into a single schema. Your data is gathered, organized and centralized to become visible in a single, comprehensive data view. It is customizable and your view can be automated and analyzed with dashboards.
It’s an ongoing process
Data harmonization needs to be maintained to keep your past, present and future data easy to access, understand and analyze. This includes continuously validating your data points across channels to ensure metric comparisons are accurate. It also means regularly creating new attributes to enhance analysis when new data sets and/or information is added.
Why is data harmonization important?
When well executed, data harmonization gives you a complete view of your business performance. It empowers your business with high quality data and insights that can help you win online and in store. This is incredibly valuable for manufacturers like consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies that tend to be omnichannel.
Not harmonizing data is risky business
It’s a huge challenge for omnichannel CPGs, operating brick-and-mortar businesses and online stores, to get a complete and clear view of their business performance. They need to scavenge their data from multiple sources across a physical and virtual landscape. When you gather, store and analyze parts of your data separately, you miss major connections.
Without data harmonization, business data is siloed, disorganized and inconsistently formatted. This can lead organizations to make bad decisions, lose sales and experience instability.
What data harmonization software does
Data harmonization software gives you that much needed holistic view of your business’s performance. It fosters easy data analysis and comparison across different data sets by converting them into a common standard. When used properly, the software:
Acquires data from multiple sources. Sources may include market (syndicated), consumer (research and loyalty), trade and revenue trends, account (shipments, POS sales, store level information), trade/RGM (baseline, promotion), product (master data, pricing), external (such as weather) and other (e.g. currency rates).
Ingests data. The data is gathered and stored in a combined, cleansed, centralized source.
Harmonizes and customizes data. The harmonization process includes extraction (reading the data in the original data set), conversion (changing its format) and writing (incorporating the data into a new central database). The information is then blended together using machine learning and a “rules engine”. For example, an item that has a different description in three different data sources will be adjusted to have a consistent description and performance, and will be viewable in one place.
Enriches data. Custom market metrics like productivity are used to index an item’s velocity performance to the segment or category.
Analyzes data. Analysis unlocks actionable insights by channel, brand and customized subsegments.
How data harmonization enhances your business
Data harmonization offers a lot of value for CPGs. Once you harmonize your data, you will enjoy:
Data-driven insights. More accurate data leads to clearer and more accurate insights that you can leverage to scale your business and optimize promotional dollars.
Key performance indicators (KPIs). Easier to identify KPIs by channel, brand and other customized segments help you pave a path to success.
A clear view of your performance. A simplified, consolidated view of how your products are performing will enhance your decision making.
More accurate reporting. Trustworthy data leads to better reporting that could potentially save your business a ton of money.
Centralized data. Reduced data confusion and disparate data improves efficiency and a single master database enables you to access everything you need.
Expense reductions. Data harmonization boosts your bottom line by saving your team time and enhancing the quality and usability of your data and insights.
Enhanced efficiency. Your team can work faster and focus on their priorities instead of getting lost in data silos. .
Centralized data governance. Data harmonization enables centralized data governance – a top-down model where one group or team within your organization sets and implements data governance strategy, policies and standards; monitors compliance; and ensures data quality. This approach makes adapting to major changes and shifts within your organization easier.
Discover how Scholl’s streamlined siloed data reporting.
Why your CPG company needs data harmonization software
Without data harmonization software, it’s challenging for CPGs to extract accurate and impactful insights from their disparate data. This can lead to poor analysis and questionable decision making.
CPG companies that don’t harmonize their data are operating in a data swamp. They need to collect, store and analyze their data sets on an ongoing basis from a variety of sources, including:
Retail syndicated and POS data
Consumer and shopper panel data
ePOS
Data harmonization software can do a lot of the heavy lifting and empower CPGs to make sense of their data.
How to choose the right data harmonization software for your business
New data harmonization tools are regularly introduced, so as a consumer you need to determine which tool best fits your business model.
What to look for:
When selecting a data harmonization software solution for your business, it’s important that the software you choose can handle:
Managing original data sets
Data transformation
Presentation
Analytics
Harmonization at scale
Many companies invest in software that specializes in one, but not all, of these areas. This leads to less effective data harmonization.
TELUS TABS Analytics
When it comes to which data harmonization software solution to choose, TELUS TABS Analytics ticks all the boxes. It’s a top-tier solution built for CPG manufacturers by industry experts. It’s designed to harmonize data and adapt to each company’s unique needs.
Key features
TELUS TABS Analytics enables you to:
Harmonize your data
View your business more holistically
Get started with minimal set up
Easily customize the software to your needs as you go
It empowers your business to view your data across multiple platforms, including:
QuickTABS. A user-friendly reporting tool based in Excel, similar to a pivot table but more powerful.
Account Insights. A custom data integration strategy and dashboard that integrates retailer-specific point of sale data, electronic data interchange feeds, shipment and financial forecasts.
Market Insights. A tool that uses market-level data from Nielsen, IRI, and SPINS.
Promo Insights. A dashboard that shows promotional spending analysis.
Presentation Builder. A presentation platform that allows you to present your findings internally or to your buyers using visuals.
If you’re ready to enhance your business decisions, unify data and get a clear view into your performance, it might be time to try data harmonization software.
Want more information on how TELUS TABS Analytics can help you master data management with data harmonization? Request a demo with our experts today to learn more about the data harmonization process and the unique features and benefits of TELUS TABS Analytics.
