Simplifying the Complex Process of Data Integration, Part 4

This week in the fourth and final part of our coverage of the recent All About ROI webinar, Good Data is Good Business!, sponsored by Stibo Systems, we conclude our recap of the presentation from Simon Rodrigue, associate vice president of e-commerce for Sears Canada. Specifically, we offer up steps four and five of Rodrigue's five critical steps to data integration.

(For part 1 of our multipart coverage of this webinar, and a recap of the presentation given by Timothy Holody, COO of Seta Corp., the parent company of multichannel jewelry marketer Palm Beach Jewelry, click here. For part 2, and a look at the first two critical steps to data integration from Rodrigue, click here. And for part 3 and a look at step three to effective data integration, click here. To access this webinar on-demand, click here.)

4. Simplify your tools to enable partner adoption. “Just like when you're developing a website, when you're developing a product collection tool, provide an incredibly easy-to-use user experience for those inputting the data, namely suppliers,” Rodrigue said. He went on to list the benefits of supplier integration with data:

• reduce time to market from weeks to days by orchestrating and making the on-boarding process transparent;
• increase on-boarding capacity by a factor of 10 by providing instant feedback to suppliers upon data submission;
• reduce supplier touchpoints from 10-plus to two (initiate item data collection and capture category-specific customer-facing information); and
• collect for multiple channels to increase consistency and avoid duplicate item on-boarding.

To make a tool that's easy to evaluate the data, change the data and manage the data, reduce supplier touchpoints as much as possible, Rodrigue said. When done right, suppliers are more willing to make that investment with your brand. And it doesn't matter whether the tool is web-based, Excel-based, email-based, feed-based, etc., as long it's as easy as possible to import data.