PromoPilot - Blog , Zoho

Why Promo Distributors Need a BI Platform (and Why Zoho Analytics is a Smart Pick)

Wed, 28 May 2025 17:20:31 -0600

Let’s be honest – most distributors in print and promo aren’t hurting for data. It’s all over the place: commonsku, CRM, spreadsheets, Google Analytics, QuickBooks... you get the idea. The real problem is making sense of it all. That’s where a Business Intelligence (BI) platform steps in and savvy distributors are picking Zoho Analytics as their BI platform of choice.

What is BI?

BI is just a fancy way of saying: “Let’s take all that scattered data and turn it into something useful.” With a good BI tool, you don’t have to guess how your business is doing – you can actually see it. BI platforms connect to your many systems, combine your data, and give you visual dashboards and reports that make it easy to spot what’s working, what’s not, and what’s coming next.

Think of it like your car’s dashboard. You wouldn’t drive around without knowing your speed or gas level. BI gives you that kind of visibility into your business.

Why BI Matters for Print and Promo Distributors

Our industry moves fast. There’s a ton of moving parts: product catalogs, client campaigns, seasonal spikes, supplier delays. It’s easy to get stuck reacting to problems instead of planning ahead. The time spent simply searching for data is a time vampire. BI helps flip the script.

Here’s how:

See everything in one place. Sales, customer activity, website data, financials – you can bring it all together. No more bouncing between apps or stitching together reports in Excel.
Spot trends and plan ahead. Forecasting tools help you see where things are heading – so you can stock up before a rush or adjust before a slump.
Custom dashboards for your team and even your clients. Everyone from sales to ops can get a real-time view tailored to their job. When it comes to your customers, dashboards provide an incredible value add to savvy buyers who desire measurable success.

Why We Like Zoho Analytics

There are plenty of BI platforms out there, but Zoho Analytics hits the sweet spot: it’s powerful, but still approachable for non-tech folks. Here’s what makes it stand out:

1. Data Blending Without the Headache

Zoho Analytics comes loaded with connectors for a huge range of tools you’re probably already using. That includes CRMs like Zoho CRM and HubSpot, finance tools like QuickBooks and Xero, e-commerce platforms like Shopify, email tools like Mailchimp, and cloud storage like Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox. It also connects with SQL databases, Google Analytics, and dozens more – out of the box.

You can pull in data from just about anywhere – Zoho apps, spreadsheets, third-party tools – and it doesn’t just dump it all in one place. It actually helps you connect the dots. That means you can, for example, see how ad spend is affecting sales or track customer support issues alongside revenue.

2. Dashboards That Make Sense

The drag-and-drop builder is simple enough for anyone to use. You can set up charts, filters, and custom views without needing IT. And everything stays up to date automatically. You can even throw it on a TV screen for a live KPI wall.

Dashboards aren’t just helpful internally – they can also be a value-add for your clients. Say you’re running a gift redemption site: you could build a custom dashboard for the client that shows real-time data like how many people have redeemed their gift, how many have opted out, the status of shipments, and even a heat map of where those gifts are going. That kind of transparency builds trust.

Distributors all pull from the same supply chain. What sets you apart is how you help clients see the impact of their spend. A clean, branded dashboard makes your work visible. It shows clients their merch campaign is actually doing something – and gives them the numbers to prove it.

3. Forecasting That’s Actually Useful

You don’t have to be a data scientist to use the forecasting features. Click a button, and Zoho will project future sales or inventory needs based on your past data. It’s great for planning and avoids surprises.

But the real value of forecasting is in how it lets you stay proactive instead of reactive. Say you’re tracking sales of seasonal promo kits – Zoho can show you when demand is likely to spike based on previous years, helping you prep inventory and staffing ahead of time. Or maybe you run a print-on-demand program and want to anticipate order volume by client segment – forecasting helps you see which customers might need outreach or support before a downturn hits.

You can also run multiple scenarios: what happens if you increase email campaigns by 20%? What if your top three clients each place 15% fewer orders next quarter? Zoho’s forecasting and what-if analysis features help you model the impact of those possibilities so you can prepare with confidence.

These tools let you ask better questions, spot patterns earlier, and take action faster. For distributors juggling lots of variables, that's a serious advantage.

4. Clean Data, Less Manual Work

Zoho DataPrep (which works hand-in-hand with Zoho Analytics) helps you clean up messy data before it hits your dashboards. That means less time fixing spreadsheets and more time making decisions.

You can automatically detect and fix inconsistencies – like duplicates, formatting mismatches, or missing values – before they cause problems in your reports. It’s especially handy when you’re pulling data from different systems that don’t always speak the same language.

For example, say you're importing customer lists from three different sources and each one records state names differently – some use abbreviations, some use full names. DataPrep can flag those inconsistencies and help you standardize everything with just a few clicks.

You can also schedule recurring clean-up routines, so your data stays accurate day after day without manual effort. For promo distributors juggling lots of vendors, product SKUs, and campaign reports, this automation saves serious time and headaches. If you're interested in learning how to connect promo industry apps like Liftoff to Zoho DataPrep, check out this tutorial!

5. AI That Doesn’t Feel Gimmicky

Zia, Zoho’s AI assistant, lets you ask questions in plain English like, “What were our top-selling products last month?” and get instant answers – charts included. It’s genuinely helpful, especially for folks who don’t want to mess with filters or formulas.

Zia can also surface trends you didn’t even think to look for. For example, it might flag that a certain category of products is trending up in a specific region. Or it might point out that your average order value dipped last week, prompting a deeper look.

You can even set alerts – Zia will ping you when a key metric, like margin, jumps or drops. It’s like having a data analyst watching your business 24/7, minus the payroll.

BI isn’t just for big companies or data nerds. For distributors, it’s a practical way to get more from the systems you’re already using. It helps you make smarter decisions, move faster, and stay ahead of the chaos.

If you’re looking for a BI tool that fits the way you work, Zoho Analytics deserves a look. It’s affordable, it plays well with others, and it helps you turn your data into real, usable insight. If it's not right for you, check out Sisence, Power BI, or Tableau.

How to Import Liftoff Commerce Data into Zoho DataPrep

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 09:55:32 -0600

Zoho DataPrep is an intuitive data preparation tool designed to simplify the process of cleaning, transforming, and enriching data. For print and promo product distributors, DataPrep can import your data from various sources like CRMs, spreadsheets, databases, and even APIs – making data management much easier.

You can quickly remove duplicates, correct errors and handle missing values, saving time and ensuring data accuracy. For instance, distributors could use Zoho DataPrep to consolidate customer data from multiple platforms into a single clean data set, making it easier to track customer activity and trends across sales channels.

You can also transform and combine data to generate insightful reports or prepare imports into other platforms. By streamlining these processes, distributors can focus on growing their businesses rather than getting bogged down by data issues.

Zoho DataPrep has a free plan that you can use to get started with, and later upgrade if you need more power. If you'd like to try it, please use the button at the end of this article. It will support what we're doing at PromoPilot and you'll also get a $100 credit from Zoho that can be used for any of their apps.

Connecting Liftoff to Zoho DataPrep

As you begin to kick the tires on DataPrep, you can easily create datasets from any spreadsheets you have or by using any of their 50+ native connections. But DataPrep has a powerful feature worth exploring. With its URL connector, you can bring in data from any of your SaaS tools that have an API. To demonstrate this, let's review the process for getting Liftoff Commerce order data into DataPrep.

Note: In this brief tutorial you'll encounter some concepts related to APIs that we won't go in depth on. My goal is to get you seeing Liftoff data in DataPrep as quickly as possible. I'll show you where to click and what to put into each field to get started, but I highly recommend that you explore topics like JSON, API basics like call methods, parameters, and headers. Working with APIs does not require coding knowledge but it will elevate your no-code work tremendously!

When you first log into DataPrep, you're going to be asked to create a workspace. Workspaces hold the various datasets and rulesets imported into Zoho DataPrep.

Give your new workspace a name and then choose a data source – for connecting to the Liftoff Commerce API, we'll choose URL.

Configure the Dataset

On the connection configuration screen you are asked to provide the dataset with a name. Call it what you please – but because any Liftoff API connection is tied to a specific account (store) I recommend naming it something like "ACCOUNT_NAME Liftoff Orders" using your own account name.

Next, define your method as GET and, for Liftoff orders, we use the endpoint at https://odata.liftoff.shop/odata/v1/Order. For more information on the Liftoff Commerce API and this endpoint, visit the Liftoff Commerce developer documentation site.

Click on the Pagination. Pagination in APIs refers to the process of dividing a large set of data into discrete pages to be retrieved sequentially or based on specific criteria, improving efficiency and manageability. The Liftoff API has a maximum limit of 100 items that it can respond to your API call with. So if you have 300 orders, you would need to make 3 requests. There are a few ways different APIs can handle pagination. For Liftoff we need to configure this screen like so:

Paginate using: Offset and limit
Offset parameter: $skip
Limit parameter: $top
Initial value: 0
Limit value: 100
Number of requests: 1

We'll only make 1 request for now, retrieving up to 100 orders. Your Pagination configuration page should now look like this:

The last step to configure our connection is to provide authorization details. Accessing an API is just like accessing any of your applications. For that reason we need something like a username and password. Like pagination, APIs can use a number of methods for authorization.

Click on Authorization and choose Basic Auth as your authorization method. Provide your connection with a name – again, I like to note the account, app, and what kind of data I am retrieving. Connections are saved by DataPrep and can be used again when configuring new data sources.

For the Username, you will use your Liftoff account code for the store you wish to receive order data from. Your password will be your admin user's API key. Both of these can be found in the Liftoff Commerce admin interface. Note: The API key for the admin user must have the right permissions to retrieve the desired data from the account you are retrieving from.

Your Authorization screen should look like the image below. Click the blue Import button to retrieve your data.

Transforming Your Data

You should now have a table of data. Nice! But – it doesn't look very useful. However, if we look at the data in the second column, we can see bits of order data. We need to transform this data into something that looks more like an order report.

On the right side of each column header, there is a small down arrow. If you click this arrow, you'll be provided with a menu of the many transforms that you can perform in DataPrep. All of our order data is here in this one column on this one row – we need to first get each order's data onto its own row. Click the arrow in the value column header and choose Extract from List.

When you choose Extract from List, on the right sidebar, you'll be asked to convert the list items to columns or rows. Select Rows, and give the new column a name like 'Data.' You'll notice on the left side of the screen that DataPrep shows you a preview of your transform and it's beginning to look more like what we expected! Each order's data on its own row. But that Data column still looks weird. The data we want is there, we just need it on their own columns.

Navigate again to the transform menu of our new Data column and choose Extract from Map. In the right sidebar you are asked to select the keys to move into columns. In our Data column you may have noticed text like "Status":"Shipped". Status is the key and Shipped is the value. All of the properties for each order are in the Data column like this. To extract them, in the Key column of the sidebar, you can click into the text field and DataPrep will provide you with a list of available keys to choose from. Once you select one, you can give the resulting new column a name, click the + icon and continue selecting keys this way. As you work, your screen will look like this:

It's worth pointing out that in order to extract the billing information for the order, we need to take an extra step when defining the keys for that data. This is because the billing values are nested in the data. If we were to look at the raw data for an order, it would look like this:

Notice that for the billing information we have keys like Name, Address1, Address2, etc. under Billing. As a result, if we want columns for that billing information, when selecting the keys for that billing data we will first choose Billing from the drop down. DataPrep automatically recognizes that there are additional keys under billing and so you can now choose which key, nested under Billing, you'd like to create a column for.

After you've selected all your keys and have the preview looking how you want it, click the blue Apply button.

From here there is any number of additional transforms you could perform like find and replace, changing date formats, etc. Many of the transforms you'll find are similar to what you would do in Excel.

Saving, Exporting, and Importing Rulesets

Now, we just did a bunch of work to get this Liftoff order data looking how we want it. The prospect of having to do this every time we want to bring in new order data is daunting. Fortunately DataPrep kept track of what we were doing all along as we built out our ruleset. This ruleset can be saved as a template, and even exported from one DataPrep account into another. This makes performing the same transforms on data that is imported in the same format fast and easy. In fact, I've exported my own ruleset for Liftoff orders and you can download it here.

Conclusion

I hope that I've introduced you to a new tool that is helpful for the work you're doing at your print and promo company, and provided you with a jumpstart on how to get data into Zoho DataPrep so that you can explore all that it has to offer. If you don't use Liftoff Commerce, the same principals apply to any SaaS app with an API. Or, you can bring in Excel documents from other reports that you might have, and begin to do some of the same transforms and see what DataPrep is really capable of.

If you decide to give DataPrep a try, please click the link below. It helps support content like this, and you'll get a $100 credit with Zoho should you decide to buy.

Get Started with Zoho DataPrep