Competitive Price Analysis: Data Quality and “Suspicious” Matchings

Jan, 30 2018 Competitive Data

Work with both completely transparent data quality in user dashboard, and suspicious matchings, in the new platform update that’s available to all Competera customers.


Competitive Data Health Dashboard

The new section in your dashboard: Data Quality

With this update, a new section called “Data Quality” appears in your Competera dashboard.


New “Data Quality” section in Competera Dashboard

In this section, the dashboard user can:

  • Quickly make sure that all of the data in their Dashboard is up-to-date
  • Find out exactly when and why their data delivery failed

The general state of collected data

Main data cards are located at the top of the Competitive Data Health section and shows the current stage of competitive price analysis.

The first card depicts the total number of products in the Dashboard, as well as the number of products added and removed during the last month. Clicking on this card takes the user to the Product Report.


Total number of products in the Competera Dashboard

The second card displays the delivery status of the data from selected stores.

On the left hand side of the card, the number of stores being monitored is displayed. On the right hand side, the number of stores with delivered to the Dashboard data is depicted. If the numbers are different then not all of the data is available for processing due to an error or a delay (read “Problems with Data” part of the post).


The delivery status of the data from select stores

The third card shows matchings with a large discrepancy in prices (“suspicious matches”) and products, where a coefficient needs to be set.


Suspicious matches card in the Competera Dashboard

The screenshot above shows an example of a notification of an unusual matching in your dashboard. However, there are no matchings with different types of packages that need an adjusting product cost coefficient.

Detailed reports

Under the cards with general information on data quality, you can find the current data delivery status diagram.


Competera Dashboard: the current data delivery status diagram

The data in this diagram is assigned one of four statuses:

  • “Fresh”: the scanning was successful and the data was received and delivered to the Dashboard.
  • If the data update process started, but the data has not yet been received, it’s assigned the “In Progress” or “Delay” status. For each campaign, an acceptable delay time is set. By default, it’s equal to one hour from the start of the scan. If this time doesn’t exceed the established indicator and the data delivery processed, then they are marked “In process”. If the waiting time is exceeds, they are assigned the status “Delay”.
  • “Errors”: assigned to data that was not delivered to the dashboard due to errors.

The following diagram in the Competitive Data Health section shows the data collection history.


Competera Dashboard: data collection history

Below, you’ll find saved reports, a retail manager’s typical tool in a Competera Dashboard.


Product reports | Competera

Data problems

If one of the monitored stores has problems with the data (when the number of errors exceeds 10%), this information is displayed in the main report of the section.

The corresponding card shows the number of stores with collected data:


Data problems are transparent with Competera Dashboard

Here, you can see that the data of only five out of the six stores is available. Clicking on the card takes the user to the settings section, where you can see which store (-s) obtained problems.


Competera: see which store (-s) in monitoring obtained problems with data quality

Other reports of the section also display problems with the data.

For example, in the “Current scanning status” report, due to the fact that the data of one of the stores is not available, more errors are displayed.


“Current scanning status” report with errors

On the “History of scanning” diagram, you can see when the problem with the data collection occurred.


Competera: see which store (-s) in monitoring obtained problems with data quality

Suspicious matchings

The third card in the section shows the unusual matchings with large discrepancies in prices (“suspicious matchings”).


Suspicious matchings report

Clicking on the card will take you to the corresponding report, “High Price Diverge”.


High Price Diverge report the product, the difference in percentage of its price, the competitor, and the date the matchings are added

This report shows the product, the difference in percentage of its price, the competitor, and the date the matchings are added. By clicking on the title, you can get to the product page on the store's website:


High Price Diverge report the product, the difference in percentage of its price, the competitor, and the date the matchings are added

In the report, the user selects the action that needs to be performed with unusual matchings:


Choose an action for unusual matchings

  • “Matching is correct” will mark the match as valid and remove the line from the report
  • “Matching error” gives the opportunity to
    • Correct the matching by specifying the correct link and option
    • Report that the product is not available on the competitor's website
    • Send a standard error report to support (click on the “Send Message” button)

    Matching error option

  • “Packaging error” makes it possible to add multiplier to the product.

    Packaging error

  • “Spider error” sends a spider error report

    Spider error

There are two filters in this report.

The first one allows retailer to cut off the price difference above a certain value.

Having downloaded procurement prices into the Dashboard, the user will receive an additional level of control. If the price of any store falls below the purchasing cost of the retailer, this matching will be marked as suspicious.

These types of product pairs can be seen using the second filter.


Additional filters | Competera Dashboard

Important: The current update is available to all Competera users, regardless of the type of plan.

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