Commerce-Connections - L'Oréal Hong Kong: Google Analytics Integration

L'Oréal Hong Kong: Google Analytics Integration

Client challenge

L’Oréal Hong Kong, established in 1983 as a subsidiary of the L’Oréal Group, offers more than 20 brands of high-quality products to its customers within four different divisions.

They had identified the need for an all-in-one comprehensive dashboard to display Google Analytics data from different websites, as well as other data streams like POS sales data.

L’Oréal entrusted us with this project after their positive experience with our previous cooperation, during which we demonstrated our ability to tackle unexpected obstacles and ensure a fast deployment. In addition to that, the company was planning a long-term partnership as this project only represented the first phase.

L’Oréal needed to get Google Analytics data automatically imported into their Business Intelligence system, in order to enable the L’Oréal users to analyse performance on their BI dashboard.

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Commerce-Connections obtains the data from Google Analytics via an API integration and then translates it from json to csv, a format L’Oréal’s system can consume. Subsequently, the data is sent in csv format to the L’Oréal system.

Due to the excellent cooperation between the project team of CC and L’Oréal colleagues some obstacles we encountered could be resolved quickly and we even managed to finish ahead of the deadline.

The implementation allows colleagues across the entire organization to view and understand analytics data from their websites and eCommerce platforms.

Users can share dashboards with colleagues who can filter to their areas of interest in order to focus on data relevant for their line of work. Having this level of insight empowers users to make data-informed decisions.

BI data is mainly viewed by senior management who now receive up-to-date information and are able to respond immediately.

Currently the project is in phase one and will be developed further in the future.

Long-term, more brands and parameters will be added to allow the collation of external data from other sources into the existing format, including the integration of some legacy POS/CRM data.

“L'Oréal HK is always striving for the best. With the long-term relationship with the L'Oréal team, we work together to handle a series of digital transformation projects to drive improvement. It is our pleasure to work with such a team with true dedication and determination.”

Lawrence Geung
Managing Director, Commerce-Connections

These days, companies embracing the changes of technology have to use and analyse more and more data to help them make the right business decisions to increase efficiency.

In order to avoid being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data from a large number of sources, more and more companies are putting in place a data strategy to integrate data with Google Analytics.

Originally this process used to be time consuming since it required several people to carry out data cleansing and transfer the data from Google Analytics to their BI software. L’Oréal HK comprises over twenty different brands, and the company needs a clear overview of all data for the various brands.

For each brand’s website, Google Analytics produces data for a number of parameters, like click-through-rate, average time on site, etc. Previously, this data had to be entered manually into a file using a format which was ready to be imported into their BI system. Now that L’Oréal is using our integration service, this process is fully automated thanks to the direct connection with Google Analytics and the built-in business logic within the integration process, freeing up resources for other areas of the business.

“I will consider Commerce-Connections as a partner rather than just a vendor.”

Jeff Tan
IT Application Manager, L'Oréal Hong Kong

As it was to be expected in a project of such extent, we encountered some obstacles on the way, mainly due to company policies, Google Analytics administration rights, custom business logic, and communication with business users.

Access to administration rights and permissions is often restricted by company policies. Commerce-Connections needed to communicate with the relevant parties in order to get approval for access and permissions.

Like many multi-national companies, L’Oréal encompasses a large number of brands with different user groups in each brand, so we had to be granted Google Analytics administration rights from the different brand teams.

Each company's business flow and requirements are different, and to cope with such a scenario the integration program we developed had to have a custom business logic to fit all of L’Oréal’s existing processes. Working closely as a team with L’Oréal colleagues helped us to tackle these issues swiftly and collaboratively solve them.

Our cooperation included weekly meetings to track the project progress and identify obstacles. This resulted in not only finishing the project in time, but ahead of the deadline.

The BI software is used by senior management who very much appreciate that they can consult real-time data which enables them to react immediately.

The Google Analytics integration is fully scalable and will be extended in the future. The current project was just phase one of a long-term venture, which initially only involved data of a certain number of brands and parameters. After a successful first phase, more brands and parameters will be added. In addition to that, data from sources other than GA will be collated, e.g., POS/CRM data that will be merged with the existing GA data via our integrated solution.

We assure that L’Oréal HK will be fully supported by our know-how and commitment in all of the phases of the project.