Northstar Commerce— from scattered reports to one defensible source of truth.
A demonstration ecommerce Business Intelligence engagement for a hypothetical multichannel US brand selling across Shopify, Amazon, and TikTok Shop. Below is the actual working dashboard — four interactive pages, filters live, KPIs recomputing in real time from the aggregated synthetic dataset.
The problem this solves
Growth keeps happening. Nobody knows which channels and products are actually making money.
If any of these sound familiar in your business, you are the audience this engagement is built for.
Which channels are actually profitable?
Three sales channels reporting three different revenue stories. No shared view of true channel margin after discounts, COGS, and marketplace fees.
Is paid media really working?
Significant spend across Meta, Google, TikTok, and Amazon Ads. Platform efficiency and attributed vs operational revenue need consistent, honest definitions.
Stockouts or overstock?
No clean view of current available inventory, reorder points, or SKU-level replenishment risk from the raw weekly snapshots.
Returns and refund leakage
Return rates, status breakdowns, and category-level return pressure stay buried inside operational extracts — nobody notices until it hurts.
Interactive dashboard
Try the dashboard. Four pages. Live filters.
Click a page tab, change the year or channel filter, hover any chart for details. Every KPI tile recomputes against the aggregated synthetic Northstar dataset. No login, no Power BI account, no screenshots.
What each page gives your business
Four pages. Four decisions you can actually make.
Executive Overview
“How is the business performing overall?”
A single page leadership can scan in under a minute: net revenue, gross profit, margin, orders, AOV, customers, channel mix, category mix, and marketing summary — all time-filtered together, no stitching across tools.
Best for:Owners, GMs, and CFOs who need a trustworthy weekly scan without opening five systems.
Sales & Profitability
“What is driving sales and margin?”
The gross-to-net flow (Gross Revenue → Discounts → Net Revenue → COGS → Gross Profit → Margin %) made visible. Monthly net revenue sits beside gross margin %, so volume and efficiency are read together. Channel and category splits surface the margin leaders — not just the volume leaders.
Best for:Finance leads, category managers, and anyone deciding where to put the next $10K of effort.
Marketing & Customers
“How efficient is marketing — and where are customers coming from?”
Spend, attributed revenue, attributed orders, ROAS, and cost-per-attributed-order across Meta, Google, TikTok, and Amazon Ads. Monthly efficiency trend sits above platform-level ROAS. Customer counts by channel and top states show where the base concentrates. Attribution revenue is intentionally reported separately from operational Net Revenue — different measurement logic, kept honest.
Best for:Growth and performance-marketing leads tired of each ad platform claiming the same conversion.
Inventory & Operations
“What stock is available — and where is operational risk?”
An always-current view of inventory position by category, with SKU-level available-vs-reorder analysis that surfaces replenishment risk before it bites. Return rate by category and return-status breakdown turn silent refund leakage into visible operational KPIs.
Best for:Ops leads, supply-chain planners, and finance teams who want returns and inventory on the same page as revenue.
What this means for your ecommerce business
If your reports contradict each other, your decisions already do.
Most multichannel ecommerce operators have the same symptom pattern — Shopify, Amazon, and marketplaces each reporting different numbers; ad platforms claiming revenue that doesn't tie to the finance close; inventory snapshots nobody fully trusts.
Northstar is a working example of the kind of Business Intelligence foundation DataCell builds for ecommerce operators who want decisions they can defend. Human-reviewed. KPIs reconciled to the finance close. Decisions you make from the dashboard, not around it.