Blend data sources

Blend data sources means you can combine data from several sources into one view or report without leaving the tool. For example, you can join ad spend from an advertising platform to sales from your shop, to see the cost of winning each order. Databox, Looker Studio and Tableau are among the tools that offer this.

Business questions rarely sit in one system. Ad costs live in one place, leads in another and revenue in a third. Without blending, someone exports each one to a spreadsheet and matches them by hand, which is slow and easy to get wrong. Built-in joins keep the report live. If your questions come from one source only, you do not need it. The harder part is that the sources must share a common field, such as a campaign name or customer ID.

• Ask how sources are matched, and what shared field is needed.
• Test a blend with your own two sources and check the totals against the originals.
• Check for limits on the number of sources, rows or joins that can be used at once.
• Find out whether the blended data can be reused across reports or must be rebuilt each time.