Enterprises have largely caught on to the potential of  Big Data analytics,  but the complexity of digesting and interpreting data has left many small companies out of the loop. Toronto-based startup Vantage Analytics, Inc.  just raised $1.1 million in seed capital to fund its effort to deliver a suite of modules for Shopify Inc.’s popular e-commerce platform that makes the most common and useful reporting metrics accessible to the average human.

Vantage has broken down the analytics task into bite-sized chunks. The year-old company’s cloud-based suite provides built-in connectors for popular relationship management systems, shopping carts and other common business services. Once the data is ingested, the reporting system spits out metrics such as average order size, retention rates and consumer demographics. Users can export the results into more heavy-duty applications for further processing.

A lot of companies are chasing this market. Vantage says it will seek a price point that’s  attractive to typical brick-and-mortar retailers. Pricing hasn’t yet been announced.

The new funding was led by Real Ventures, the self-proclaimed largest and most active seed venture fund in Canada, which contributed $500,000 of the total. The rest came from a group of angel investors that includes former PayPal executive Darrell MacMullin, serial entrepreneur Greg Wolfond and PBX Innovations AG.

Vantage said that the funding will be used to bring in more talent and accelerate development. According to co-founder Aran Hamilton, the first item on the checklist is to expand product support beyond Shopify to other e-commerce platforms such as Magento, Volusion, and BigCommerce.

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