Why Perplexity Can't Answer 'How Are My Sales?'
Search-based AI is great for public information. Useless for your proprietary data. The distinction matters.
Ersel Gökmen
December 30, 2025
Perplexity is incredible for research. "What's the average sell-through rate in fashion retail?" — it finds the answer from industry reports in seconds. But ask it "What's MY sell-through rate?" and it's helpless.
Public vs. Private Intelligence
Search-based AI (Perplexity, Google Gemini, Bing Copilot) excels at synthesizing public information. Industry benchmarks, market trends, competitor news — all valuable. But the most important questions in retail are about YOUR data: your sales, your inventory, your margins.
These answers live in your Shopify admin, your ERP, your spreadsheets. No search engine can reach them.
The Integration Requirement
To answer "How are my sales?" — the AI needs to connect to your data sources, understand your schema, respect your access controls, and run calculations specific to your business. That's not a search problem. It's a data platform problem.
Mondian solves this by connecting directly to your systems. It doesn't search the internet for your answers — it queries your data in real time.