Think about ordering something online. Your order connects to many different types of business data:

• Your customer information
• The products you ordered
• Your shipping address
• Payment details
• Inventory levels
• Shipping tracking information

Understanding how these pieces of information relate to each other helps businesses operate efficiently.

Consider a small clothing boutique:

• Each customer may make multiple purchases
• Each purchase can include several items
• Each item belongs to a specific category
• Each category has multiple items
• Each item has a specific supplier
• Each supplier provides multiple items

Understanding these relationships helps you organize data effectively in a database. In the upcoming lessons, you’ll learn how to structure these kinds of relationships in Access to support business operations.