ECommerce & ERP Integration
Integrating your eCommerce sales channels with your ERP / finance systems allows you to operate more efficiently as a business, scale internationally and reduce costs.
ECommerce integration is the coordination between a company’s eCommerce site and back-end accounting and inventory (ERP) system. Proper integration enables the flow of information bidirectionally between the two systems meaning data only needs to be entered into the system once. This results in various efficiencies such as inventory levels automatically updating at the back-end as the product is sold on the site and at the front-end as the product gets added into inventory.
While many eCommerce businesses currently have one-way integration or batch updates, true eCommerce integration is achieved by the two-way, real-time flow of data. Many businesses choose to fully integrate both systems as it means inventory and pricing information is available to customers and staff in real-time and as demand increases the need for additional staff to handle transactions is minimised.
Why Should My Business Integrate?
The need for companies to integrate their ERP systems with eCommerce is usually overlooked because of cost or the business disruption caused by having to change existing systems. But, the costs become worthwhile when you see the immediate and long term benefits it offers on your operations and customer experience.
Integrating your eCommerce sales channels with your ERP system allows you to operate more efficiently as a business. Your main types of data – order, inventory, item, customer, and shipping/tracking – are communicated between your once independent systems.
Aphix Software real-time integration products WepShop & SalesRep automatically pass data between your systems. This eliminates your need to manually enter data from one system to another. While a typical web store can operate without integration into an ERP system, businesses need to address the amount of staff time that is wasted on tedious jobs that eliminating would save substantial time and money. Manual hand-keying, updating product information and then uploading to your web-store is a known burden that many businesses face. Relying on decimating inventory across your systems by hand, or not being able to do it all, can cause you to oversell.
When these processes aren’t automated, it’s easy to make mistakes. Shipping addresses can be entered wrong. Incorrect inventory levels can lead to overselling. Product information could be incomplete, incorrect, or missing. Ultimately, your customer experience is at stake, when you don’t integrate.
What to expect with ERP Integration
If you want to be successful online and keep up with increased online demand, your eCommerce strategy should include integration to your ERP, account, and inventory software.
WebShop has the complexity to allow ERP integration, which in turn allows you to easily account for new orders and fulfil them, regardless of where the sale is made. This solution allows you to provide customers with access to their live account information. The customers can access their accounts online 24/7 which also means they can view their account information without contacting you directly. Information on order history, invoices, real-time price and the real-time stock available to them can all be checked online. When you integrate, you’ll enjoy many benefits like these listed below.
Benefits of eCommerce ERP Integration
- Reduce manual entry to save time and increase output while reducing errors, when entering an order, inventory, item, customer and shipping data.
- Streamline inventory synchronization, track updates, and provide accurate inventory levels to customers, without hiring staff to manage these tasks.
- Automatically notify customers when orders have been shipped and allow them to track the delivery of products.
- Simplify how you manage price and product changes to inventory.
- Be flexible enough to add multiple online (web-stores and marketplaces) and offline (brick & mortar) sales channels, without losing operational efficiency.
- Handle increased demand for online orders without extra resources.