Advantages of Integrating eCommerce with ERP
The demand for integrations is on the rise across all enterprise functions. The same is applicable in the case of digital commerce as well. According to Gartner, a minimum of 30 integrated eCommerce applications will be needed to provide the best eCommerce experience by 2022. With this perspective, it is easy to understand why integrating Enterprise resource planning or ERP with eCommerce is beneficial to businesses. This is because ERP contains everything from product specifications and customer details to pricing.
In simple terms, eCommerce integration is all about connecting your online shop with other business systems such as finance, accounting, order fulfillment, inventory, and shipping. This enables better coordination between front-office and back-office functions. This means integrating eCommerce with critical business systems ensures data consistency between orders, invoices, shipment, and customer as well as product information. This, in turn, boosts not only employee productivity but also customer experience. Having said that, let us clearly understand the advantages of integrating eCommerce with ERP.
Benefits of eCommerce Integration
The advantages of integrating your eCommerce platform and back-end-systems include the following:
- You can avoid manual data entry work and maintain data accuracy across customer, product, order, and shipping functions
- As it is easy to maintain consistency with respect to prices and inventory levels across systems, you will be able to provide the right information to your customers every time
- You will be able to provide a better experience to your customers across multiple channels, devices, as well as touchpoints during their purchase journey
- It allows you to offer better customer service with data such as order status, stock availability, and product, pricing available to you instantaneously
- In addition to expanding to other business models, it is also possible to sell through marketplaces or directly to consumers without upsetting the existing channels
- You can also get rid of business silos, enhance employee engagement, increase productivity, and improve overall workplace efficiency
- Further, you can scale up easily, react faster to changes in market conditions, expand to new locations, and even deploy new business models
ERP Integration Example
Imagine a pet food supply company that is expanding rapidly by setting up numerous regional warehouses and storefronts, legacy platforms, and ERPs. Hundreds of employees and customers would be logging in and accessing different web stores, disconnected systems, and self-service portals. In such a situation, managing inventory and checking fulfillment status cannot be productive at all.
ERP-eCommerce integration would enable this company to maintain product, customer, and order information in real-time. In addition, it would allow the company to bring regional operations under one back-end and cut down the time required to retrieve information and offer the best experience to its customers. Finally, it enables the company to effectively serve all its customers and maintain maximum data visibility across all channels.
Zerone Hi-Tech
Zerone Hi-Tech, a leading systems integration company, helps its customers automate their businesses by building future-ready solutions and providing cost-effective services. As Microsoft’s Gold Partner, Zerone specializes in providing ERP systems implementation, migration, and integration services to companies of all sizes in different industrial verticals.