22 Mar The Vital Role of ERP in eCommerce

The sustained evolution of eCommerce has significantly transformed the way that a company can run its business. Modern on-line trading is fast-paced, rapidly evolving and never fails to surprise. Where competitiveness is paramount, operators accept the need to find new ways of expanding both their markets and operations. Its virtual nature and lean-cost model may well make all this relatively easy but, next to other suppliers, the eCommerce market leader knows that they can only achieve long term success by; streamlining processes, finding supply efficiencies, reducing costs and inventing new ways of attracting and retaining customers.

Today almost all modern companies have at least part of their business operating online and, over the last decade, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has become an essential ingredient to this. Having an integrated system that provides speed and consistency is in itself of great value but when we consider the advantages of ERP closely integrated with online sales then the overall solution offers game-changing possibilities. 

Integration of eCommerce with ERP

Successful integration between eCommerce and ERP provides front to back flow of business processes. This capability helps with the rapid transfer of information required to fulfil the demand. Information such as; sales order detail, customer profiles, stock availability, pricing, and other financial analysis. Crucially, this data exchange needs to be both instantaneous and bi-directional.  The beauty of this technology, of course, is that it’s the customer that enters the order, not the order taker. Once the order is active the system takes over; one set of keystrokes by the customer and then few or little more by the fulfilment team. By skilfully designing these steps a business can attain unlimited scalability and scope for growth.

Without these advanced functions, there is a real risk of error and poor delivery performance resulting in diminished customer experience. Traditional retailers have already seen their trade fall away and market share snatched by brighter, more modern operators. 

So if we consider the importance of bi-directional processing, not only will orders effortlessly stream into ERP but the opportunity exists to provide delivery promise data back to the customer using inventory or replenishment rules throughout the life of the order.

Where resource constraints do exist the nature of the data means that corrective fulfilment decisions can be made promptly and supply managed more confidently based on higher levels of visibility on offer.

All this leads to a business enjoying more flexibility and frees up key resources to concentrate on value-adding activity such as marketing and supply chain.

The main benefits of integrating eCommerce with ERP

• Leverage existing customer, product, sales, inventory and shipping data
• Reduce inventory cost by having better sales demand visibility
• Eliminate redundant manual entry
• Streamline sale processes from the website to the delivery
• Notify customers when orders ship
• Increase internal productivity
• Generate better financial analysis
• Manage multiple online and offline sales channels to maximise revenue and profit
• Meet tax requirements with automated tax compliance
• Allow customers to track product delivery from a single portal

Acumatica offers the greatest flexibility in ERP for the eCommerce industry. The software was built with a modular approach which allows customers to simply add new features as their needs evolve. In addition to providing the necessary eCommerce integration, Acumatica also includes several out-of-the-box capabilities in its product and customer management modules making it an ideal addition to any eCommerce system.

Acumatica eCommerce Edition combines all the elements necessary for world-class multichannel fulfillment. With Acumatica eCommerce ERP, you can manage the entire process; inventory, packaging, shipping, return, customer service and accounting all from within one workflow and dashboard.

This complete solution tightly integrates Acumatica’s Financials, Inventory, CRM, Sales and Fulfilment with most modern eCommerce platforms. This means you can promise your customers more – and then deliver!

Key benefits of Acumatica’s eCommerce edition for your business

• Reduce stock-outs and back orders. Connect with Acumatica Inventory Management to optimise your stock levels through automated replenishment. Get real-time inventory counts across your business through a website that is integrated with your ERP system.
• Speed order processing and fulfillment. Reduce shipping and packing errors by automatically printing labels and select tickets. Scan selected goods when they are in a box and confirm shipment. Integrate with UPS WorldShip and FedEx Ship stations for greater efficiency.
• Streamline returns and exchanges. Improve customer satisfaction by automating your shipping and receiving workflows. Manage returns for loans with automated reporting and quality control.
• Provide an omnichannel experience. Centralise processing by integrating the eCommerce website with backend software from Acumatica. Use a single stream for online sales, counter sales, catalogue sales, and telemarketing sales to serve a wide range of customers. 
• Offer a world-class eCommerce site. Magento, a leading provider of eCommerce web platforms, offers an open-source product used by thousands of businesses to create, customise, and scale their eCommerce websites. And these customer-friendly websites are seamlessly integrated with Acumatica.
• Gain a single source of truth. Accelerate business efficiency and make smarter decisions through automated processes, real-time data collection, financial analyses, and forecasting. No pricing for each user – the system scales with the growth of your business.

Conclusion. Acumatica is a world-class cloud ERP that provides support for eCommerce software for small and mid-sized companies. With Acumatica you can significantly improve the in-store experience and automate online sales orders. Designed with flexibility to meet the needs of a single location or multi-channel seller, Acumatica combines an all in one solution to improve the experience of purchasing and encourage repeat business customers. Acumatica’s eCommerce ERP solution provides a centralised view of your business, where you get real-time status of your orders, inventory, shipments and profitability by product and location. By providing a complete overview of your business across online sales, telesales and retail sales operations, Acumatica helps you to optimise inventory, ordering and profitability.