E-commerce is a modernized way of selling products at relatively lower costs. It has changed the way in which enterprises do business and communicate with their consumers. For almost every type of retailer, putting an online store has become a need. The online stores offer various benefits for retailers, as well as customers. However, maintaining an online storefront can become a huge, and arduous stress for retailers, if the storefront is not integrated with their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.
The Reason Behind Integrating E-commerce With ERP?
Usually, businesses overlook the need for integrating e-commerce with ERP due to cost or business interruption caused by having to modify current systems. However, when you see the effect of this integration on your operations, as well as customer experience, the costs seem to be worth it.
When you integrate e-commerce sales channels with your ERP system, it enables you to function even more competently as a business. The key types of data, such as shipping/tracking, order, customer, item, and inventory are all linked to your independent systems.
There are some types of integration, which pass this data between your systems automatically, thus eliminating the need to enter data from one system to another, manually.
Hand-keying the sales orders into ERP is a painful and time consuming process. It involves a lot of hassles in updating product data in Excel, and then uploading to the web store. If you are dependent on reducing inventory in your systems manually, or not able to do it all, then it can cause you to oversell. There are a lot of chances to make mistakes as these processes are not automated. Some of the common mistakes include:
• Wrong shipping addresses
• Incorrect inventory levels
• Missing, incomplete, or incorrect product information
In short, when you dont integrate e-commerce with ERP, you put your consumers experience, and your business at stake.
Also read “How Cloud Technology Help Your Ecommerce Business To Scale And Handle Global Expansion“
Benefits of ERP Integration with an E-Commerce Storefront
Here are the seven major benefits of integrating your e-commerce storefront with ERP system:
1. Reduces Data Redundancy, Human Involvement, and Error:
2. Reduces Operation Costs:
3. Increases Internal Productivity:
4. Reduces Inventory Cost:
5. Increases Customer Satisfaction:
6. Generates Financial Reports in ERP:
7. Better Control of your Business:
You can also read 5 Benefits of eCommerce Mobile Applications
The main benefits of integrating e-commerce store front with your ERP are as above. Now, it is time that you comprehend these benefits and adopt them for the success of your business. As a whole, availability of precise, and up to date order and consumer information makes it easier to deliver a good customer service.