The Vital Role of ERP in eCommerce (2024)

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 acceptthe 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 successby;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 anessential ingredient to this.Having anintegrated systemthatprovidesspeed and consistency is in itself of great value but when we consider theadvantages of ERP closely integrated with online sales then the overall solution offersgame-changing possibilities.

Integration of eCommercewithERP

Successful integration between eCommerce and ERP provides front to back flow ofbusiness processes.This capabilityhelps 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 fulfilmentteam. By skilfully designing these steps abusiness 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 abusiness enjoying more flexibility and frees up key resources to concentrate on value-adding activity such as marketing and supply chain.

Themain benefitsof integrating eCommerce with ERP

• Leverage existing customer, product,sales,inventoryand shipping data
• Reduce inventory cost by having better sales demand visibility
• Eliminateredundant manual entry
• Streamlinesaleprocessesfrom 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 inERPfor theeCommerceindustry.The software was built witha modular approach whichallows customers to simply add new features as their needs evolve.In addition to providing the necessary eCommerce integration, Acumaticaalso includesseveral out-of-the-box capabilities in its product and customer management modulesmaking it an ideal addition to anyeCommerce system.

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

This complete solution tightly integrates Acumatica’s Financials, Inventory, CRM,Salesand Fulfilment with most modern eCommerce platforms. Thismeans 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 AcumaticaInventory Management to optimise your stock levels through automated replenishment. Get real-time inventory counts across your businessthrougha website that is integrated with your ERP system.
• Speed order processing and fulfillment.Reduce shipping and packing errors by automatically printing labels andselecttickets. Scanselectedgoods when they are in a box and confirm shipment. Integrate with UPS WorldShip and FedEx Ship stations for greater efficiency.
• Streamline returns and exchanges.Improvecustomer satisfaction by automating your shipping and receiving workflows. Manage returns forloanswith automated reporting and quality control.
• Provide an omnichannel experience.Centralise processing by integratingtheeCommerce website with backend software from Acumatica.Use asingle 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 tocreate, customise, and scale their eCommerce websites. And these customer-friendly websites areseamlesslyintegrated with Acumatica.
• Gain a single source of truth. Accelerate businessefficiencyand make smarter decisionsthroughautomated processes, real-time data collection, financial analyses, and forecasting.Nopricing for eachuser–the system scales with the growth of your business.

Conclusion.Acumaticais a world-class cloud ERPthatprovidessupport foreCommerce software for small and mid-sized companies.With Acumatica you cansignificantlyimprovethe in-store experience and automateonline sales orders.Designed with flexibility tomeetthe needs of a single location or multi-channel seller, Acumaticacombines an allin one solution to improve the experienceof purchasingand encourage repeat businesscustomers.Acumatica’seCommerceERP solutionprovidesa centralised view of your business, where you get real-time status ofyourorders, inventory, shipments and profitability by product and location. Byprovidinga completeoverview of your business across online sales, telesales and retail sales operations, Acumatica helps you to optimise inventory, ordering and profitability.