This blog is paying attention to analyzing the problem and indicates 5 helpful tips that medium to large-scale enterprises must need to address issues related to controlling its resources during the digitalization on the eCommerce platform.
Contents
An overview
Compared to large firms, there are not many management tasks for small-sized online shops on eCommerce platforms. Because the main things that those stores have to focus on are several steps to build a store and some useful strategies to promote the brand.
However, running eCommerce successfully is a significant matter for large companies. The advantage of big corporations is the name and the reputation. But it also has to confront a huge obstacle of controlling all the resources effectively. There are thousands of orders, customers, products information, and processes occurring when having the brand goes live on eCommerce. All of those data need to be gathered and allocated in a consolidated manner.
It is obvious that humans can not proceed with the “data forest” without errors and sufficient numbers. Thus, the invention of eCommerce integration is a key to solving that problem and to helping your business improve digital performance by automating all processes and data entry.
Map out all of your eCommerce processes
In front of a mess, it is hard to know where to start optimizing the online business processes. Mapping out each process will help you identify the “hole” that needs to be fixed. From there, bring automation technology in to change and improve working efficiency.
In terms of the customer aspect, you need to visualize your customer personas, their needs, and wants.
Identify the pain points of your eCommerce
In this section, the article wants to emphasize the inconvenience of having to manage 2 types of business (traditional and digital) without synchronization from technology solutions.
A common pain point for traders on eCommerce platforms is that inventory data is not integrated in real-time. For example, the actual quantity of goods may be out of stock but the quantity has not been updated on the exchange.
The second difficulty is not synchronizing customer and order information. This means that although the e-commerce platform aggregates and allows us to store order and customer information in a file that can be downloaded to the computer as a CSV. However, manually entering and classifying these two fields of information into a common system of enterprises is not simple.
Next, the online delivery process is also quite cumbersome because there is a need for employees to monitor the delivery progress and work with delivery partners. And sometimes the delivery partner comes to pick up the order too late just because the information data on the systems do not match.
Not only that, but it also becomes difficult to calculate the company’s revenue, loss, and profit in a month. Accountants have to make separate spreadsheets for two different types of business models: in-store business and e-commerce business. Thus, the possibility of errors is very high, and the business owner does not have a comprehensive view of the business situation in each quarter.
It can be seen that everything seems to be very fragmented, a large enterprise inherently has too much information to process. Receiving a large amount of information from the e-commerce platform inconsistently; will only make the movement cumbersome; performance is not as expected.
Understand ERP and eCommerce Data Flows
ERP functions as a central database, supporting all the essential modules of the business, including sales, marketing, finance and accounting, human resources, and logistics at all levels.
E-commerce is a selling channel that attracts customers and receives new orders. When the two applications are integrated, essential data is automatically transferred.
Some types of data that will be shared between the ERP and eCommerce systems are:
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- Product Data: All the product information like product names, SKUs, prices, and descriptions.
- Customer Data: Customer information like names, gender, age, addresses, the preferred payment.
- Delivering Data: Shipping logistics, order status, and bill of lading information
- Inventory: Up-to-date inventory information, quantities, and lead times must be coordinated and synchronized.
- Order/Invoice Information: order/invoice history, current order/invoice status, status on sales and purchase orders, and payment information.
- Taxes Information: Tax codes, rules, and rates.
- Banking data
Identify Which Resources your eCommerce need
This topic is quite broad, there are dozens of things you have to prepare to build a successful e-commerce business.
But a few things you cannot ignore are knowledge, technology, and the consulting team.
The e-commerce market in recent years, especially through the last pandemic season, has witnessed explosive growth. The potential of the worldwide e-commerce market tends to grow explosively. As of 2024, retail sales will be about 6.388 billion US dollars. To catch up with this trend, we should also have a deep enough knowledge about it to understand the pros and cons and what we should be prepared for.
The main resource required when you want to implement digitalization is Technology. Technology includes both software and hardware. In terms of software, you will choose which e-commerce platform to start building your store. Not stopping there, you also need to consider management software that integrates with a variety of third parties to optimize management work as well as customer experience. On the hardware side, your company may need to think about POS hardware kits to connect point-of-sale and automated applications.
Select an Integration Solution Provider
The integrated system can be said to be quite complex. If you can’t build an in-house team of programmers, you’ll need to hire a third party that specializes in integrated software programming.
Choosing the right software solution to integrate your software can be difficult with so many different options available. However, you can consider a few basic criteria before choosing to not make the wrong decision. Those criteria could be:
- Having Good customer care service.
- Allows to freely customize as required
- Get Positive reviews from previous users
- Offer affordable price compared to your set needs
Currently, on the market, there are many integrated software providers. The important thing is not that you choose the largest, most reputable supplier, but the one that is most suitable for you.
One can mention Beehexa, the Hexasync product has been reviewed as a satisfying service by several companies worldwide. Hexasync plays an important role as a bridge between your business system and the e-commerce platform. It directly performs data synchronization, bringing it to a common system. This makes everything much easier.
Hexasync will connect eCommerce systems on many leading platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento; with different kinds of business systems such as ERP, CRM, POS, Accounting,…
Benefits demonstrating eCommerce Integration is a must
After listing and evaluating the 5 tips above, it can be concluded that in light of the integration solution; your online business operation streamlined sleekly.
Specifically, here are 4 outstanding advantages when deploying eCommerce Integration:
- Efficiently use the company assets
An eCommerce integration solution allows to push orders from eCommerce sites and integrate them directly into ERP or administrative systems. As a result, businesses do not need to spend labor costs and eliminate errors caused by manual data entry.
- Completely removed manual data entry
Integration technology eliminates the need for manual data entry and reduces the damages associated with a breach of the partnership compliance policy. It will help you integrate and validate EDI data and maintain a unified data system.
- Continuously update stock information
Inventory updates are an integral part of e-commerce solutions. Allows businesses to share overview inventory information with key e-commerce platforms.
- Immediately tracking real-time order
Help businesses monitor the latest real-time order and delivery information.
- Effectively tracking delivery process
eCommerce solution allows you to push orders from your e-commerce site and send them to a logistics, warehouse, or drop shipping provider.
Final words
Hopefully, the information in this article will be useful to you. In fact, integrated solutions have become indispensable today, often accompanied by extensive services of e-commerce platforms.
If you are a small business, it makes perfect sense to use a one-click connection service. Because it will not cost you too much, and the size of the booth is not too large to do many advanced integration processes.
In contrast, a medium to large business needs to instill toward professional software vendors. Because that is the proper solution to deal with a huge amount of data.
If you have any questions about integration, integration software, and e-commerce integration services, do not hesitate to Beehexa Integration Platform.