You've heard about the benefits – an ERP and eCommerce integration can make your team more efficient, open new revenue streams and increase profits. But you've also heard the horror stories – integrations that break down, cause corporate disruption, and cost a ton of money.
So how do you enjoy the benefits without finding yourself in a corporate horror movie?
You deep dive into questions about your work processes and your customers' buying processes and make a strategic plan before you get started.
That's what we'll cover today – key questions you must explore with your team to ensure your ERP – eCommerce integration helps you grow. Getting these questions answered will also make it easier to get internal buy-in for this efficient way of doing business. And just in case you're unsure of how the benefits actually come into play, we'll cover that too.
The biggest data sets you'll be syncing will likely be orders, accounts, and products. But there are additional data points to take into consideration, like product pricing and quotes. Deciding who's in charge of what will make your ERP and eCommerce integration much more seamless.
Integrating the least amount of data is the opposite of cutting corners – it's all about efficiency, both in your day-to-day and when things go wrong.
When you sync your ERP and eCommerce data, you need to decide whether data will be synced one way or two ways.
For example, your basic product catalog might be created in the ERP and synced with your eCommerce platform, but everything eCommerce adds to it – images, videos, descriptions, reviews – don't need to get synced back.
The folks using your ERP system also don't need to know that a specific customer joined a subscription program that automatically makes a purchase order every month instead of her doing it manually. They just need to know an order was made and that orders have been scheduled in the future. Therefore, all of this doesn't need to be synced with your ERP system.
For example, your eCommerce needs to sync data on closed deals to your ERP, so your warehouse ERP users know to find, package and ship a specific product to a specific address.
Then, you need to sync shipping information back to your eCommerce platform, so that the customer can be automatically notified of shipping status and arrival time.
To make the most efficient decisions, it's often necessary to have a complete data structure that’s well documented. Particularly for the most important data sets – products, orders, and accounts – it will help you verify you haven't missed any critical points or practices.
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Integrating an eCommerce platform with your ERP is going to impact your customers' experience – but also your employees' day-to-day work.
Launching an eCommerce platform and integrating it with your ERP makes it easier for you to grow more efficiently with resource deployment.
Find duplicate functionality or responsibility across your ERP and eCommerce system, and redistribute the workload more efficiently. This could be an opportunity to create better cross-departmental collaborations that are necessary for the company's overall health.
Some of the function duplications you might see in these systems include:
Change the Way You Sell to Increase Profits
Transitioning to online sales opens new revenue possibilities. Sure, customers might not click a button to make their next seven-figure purchase, but they might buy a four or five-figure annual service subscription online, to maintain the products they bought from you or to keep training their teams.
Moreover, customer data in your eCommerce platform can trigger automatic notifications or promotional emails to segmented markets, inviting fast-growth companies to explore upgrades after a couple of years, or all customers to check out new product versions a few months before it's time to make another purchase.
Simultaneously, ERP data could reveal excess inventory in the warehouse. By syncing with your eCommerce platform, you could offer a special deal on the excess inventory, to make room for more profitable products.
Proactively upselling and cross-selling could be crucial for your profit margins:
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Not all your products will necessarily be a good fit for an eCommerce platform. As mentioned above, most customers aren't likely to click a button to buy a seven-figure machine. Similarly, some products might be highly customizable and require in-person (or Zoom) meetings.
So how do you choose how many – and which – products to sell?
It's OK to start small and add more products as you go. It's OK to skip visuals of "obvious" products at first, so you can start getting some sales and testing your eCommerce platform, and adding them later on to improve conversions.
It might even be better to start small. It will help you test the integration with your ERP when the stakes are lower. Then, improve what's needed, and scale more seamlessly.
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When you set up your ERP and eCommerce integration, you need to choose which data will be synced where, and how often:
Take into consideration that:
To avoid mishaps:
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If your company is like most companies, you're juggling a lot of tools and platforms. "The number of software apps deployed by large firms across all industries worldwide has increased 68%" within "four years, reaching an average of 129 apps per company by the end of 2018, according to an analysis by Okta Inc. Nearly 10% of businesses now have more than 200 apps," reports The Wall Street Journal.
Therefore, chances are you'll need to integrate more than just your ERP and eCommerce systems to ensure the company operates smoothly. You've got shipping solutions, email providers, analytics platforms, CRM… you name it.
To prepare for your ERP – eCommerce integration, consider all these platforms and their roles in this new journey, including:
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When you integrate ERP and eCommerce, you get multiple teams, each with its own complex needs and processes, working on the same systems.
It's important to get input from every relevant team on what they need from your integration, then make a list of priorities. It will help you understand your company's non-negotiables when choosing a partner. Then, it will help you set the integration in a way that the right people own the right processes, and the right data is synced when it's needed, to whoever needs it.
Once you make your priorities list, get back to fellow departments to verify all their key needs have been met.
This might require multiple rounds of feedback and adjustment, but once you get started, it'll be much easier to set your integration to a "happily ever after" corporate story – one of efficiency, growth, and making a bigger impact.
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The integration between eCommerce and ERP is so critical for the long-term success of any B2B business that if you don’t plan ahead, it can cause all sorts of issues. Take the time to consider each of these points and put together a strategic roadmap to minimize integration problems that might arise. When done correctly, an eCommerce and ERP integration will allow you to unlock valuable innovations across the entire enterprise.
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