Whether you are a small retailer or a medium sized business owner, someday in the future your business will grow to a level where manually adding various fields like orders received and shipment details will become a tedious task for you and your employees.
You might already be using some ecommerce platform like Magento, Shopify, or WooCommerce. And you might also be making use of an ERP system, if not, then it is high time you thought of implementing one. A lot of data flow happens in both the ecommerce platform and the ERP system, so in order to handle the data properly and sync the data so that no errors occur, it is essential to integrate both the software solutions.
Let us look at some points for the smooth integration of the ecommerce platform and the ERP system: -
Before going for an integration, you must be clear on the fact that the integration solution you are going to implement must be tailored taking into account the present and the future. You will need a smooth integration that automates all the important tasks that occur in your business. The integration must be able to adjust with the need and growth of the business.
In a bi-directional integration, you can update or sync data in both software solution, i.e., from ecommerce platform to ERP system and from ERP system to ecommerce platform, in real time. Now data sync is just a few clicks away and your employees won’t have to manually enter each entry into your ERP or ecommerce store and they can focus on much more important tasks.
Most of the business owners often forget the importance of the testing of the integration. This allows you and your employees to ensure that the integration works fine and identify any sort of mistake in the integration solution like error while data synchronization. This phase can also be utilised by your employees to familiarise with the tool and check the ease of use.
You must discuss the terms of support and maintenance with the company that provided you the integration solution. If possible, you can also hire a software developer for permanent maintenance. You must also ensure that your employees who will be using the integration solution are trained well by the integration provider.
The ecommerce – ERP integration might be enough for your business, at least for now. But, what about when you plan to expand your business or your business suddenly booms? This is when you will have to add on more software solutions to your integration. Some of them might be accounting software, order management software, or inventory management software.
You must remember that this integration solution only connects your ecommerce store and ERP. The data related to your business should be regularly updated into any one platform, and the integration ensures that the other platforms are in the loop.
