One of the main problems of a large e-commerce site is the management of orders, the customer base and the product catalogue. Maintaining this information can quickly become tumultuous and tedious.
Despite this, companies often put off connecting their ERP to their e-commerce because of the magnitude of the task, the cost and the time required. However, these costs are well worth it and are quickly outweighed by the benefits.
Indeed, not connecting your e-commerce to your ERP means doubling your workload. Not only is this a huge waste of time, but it also makes it much more likely that mistakes will be made or duplicate data will be entered when manually updating both e-commerce and ERP.
When these processes are not automated, an error can quickly occur:
- A shipping address may be incorrectly entered.
- Incorrect inventory levels can lead to overselling risk.
- Product information may be incomplete, incorrect or missing.
By centralizing and distributing data, and creating a streamlined flow of information within the company, the coupling of e-commerce and ERP has many benefits.
Specifically, it allows you to operate more efficiently as a business and amplify the performance of your e-commerce platform (Magento, PrestaShop, Shopify …). Your key data types – order, inventory, item, customer and shipping/tracking – are automatically synchronized.
The result?
No need to manually enter data collected from one platform to another. All the tedious data entry operations, and the risk of error they entail, are avoided!
Advantages of coupling ERP and eCommerce
1 – Reduce errors and loss of information
With the linkage, payment and shipping information, orders and customer details are instantly integrated into the ERP. Similarly, database details and inventory are automatically uploaded from the ERP to your e-commerce.
As a result, human involvement is greatly reduced, and with it the risk of accidentally entering duplicate data or incorrect information.
In fact, manually resetting the information makes it very likely that you will enter the wrong quantity, incorrect shipping information or even lose your order.
Thanks to the coupling, all information is automatically communicated between your ERP and your e-commerce, allowing you to have quick and easy access to accurate data.
2 – Reduce operating costs
Think about it: linking your ERP to your e-commerce significantly reduces operational costs by eliminating the time and effort of manual input and verification.
When a customer places an order on your e-commerce, your stock is automatically updated in your ERP. The same goes for all the information updated (product catalog, promotion, price, etc.) in your ERP, which is automatically transferred to your e-commerce.
This data synchronization avoids the need to hire staff to manage these tasks.
3 – Simplify price and inventory management
Connecting your ERP to your e-commerce means simplifying your task. Indeed, all data concerning online sales appear instantly in your ERP. And based on these e-commerce transactions, the stock will also be updated in your ERP.
4 – Increase internal productivity
By reducing human intervention and involvement, connecting your ERP to your e-commerce plays an essential role in streamlining several business processes.
Since orders are integrated into the ERP in real time, your team can follow the order instantly and focus on processing it.
As a result, integration shortens the order fulfillment cycle and your teams become more efficient by having more time to focus on other growth opportunities, such as customer acquisition and retention or entering new markets.
5 – Increase customer satisfaction
There is no secret: a well-informed customer is a happy customer!
So having accurate and up-to-date information about consumers, products, availability and order tracking details makes it easier to provide excellent customer service.
Real-time data allows consumers to see available stock, the latest order status and track delivery progress.
6 – Speed up order processing
With ERP and e-commerce coupling, orders are automatically sent to your business software where they can be processed without waiting for someone to enter them manually.
This significantly increases the speed of order processing, and therefore the speed with which customers can receive their packages.
7 – Improving decision making
Connecting your e-commerce to your ERP allows you to gather all data (customer, product, stock, order, etc.) in one place, thus avoiding the need to collect information from multiple sources.
This offers the significant advantage of advanced analysis and reporting that leads to improved forecasting, customer understanding and data-driven marketing strategy.
You can also more easily and clearly produce a balance sheet on your profitability or the cost price of your products. In short, control of your business is improved.
To help your e-commerce business grow and support future growth, it is necessary to adopt a computerized management strategy that supports your business according to its current and future characteristics.
By tracking and automating the communication between your data flows, the e-commerce and ERP culprit allows you to efficiently develop your business and offer better customer service. In short, it helps you build loyalty and keep your online sales at a record level.
As soon as you have more than a hundred products and/or you have to process about thirty orders per day, connecting your ERP to your e-commerce becomes a serious option.