How to Select ERP solutions for your eCommerce Business

The demand of ERP for eCommerce business is increasing day by day as Online selling became one of the recent trends of this decade where many organizations are reaping benefits of selling products via online platforms rather than the virtual store. Online eCommerce provides many benefits to the seller as well as to the buyer. How to Select ERP solutions for your eCommerce Business. According to statista, the global ERP software market is forecast to grow to around 100.7 billion U.S. dollars by 2025.

Yes and there are reasons to grow. Why?

The past two years have seen a significant increase in the use of ERPs, particularly at the enterprise level and in B2B e-commerce companies that had to handle complex operations. The names SAP, Oracle and Microsoft Dynamics and NetSuite may come to mind.

To integrate and manage essential business workflows, however, online businesses of all sizes are increasingly turning to ecommerce business-specific solutions.

Leveraging an enterprise Resources Planning can minimize the risk for retails organization and positively impact both vendor’s profitability and Productivity.

There are many options available that can integrate with retailers’ e-commerce platforms, either through pre-built integrations or using APIs. These options were created specifically for e-commerce businesses.

Benefits of an ERP in ecommerce Business

Most people think of traditional businesses, complex software, or out-of-date software when they hear the term “ERP.” Actually, ERP has been updated and is simple to use. Some people might consider the advantages of ERP for e-commerce operations to outweigh the costs.

However, there are many advantages of ERP systems designed specifically for e-commerce that are likely to boost productive capacity, customer retention rates, and total sales. “ERPs generate automated work environments that enable businesses operate more effectively and efficiently, including warehouse management, fulfilment processes, accounting, and standard order processing.

Here are the 8 benefit for ecommerce businesses

1. Create an Integrated and Centralize data hub.
   You can view your business holistically thanks to the integration that an ERP system provides, which eliminates silos. In a similar manner, it also upholds the integrity of your data, ensuring that you are working with accurate information. You’ll have a strong foundation for your decisions that will advance your business thanks to that lone, data-driven perspective.
2. Enhancing Reporting and Forecasting.
   With a centralized view of your data, you can compare sales, financial, logistical, and procurement data to see how each one affects the others. Additionally, your historical data will be fuller. You’ll be able to predict demand more accurately if you have access to extensive historical data as well as current trend visibility.
3. Boost business effectiveness.
   Process standardization depends on implementing the automation that an ERP enables. Your employees no longer needs to manually enter that data in various places when your ERP and ecommerce solution routinely exchange it. Additionally, it saves time and avoids mistakes.
4. Control inventory more strictly.
   To prevent stock-outs and guarantee supply, real-time inventory visibility is essential. But you can also streamline your sourcing procedures, which can help you save money, with improved supply chain and warehouse efficiency. You can better optimize your inventory costs if you have better sales forecasting.
5. Build Customer Relationship.
   When ERP systems have CRM capabilities, you can combine sales data with comprehensive customer information to, for instance, more effectively customize your messaging and promotions. Additionally, you’ll be able to see the outcomes of those promotions, which will aid in future marketing optimization.However, marketing isn’t the only division in charge of making customers happy. With access to all the data on customer activity and interactions, your support team has a superpower and plays a crucial role in retention and loyalty. Customers will value your ability to give them the details they require regarding the status of deliveries and when to anticipate their purchases.

6. Improve KPI visibility.
   Create dashboards using your centralised data to get the quick access to the sales, marketing, and financial data you require. You can make customised dashboards for each person based on the information they require. Quickly, easily, and in real time, gain insight and analyse trends.

When you are into eCommerce selling business, it means you sell your products to multi countries with numerous eCommerce websites or platforms. There is generally two ways where you can manage all your online and eCommerce business activities.

Method 1 : Managing your eCommerce business

Considering your online shop as an ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning system. In this approach you end up with silos of information as you synchronize data using CSV upload method. Although this approach is cost effective but comes with many limitations such as no real time updates, time consuming method etc.

Method 2 : Managing your eCommerce business

The second rewarding approach is to integrate your online store with an ERP system which is much more rewarding than the first approach. Which means a single login to manage multiple stores.

Now being an eCommerce seller you made up your mind to have an ERP system which can connect to your store where you can manage all your Enterprise activities. The next question arise is how to go about it further ?

Points you should consider before choosing an ERP software for your eCommerce business:

• Discussion and Involvement:

One of the key points of implementing any software is the discussion and involvement of the key personnel from the department such as marketing, IT, finance, warehouse etc. From the initiation of the goals as the integrating different solutions is a critical part. Involvement and discussion will help in defining the project and every department’s role. Also this helps in getting filtration of the best ERP systems with the pros and cons.

• Existing System :

Businesses may have internal systems such as accounting software, HR systems etc. You need to be smart enough to see how you can connect the ERP system with the existing database or how you can replace the existing system with the ERP you are choosing. IT managers must make the existing system decision such as which system need to be talk to each other etc.

• Vendor Communication:

Vendor selection is an important process as already there are stake holders who are involved in the early stage of the project, and the second important people are the vendors who are offering their services are considered as to provide a powerful impact onto the implementation time and costing part.

Another option for companies is to have an in-house IT staff or a third party vendor (in case of commercial products). Having an ERP consultant and eCommerce developer together with other key stake holders will help you to have a feasible report, with proper timelines and pre-requisite.

• Technology:

One of the most powerful and tedious job is to choose the best technology in Business system which will integrate your eCommerce shop. There are different software in the market which are available some of being open source where you can connect easily through the API of your eCommerce store, and there are also ready to use products commercial ERP software specifically made for eCommerce industry.

• Data Migration:

So after looking at the technology you decided to go with and eCommerce ERP product or you would like to start building from scratch. The final hectic work is the integration of your data which means how easily you can enter all your old data into the ERP by mapping of fields in the erp system to the eCommerce You would not like to end up with the situation where the customer or related data is missing or there are certain incorrect entries with wrong field.

This might be the easy part to affect your business logic with your customer’s experience. Final question on data migration arise is that how often the data will be synchronized between the two systems. There are some real time data migrations also available in certain ERP systems if required.

• Agile Approach:

This is also called as phase wise approach where you need to priorities the critical integration features you would be requiring in the part one of the implementation. Agile method of development breaks the total development into various phases. It is recommended to have agile roll out during the ERP integration. This helps you to have more control and focus on the features that are being released in phases.

• Ease of using the system:

Finally it is your employees who would be using the tool. The integration or the ERP selection must be taken after having a look onto your organizational employee. If the users are unhappy and getting difficulties in using the system this might be a failure point in your ERP selection. Apart from the above steps there are other stages which will come during the implementation and selection of your ERP software, but if the above flow is correct then the ERP selection & implementation process would be a successful one.

How Globalteckz help you choosing ERP for eCommerce business:

At Globalteckz we are working on integrating 3rd party eCommerce website with one of the leading ERP software named as Odoo – Odoo comes with enterprise as well as free (community edition). Our team integrate Odoo ERP software with these ecommerce platform to ensure smooth flow between your trading and ecommerce business.

Odoo ERP For eCommerce by Globalteckz

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