Integrated Web Store
What Does it Mean and Why is it Important?
“You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?” -Steven Wright, Comedian
I don’t know why but that popped into my head as I was thinking about this topic. There is some connection in my train of thought about the Internet providing the ability for merchants to sell their wares to anyone on the planet. Realistically, most of us don’t have the infrastructure or bandwidth to fulfill orders from anywhere on the planet. The typical SMB (small to mid-size business) is more interested in selling to their customers and new prospects in their own geography.
OK, so the connection is a bit weak but I’m not above a gratuitous quote to get your attention.
Let’s get back to the Internet and how it has significantly changed the landscape for SMBs to let their world know about what they have to offer. Online shopping is exploding. According to Statistica, B2C (business to consumer) e-commerce sales in the US alone reached over $700 Billion in 2013, more than triple the 2006 levels. B2B (business to business) e-commerce sales reached $5.3 Trillion, almost double the 2006 levels. That is clearly signaling a significant shift in how consumers and companies are doing business.
So…back to the point of this article. What does it mean to have an integrated web store and why is that important?
Integration can mean many things. It can refer to adding functionality like package tracking, or tax compliance calculations, or payment card processing, all of which can be very important to some businesses. But what is proving to be most important to SMBs is integration to their back-office accounting or ERP.
Let’s paint a picture. An SMB decides to publish a web store and puts a lot of thought and effort into getting it noticed through various marketing activities including SEO, keyword purchases, pay-per-click advertising, etc. They load all of their products on the web store with pricing and images, supporting documentation, and everything else needed to provide a great shopping experience. It was a lot of work but it looks great and they start to get a lot of orders.
The web store is completely independent of the back-office ERP. Any changes in products or pricing need to be replicated on both systems. Any orders from the web store need to be manually keyed into the back-office system for fulfilment. This effectively doubles the work required just to keep both system current. So they may have increased sales but they’ve also significantly increased their cost and effort to fulfill those sales.
Potential issues:
- Due to currency exchange fluctuations their cost of goods changes dramatically requiring a change in selling price on several items. The updates to the web store are somehow missed and several orders are taken at a price which is lower than their cost causing them to lose money or, at best, creates a big customer service problem.
- While rekeying a web store order into the back-office system, an error is made causing an incorrect product to be shipped. The end result is a returned product (extra cost), a reshipment of the correct product (extra cost), and an unhappy customer that may not bring future business, and even worse, tells others of their back experience (lost future business).
Those are just a few potential issues that could arise with a disconnected or non-integrated web store. Added cost, unhappy customers, lost business.
An integrated web store provides several advantages and eliminates these kinds of issues. First of all there is no redundant data entry. As new products or prices are updated in the back-office they are automatically available to the web store with no need to rekey them. As orders and payments are processed on the web store they are automatically available in the back-office. Again, no rekeying and no errors.
But that’s just the beginning. A properly integrated system allows the vendor to serve up a very personal experience to their valued customers. Customer specific pricing, payment terms, order history, account standing, and more can be made available allowing customers to serve themselves and make it easier for them to do repeat business.
With a truly integrated system, sales volume can increase dramatically without the need to add administrative staff to process the increased volume. Existing staff that are familiar with the back-office system can easily maintain the products available on the web store because they are familiar with the user interface. Cost of ownership is lower because they can manage the content themselves, easily.
An integrated system allows you open a web store and not increase your workload to maintain it.
Increased sales, lower costs, improved customer experience translate to higher profits.
Here comes the advertisement.
Webtelligence by North49 provides this level of integration for Sage 300. A web store, customer portal, or salesperson portal are all possible with deep integration and even live access to any data in Sage 300. We’d love to show you how we can help your business grow while making raving fans of your customers.