Written by Alberto Chiang
on 4 June 2019
Retail organisations have been adapting to the digital world and expanding to online channels for the past few years. However, a multichannel approach can put a lot of pressure on your company’s operations. Increasing orders means keep tracking of inventory levels, processing more orders, and ensuring that shipping/tracking information is accurate between both the back office and ecommerce platform.
The risk of not having accurate information and fast processes affects your customers’ shopping experience by having to wait or deal with order errors. In the competitive world of ecommerce, customers can easily move onto a competitor.
By integrating ecommerce and ERP systems, retail organisations can improve their customer experience as well as improve internal operations. Here are 3 benefits of integration:
Generate fully-automated customer experiences
Having real-time integration between the back office and the ecommerce platform enables customers to have a self -served and improved experience. For instance, customers would be able to see their records, look for products in past invoices, find alternative substitutes for out-of-stock items and find more detailed information on any product from existing content or integrated vendor resources. Many customers can manage their accounts 24/7 without human intervention.
Reduce administrative work
Creating and updating spreadsheets, having to export and import data, as well as entering the same information in multiple places generates hours of administrative work. By integrating the back and front office, departments only need to enter data once and the information syncs across the entire platform. Integration also means staff do not need to check information between systems. Reducing administrative work allows more time for strategic and creative tasks.
Deliver consistent and timely data
When you have a single source of truth, information is consistent. It also creates real-time visibility across your business by consolidating fragmented sources of data, allowing you to make timely business decisions. For example, staff easily know when to move inventory from one location to another, when to mark down products, and how to market in one region versus another.
These are only a few benefits of integrating back and front-end systems. In the long term, choosing the right technology will allow Asian retailers to stay competitive while reducing operational costs. Find out more about Agilyx-recommended commerce – ready ERP for the Asian market
