How To Successfully Integrate ERP Into A Magento Platform

eCommerce is one of the fastest growing industries today. Joining this channel is like a ticket to successful business growth. However, the cultivated and seamless backend infrastructure is a must thing for the retail organizations to meet the next-gen customer demands. The eCommerce application (like a website or mobile app) sometimes get disconnected from the company’s ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system- in which inventory management, accounting, order processing, and other information live. As a solution, businesses today opt for ERP and Magento eCommerce integration. It allows SMBs as well as big sellers to run a smooth web-based channel that keeps the buyers happy and lowers the operational costs.

The digitization removed unnecessary elements in the retail chain, which helps the consumers to buy anything anytime from anywhere at lower costs compared to an offline market. Companies that leverage Magento ERP integration find success in this digital age with a streamlined, consistently performing sales funnel and workflow fulfillments.

Key benefits of Integrating ERP with Magento

• It automates processes like inventory status, order history, item categories, customer information, and shipping data.
• Order tracking, item availability, and other related information are updated to the customers without hiring staff to do such tasks.
• Price and product updates are simplified.
• Flexibility to add multiple online & offline sales channels without using the efficiency of operation, which reduces inventory costs.
• Automated tax compliance and financial reports generation creates transparency in organization and meets tax requirements.
• Keeps the customer happy without adding the extra resource.

Guidelines while integrating ERP into an eCommerce platform

1. Cover all the integration touchpoints like the locations of shipment generation and card payments authorization, handling promotions or special discounts for specific customers, and other basic configurations like products, customer database, orders feed, and different configurations.
2. Buyers today wish notifications of every stage of the purchase. Whether the order is correct, payment succeeded or not, from where & when the items are dispatched, what is the tracking ID, and live location of the order. Make sure to make this customer communication right to turn the customers into repeat buyers.
3. Implement a proper accounting system for ensuring an adequate collection of payment information, item sales, shipping, and more. Managing backend accounting in a correct way helps to get a real feel of margins.

Best Practices for Magento ERP integration

Be clear about the data to be integrated

Identify which data of your site is going to be shared with the ERP system. Data containing the product details, inventory, and order information are the typical content of an ERP integration. However, you can also move the customer data to the ERP system if needed. It is essential to set the goal of what technical capabilities of data integration you want and what your business is trying to achieve.

Get the timing and triggering right

While establishing the data-flow between Magento platform and ERP system, you should take into account the schedules for different process triggers. For example, once the payment has been made, the ERP system must get the order details for generating the tracking ID and then sending it back to the Magento platform, which then can send it to the customer and admin via email and other platforms. Moreover, the item availability with verifications needs to be exchanged quickly between ERP and Magento systems before the payment is captured.

Take full benefit of automation

Retailers can save time and money by automating order entry, tracking ID distribution, and other workflows. However, in a rush to develop these basic automation functionalities faster, many sellers miss the automatic features that offer better ROI. For instance, a good-quality ERP tool automates the pick list generation process which minimizes management handling and simplifies fulfillment. Take advantage of such smaller automation abilities of a Magento ERP incorporation.

Improvise taxation

The ERP integration with Magento will help to streamline the most complex workflows like taxation management. Businesses can use it as a system of records which can help to solve the taxation issues that companies face during the integration. It also helps to synchronize the sales tax amounts created in the ERP system and user-facing sales portal.

Customer experience

You need to understand how this integration impacts on end-user experience and how to streamline the internal operations according to that. The dataflow should be seamless and supportive to the users as well as organizations to maximize the value of the investment.

Retail organizations which can leverage the Magento ERP integration become successful in driving efficiency gains. Integrating ERP with the Magento eCommerce platform cultivates the seamless backend operational infrastructure for your retail business, which keeps the customers happy and lowers the running costs to streamlines sales and maximizes the organization profits.