Key reasons to integrate SAP Business One with Shopify
If your eCommerce business uses Shopify, you’re in good company. It’s one of the world’s most popular eCommerce platforms, enabling organisations across multiple sectors to sell and expand online.
We’ve blogged many times about the brilliant business benefits you can harness by deploying this flexible, adaptable ERP solution.
However, if you haven’t yet integrated SAP Business One with Shopify, there are still plenty of rewards for you to reap. Here are some of the key ones.
Synchronise your product data
If your Shopify and SAP Business One deployments are totally separate, the chances are there is a great deal of duplication between them, particularly when it comes to stock management and new and existing products. Integrate the two systems and your website will display the most accurate information on stock availability, as well as pricing including discounts, special offers and so on. As orders are taken online, so your product inventory automatically updates. Bundled and catalogued products can be reflected in both systems.
Meanwhile, as new products are added within Spotify, they are automatically updated in the SAP Master. In other words, you have a single source of knowledge on all products, which dramatically streamlines operations and reduces incidences of error due to manual updating and replicating.
Speed up order processing
The faster your customers can complete their orders, the faster you get paid – and the happier those customers are likely to be. The powerful Shopify eCommerce front end offers a slick and speedy means for customers to place orders – but integration with SAP Business One means that those orders can be automatically updated in the ERP as sales orders. This applies even to unregistered customers, who can be treated as guests by SAP Business One.
From there, key information pertaining to the order, such as order updates, tracking codes and delivery status can all be transmitted automatically to the customer too. It’s a win-win – the customer is kept up-to-date and there is less manual processing in your back end.
Simplify payment processing
Running separate eCommerce and ERP systems can be a headache as far as accounting is concerned. However, integrate SAP Business One and Shopify, and payments made via the website are automatically added to your accounting ledgers as soon as the payment takes place. Checking for successful payments is straightforward too.
Shipping and logistics visibility
The combination of improved inventory management outlined above, and the ability to automatically send customer updates based on the latest information in SAP Business One, means you can offer improved visibility throughout the shipping process. Tracking numbers can be sent directly to customers as soon as they have placed their orders and even records of the general location of the shipped item.
Reduced operational costs
Many of these benefits are a result of the information being automatically synced between the two systems, thereby reducing the need for manual data entry or duplication. In turn, this dramatically frees up internal resource and reduces operational costs. And don’t underestimate the cost savings resulting from a reduction in data errors. Something as simple as a mistyped shipping address, for example, can be a hefty expense both in terms of righting the original errors and in terms of damage to reputation.
Ready to get started with your SAP Business One / Shopify integration? Get in touch with us today, and we can enable all of the synchronisations and ensure that the key data gets to where it needs to be.
