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E-commerce Automation: How to Streamline Your Online Store for Stress-Free Holiday Season

As the e-commerce landscape continues to evolve, the challenges of managing an online store extend far beyond just the holiday season. Whether you’re dealing with seasonal spikes or maintaining daily operations, the principles of automation can help you navigate these complexities with ease. This article, originally focused on the holiday season, provides insights that are valuable throughout the year, offering strategies to streamline your processes and reduce stress, no matter the time or circumstances.

The holiday season brings joy and celebration, but for online store owners, it often means stress and chaos. Managing the surge in orders, keeping inventory in check, and ensuring timely fulfillment can be overwhelming. As an e-commerce integration provider, we understand all the challenges that online store owners face, especially during peak seasons.

In this article, we’ll explore the challenges online store owners face during high seasons and how automation of key processes, such as inventory management and order fulfillment, can transform your seasonal sales into a smooth and stress-free experience.

E-commerce Challenges

Running an online store comes with a number of challenges, from facing tough competition to protecting customer data. Over the years, we’ve worked with various online stores, including those on platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce. Our experience has taught us that solving key issues often helps tackle other problems. Let’s focus on the crucial points that store owners should keep in mind for effective problem-solving.

E-Commerce Order Overload

As the holiday season approaches, online store owners often find themselves inundated with a sudden influx of orders. Managing these manually can lead to errors, delays, and unhappy customers.

Inventory Nightmares

Our extensive experience in the industry has shown us the nightmare scenarios of mismanaged inventory. Keeping track of inventory levels becomes increasingly complex during high-demand periods. Over-selling or running out of stock can be detrimental to your business – a situation we are well-equipped to help you avoid.

Online Shop Fulfillment Fiascos

Timely and accurate order fulfillment is crucial for successful e-commerce. However, logistics, tracking, and coordination with shipping partners can turn into a logistical puzzle during peak seasons, an issue we are committed to resolving.

How EDI2XML Can Help Improve Your E-Commerce Store

At EDI2XML, we specialize in e-commerce integration services, bridging e-commerce stores with ERP/CRM or EDI systems. Although our expertise originally focused on Shopify, BigCommerce, and Amazon our services extend to any e-commerce store or marketplace facilitating seamless connectivity with leading ERP systems like Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle JD Edwards, Salesforce, SAP Business One/ERP, and more.

Managing an e-commerce store alongside ERP or CRM systems can burden companies with inefficiencies and redundant efforts. Our real-time integration solutions aim to streamline workflows by automatically exchanging critical data such as stock information, orders, and customer details between ERP/CRM systems and e-commerce stores.

E-commerce Integration Solutions

EDI2XML offers robust and fully managed integration solutions that facilitate two-way data exchange, ensuring secure and automatic processing between e-commerce and any business or accounting system and application.

Our integration platform, Magic xpi, eliminates the need for manual data entry by automating critical business processes. It connects your ERP/business systems seamlessly with your e-commerce store, enabling automatic order transmission from your e-commerce platform to your business system. Additionally, it ensures timely updates of order status and inventory information, providing your clients with real-time order updates.

Order Automation

As seasoned e-commerce integration providers, our solutions, including seamless e-commerce integration, automate the order processing pipeline. By leveraging our expertise, your orders are processed with precision, eliminating errors and ensuring prompt customer service.

Inventory Management (Stock Status Synchronization)

Challenges such as over-selling, stockouts, and manual errors can harm your reputation and hinder growth. Stock status synchronization involves maintaining real-time consistency between your online store’s inventory and your ERP or CRM system. This ensures that the information about product availability is accurate and up-to-date across all platforms. With our fully managed e-commerce integration service, you can say goodbye to the hassle of manually updating your inventory.

USEFUL READING: Why You Should Automate Inventory Updates for Your Shopify Store?

Fulfillment Automation

Fulfillment Automation is the key to transforming your order processing from a manual, time-consuming task into a streamlined and efficient operation. This process involves leveraging technology to automate various stages of order fulfillment, from tracking to shipping, reducing errors and enhancing overall customer satisfaction.

USEFUL READING: Why Is It Crucial to Automate the E-Commerce Order Fulfillment Process?

Conclusion: E-commerce Automation

The holiday season should be a time of celebration, not stress for online store owners. By embracing e-commerce automation, you can turn potential problems into opportunities for growth and customer satisfaction.

Whether you’re dealing with order overload, inventory nightmares, or fulfillment fiascos, automation, such as those offered through our services, can make your online store operation smoother and more efficient.

 

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E-commerce Integration with business systems – outperform the competition

The purpose of this article is to highlight the major points of e-commerce integration with business software systems such as ERP or CRM and others.

Let us start with a high-level definition of important terminologies.

What is an e-commerce platform?

An e-commerce platform is software platform, that enables companies to launch, host, and manage their online eCommerce store, normally in a “self-service” model.

According to various sources, there are more than 300 different e-commerce platforms in the marketplace. They all offer different features and terms of use but allow merchants to create an online store to sell their products.

In other words, thanks to e-commerce platforms, companies and individuals can create or expand their e-commerce business without coding and web design skills; most importantly, without the need of a large budget to implement such projects.

Online shopping is one of the most popular online activities

The incredible number of e-commerce platforms, as well as the huge number of online stores opening every day, are driven by the growing interest of consumers in online shopping.

Moreover, in connection with the Covid-19 pandemic, the popularity of online shopping in the grocery segment and among local businesses has also grown.

According to Statista, online shopping is one of the most popular online activities worldwide, thus a global number of digital buyers is growing rapidly. Over 2.14 billion people worldwide are expected to buy goods and services online, up from 1.66 billion global digital buyers in 2016.

Why is e-commerce important in 2021?

Just some 5-8 years ago, it was common for a small business to work offline only. The companies did not have their e-commerce sites and did not run online sales. It seemed to them that this was not necessary to invest time and effort in the e-commerce business.

Times have changed and companies began to develop more and more online businesses. However, the turning point came in early 2020, caused by the global Covid-19 pandemic and massive lockdowns. Due to restrictions, many sellers, especially those who did not expand their e-commerce business, were on the verge of collapse. Continue sales despite the closure of physical stores has become vital even for a local business.

Now the company may no longer have an offline store or even not have an office with employees. Everything goes online. Workers around the world had to switch to a “work from home model” (WFH)

Huge sales happen through online stores or marketplaces like Amazon.

However, creating your own online store does not guarantee success yet. The next challenge is customer satisfaction.

According to HubSpot 80% of respondents said they had stopped doing business with a company because of poor customer experience.

Thus, customer satisfaction depends on how you are going to handle online sales in the future. How quickly, efficiently, and accurately you can process orders. How fast and correctly you will manage inventory, etc. To do this you need to synchronize your e-commerce website with your internal business system (ERP/CRM or accounting)

In other words, the success of online sales largely depends on the level of your ecommerce integration with other business systems of the company.

Leading e-commerce platforms in 2020

Despite the fact that there are huge varieties of e-commerce platforms, there are certainly unchanging leaders among them.

In the top of e-commerce platforms are:

If you want to learn more about e-commerce platforms, check out this article: The Top 9 Absolute Best Ecommerce Platforms for 2021

Why you need e-commerce Integration?

If the online store operates independently, for example without connecting the company’s ERP system, employees have to manually upload product data; enter customer delivery addresses, tracking codes, etc. Each order placed through the online shop must be manually transferred to the business systems. The manual data entry always carries a high risk of human error. Moreover, it is ineffective and leads to delays in fulfilling. Besides, if the process is completely dependent on the staff, order processing cannot be processed on weekends.

Thus, achieving high efficiency and profitability of a company business, as well as customer satisfaction, is almost impossible.

To increase the efficiency of its online store, a company needs to integrate its back-end systems with its e-commerce platform. In this case, all key information such as customer data, delivery information, orders, and warehouse stock levels will be automatically synchronized and do not require human intervention.

Most common third-party eCommerce Integration

Systems listed below are commonly integrated with e-commerce platforms for product master data, customer records, financial transaction, and supplier management and so on:

  • ERP (Enterprise resource planning)
  • CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
  • PLM (Product Lifecycle Management)
  • SCM (Supply chain management)

Typical Integration Tasks

– Automate online orders, improve efficiency, and meet delivery times.

– Improved data accuracy

– Stop using employees to enter data and perform repetitive tasks

– Perform integration without internal IT specialists.

Integration platform

It is very important to choose an integration solution that connects your e-commerce online store with back-end systems, as well as for real-time integration and a robust scalable integration platform.

We provide a fully managed and cost-effective integration solution to integrate your e-commerce store seamlessly and quickly with all leading business systems such as:
e-commerce ERP integration

With Magic xpi integration platform, we integrate quickly and seamlessly using a no-code visual drag and drop approach as well as large numbers of certified connectors.

Integrate easily, quickly, and efficiently with the best experts and solutions

At any stage of the development of your online store, we can quickly and efficiently set up data exchange with your business system. Bi-directional data exchange such as
  • customer information
  • sales orders
  • order status
  • stock information and so on.

To find out more about synchronizing with an online store, contact us.

Call (450) 681-3009 or use the form below to contact our integration specialist!

Free Consultation

The Impact of coronavirus (COVID-19) on e-commerce

This post was updated to reflect current trends and information.


In almost all countries where coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread, isolation, social distance, and lockdown measures were taken. Whenever possible, employees have been asked to work remotely from home, schools have been closed, and people have been asked to avoid public crowded places.

It is not surprising that in this pandemic of coronavirus disease situation more and more people turned to shop online. Thus, the COVID-19 virus can stimulate e-commerce, as consumers avoid visiting places like shops, malls, and shopping centers.

People’s habits are changing very quickly, therefore the category of consumers who never made online purchases previously, are somehow forced to do so, because of the Coronavirus pandemic; consumers will likely continue to do online purchases in the future, considering they live a positive shopping experience online. Hence why companies running online commerce stores must be ready to quickly and efficiently meet the needs of an increasingly growing number of customers and their demands, while the pandemic’s curve does not seem to be likely in the near future…

Read also: Coronavirus Is Changing How Consumers Shop

Increase E-Commerce Efficiency by Connecting online store to ERP Software

ERP is a business management software. It is used to collect, store and manage data of various business processes of an enterprise. Implementation of an ERP system is considered necessary for the effectiveness of the management of any company.

ERP systems, originally implemented only by industrial enterprises, are now adopted by most organizations, regardless of the size of the company, industry, or country. One of the most popular ERP systems is SAP ERP Software, Oracle JDE for large enterprises, and Microsoft Dynamics suite in addition to numerous ERP systems for the mid and small market…

E-commerce stores must be viewed from two sides. The first is the store’s external interface, which allows online visitors to shop online. The second side is the internal business process of your online store. Inventory, orders, and sales management.

Connecting ERP / SAP (for example), to your online store is critical to the successful functioning and development of your online business.

Yes, your online store can work even without integration with your ERP system. However, in this case, a company will have to leverage human resources to manually manage orders, inventory, and sales orders, which is usually a very demanding job, inefficient, often leading to lots of human errors and increasing the delivery window of the orders… This will certainly result in a loss of profit, hence defeating the purpose of the basics of eCommerce.

Key Benefits of Integrating ERP with Shopify e-commerce store

Integration to Shopify or any other e-commerce platform with a company’s ERP prevents inefficient manual data entry between the business system and the online shop. Manual data entry is very time-consuming and involves a high risk of costly errors.

Data transfer errors are one of the most common errors that occur in online stores that are not integrated with the company’s business system. These can be errors with both, the end-users and the suppliers. These errors lead to financial losses; company’s executives should take it seriously and should not ignore those facts.

Integrating the ERP of a company with its online eCommerce store, will certainly eliminate all these errors and provide a close to real-time synchronization between the ERP and Shopify for example, which is necessary to guarantee error-free data transmission between both systems/platforms.

Integration can save companies a lot of time by providing continuous and uninterrupted data transfer between the online store and their business system. This means the purchase order, inventory update, etc. can be automatically updated on both systems, eliminating duplicate data entry.

The integration service that we provide at EDI2XML, is bi-directional between the Shopify online store and a company’s ERP. In other words, information is transferred back and forth between both systems.

Through integration, an order created in the online store is registered in the ERP system without any human intervention. This not only avoids errors but also saves on salary costs.

In the same way, the availability of stock data from the ERP is synchronized with the online store. Thus, online customers have up-to-date information on available products, always.

How to Connect Shopify e-commerce store with SAP ERP Software

Shopify is a popular eCommerce platform that can be integrated with your ERP software using Magic xpi integration platform while leveraging Magic’s SAP-certified connectors.

Magic xpi Integration Platform lets you easily integrate, synchronize and automate processes between ERP systems and e-commerce store and provides a robust integration with any ERP. It is a proven Integration Platform certified for SAP Applications, SAP NetWeaver, and other major enterprise application vendors.
Shopify integration with SAP

Below are some of the examples of business process integration between Shopify and business systems:
  • ERP – eCommerce Catalog data integration
  • inventory data pushed to the Shopify store
  • ERP to eCommerce pricing updates (bidirectional)
  • real-time inventory checks
  • real-time credit checks
  • order information pushed to ERP
  • address book updates (bidirectional)
  • shipping confirmations
  • delivery notices
  • inventory alarms to eCommerce managers
  • call center integration
  • CRM integration

With near real-time processes, information is updated within seconds. Magic xpi automates the way you deal between ERP and Shopify processes.

Integration Partners That Will Grow Your Business

Any integration project requires technical expertise. We, at EDI2XML offer our customers, Integration services to complex ecosystems such as SAP, ServiceMax, Salesforce, JD Edwards, Oracle ERP, SugarCRM, and more.

For over 21 years, we have been partner with a Global software company Magic Software Enterprises Ltd., which provides the Magic xpi integration platform.

Professionally made synchronization of the e-commerce online store with ERP really helps to make business processes as efficient as possible.

Our company will gladly help you with any Integration project. Contact us to get a free consultation.
Shopify integration price list

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Must-Have Integration between E-Commerce and Business Systems

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The main reasons why you need Microsoft Dynamics Integration with your Business Systems

PRICING PACKAGES: Shopify Integration

Shopify and Microsoft Dynamics Nav Integration: Things you should know

Fully Managed Shopify Integration with EDI2XML

Ecommerce (or online retail) has been a growing trend over the last few years. Due to this, online retailers are always on the lookout for efficient processes in order to better serve today’s well-connected, tech-savvy and wise online consumer. Successful brands are those that are able to find a balance between affordable prices, fast & low-cost shipping, and availability of products.

Download our Shopify Whitepaper to learn more about:
– Shopify & the e-commerce trend
– When you should integrate your Shopify store with EDI
– Integration between Shopify and an internal software management system (like ERP, CRM…)

Interested in fully managed Shopify Integration service?  Take the next step to request our Shopify Integration pricing plans

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– Must-Have Integration between E-Commerce and Business Systems

– 9 Major E-Commerce Trends That Will Help Grow Your Online Business

– PRICING PACKAGES: Shopify Integration

– Shopify and Microsoft Dynamics Nav Integration: Things you should know

– Best Practices for Improving E-Commerce Supply Chain Management

Best Practices for Improving E-Commerce Supply Chain Management

This post was updated to reflect current trends and information.


Currently, many businesses are operating their own eCommerce stores on Shopify or Amazon to sell their products and services over the Internet to clients and consumers, all over the world. This is a great way to increase sales and brand awareness.

United States: top 10 online stores

The e-commerce market in the United States is constantly evolving. According to Statista’s forecasts, in the coming years, retail sales of B2C e-commerce in the US will grow rapidly: from 315.6 billion US dollars in 2018 to more than 565.7 billion US dollars in 2023. The most popular online store in the United States is, of course, Amazon.com, the second most popular is Walmart.com
United States: top 10 online stores

As you can see in the graph above, at the top of the e-commerce rating are the 2 largest retailers:

Amazon.com, Inc. is a global e-commerce corporation that provides online retail, consumer electronics, digital content and other services such as daily deals and local groceries. The greatest part of the company’s revenue is generated from third-party seller revenues, subscription services, and AWS activities. Due to quality standards and global reach, Amazon is considered one of the most valuable brands in the world.

Walmart, Inc. is one of the biggest retail chains offering low prices and immensely varied products, giving Walmart a competitive edge.

Challenge of efficient e-commerce transaction

Whatever you choose, open your own online store on one of the most popular e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento or sell on Amazon, or deal with Walmart, Home Depot, Target, etc. it is very beneficial for companies of all size and various industries to expand their online business.

However, many executives still do not consider a full integration between there online store, and their business management system (ERP, CRM), as a must and important option to adopt.

Efficient supply chain management and prompt exchange of the necessary information between trading partners is the key to the success of your electronic business and the high satisfaction of your customers.

Download our whitepaper for more information about Shopify integration.

The main problems that online store owners may encounter when they omit a full integration between their store and their ERP are as follows:
  • They must hire more staff to manage their supply chain, in order to respond to growing customer demands.
  • It is difficult to balance incoming demand and production (in case the company is a manufacturer)
  • Problematic transfer of inquiries and information between several business partners involved in the supply chain channel.

The challenge with supply chain management is to synchronize the supply chain with consumer demand and measure the productivity and success rate. Therefore, below are 3 useful tips to overcome these challenges:

Integrated ERP Solutions

Having one platform to manage and run a business can make all the difference. A fully integrated software system will be able to efficiently manage an eCommerce and retail business and eliminate the need to key-in information from the online store to the management system manually.

Useful reading: Must-Have Integration between E-Commerce and Business Systems

EDI Integration

As mentioned previously, the ability to balance product demands from an eCommerce store and supply chain demands is very important. Therefore, to do this would be to empower the eCommerce platform with EDI capabilities, to exchange data in real-time with suppliers and partners.

Useful reading: The most used EDI messages in the supply chain management

Modern Business Solutions

A scalable integrated IT solution, such as the one suggested by EDI2XML, is needed to be able to electronically exchange information by parsing data of different formats, like X12/EDIFACT, XML, CSV or Json, and translate EDI from one format to another. On top of that, the solution should be able to easily integrate with different systems and communicate with different partners using modern and secured communication protocols such as AS2, sFTP or API (Web services).

Improve your eCommerce management and supply chain by implementing and integrating with the best tools and solutions.
Free EDI Consultation

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Must-Have Integration between E-Commerce and Business Systems

9 Major E-Commerce Trends That Will Help Grow Your Online Business

The main reasons why you need Microsoft Dynamics Integration with your Business Systems

PRICING PACKAGES: Shopify Integration

Shopify and Microsoft Dynamics Nav Integration: Things you should know

Must-Have Integration between E-Commerce and Business Systems


This post was updated to reflect current trends and information.

Must-Have Integration between E-Commerce and Business Systems

Prior to addressing the e-commerce integration with different business systems and applications, let me start by asking the obvious question, and try to answer: “What is integration?“

In a short sentence, “Integration” is the process of orchestrating processes and synchronizing data between two or more different business software systems, without human intervention.
The integration between online eCommerce store and one or more systems, allows a company to overcome important challenges such as:

– Maintaining up-to-date product information on the e-commerce store (availability, price, specifications)

– Connecting online payment services (payment on the website via bank cards, Authorize.Net, PayPal, Google Checkout, Amazon Payments, etc.);

– Using various support services (statistics services, online consultants, and many others) and many more.

Does Your Business Need Systems Integration?

Do you know how to determine whether your business needs to automate and orchestrate flows and data? Here are some of the most common reasons that indicate the need to integrate your online store with your CRM:
  • Your Online Store receives more than 150 orders per month. With this volume, manual data entry and processing takes a lot of time and resources, thus becoming ineffective.
  • Your e-commerce store needs to improve the customer experience. Constantly, you have problems with orders, due to incorrect inventory status.
  • You have an issue with getting the shipment tracking number from your business system, into your eCommerce store, immediately after the product is shipped.
  • Your online store accumulates orders that are waiting to be processed. which directly affects your delivery timeline.
  • You have no real-time inventory update, such as inventory available to sell. Of course, here you are risking to under sell your goods.

Cost-Effective Integrating Solution

In today’s age and time, there are sophisticated technologies to bridge any system to any system and build an efficient integration. There is a lot of integration approaches. However, for entrepreneurs and large corporations alike, the important aspects they look at when planning integration projects are the budget and the timeline to implement the integration project while having a powerful technology capable of delivering.
Integrating your e-commerce store with other business systems, allows your company to benefit from:

– An enhanced customer service experience, with accurate and quicker handling of orders.

– An outstanding quality of information, free of human errors.

– An Increased efficiency, accuracy and timeliness.

Regardless of which e-commerce platform your company adopted, be it Shopify, Magento, Volusion, BigCommerce, OpenCard, eBay or Amazon, etc. your online store will be always in sync with your ERP/CRM or any home-grown system your company might have adopted.

If you what to find out all about selecting an Integration platform, take a look at our article: How to Choose the Right Integration Platform? It will help you figure out the issue and make the right choice! 

The Most Common Integrations to E-commerce

Warehouse Management System

One of the most popular integration is to build an integration between an eCommerce store and a company’s Warehouse Management System (WMS).
A warehouse management system is a software that automates a company’s warehouse operations. This operation may include inventory management, picking processes, and auditing, among other processes.
There are different types of Warehouse Management System:

• Standalone systems – usually deployed on-premise
• Cloud-based systems – SaaS solutions
• ERP modules –as a component of enterprise resource planning.

The demand to integrate e-commerce stores with Inventory Management Systems is quite high that is why, an integration platform such as Magic xpi, has more than 100 pre-built connectors and adapters for quick and easy integration. This makes integrators’ life much easier; integration time is greatly reduced and saves customer’s money.
No matter what warehouse management system your company adopted, or plan to adopt, SAP EWM, Oracle WMC, NetSuite ERP, NetSuite Warehouse, Zebra Warehouse, WIMS 2.0, etc. it’s always worth remembering that integration is best done with proven experts and technologies.

If you want to know more about Warehouse Management System (Types,  Features, and benefits of WMS)  read the article here

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Another not less popular is the integration of an e-commerce store with the company’s CRM. If your online store has been successfully operating for a long time and sales are growing, it is likely that you are thinking about using a CRM system (Customer Relationship Management). Maybe you already use it and now it’s time to integrate your CRM and your e-commerce store.

But how to maintain the relevance of information in CRM and organize the work of employees in such a way that they are not torn between the work in the administrative panel of the e-commerce site, the mailbox, and the CRM system? In case of integration of your CRM with the online store, orders and other relevant information will appear directly into the system. According to financesonline.com, the best CRM systems are:
  • Salesforce CRM
  • Hubspot CRM
  • Freshsales
  • Pipedrive
  • Insightly
  • Zoho CRM

DropShipping

Currently, there are a lot of online shops who offer the Drop-ship concept to their suppliers. “Drop-ship” is a popular fulfillment method where an online store (eCommerce) doesn’t keep stock. The process is that the online store sends information about customers’ orders to the manufacturer and then, the manufacturer ships the goods directly to the consumer. This method eliminates the need for the merchant to handle the goods. In this business model integration of the company’s internal systems with the drop-ship eCommerce store, becomes very critical for a successful dropship experience.

For more information about Dropshipping integration read our blog: 4 Challenges of EDI and Drop-Ship in eCommerce

When Discussing third-party integration options, you should not forget about the delivery service. Certainly, one of the key factors influencing clients ‘ decisions about purchasing is delivery.
An integration platform like Magic xpi can also easily connect your online store to the most Populaire delivery services such as DHL, FedEx, or UPS.

Payment systems

Another popular integration is the integration with payment systems. By payment systems, we understand service providers that allow you to process financial transactions, and the provider would charge a percentage of the commission to cover his fees. Many payment systems have already developed API (application programming interface) of their payment gateways, for integration purposes.
If you are wondering what kind of system to connect, here are some of the most popular Payment system:

  • Paypal
  • Amazon Pay
  • Google Pay
  • American Express
  • Apple Pay
  • Stripe
  • Square
  • Visa Checkout
  • Masterpass
  • 2Checkout (now Verifone)

Everything you Need to Know about Online Payment Processing: Online Payment Processing Guide

Leave your e-commerce integration to the experts

E-commerce Integration needs a professional approach. It takes time, resources and skills, and in case of an error, the company may incur significant losses.
Therefore, if you have any questions or need integration with any service, feel free to contact us. We have a great experience with integration between e-commerce and different systems.
We will be more than happy to help and assist!
Shopify integration price list

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Secrets and rules of Shopify integration with your ERP or CRM

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9 Major E-Commerce Trends That Will Help Grow Your Online Business

This post was updated to reflect current trends and information.

According to forecasts of market research and business intelligence portal Statista by the year 2023, U.S. retail e-commerce sales amount will surpass 735 billion US dollars. In the current economic conditions, it is unlikely that any other industry can demonstrate such a rapid growth rate.

In the same token and according to Oberlo, the retail e-commerce sales worldwide are projected to grow to 6.388 trillion US dollars by 2024.

Let’s see what the key market players are betting on, and what trends will determine the development of the industry.

1. Efficient logistics and reduced delivery times

e-commerce reduced delivery times

The world leader at this point is American Amazon. Back in the company’s report for 2018, it is indicated that the fastest delivery of the year was done in 8 minutes in Berkeley CA, and 9 minutes in Kirkland WA, Los Angeles CA, Seattle WA, Charlotte NC.
Amazon the fastest delivery 2018

That sounds like something out of Science Fiction. But look: In the fight for customer loyalty, online stores of the leading e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, Bigcommerce, Volusion and other reduce delivery times.

2. Mobile sales

online shopping top ecommerce trends

As predicted (based on many studies and mobile e-commerce statistics) mobile web is booming. An American market research company Forrester forecasts that US retail sales via smartphone will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18% over the next five years. Thus, with the increase in purchases from a mobile device, it is very important to make sure that your online store is designed for mobile viewing.

3. Augmented Reality Technologies

e-commerce trends Augmented reality

Augmented Reality Technologies inevitably follow the mobile web sales boom. Today, with the help of special applications, online store buyers can see how furniture sets will fit into their living room or, for example, which watch will look better on their hands. In 2021 AR technologies will become more sophisticated, but perhaps they will start to lose the WOW effect.

4. Using Big Data
e-commerce trends Big Data

The accumulation and analysis of consumer data is a powerful tool to increasing sales. By tracking user behavior in the network, retailers are able to make accurate offers to their customers thereby increasing the chances of making a purchase.

Large online stores have already accumulated a large amount of data about their customers. Now the question is, who will learn how to use this information more effectively – it will give a noticeable competitive advantage.

5. Social commerce and user-generated content

e-connerce trends - 5. Social commerce and user-generated content

Online stores have long used content in social media to attract a loyal audience. In recent years, online sales are increasingly merging with social networks.

On the one hand, social media are introducing more and more new features for sales.

Facebook is already testing Live Video Mode for Sellers and the ability to process payments directly to Facebook Messenger.

Several e-commerce features have tested by Instagram over the past two years – including shopping tags, Promote Ads, built-in payments, and even a separate mobile app for shopping.

On the other hand, online retailers and marketplaces learn to use user-generated content.

Everything started with the reviews, but they were not limited. For example, users can write reviews, tips, articles about products and how to choose them.

6. Artificial intelligence and real-time interaction with the client

e-commerce trends Artificial intelligence and real-time interaction with the client

The times when the online store support service could not respond to the customer’s request for several days will irrevocably disappear. Now, online retailers are increasingly relying on chat-bots to help and advice customers. They work around the clock and instantly navigate in large volumes of information about goods and services.

7. Integration of ERP Software with e-commerce
e-commerce trends ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software

Internal processes of e-commerce retailers are also switching to total automation. Previously, entire departments of employees were required to interact with suppliers and track items in warehouses.

Now, more and more successful companies, adopted ERP (Enterprise resource planning) software for management of core business processes. The most popular ERP software for e-commerce:

• Oracle JD Edwards
• Microsoft Dynamics family of ERPs
• SAP
• and other more ERP software solutions

Helpful Information:

Fully integrated with B2C or B2B e-commerce web-stores, an ERP software can power your business and move your online store to the next level.

8. Integrating e-commerce and CRM application
e-commerce trends -CRM integration

CRM (Customer-relationship management) system allows to collect, manage and use customer relationship data to improve your online business. CRM can eliminate lost sales, and help you build a loyal customer base.

Key e-commerce companies who run successfully their business on leading platforms for global trade such Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, Shopify, Magento etc.,  have already integrated their CRM with their online stores and enjoy the benefits.

Helpful Information: How to get more out of Salesforce with EDI Integration

9. Electronic data Interchange (EDI) and B2B e-commerce
e-commerce trends EDI Integration

Last but definitely not least: your e-commerce business should be supported by EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). In many cases, it’s almost impossible to trade without using EDI. In B2B e-commerce, EDI has become mandatory for trading with the majority of big retailers such as Target, Walmart, Home Depot or Costco, because they work exclusively with businesses that meet their EDI requirements and comply with their EDI specifications.

What are the benefits of EDI in e-commerce?

  • Reduced document processing time
  • Works all over the world, does not depend on time and provides a fast flow of information
  • No errors related to manual data input
  • Guaranteed delivery of messages (due to notify the sender about documents delivery);
  • Acceleration of logistics operations
  • Security and confidentiality of information
  • Reduction of costs associated with paper circulation

Helpful Information:

For the last 21+ years, EDI2XML has been helping companies of all sizes, in their EDI integration projects. We take care of all aspects of EDI “complexities” due to our Fully managed EDI service.

Total Automation 

Automation of everything that can be automated is the most important trend of our time. If you are looking to develop a high-volume e-commerce business, and you don’t yet have all the elements outlined, it’s time to start. We can help you with the most important part of e-commerce integration with ERP, CRM, and EDI.

Our “Fully managed cloud integration” service can solve all your integration challenges, and you’re your company achieve its business and technical goals in this highly competitive space.

Contact our team for a free consultation.

Free EDI consultation and demo

EDI Integration: Tips to better manage your online business

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This post was updated to reflect current trends and information.

 

Purchasing tickets, gifts, clothes, equipment and even groceries can now all be done online. Due to its accessibility and convenience, most of us already buy products online, from anywhere at anytime, using a smartphone or laptop, so long as we are connected to the Internet. Simple user interface, quick actions and results: everything is so easy that it only takes a few minutes. This explains why the number of online shoppers is growing at a tremendous rate, year after year. For example, the number of online shoppers in the United States alone is estimated to be 230.5 million by 2021 as compared to 215.4 million in 2017.

Online shoppers USA

Source: The Statistics Portal “Statista”  

The above graphic displays statistics about online shoppers who browsed products, compared prices or bought merchandise online at least once during the corresponding year.  Notice an increase of online buyers year over year due to the active introduction of Omnichannel retailing.

What is the omnichannel retailing?

 

Omnichannel is a cross-channel business model that companies use to improve their customer experience. “Omnis” can be translated from Latin as “existing everywhere”. In our case, covering all channels of communication with customers: as physical locations, online store, social media, live web chats, mobile applications, and telephone communications. The customer accesses all products and services in the most convenient way for him, while being always visible to the retailer.

Setting up your online store

 

Opening an online store in today’s digital world is NOT difficult; however, running the operations of an online business is of course a little more challenging. Here are some of the undeniable advantages of running an online store:

  • There are no rental fees
  • You need fewer employees to operate the store
  • Companies can overcome geographical limitations
  • Best of all, it is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year

Use the best e-commerce practice

 

In order to not be left out of the e-commerce game, you should give great attention to detail and look for the best practices in operating your e-commerce business. On the Internet, there’s a ton of great advice for entrepreneurs who have started their online business already; it is about choosing an e-commerce platform, optimizing the page load speed, creating unique content, promoting the products, and the list goes on…

However, there isn’t much information out there that talks about the technical and logistical aspects of running an online store. Critical information that e-business owners should know are things like how to exchange documents electronically between your e-business and trading partners or transport companies. There’s also the important e-commerce practice of integrating your systems and electronic exchange of data (or EDI) in order to improve speed, accuracy, quality of information and overall business efficiency.

The role of EDI integration in logistics and e-commerce

 

The term “logistics” even in the traditional retail sense was not always so clear-cut and far from being obvious. Business logistics can be defined as:

Definition of business logistics

When running an e-commerce business, regardless of which supply chain management methodology you choose (Drop-Ship or other), you will have to face a substantial amount of business related documents that you need to exchange with your trading partners.

Now, let’s do a simple calculation: how much time do your employees spend on order entry, shipping advice, invoices, generating labels? What is the error rate? Maybe that’s why the rate of returns of online sold products is sky-high. Research about e-commerce product returns shows:

statistics online return

Online return reason

In my opinion, the statistics shown above reflecting e-commerce product returns looks frightening… Is it possible to reduce the above percentages?  Can your online business avoid those errors?

EDI integration improves the quality of the data by at least 30% to 40 % reduction in the transactions containing errors, by eliminating unreadable writing or typing errors, the losses of faxes/mail, transmission, and re-manipulation of errors.

Think and manage your online business better

 

The positive effects of EDI Integration will be measurable across all of the following services: commerce, production, logistics, and finance.

In sales:

  • Sales cycle and quality of the relationship with your customers are improved and processing times reduced (reliability and efficiency of exchanging orders, shipping advice etc. …)

In production:

  • Reduced production costs
  • Better management of your stocks
  • Short production times

In logistics:

  • Reduced processing times for shipments
  • Elimination of anomalies or errors
  • Elimination of paper documents
  • Strong improvement in the quality of information

In finance:

  • Reduced billing times
  • Reduction of disputes

In conclusion, moving forward with an EDI integration project gives a business the access to an undeniable competitive advantage; companies are able to reduce the costs of its products and services, improve business processes and meet the demand of customers and suppliers. What’s better than that?

Keep learning about EDI integration and the MANY benefits it has for your online business by visiting our website EDI2XML.com or contacting us directly today!

Free EDI Consultation