Seamless Shopify eCommerce integration to automate your online store operations, enhancing sales and customer experience

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Shopify Integration with EDI using Magic xpi

Explore the seamless integration of Shopify with Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) using Magic XPI for efficient business operations.

Why EDI2XML?

With more than twenty years of experience in EDI integration, EDI2XML offers a wealth of specialized knowledge that enriches the functionalities of Magic xpi, enabling comprehensive integration and streamlined operations. Explore the transformative potential of combining EDI2XML‘s expertise with Magic xpi to optimize your business procedures, promoting efficiency and success in today’s ever-evolving market environment.

Understanding EDI and Its Benefits for E-commerce

What is EDI?

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is a digital communication method that allows businesses to exchange data via electronic means.

Why use it in E-commerce?

In the context of e-commerce, EDI is particularly beneficial for several reasons:
  • Efficiency: By automating data exchange, EDI reduces the need for manual entry, thereby saving time and resources.
  • Speed: EDI enables real-time processing of transactions, which can significantly speed up business cycles.
  • Cost Savings: EDI can lead to substantial cost savings by reducing the use of paper, storage space, and administrative effort.
  • Accuracy: The automation of data transfer through EDI minimizes the risk of errors, leading to improved data quality.
  • Competitive Advantage: The ability to process transactions faster and more accurately can enhance customer satisfaction and boost a business’s reputation.

EDI offers a range of benefits that can enhance the operations of an e-commerce business, making it a valuable tool in today’s digital marketplace.

Introduction to Shopify and Its Integration Capabilities

Shopify is a leading e-commerce platform that allows businesses to create online stores and sell products. It’s known for its user-friendly interface, making it accessible even to those without technical expertise. But what sets Shopify apart is its robust integration capabilities.

 It can seamlessly connect with various third-party applications, such as:
  • Inventory management systems
  • Customer relationship management tools
  • Marketing automation software.
EDI2XML-Shopify-Integration-with-EDI-using-Magic-xpi

This means business owners can manage different aspects of their operations from a single platform. These integrations not only simplify the management of an online store but also enhance its functionality, providing a better shopping experience for customers. Therefore, Shopify is a powerful tool for business owners looking to establish or expand their online presence.

The Role of Magic XPI in Streamlining Shopify-EDI Integration

Magic xpi is a powerful and versatile integration platform designed to facilitate the seamless connection of various software systems and data sources within an organization. In the context of e-commerce, Magic xpi stands out by streamlining business operations, automating data exchange, and enhancing customer experiences, thereby unlocking the full potential of e-commerce.

Magic xpi is a versatile integration platform that allows you to connect Shopify with various EDI systems smoothly. It acts as a bridge, facilitating the smooth exchange of data between the two platforms. With Magic XPI, business owners can automate the transfer of data such as orders, inventory updates, and shipping details from Shopify to their EDI system and vice versa.

This automation reduces manual data entry, minimizes errors, and speeds up business processes. As a result, businesses can operate more efficiently, fulfill orders faster, and provide a better customer experience.

Useful readings: Fully Managed Shopify Integration with EDI2XML

Drop shipping and EDI integration (Why Do You Need EDI if You Have a Shopify Store?)

If you’re running a Shopify store, you might wonder why you need EDI integration for drop shipping. Here’s the deal: EDI, or Electronic Data Interchange, is a system that allows different software to talk to each other. In the context of drop shipping, it means your Shopify store can communicate directly with your suppliers’ systems. When a customer places an order, the details are automatically sent to the supplier who then ships the product to the customer.

This automation eliminates the need for manual data entry, reducing errors and speeding up the order fulfillment process. So, even though Shopify is a powerful platform, integrating EDI can take your drop shipping business to the next level by enhancing efficiency and accuracy.

Apps vs Managed EDI Service

When it comes to electronic data interchange (EDI), you have two main options: apps or managed services. Apps, like those you can add to your Shopify store, can handle basic EDI tasks. They’re user-friendly and often affordable, making them a good choice for small businesses or those new to EDI. However, they may lack advanced features and scalability.

On the other hand, a managed EDI service takes care of all your EDI needs for you. This includes not just the technology, but also handling setup, maintenance, updates, and troubleshooting. While this option might cost more, it provides a comprehensive solution that can be adapted as your business grows.
EDI2XML-Shopify-Integration-with-EDI-using-Magic-xpi

Enhancing Business Efficiency and Growth through Shopify-EDI Integration

In conclusion, integrating Shopify with EDI can significantly enhance business efficiency and growth by streamlining operations, improving data accuracy, and fostering stronger business relationships. 

EDI2XML plays a pivotal role in this integration, offering a robust, flexible, and cost-effective solution that can be tailored to your specific business needs. By leveraging our services, businesses can establish and boost their performance, thereby gaining a competitive edge in the market.

If you’re interested in exploring how EDI2XML can transform your business operations, we invite you to book a free consultation with our experts.

Let us help you unlock your business’s full potential.
Retail automation, Shopify Integration using Magic xpi

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Shopify Private or Public app: What’s Best for ERP Integration

During the COVID-19 pandemic situation, companies worldwide have shifted their business mostly to their eCommerce front, to stay the course and become effective, given the worldwide safety and restrictions. It is no secret that this kind of business shift positively affected eCommerce platform providers such as Shopify, Big Commerce, WooCommerce, Magento, and others in the marketplace.

Considering Shopify is the one of the top 5 major players in the eCommerce market in North America, we frequently get this question from clients and contacts, when discussion integration projects between Shopify and ERP/CRM:

“What is the best option to integrate the Shopify eCommerce store, is it to do it through any public app in the marketplace or through the private app?“

While this question is very generic, I will try to keep my explanation simple, with an emphasis on the pros and cons of both integration options. All this is based on our proven expertise in ERP integration to eCommerce platforms and other systems; Let me start by putting some definitions.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a Canadian eCommerce platform company based in Ottawa (Canada), with a revenue of less than little less 3 billion US dollars as of 2020. Shopify is servicing companies and users around the globe, in providing a stable, intuitive, and solid eCommerce platform for eCommerce business.

For more information about Shopify as a company or offerings, you can always check their website

Why companies need integration to their ERP or CRM?

Companies of all sizes in today’s business reality are becoming very agile in using different means to process sales transactions and generate revenues. As an example, a typical company today in the service or retail industry will have several means to receive orders:

1. through a phone call where consumers or even B2B clients might call in, to place orders.

2. through the exchange of electronic business documents (EDI) a typical protocol mainly used by large retailers and distribution (B2B)

3. through one or multiple consumer based (B2C) eCommerce sites.

As you notice, there are different channels or protocols to communicate sales orders for that same company, which are typically through different systems (ERP, CRM, eCommerce site) and having their ERP as the main business system.

The process to consolidate all orders received from all the different sources, into one destination system (ERP or CRM), is called “integration”.

Having an integration and synchronization between an eCommerce site based on any of the known platforms of the marketplace (i.e. WooCommerce, Shopify, Big Commerce, Magento,…), and the ERP / CRM system of an enterprise (i.e. SAP, Oracle JDE, Microsoft Dynamics,….), will improve efficiency and productivity, and most importantly offer a better customer experience to their clients.

Read more about the most 3 important reasons for EDI integration with Shopify

What are the integration possibilities with Shopify?

Shopify offers several options to allow integration between an eCommerce site on its platform and other third-party systems, they are offered under two models:

a) Public Shopify apps

b) Private Shopify apps

both options are available for all Shopify subscribers. Let’s drill down and describe the difference between both integration options

a) Shopify public apps

Those types of applications (or apps) are most of the time activated per instance of Shopify, from within Shopify marketplace. Those apps can be purchased through a subscription paid annually or monthly, in return of its use.

Here are some of the characteristics of Shopify public apps:
  • Public apps are publicly available on Shopify marketplace. They are sometimes developed by Shopify team, or a certified Shopify partner or developer.
  • Most of the times, such apps do execute one and only one functionality (for example reading an inventory feed and updating the SKU available quantity in Shopify).
  • You can find on the same marketplace, multiple apps, providing the same functionality, while it is developed by different professionals, and offered at different prices.
  • Subscription to public apps is most of the times intuitive, quick, and requires little configuration for users with some level of expertise.

b) Shopify private apps

Private apps on Shopify, as per their definition are built for a single Shopify instance (or store). Shopify provides access to the underlying database through a REST API.

By selecting the option to build a private app to access Shopify, you will be given necessary credentials and security tokens to be able to read and write all the data objects available to you from your Shopify store.

Here are some of the characteristics of Shopify private apps:
  • Not available for the public; only you can use it for your own store
  • Not publicly available on Shopify marketplace.
  • This type of private apps is developed by your integration partner, to access your own data.
  • Your integration partner can develop integration flows that can sync in both directions multiple flows.

What is best a Shopify private or public app for integration?

While public apps are great applications, built by experienced developers, we have been seeing much better success when doing the integration between Shopify and a company’s ERP / CRM system using Shopify private apps. This conclusion is based on previous integration projects.

In previous projects, we were able to integrate Shopify orders, fulfillment, inventory with home grown ERP systems, and branded ERP / CRM systems such as Oracle JDE, SAP, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics….

Our integration flows are proven to be stable and mainly it does not conflict with different Shopify public apps active on the Shopify instance. In fact, most of the clients who use our integration services, they come to us, to solve the technological issues they face when they implement and use different public apps in their instance of Shopify.

Choose the best integration provider to integrate Shopify with your ERP or CRM

We, as a successful integration provider, have been helping our customers for 21 years quickly, reliably connect eCommerce to ERP or CRM and integrate it into business systems.

Contact us for a free consultation and we will help you choose the most suitable integration solution for your business.
Shopify Integration

Recognize Warning Signals: How Urgent it is to Integrate E-Commerce with ERP?

This post was updated to reflect current trends and information.


Clear navigation, great visual branding, and a simple user-friendly layout – this should look like a good online store. E-commerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, Woocommerce, BigCommerce, and the likes, already perform these functions.

However, no matter how important usability is, this is only part of the success of your e-commerce business. Long delivery time for example or errors in the order have a decisive influence on customer satisfaction. We all know, that only happy customers will buy again from your eCommerce online store in the future.

The effective work of the online store is ensured primarily, by having a streamlined internal business process and flows, fully integrated with the company’s business management software such as the ERP.
e-commerce automation and integration with ERP and CRM

However, many online store owners, waste valuable time with poorly performing and none-integrated applications, isolated solutions, or even manual work.

If you recognize one of the following warning signals from your everyday work, it is time to act and make a change!

Shopify Store: Not Enough Time for Everyday Activities

What is your daily work in the Shopify online store? Is manual data entry or complex import and export a daily occurrence in your workplace? For small startups, it is reasonable to manage e-commerce business processes using the free basic features of Shopify store.

But if you spend more time synchronizing data than in everyday work, the effectiveness of your online store will drop rapidly.

Online Store: Long Order “Lead Time”

Your store doesn’t have automated processes. Without consistent automation, orders “lead time” for delivery will be on the rise, which affects your service and, above all, the satisfaction of your customers.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

A “lead time” is a measurement of how long it takes to complete a process from start to finish.
For example, the time between placing an online order by a client and delivering goods to him.

The Standard Features of The Online Store are Not Enough

Are the processes in your Shopify store system insufficient to match the growing requirements, even if you have already hired new employees? As company success grows, so does the demand: new functionality must always be embraced.

E-Commerce Store Isolated From Other Business Systems

Do you use your e-commerce store as an isolated solution? If your online store is not connected to the business systems of the enterprise (ERP, CRM, EDI, accounting system, etc.), a separate operation in your company provides double keying-in of data – this is annoying and often leads to human errors.

Loss of Sales

Are you losing sales because you do not have enough goods in stock or there are delays in production or the supply chain? Or maybe you have delays with third-party services such as dropshipping?
e-commerce sales orders automation

Competition

Are you losing qualified employees or applicants to the competition, because they expect a modern, productive work environment?

ERP Integration for Your Online Store

Have you recognized your business and understood the source of the problem? Do you want to change something? We can help you!

We have many years of successful experience in ERP integration with online stores. Our customers note that the integration expanded the functions of the online store, increased the productivity of their online trading, and contributed to the effective growth of their business.

Contact us to get a free consultation on the integration of your online store.
Shopify integration price list

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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

Why You Should Automate Inventory Updates for Your Shopify Store?

This post was updated to reflect current trends and information.

One of Shopify‘s main challenges is managing your inventory. Without well-organized inventory management, you can lose a lot in sales. A bad situation is when you sell products that you no longer have in stock, which can lead to additional costs for refunding money, irritating customers, and losing loyalty to your store.

Manually updating your inventory level in the Shopify Admin Center can be impractical and you also lose a lot of time and you have no guarantee that you will avoid errors. Thus, how to avoid these problems?

Let’s first look at what Shopify is and how the ordering process takes place.

What is Shopify and How Does it Work?

Shopify perhaps is one of the most popular brands in the world of e-commerce, but not everyone knows how it works. Simply put, Shopify is the software you pay its usage, based on a monthly subscription, under the SaaS model. It allows you to create an eCommerce site and use the solution payment gateway to sell both digital and physical products, to customers around the world.

When you setup your Shopify store, you can choose one of 3 available plans:
  • Basic Shopify – $29 monthly
  • Shopify – $79 monthly
  • Advanced Shopify – $299 monthly

Shopify in no way limits the number of products that you can have in your store. You can sell an unlimited number of items on every Shopify plan.

Many experts recognize Shopify as the best solution in the e-commerce market for investing in the growth of their online store.

Typical Workflow for Online Orders

Understanding Shopify order processing is a fundamental part of your e-commerce business. Let’s briefly review the main stages of Shopify order processing when your Shopify store is not synchronized with your business systems.

Every Shopify online order goes through certain stages. Each of these stages requires a different action in your Shopify store. You can configure Shopify to automatically perform these actions or process them manually.

Capture Payment of a Placed Order

When a client makes a payment by credit card, payment information must be received and sent to his bank for processing. You can receive payments manually or automatically. If you set a manual capture, you will need to capture funds for each order from the Shopify orders area. In this way, (if you configured your settings for manual capture funds), you will not automatically receive payment from orders. And attention, you won’t be able to collect any money for an order after the authorization period ends.

Thus, manual payment management requires a lot of time and effort, especially if you have many orders.

But if you just automate the capture payment, without automating inventory updates, there is a high risk of getting money for goods that are no longer in stock.

Fulfill the Paid Order

When a client buys something from your online store, this information appears as a new order in the Orders page of Shopify. Simultaneously you receive a new order notification by email. The customer receives an order confirmation by email. The fulfillment procedure typically includes the following stage:

1. You log into your ERP/accounting system to create an order record from the Shopify store.

2. Search for customer records in your ERP/accounting system. If you do not find customer information in your system, you must manually enter all the information about the new customer.

3. To account for purchases, you need to manually adjust your inventory levels. This is more complicated than it seems at first glance, because your product identifiers (Shopify creates a unique product ID for every item you sell) in your online store may not exactly match the SKUs (Stock Keeping Unit- the code that identifies the product within your business).

4. After entering and adjusting all the related order information, you can proceed with the order, namely: picking and packaging items, labeling the order for shipment, shipping the package with a mail carrier. The steps for fulfillments may be different depending on the fulfillment method used:
  • Fulfill own orders. You execute orders yourself, packing and sending your goods.
  • Dropshipping (fulfillment services). Dropshipping partners stores, packs, and ships the goods for you to your customers. The typical dropshipping services that integrate with Shopify are Oberlo Dropshipping and Fulfillment by Amazon but it could be other services.
  • Custom dropshipping Customs dropshipping services realize your orders when they receive a request by e-mail. This request is generated when you mark an item as fulfilled in your Shopify store.

5. After completing the order, you must take note of the shipping information and return to your Shopify store to send this information to the customer for tracking.

6. If you use CRM you need to manually update the information to reflect the sale you just completed.

Shopify Refund, Return, or Canceling Orders

If the process described above seems familiar to you, most likely you are tired of manually entering data between business systems and your store. Either you must incur large salary costs for employees who are responsible for data entry. But the worst part is that you often find errors as a result of re-entering data. Thus, part of the orders ends with a return.

Did you know that according to e-commerce returns statistics 65% of all returns are the merchant’s fault (whether it’s an incorrect size, color, etc.) But for sure, your goal is to minimize returns in your store and increase customer satisfaction.

Our recommendation: to better manage your business we highly recommended automating all your order processing at each stage.

Inventory Updates Issues

Another big common problem in online shops is inventory updates. Inventory levels in the online store and business system are never synchronized; as a result, it is typical in such case to find companies issuing lots of refunds to offset ordered goods that are not available for shipping.
Shopify inventory updates

It’s no secret when returning the goods and reimbursing their payment, not only profitability is reduced, but unexpected order processing work is added.

Shopify takes its share from each transaction that occurs in your online store. Fees are: 30¢ for every online transaction, plus 2.9% to 2.4% depending on your plan. Even if you activate Shopify Payments (that available only to stores in certain countries) you still have to pay for each transaction.

Although the fees for Shopify Transactions are not so bad, but if the company has problems with inventory synchronization and often must make refunds, they are not happy to pay the transaction fee.

Some e-commerce owners recommend put in the financial plan “fund returns”. They say start by depositing 10% of the income into the “return fund”. And if experience shows that more or less is needed, change the percentage.

This may seem reasonable, but we recommend that you invest better in automating your business, which will improve the performance of your store at every stage and increase customer satisfaction and profitability.

Save Time and Money with Fully Managed Shopify Integration Service

Do you need an effective integration solution to automate your order processing, update an inventory and help you sell more on Shopify?

Our goal is to save the time of entrepreneurs so that they take care of the e-commerce routine problems as little as possible. We take this job on ourselves. We reduce the processing and delivery time of a Shopify order and make it faster by integrating your Shopify store with another system that you use to run your business.

Contact us today for a free consultation!

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Secrets and rules of Shopify integration with your ERP or CRM

Secrets and rules of Shopify integration with your ERP or CRM

This post was updated to reflect current trends and information.


As you know, an online store or eCommerce site, always becomes an additional source of revenue for a company, and sometimes even it might become the main source of sales and revenues.

Great design, information blocks and a clear structure are just some of the many good advantages if you decide to create an online store using an e-commerce platform based on Shopify.

Understand what Shopify integration is
Shopify integration

First, your Shopify store needs an inventory management strategy. Keeping track of your inventory should be a top priority. This means that you need real-time automation for all your stock, as manual stock inventory can be an overwhelming task.

Thus, the integration of the online store with the company’s internal business system allows you to synchronize the inventory in your Shopify store with the inventory status of your ERP database system, based on pre-defined schedule.

Automatic updates of Shopify variants, inventory quantities and prices will be useful for online stores that have a considerable range of products, especially when inventory status of those products/items is constantly fluctuating…

With Shopify integration, there is no need to monitor and adjust, manually the stock of your products on the eCommerce site or store; you sell only what is available, and all new products are automatically fed to the site.

Thus, your visitors have the most complete and reliable information on a product or service. At the same time, you can significantly reduce the cost of processing the price lists and catalogs of your products.

Why do you need to exchange data?

Automatic integration between a Shopify store and the business management system (ERP, CRM, accounting, etc.) helps to solve several issues:
– Get rid of problems related to human factor.
– Reduce the number of possible errors during data exchange.
– Reduce the workload of employees and focus their activity on sales and customer service.
– Ensure the relevance of the information for both: store visitors and company sellers. Especially relevant for large turnover.

Useful reading: Challenges of selling on Shopify

The main stages of data exchange

The process of implementing data exchange between Shopify and a company’s business software system, consists of three main phases:
1. Project analysis and initiation.
2. Configuration of the data Upload from ERP/CRM to the eCommerce site.
3. Configuration of the data Download from the eCommerce site to ERP/CRM.

The first phase is a step that happens only once during the lifecycle of the integration project. During this phase, our team at EDI2XML will work with the client and identify the business rules, the entities to synchronize between the ERP/CRM and their Shopify Stores, the frequency and other aspects.

This initiation phase is crucial to initiating a continuous automatic process that will have one single mission: run indefinitely and do what it is configured to do.

The automation process will be executing the upload of data from ERP/CRM to Shopify and the download of data from Shopify to the ERP/CRM system, when needed, without any human intervention.

Which information is usually sent from ERP to the online store?

The following is a list of information and data objects that can be extracted from a company’s management system, and uploaded / synchronized to the Shopify store:
  • Update Variant Inventory/Price
  • Customer Information, Bill To, Ship To
  • Update Shopify Customer (Customer Information, Bill To, Ship To)
  • Update Shopify Orders (Complete, Cancel)
  • Create Shopify Order Fulfillment
  • Update/Cancel Shopify Order Fulfillment
  • Create Shopify Product(s)
  • Update Shopify Product(s)
  • Delete Shopify Product(s)
  • Create Shopify Product Image
  • Modify Shopify Product Image
  • Delete Shopify Product Image
  • Create Shopify Variant(s)
  • Update Shopify Variant(s)
  • Delete Shopify Variant(s)

Which information is sent the online store to ERP?

The following is a list of information and data objects that can be extracted from a Shopify store and downloaded / synchronized to the company’s management system:
B2B Integration
  • Shopify Orders (Ship To, Bill to and Order details) Update
  • Shopify Customers (Customer Information, Bill To, Ship To)
  • Shopify Orders Fulfillment
  • Abandoned Checkouts
  • Inventory Level by Location


Integrate Shopify with Leading ERP Systems

As mentioned above, Shopify integration with your internal system makes it easy to manage your sales, inventory, and reports. We at EDI2XML eliminate the need for manual data entry using the Magic xpi Integration Platform, we automate the most important business processes, ensuring data exchange between Shopify and leading ERP and accounting systems.
Shopify integration

Following is a list of the most commonly used ERP systems to integrate to Shopify:

What to consider when organizing the integration of Shopify.

Prior to kicking off a Shopify integration project between your company’s business system and the eCommerce store, it is necessary to define the business flow. Think through all the stages of working with customers, this help determine what information you need to transfer and in which direction.

What points are important to consider for integration:

1. What data should be uploaded to each side;

2. How often will the exchange take place;

3. Prepare your data for Integration based on the appropriate data format (i.e. csv, xml, json ….).

4. For the integration to be efficient and smooth, it’s important that you sanitize and clean your data; Clean all duplicate fields and customers, correct incomplete or contravening data, Product/SKU IDs on your online store, must match the Product/SKU IDs used to represent items in your accounting/ERP system. ..

5. Anticipate possible issues: lack of the right product, the possibility of doubling data and other difficulties.

The technical complexities of your integration project depend on how to decide to integrate with your software business system (i.e. accounting software, ERP or CRM system); Connecting directly with certified connectors to branded systems such as SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, is possible, but will need additional time and effort to build, test and deploy. Still integration using messages of type XML, Json or CSV are the most standard and efficient to date, and do not require any additional fees or efforts.

Shopify Integration Experts

Need an efficient Shopify ERP integration solution that automates orders and inventory between your Shopify store and your ERP system? We can help you! The e-commerce integration with ERP, CRM and EDI is our specialty and one of the strongest offerings. We setup fast and efficient synchronization bridge that works very efficiently to add value to your business.

We specialize in integrating Shopify with ERP, CRM, and other third-party systems and applications. It doesn’t matter if you are a Shopify user or just want to open a new store, or switch to Shopify from another eCom platform, we have experts who can solve all your integration challenges.

Contact our Shopify integration experts today for a free consultation!
Shopify integration price list

The following is a list of additional helpful information:

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

Shopify and Microsoft Dynamics Nav Integration: Things you should know

Free Shopify Integration Whitepaper
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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

Related posts:

– 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

The Definitive Checklist For Oracle JDE and EDI Integration Projects

This post was updated to reflect current trends and information.

Article written by Pierre Namroud, EDI Integration Specialist & Business Consultant

I had the pleasure of attending Collaborate17, a Technology and Applications Forum for the Oracle community. This opportunity brought together Oracle professionals, integrators, project managers and IT experts from around the world, who all work in different spaces of integration. It was such a great experience speaking with so many Oracle experts and attending educational sessions.

One of the main points of discussion during the various speaking engagements was on the challenges that professionals were facing when it came to integration projects involving EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) as well as eCommerce data to JDE (JD Edwards). The opinions were unanimous in the sense that Oracle still has more work to be done in order to strengthen and simplify integration with legacy EDI protocols and build simpler integration flows for protocols such as X12, EDIFACT, Rosetta Net, etc.

I’m writing this article, in order to share my own expertise as a data and EDI integrator, where I had the chance to be involved in several eCommerce and EDI integration projects with Oracle JDE. Hopefully it will help inform other Oracle professionals looking to overcome some of these integration challenges.

Challenges currently being faced by Oracle JDE professionals

There are many challenges that any JDE professional might see when it comes to data and systems integration with Oracle ERP software in general, whether for on-premises or cloud systems. [As a side note, Oracle’s cloud systems have their own specific limitations that I recently learned about during one of the Collaborate Sessions].

Below, I have listed some of the most common challenges that not only have I experienced in my own projects with Oracle customers but that others have expressed during the Collaborate conference;

  • Oracle’s JDE does not have a seamless built-in integration with all EDI X12 documents “out of the box”.
  • The current integration process for EDI X12, EDIFACT, HL7 or any other data format now happens by writing into transition tables (or Z files) and then triggering a business function to process those incoming data.
  • Even though Oracle’s JDE system supports business functions, some older versions do not support new API functions, which can cause some headaches.

    Looking to integrate your EDI or eCommerce processes with Oracle JDE enterprise one, look no further, since we have the best integration option where we turn your Oracle JDE system into a modern REST API, that receives https requests and acts accordingly. Learn More>

Integration Project Checklist

Before starting an integration project with your Oracle JDE system, I recommend that you go through the following list of questions. This way, you’ll be able to make the best decisions to move forward with development efforts as efficiently as possible.

  • Who are the Business or Trading Partners you want to exchange electronic data with?
  • Which documents (or types of data) are you requested to exchange from your Business Partners? In normal circumstances, they’ll provide you with the necessary documentation and specifications as a road map and for compliance reasons.
  • The exchanged data will be sent under what format or standard/version? (X12, EDIFACT, RosettaNet, XML, custom format…?)
  • What is the protocol of communication used to send the data back and forth between you and your Business Partner? Is it point-to-point, such as AS2 or sFTP?
  • Is a VAN required in order to transport the data?
  • Do you have the necessary expertise to select the appropriate certified communication software (for first time project implementation)?
  • Do you have the necessary expertise in your development team to decrypt and understand the terminologies of legacy EDI formats?
  • Has your team ever done an EDI integration project, that includes a full certification process?
  • How many partners will you be exchanging with? The more partners you have, the more complex the project can become.
  • Check the specs of all of your partners (when possible) to verify the differences in their requirements. It is well known in the EDI integration world that there can be many distinctions and exceptions found per Business Partner and per document. Every EDI project can be unique.
  • What is the lead-time to complete the certification and testing phase with your business partner before going live?
  • What is the volume of exceptions that your development team can currently handle in the project in order to be on time and within budget?
  • Do you have the necessary integration tools to simplify the EDI syntax in order to work with one format regardless of the format of the data you receive from different sources?
  • Is your team coding directly in Oracle JDE native framework, or are you using any efficient integration tool available today?
  • Will you be doing end-to-end integration using Z tables of Oracle JDE, or you are going to use API (or business functions) of JDE?

Recommendations for a Successful Integration Project

As you might have noticed, data integration projects involving legacy EDI protocols or custom data format exchange are not simple. They are projects that need a lot of expertise and experience in data communication and transportation, data mapping and systems integration into Oracle’s JDE system.

Moreover, at most enterprises that we’ve completed EDI integration projects for, it was evident how stretched and overwhelmed the internal JDE development team was in their own day-to-day operations, support and maintenance of the application and were incapable of learning new standards to respect the strict timeline given by Trading Partners. In these cases, they looked for help from an outside Service Provider, such as EDI2XML.

My recommendations for such projects are as follows:

  • Outsource the EDI part of the project to a reliable Service Provider, who is highly focused on service availability and quality, since EDI is quite sensitive. This will allow your team to continue working on their daily tasks and keep doing what they do best (JDE support and maintenance, for example). This way, you’ll have a simplified and streamlined EDI integration process; you build one tunnel between your EDI provider, where they deal with the exceptions, and your own process.
  • In case your company policy requires you to deploy the EDI integration solution on-premises, make sure to use an efficient EDI conversion tool such as our EDI2XML technology that has the capability to turn the EDI documents from X12 format to a human readable XML format, for example.
  • Equip your team with the right tools for data integration such as Magic xpi, which we have been using for many years in our data and systems integration projects. Leveraging such technologies allowed us to integrate anything-to-anything (JDE to SAP, SAP to Salesforce, EDI to any system as examples).

I sure hope I was able to expose the most common EDI integration challenges and complexities and help you to overcome these obstacles with the above checklist and recommendations.

If you are interested in learning more about this topic or any other issue related to EDI integration projects, please click on the image below and I will be more than happy to contact you personally for a FREE consultation.

 

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This post was updated to reflect current trends and information.

 

ECommerce (or online retail) has been a growing trend over the last few years. Due to this, business partners, retailers and suppliers have been transforming their flows and processes in order to better serve today’s well-connected, tech-savvy and wise consumer, who is constantly plugged in to the latest technologies. Read more