Magento integration with ERP is increasingly becoming popular across eCommerce companies because of the rapid sales growth and positive impact that it can have on their online stores. Since COVID-19 pandemic there has been an accelerated demand for eCommerce platforms. Let us understand what Magento and ERP are, and how the two, when integrated, can benefit your online store.
Introduction
Magento is an online platform for e-commerce that lets you sell your products online. It is well-suited to the needs of all sizes of companies and provides essential benefits like live tracking of orders, creating invoices, automatically approving orders, and introducing a customer-centric approach. In short, it provides a comprehensive solution for eCommerce businesses of all sizes.
As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, many companies have altered their strategies, with 45% of them now prioritizing digital transformation and making investments in new eCommerce software.
This platform can be integrated with ERP software, which helps companies manage their daily functions like accounting, analysis of data, marketing etc. The software also ensures real-time reporting, accuracy, and better performance, thereby increasing sales growth and providing a competitive advantage to the company.
Magento integration with ERP is beneficial because it automates manual tasks between two systems and reduces the chances of errors. It also ensures higher customer satisfaction, improves the efficiency of your online store, and enhances the performance of employees. In this blog, we will elaborate on more reasons for Magento integration with ERP and how you can go about it.
What is Magento?
Magento is a popular e-commerce platform that enables companies to sell their products over the Internet. The platform can easily be deployed as a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) or on-premise. Built on the PHP framework, Magento uses MySQL for data management and other functions.
Magento is a robust and customizable platform well-suited to businesses that specialize in a B2B environment like wholesale producers, manufacturers as well as distributors. Following are some essential B2B/B2C features of the platform:
- Request for proposal
- Tracks orders, quotes and invoices
- Establishes credit limits
- Defines purchasing limits
- Introduces customer-specific payment options
- Automatically approves orders
- Tools for self-service
With an extensive range of features and customization options, businesses are looking at Magento as one of the best eCommerce platforms to establish or expand their online presence.
What is ERP?
ERP or enterprise resource planning (ERP) is software that is deployed by many companies to handle their day-to-day operations like accounting, planning, data management, and supply chain. It is a good choice for purchasing stocks, managing sales, human resources and even marketing.
ERP is quite important for e-commerce business platforms since it provides a centralized database. It enhances productivity, helps retain customers and increases revenue. Using ERP can significantly help reduce the hidden costs that are involved in eCommerce. It takes into account areas like customers, inventory, accounting, shipment and pricing among others. The software ensures that its deployment helps companies and guarantees the following benefits:
- Streamline Process
- Real-time reporting
- Improved performance
- Enhanced collaboration
- Improved communication
- Free flow of information
When choosing an ERP software, make sure that you keep the following points in mind:
- The solution is up-to-date with current technology.
- It must suit the needs of your company.
- It can be integrated with the existing systems easily.
- The vendor provides full support, and is trusted.
- Costs involved, including TCO and ROI.
- It should be easily customizable.
What is Magento Integration?
Magento integration is a process of integrating the Magento CMS website with other systems. It can be anything example CRM, ERP, etc to streamline business processes, reduce manual errors, and improve efficiency. It automates the day-to-day operations of your business without any human interference. It also synchronizes both, Magento as well as the ERP thereby ensuring proper functioning. The basic premise of Magento integration is the automation of the majority of the functions that go on in a company. This helps in connecting all the disjoined systems and departments under the business and improves productivity and future projections too. Most companies follow the given set of processes:
- Management of customer accounts
- Manage orders through Magento
- Automatically update orders
- Simultaneous update of pricing and inventory
- Update of products
Why Do Magento Integration with ERP?
Now that we know what Magento integration is, it becomes important to understand the process of Magento integration with ERP.
Magento integration with ERP system provides numerous benefits for an eCommerce business. The integration empowers your business to streamline critical business operations, such as inventory management, order processing, accounting, eliminating manual errors and amplifying efficacy.
In the next few paragraphs, we will tell how you about Magento integration with ERP and the best ERP software available. To be sure, there is no ideal ERP software that is compatible with Magento as it completely depends on a number of factors like the size of your company, the kind of operations, the industry you are involved in and whether you classify as a B2B or a B2C company.
The most common ERP software used by companies for integration is listed as follows:
- MS Dynamics
- SAP Business One
- SAP Business By Design
- Sage 200
- Sage X3
- Sage 1000
- SYSPRO
- Epicor
- Exact
How to Integrate Magento with ERP?
Magento integration with ERP is important for any business to realize its benefits. Now that we know this, we will tell you what the process of integration is like. The eCommerce ERP integration solution that you opt for will be determined by the volume of orders and products that require manual processing between your Magento store and an ERP system.
The integration of Magento with ERP enables your business to ‘talk to each other’, pushing and pulling data thus eliminating the need for manual intervention by employees. The Magento integration with ERP largely depends on a number of factors like the size of your company, the kind of operations, inventory management, and the industry you are involved.
Based on the different deciding factors let us discuss Magento integration with ERP. It can be done in three ways:
Point-to-point Magento Integration
This is a cost-effective method for Magento integration with ERP that helps product data or orders move from point A to B. Point-to-point integration requires very fewer effort on your part since point-to-point connectors are designed for a specific purpose and guarantees maximum benefits. Point-to point Magento integration with ERP is quite beneficial for start-up eCommerce platforms, as they can be deployed within a few minutes with minimal configurations and low overheads.
With a growing business and fairly establishing an online presence several connectors will be involved in the functioning of any integration, there is bound to be a lot of confusion and an increase in the stress levels of the users. For such a situation, businesses can opt for the Flexible Magento integration platform.
Custom in-house Magento Integration
Custom in-house integration is used by companies who want to customize their integration and develop it themselves through their internal IT department rather than outsourcing. It is also termed bespoke eCommerce integration. However, it has a lot of limitations involved like an increased dependence on the same team for a change in the requirement of the business. Moreover, it is very complex and time-consuming and requires a strong set of finances and efforts.
But the positive side of this bespoke integration is that it allows room for improvement as it is flexible and can be amended as and when the need arises.
Flexible and customizable Magento Integration
This kind of setup is based on a third-party integration that also provides the benefits of automation and an upper hand against bespoke integration. This helps companies automate their business processes and interact across databases. Through this Magento integration with ERP can be done without any coding and is suitable for companies dealing with a higher volume of sales and inventory and demands quick automation as per the requirements. It synchronizes the work between departments and integrates all present systems. The solution offered is flexible and easily amendable.
UNO plugin in MS Dynamics can integrate with any data source to automate business processes through a drag-and-drop graphical user interface. It can be easily and quickly configured in ERP and Magento endpoints. Once it is configured all the tasks and processes are adapted to the need which triggers the eCommerce process and gives a competitive advantage.
Benefits of Magento Integration with ERP
Integrating Magento with ERP, as mentioned above, is gaining popularity because of the ways it can work wonders for your online store. There are multiple benefits of Magento integration with ERP, some of which we have listed below:
- Streamlined operations
- Inventory management
- Order fulfilment
- Shipping and logistics
- Better data management
- Centralized, accurate, and real-time data
- Increased efficiency
- Reduced manual entry of data
- Automated processes
- Faster decision-making
Takeaway
In this blog, we have discussed Magento integration with ERP in detail. The process is quite important if you want to grow online and sales to skyrocket soon. We have also talked about how the integration can be completed and the benefits post-integration. We hope this helps you out!
