The popularity of online shopping is constantly growing and with the pandemic and closed stores, e-shops have been a “rescue” for many entrepreneurs. However, the process of ordering goods, making a payment and recording it up to the goods being delivered to the customer consists of many steps. How automation using the ERP information system can make it easier for a company has been revealed to Podnikajte.sk by experts from the business and e-shop operators.
As we have been creating e-shops for a long time, they also reached out to our CEO Marek Barta:
He considers it important to define the objectives, the expectations from the connection and to have a clear definition of how the connection should work. And it’s essential to thoroughly analyze all these before making the connection.
One of the first steps is to check whether the ERP or the e-shop will allow the connection at all, in what form and under what conditions. There are ERPs that don’t allow connection to an e-shop and force entrepreneurs to use the built-in e-shop from the ERP vendor. It’s an unfortunate solution, as the built-in e-shops of ERP systems are generic, don’t allow customization and the implementation of online marketing is very complicated. There are also e-shops that can’t connect to ERP or only in a very complicated way.
At the same time, he recommends prioritizing such information systems that offer a connection to an e-shop in the form of the so-called Rest API services.
Marek Barta advises entrepreneurs to define the functionalities that the e-shop will provide and those which the ERP itself will provide, in the analysis phase of creating the solution. According to him, the form of connecting the e-shop with ERP then depends on this, which can be reflected, for example, in the current state of stock items, but also their prices. Also, in many cases, the form of the connection affects the loading speed of products in an e-shop and the overall user experience. At the same time, he advises companies not to try to reinvent the wheel.
There’s no need to force e-shop creators to program a warehouse system or accounting. E-shop warehouse and accounting won’t work according to current legislation. But what works is a good connection between the online store and ERP. Entrepreneurs should therefore devote their energy to defining the interconnection (what and when, under what circumstances to interconnect) and the accounting or warehouse itself is better implemented as a ready-made solution.
