What Is Integrated Ecommerce and How It Changes Your Business

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Ecommerce is the buying and selling of products online, usually via your company’s website. If your business has an online shop, there will be data associated with what customers buy. This includes color, price, and quantity. There will also be information about inventory, and the stock available to be purchased. Tight inventory control is one of the main reasons why companies choose integrated ecommerce.

In many businesses, this information is entered into the ecommerce system via manual data entry. This also works vice versa; for example, product descriptions (or anything related to marketing) must be entered one item at a time.

Integrated ecommerce makes this process a lot easier. It involves linking your sales information from your shopping platform to the other parts of your business. Information about inventory and details about sales can be seamlessly transmitted as soon as an item is purchased.

The implementation of integrated ecommerce can have a significant impact on business practices. These should be taken into account before implementing integrated ecommerce.

Below are the most significant changes that you can expect. Let’s take a look at how integrated ecommerce can change your business.

Consistency

Consistency is essential in business. It allows you to save time and resources, as well as just being less of a headache. Integrated ecommerce can help with this. Because data is constantly being streamed from your online shop to other parts of the business and back, information becomes a lot easier to find.

This will make all tasks using any of this information a lot easier, as everything is consistent and also grants you the ability to almost constantly meet expectations and requirements.

Make better decisions, considering all things at once

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There is a high cost of being unprepared and it can set companies back. This is never more important than when making decisions for the future.

The various processes of a business can be vast and exhaustive. These days, there seems to be a department dedicated to pretty much every aspect of a business’s division. It’s difficult to see, from the top, how all of these intertwine if you don’t have clear management.

Linking together all of this information can help management to have a better overview of the company’s operations. Decisions can be made with an improved understanding of the business’s ecommerce situation, and how the numbers are likely to affect everything in your company.

For example, a decrease in the marketing budget could affect sales, to various extents. With integrated ecommerce, these negative correlations can therefore be spotted more easily.

No data entry means no errors and lower labor costs

Does your business pay for data entry and administrative staff? Sometimes, high labor costs are an indirect result of a company being behind on tech.

These costs could be a thing of the past with integrated ecommerce.

There’s no need to pay for labor costs to enter the data from the shop into other parts of the business, and because all the work is done by a machine, there’s no possibility of human error.

This will no doubt improve the company’s overall efficiency.

Increased agility and ability to scale faster

One of the most important qualities of a business is being able to pivot as necessary and move through all of the changes in that particular industry.

Integrating your ecommerce activities into the rest of the company’s operations means that things will be constantly kept up to date and changes will be easier to navigate. With more efficiency and more streamlined business operations, the company will be better prepared to compete.

As the business grows, and you start wondering how to scale a business, it will be easier to adjust, as this particular kind of integrated measurement doesn’t require complicated intervention.

Allows customers easier access to data

Integrated ecommerce comes with a hidden benefit – customers can access information about their order online.

Many of the most famous ecommerce sites already provide their customers with their own back-end view of the ordering process. It provides clarity for the customer, improves satisfaction, and is likely to prevent customers from contacting the company with queries, dramatically reducing any associated costs.

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This can only be a good thing. The above graph illustrates customer frustrations over a two-year period. The main annoyances were the inability to access simple information. Even with world class customer service, customers will resent having extra steps to take. If customers could access information about their order easily online, this frustration would become a thing of the past.

Deliveries will be on time

Integrated ecommerce allows better overall management and efficiency. Information flows easily and freely between customer orders and logistics fulfillment. As soon as a product is ordered from the site, the logistics department has the information and it is ready to be packaged and sent out.

As well as this, and as discussed, mistakes made by data entry staff can be costly, as they may lead to delayed deliveries. Therefore, there are likely to be fewer mistakes, and products will be delivered more consistently on time.

Prevents employee silos

Often, in offices, departments can become insular as they focus on internal matters – a classic case of an employee silo.

Because of the transparency that comes with having the company’s information connected and accessible to all employees, these silos can be prevented.

This unintended benefit has further benefits attached. Employees are likely to feel a sense of empowerment thanks to their access to information from different parts of the business, leading to increased employee satisfaction and a greater sense of worth.

This is especially important as a business grows.

The below graph demonstrates that, as a company’s size increases, so does the general happiness of its employees.


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The opportunity to make stakeholders happy

However you use integrated ecommerce, it can have a variety of benefits, as shown above.

These benefits and their results will naturally lead to positive reactions from stakeholders. As stakeholders dictate how well a business performs, keeping them happy is very important as it helps with the overall direction and guarantees the success of the business.

Integrated ecommerce is therefore a vital tool to level up your business, especially as it grows.

Among other organizational improvements, it’s a great thing to implement and will serve the company well as it progresses into the future, where more opportunities await.

Nick Shaw
Nick Shaw has been Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) of Brightpearl, the number one retail-focused digital operations platform which encompasses sales, accounting, logistics, CRM and more, since July 2019 and is responsible for EMEA Sales, Global Marketing and Alliances. Before joining Brightpearl, Nick was GM and Vice President of the EMEA Consumer business at Symantec and was responsible for a $500m revenue business.

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