Why B2B ecommerce ERP integrations need to be purpose-built and powerful

Have you been wondering how to integrate your ERP with a B2B ecommerce platform?

Like most B2B businesses, you've got an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to manage your stock and sales. However, you've been doing your due diligence around the various platform options, and it's raised the question of how your ERP is going to integrate with them. And it's a valid concern; ERP integration is essential to the success of your ecommerce platform deployment, so it's important to get it right from the beginning.

A successful ERP and ecommerce platform integration will enable your organisation to streamline the sales environment, provide visibility into your data, and ultimately enhance the buying experience you're offering your customers. But not all ecommerce platforms accommodate ERP integrations equally that’s why in this blog we outline what you need to look for when evaluating your options.

What exactly is an ERP integration?

At a basic level, an ERP integration is connecting and synchronising data between your ERP platform and other software applications. It will enable you to centralise information into a single source of truth, which is why many B2B businesses must integrate their ERP with their ecommerce platform.

The benefits of integrating your ERP system with your ecommerce platform

You already know that your ERP is a powerful business tool. The ecommerce platforms you've been evaluating are powerful sales tools, so they need to work well together. When they do, they can share data across systems, boosting productivity, gaining data-driven insights, and providing a single source of truth.

How does your current ordering process work? Are you interfacing directly with your customers? If you're receiving purchase orders via email, then someone on your team has to manually enter those orders into your ERP system. That’s probably one of the reasons you're on the hunt for an ecommerce platform and why you're concerned about ERP integration - you're looking for a solution that provides a seamless transfer of relevant data between applications. This drives process efficiencies, reduces cost to serve, improves your customers’ experience and follows all the business rules and logic that exist within your ERP.

By choosing an ecommerce solution equipped for seamless ERP integrations you’ll benefit from all of your information being stored centrally - products, stock inventory, accounts, customer details. In addition to this, all online orders will automatically be communicated to your ERP. This makes the whole sales order process much easier to manage.

What to look for in a B2B ecommerce platform ERP integration?

There's a lot to consider when it comes to ecommerce ERP integrations. From out-of-the-box to bespoke systems, the one that will suit your organisation best typically comes down to:

• What your business needs are
• How many customisations your ERP has
• How configurable you need the integrations to be
• Whether you need new development, depending on what kind of ERP you have
• The scope and size of your business
• ecommerce platform development code

When you're evaluating B2B ecommerce solutions, look for one that has the capabilities to add new functionality when required. The vendor should be able to provide bespoke development specifically for your ERP. Look for one that has completed a variety of ERP integrations over time, with a range of different requirements. It should have evolved over time to support a rich variety of functionality. Vendors that are relatively new won't have this level of development experience, nor will they have a history of successful ERP integrations across a range of B2B businesses.

Look ahead to what you might need down the track. The B2B landscape is constantly changing, meaning companies always need new features, so look for a vendor that is focused on continual growth with their development.

Whoever you partner with must understand your business. This means you need to be clear yourself on what your requirements are, so everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals.

Integrating your ERP with Commerce Vision’s B2B ecommerce solution

Our out-of-the-box ecommerce solution, is highly flexible, integrates with the ERP systems that drive B2B business, and our more than 300 out-of-the-box features can be configured to create a bespoke solution for the way you do business. We map fields from your ERP into our ecommerce platform to get the integrations up and running, and then we focus on the individual business processes.

Our customers find that most B2B requirements can be handled by the CV ecommerce platform right out of the box, but we understand that business is constantly evolving and changing, which is why we continue to add new B2B functionality back into our product. We then make it available for our existing customers - something no-one else is doing. This is because we understand business, not just technology. What this means is that our solution is feature-rich, because as we evaluate each new requirement, we determine if it's something that other B2B businesses would find useful, and then it becomes part of the out-of-the-box solution.

Because we have over 20 years of experience successfully integrating a wide variety of ERP systems into our B2B ecommerce platform, we've gained significant expertise and deep knowledge. CV ecommerce has evolved over time with the contribution of different requirements and business processes and continues to do so.

Integrating your ERP with the right ecommerce platform can play a significant role in the growth of your business. Centralised, automated processes combined with a reduction of human error and cost savings are just some of the benefits you can achieve through integration. Remember that true integration success needs a flexible ecommerce platform that can provide new solutions when you have new requirements.

Wondering what else you should look for in a B2B ecommerce platform? Download our practical guide and checklist.