Managing a business is a complex thing. With so many different management aspects and parameters involved, you often need to employ different business solutions each handling some specific nature of business management. Some are designed to manage customers, while others are designed to manage inventory and supply chain-related operations. While you may be using a centralized management solution that caters to various business management domains single-handedly, the complexity of many businesses still requires utilizing specific solutions designed to manage different business domains in more depth independently. However, in such a scenario the consolidation of data from all these independent solutions is still required to have a complete picture of your business.
To fulfill such requirements integration solutions are needed that seamlessly synchronize the data between these disparate solutions and consolidate the data that can depict the whole picture of management operations. Furthermore, integration also allows the user to control various aspects of their business operations with fewer touch points by enabling them to link the task between solutions and achieve a greater level of productivity with automation. This article will discuss some of the common values that need to be synced to achieve unified business management in an eCommerce setup.
Sync of items
Items are the primary thing that is important to run any store; of course, you can’t run any business unless you have something to sell. What you sell defines your business and customers. Therefore, managing item data properly is very crucial for the proper functioning of your business, especially when such information exists on various platforms and must be processed on each for different management purposes. Some of the aspects that make the syncing of items between different business platforms necessary are:
Consistency of operation
Since the processes related to items are taking place on different platforms for their own purposes, the item information must be correct on each to establish a consistency of data across the business management system. Otherwise, any occurring discrepancies can result in negative consequences that will incur losses and loss of business productivity. For example, if the item price is different on the POS solution than on the accounting solution then this can result in inaccurate representation of accounts and revenues.
Customer experience
Providing a good customer experience is one of the main focus for businesses. If your business utilizes different platforms to manage different business aspects then you can’t provide a good customer experience without your item information available to you on a platform meant to provide customer support. For example, your chatbot support system might need the relevant item information to answer customers’ queries related to items.
Sync of accounts
Accounting is one of the main areas of business where great diligence is required. Any error in your account can result in significant losses for your business. Since you might have various accounts on various platforms it’s required to have synchronization between them as well.
Compliance
It’s very important to ensure that you follow all the business laws where you’re operating. In a retail business environment where the frequency of transactions is large and accounts are always being populated on various channels, it’s important to ensure that each transaction is properly recorded in the chart of accounts. Integration enables this by linking accounts across different channels helping you achieve compliance by recording transactions across different business platforms on your main accounting software.
Reporting
Business reporting is the foundation of many important business decisions and a large part of business reporting is financial reporting which is not possible if your accounts are not properly maintained. Having a multichannel business operating various sales channels it’s important that your chart of accounts is being populated and updated constantly to represent the up-to-date financial condition of your business. Integration solutions help in achieving this by syncing accounts from various channels with your main accounting solution enabling you to have an updated and accurate business account allowing you to make decisions with greater accuracy.
Sync of Customers
If you want to promote loyalty among your customer then you must ensure that they get consistent experience across all of your selling channels. This is only possible with the integration of your solution managing these channels. When you have an integrated unified business management system you can present your customers with an omnichannel experience allowing them to get the same experience wherever they shop. For example, if you offer loyalty points to customers they can get these points when shopping physically at your physical store and redeem them when shopping online. Furthermore, with integration, your staff will better handle customer queries and serve them better.
Conclusion
Our business dynamics have evolved greatly and the increasing complexity of business nature has driven the utilization of multiple business solutions as well. This increasing complexity means more data to manage, maintain, and process. However, the necessity of efficient business management calls for complete transparency, consistency, and consolidation of useful information and this can be done by incorporating integration solutions. While these solution provides the integration of a wide range of fields and their values across different disparate solutions the entities discussed here are some of the most important ones. This being said, it’s however very important for businesses to carefully asses their business requirements and needs diligently and utilize the right integration solutions; a consultation with an integration provider can help here.
The x2xeCommerce being an expert in providing integration solutions in various domains can help you implement integration solutions specific to your needs in the domains of POS, ERP, accounting, and eCommerce. An example of the integration solution by the x2xeCommerce includes the x2xeCommerce RMH-Shopify Integration solution. If you need to discuss your requirements and needs or want a free demo you can reach out to the x2xeCommerce team.