How Can You Automate Your Webstore With BigCommerce?
As the number of people making purchases online increases, merchants in this industry are trying to find ways to modernize their processes to keep up with the demand. How much of your time is used by managing orders in BigCommerce and other systems?
The solution to this issue is to automate your online business by connecting your BigCommerce shop with your finance, ERP, POS, or 3PL systems. Find out what the top indicators are that you're ready for integration, and how to select the optimal BigCommerce integration solution.
Do any of the following describe how you feel right now? When you're prepared, you can begin integrating your internet business.
Overselling
How often do you oversell a product or service online? Poor stock management might result in unsold items still being listed on the internet. There is nothing more disappointing than having to inform a consumer that the item they ordered is not available for shipment. When sales are high, as they tend to be over the holidays and during flash sales, it can be extremely challenging to keep up with the ebb and flow of inventory.
Lack of Time Management Due to Excessive Order Processing
Do you have employees who spend many hours a day transferring information by hand? Time spent on manual data input can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars each year in salaries.
Terrible Shipping Delays
Processing orders manually requires entering data, which can be a time-consuming operation that affects delivery delays. Have you considered providing expedited shipping options like one-day or two-day? Customers place a high value on delivery timeframes when making purchasing decisions. Customers will go elsewhere if they have to wait too long for their orders to be fulfilled.
There Are Way Too Many Mistakes When Processing Orders
Typographical errors are another risk when moving data manually between your systems. Even a small mistake might have disastrous consequences, such as erroneous inventory counts, misspelled delivery addresses, or the wrong products being sent to customers. Costs and customer dissatisfaction from such oversights can quickly build up.
Poor at Responding to Price Changes
In search of better pricing and bargains, many people now favor shopping online. Merchants in a highly competitive market need to promptly adjust their pricing to account for market fluctuations. How many potential purchases are you turning away because you can't adjust prices quickly enough?
A+ Service to Customers
Is it common for your company's customer support representatives to intervene and attempt to correct internal errors? An increase in the volume of customer service tickets is one indication of an error-prone process.
To sum up, if you don't take care of your backend procedures, it can have a negative impact on your client experience. In the end, your clients won't return to buy from you since they lost faith in you. However, integrating your BigCommerce storefront can help you avoid these problems altogether.
The meaning of "eCommerce integration"
Connection to BigCommerce
By integrating your eCommerce platform (like BigCommerce) with your back-end financial, ERP, POS, or 3PL systems, you can streamline the flow of information between them. The most common types of transferred data include orders, inventory, customers, products, and shipping/tracking information. With your core systems integrated, you won't have to re-enter data twice. Information will instead be synchronized in real-time in response to events like online purchases.
When it comes to eCommerce, the advantages of integration are obvious. You may improve the online experience you provide to customers while also boosting operational efficiencies. Selecting the optimal integration method for your BigCommerce storefront might be challenging.
Tips for Choosing an Appropriate BigCommerce Integration
Integrating your core systems is beneficial to your business and your customers. Integration is challenging, though. The wrong project management strategy might waste time and money without producing a solution that meets your needs. It is crucial that you thoroughly investigate all of the options available to you for integrating BigCommerce. In this article, we'll examine the two most popular approaches to integrating BigCommerce and highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each.
Specification of BigCommerce Custom Integration
One common initial step for some merchants using BigCommerce is to commission a custom integration solution. If you need bespoke code written to link your systems together, you can ask your in-house IT staff, a web agency, a consultant, or a vendor for help. You have prior experience with them, they have an in-depth understanding of your industry, and their solution comes at a reasonable cost. After all, what could possibly go wrong with letting them develop their own unique integration solution?
Most retailers shouldn't need to go down this road unless they are connecting BigCommerce to an unusual system or have really complicated operations. It's important to think about the repeated dangers that can arise with custom integrations.
Is your whole endeavor being led by one person?
A single developer may be able to take on the role of architect, programmer, and supporter for your whole solution, simplifying your workload. When they take a vacation, what happens? The truth is that they can't since if there were ever an issue with your integration, nobody else would know how to fix it.
Exactly how familiar are they with your infrastructure?
It's challenging to integrate. You need to be well-versed in ALL the connected systems in order to guarantee trouble-free data transmission to and from BigCommerce. Data is accepted differently by BigCommerce and ERP back-end systems. Product information, for instance, has a whole new use in an enterprise resource planning system. How well does your vendor know your various endpoint systems and how to optimally integrate them? Don't accept a solution whose architects know nothing about your other systems.
Can the solution be adjusted easily?
When two systems are tied up directly, as is typically the case with custom solutions, the integrations must be hard coded. What steps must be taken while updating systems or introducing new distribution channels? Depending on how your integration is set up, you may be forced to restart the entire project from the beginning to incorporate these alterations or be forced to continue operating as you have been.
A custom solution may seem more enticing due to its lower price tag, but it may wind up costing more due to its many flaws. Because of this, we suggested that BigCommerce store owners look into middleware options to meet their specific integration requirements.
BigCommerce's Middleware Integration
Using a commercially available middleware platform is another option for facilitating eCommerce connections. Data transfers between your endpoints (such BigCommerce and your finance, POS, or 3PL systems) can be automated by using a "hub" that sits between the two.
You might think of the hub as the nerve center that coordinates all of the communication, translation, and orchestration that takes place between your various systems. The cloud-based platform you choose should have pre-built connectors to link your systems together via the hub.
Users of BigCommerce have reported significant success using these methods. The platform and integration are handled by the integration providers. The pre-built connectors can still be configured to fit your specific company needs.
Additionally, you can rest easy knowing that your provider is well-versed in integrating BigCommerce with other platforms. And if your business model should shift, you can make the necessary adjustments without having to redo the integration from scratch. Simply swap out one connector for another that has already been installed.
Article Post by: Gtechwebindia
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