One of the most common (and the one that drives the highest value) reasons for an ERP integration project with Magento is to automate the data transfer process. Automating data transfer between systems - typically using the APIs of each system - brings tremendous benefits in terms of speed and accuracy (once the links are established).Automated data process
What are you actually doing?
You are significantly reducing the chance of human intervention and error when you automate the sharing of data between your e-commerce platform and ERP systems. Automated data sources don't make mistakes like humans do. And the link works 24 hours per day, 365 days per year and, once paid for and established, do not require to be paid a salary or a pension or take holidays. And, very importantly, it frees up staff previously dedicated to resolving mistakes to do work where they can really make a difference.
For example, this allows customer service representatives and accounting staff to deal with errors on an exception basis rather than on an ongoing basis.
Reduction in intervention
When selling products online and the majority of sales (a very high percentage that is) happen seamlessly and automatically, human intervention is limited to a problem arises. This leaves your customer service team free to focus on actual customer service - such as complex orders - as opposed to mundane order taking. They are actually adding real value where lost sales were a real possibility.
Another benefit for your customer service team is that integrating Magento with your ERP system brings down the call volume to your Customer Services desk. For many B2B organisations in particular, over 50% of inbound callers are only asking for the price of an item, or its availability, or the status of an order. This can be very much reduced with a good integration especially showing your stockholding and current pricing.
By doing a full renovation of your e-commerce site, these questions are answered online instead of being fielded by your customer service representatives.
Scale your processes
Automation also allows for an easier scale process for your e-commerce site (this is dealing with a much larger volume of sales activity without the requirement to expand the back office in proportion).
If, for example, your team ramps up your marketing efforts on the site that successfully drives more traffic, there is not necessarily more work created for employees. This is because you don’t have to worry about aspects such as dual maintenance, it is easy to scale your site to accommodate new traffic.
By taking human intervention out of the equation, your company can increase efficiency and drive cost out of the organisation. Without the complexity and overhead of dual maintenance, there is one source of numbers that cannot be questioned (and less room for human error). This also can reduce friction within an organisation because everyone uses one consistent data source - there will be no arguments about sales using different numbers from operations and the two not being comparable.
Online integrator
But, most importantly, by integrating Magento with the ERP, you are allowing customer service representatives to focus on customer service instead of menial tasks: they will be adding revenue so you do not need to worry that this is a cost rather than an investment.
If you liked this blog then you might also like this previous blog too: http://inbound.itqsolutions.net/blog/4-ways-to-tell-if-your-erp-system-is-now-overloaded