ERP for Magento Ecommerce Stores - Guide to Choose & Integrate

Success in an ecommerce business is not as easy as it sounds. There are many factors that come into play and resource planning is one such factor. As your business grows, it becomes very difficult to manage your resource which is why you need something called ERP software (Enterprise Resource Planning).

What is Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software and what is the need for its integration with Magento?

It is business process management software which automates and integrates the core business processes. These processes include product planning, purchase, production planning, inventory management, manufacturing or service delivery.

By using ERP software, you can reduce your workload of creating invoice and sales orders, calculating finances and accounting, thereby spending hours and hours of your useful time in creating and maintaining countless spreadsheets. Your staff will be far more productive if these menial works are left to be done by software. Also, by automating these tasks you ensure that there is no human error which can be very detrimental to your business.

When you own an ecommerce website, you have all your data on the ecommerce platform. There is a need to effectively transfer the data between the two systems. This is the reason why you need to integrate your ERP software with your Magento. You can get this done easily from any dedicated Magento programmer near you.

How to select an ERP solution?

Selection of the right ERP software is important for the smooth functioning of your business. The selection should be based on the features that you require the most in ERP software. This depends upon the kind of business you own. Also, the scale of your business will determine how much Return on Investment the software will provide. While looking for ERP software, you should also check if the software integrates with your Magento platform well.

Make sure you compare all the leading ERP software providers thoroughly before deciding your choice.

What are the Magento-ERP integration solutions available?

When your business grows, it will be imperative to integrate your ERP with Magento. Basically, there are two main types of integration methods available; the first one is a point-to-point connector and the second is Custom Integration.

Point to point connector

Some third-party integration extensions are available in the Magento Extension Marketplace. To synchronize the data, Magento and ERP are “pointed” at each other. An ecommerce company has to decide which system they should choose to manage their data in. These extensions are relatively cheap and are available for around $100 a month. These are beneficial for small retailers and if your business grows, these may create some problems.

These connectors do not allow flexibility of adding a sales channel. You will need to reconfigure the integration if you wish to add one channel. But a simple remider that this could be bit messy and time-consuming.

Custom Integration

The most important benefit of using Magento is its ability to be customized. You can customize the integration between your ERP and Magento as well. This would use both applications’ programming interface (APIs) to synchronize the data.

This process is complex and is hence a little expensive as compared to the cost of point to point connection. To do integration you need an certified expert Magento developer to get such a customized that website needs.

There are many good Magento web development companies out there. It is important that you choose the one which provides all the Magento ecommerce web development solutions making your website computable with all the search engines, making accurate user navigation with perfect product display which will increase your sales globally.