The Advantages of Running Your Business Processes and Your E-commerce Site on the Same ERP

A company that decides to build an e-commerce site has to choose whether the site will run on the same ERP it already uses to manage its business processes, or whether the site will run independently and then rely on Excel or some other method to reconcile sales and stock levels on the site with the existing software.

Sometimes the existing software has no way of connecting to an e-commerce site, and then the only option is the Excel route or something similar.

Where a company does have the choice, however, using the same solution for both is the better decision, for the following reasons:

#1. Managing stock is simpler

If you use the same software both to run your business and to power your e-commerce site, keeping track of stock is far simpler, because everything happens in one place. The site pulls stock levels straight from the ERP, and those levels change in real time, so what the site shows is always accurate and you cannot end up selling something you do not have.

#2. New items are entered in one place

New items are entered only in the ERP, and the e-commerce site then picks them up automatically and displays them with everything they need — product photo, description, price and so on. Without this, every new item has to be entered into the ERP with all its details and then entered a second time in the back end of the e-commerce site, which is considerably more work.

#3. Every document that accompanies a sale is created automatically in the ERP

When a purchase is made on the site, all the accompanying paperwork — the invoice or the delivery note — is created automatically in the ERP and emailed to the customer. On top of that, stock levels drop in real time the moment the sale goes through, and everyone using the system can see it. Without a single shared solution, stock has to be reduced by hand and every required document, from the receipt to the delivery note, has to be created manually.

TiramisuERP fully supports e-commerce sites and can serve as a single solution for both managing business processes and running your online shop.