Integrate Your eCommerce Store With SAP Business One

In a fast-paced business environment, we hear the term “e-commerce” thrown around frequently. We know that e-commerce provides an online platform for ordering goods and services, but how would it help your business specifically? Implementing an e-commerce solution to manage an online store and take online orders, while integrating with SAP Business One is a lot easier than you might think.

To conduct business over the internet and integrate online sales with back office operations, you need to make sure you have a strong connection between your eCommerce solution and your ERP solution. Luckily, SAP Business One is well-suited to do so. To better understand how an eCommerce solution should work, let’s dive into a little business scenario:

Mr. A is the purchasing manager for XYZ Corporation. He needs to purchase some computer equipment, so he logs into his online catalog and navigates to the item he needs. In this case, it is a printer. While in the online store, he can also check his account data to make sure all the information is accurate. In addition, he can also view order history to see past orders, pricing, and delivery status. In this case, Mr. A goes to select the printer model he would like, but then sees that it is currently out of stock. Since all the stock information is pulled directly from SAP Business One, Business One updates the availability status in real-time and automatically recommends an alternate model. Mr. A then selects the alternate model and adds it to his cart. As a result, SAP Business One updates the price to reflect the quantity.

Mr. A decides that while he’s in the online store, he might as well purchase a backup printer as well. He selects the item and adds it to his cart. This time, he decides he also wants support service for this item, so he selects the recommended support option. Now Mr. A is ready to check out. His shipping data is automatically populated, he can specify that the online store should bill him for the order, and the order is submitted. This begins the process of creating sales orders and invoices.

Jane Smith is the office manager at ABC Printers & Computers. As a result of Mr. A’s order, Jane receives an alert in SAP Business One with the order details. In these details, she can see where the order came from and when it was placed. From here, Jane can easily generate a sales order with complete details, including items, quantities, and prices. With a single click, she can drill down to review customer data, meaning all the orders the customer has placed plus a graphical view of revenue generated. Additionally, she can also view detailed information, like real-time inventory data and order confirmation documents that are automatically sent to the customer.

Now Jane is ready to create an invoice for that order. The sales order data is automatically copied to the invoice and currency options are selected. The invoice due date gets automatically populated at this step. Jane then assigns a serial number to the printer which Mr. A requested support for. At this point, SAP Business One automatically creates a service contract. Jane can now view the invoice generated by Business One, can import it into a Word document, and can add comments before sending it off to Mr. A. Since the invoice is fully integrated with SAP Business One financial accounting, all financial ledgers are updated automatically as well.

Hopefully, this brief business scenario has shown you how SAP Business One allows you to quickly and easily conduct business over the internet while integrating online sales with back-office operations. To find out more information about why you need an e-commerce solution to manage inventory and orders across channels, contact Third Wave today!