Cloud-Based ERP Technology and Solutions

Changing the Way Online Marketplaces Sell to Consumers

Customer experience is paramount for businesses to minimize customer churn and achieve their business targets.

Over 95% of the customers say they give more importance to the customer experience while choosing a brand to purchase.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) technology plays a vital role in delivering the required data for brands to enhance the customer experience.

Even in digital marketplaces, scaling and increasing the number of products available to consumers can be done by implementing live feeds, robust ERP technology, and other solutions to connect the sellers and consumers in a better way.

Businesses need to understand the importance of ERP for the online marketplace and adapt to the modern approach of using ERP.

Traditionally used as the back-office system for handling financial information and accounting, ERP systems need to connect with customer relationship management and customer services to extract the data for delivering a seamless customer journey.

Here we will highlight how the online marketplace can help customers shop products based on the information from wholesalers and distributors.

In this whitepaper, we have focused on how Weapon Depot Cloud ERP Tool has integrated several cloud-based solutions for its consumers and sellers.

It will provide information about ERP integration, how to integrate it, how it works for the online marketplace, how data feeds, and cloud-based technology help in fast product selling.

The whitepaper is well prepared with hours of research and our expertise in the online marketplace industry and the use of ERP cloud-based integration.

The Weapon Depot team analyzed different aspects of cloud-based ERP technology and its use in the online marketplace to enable the sellers and customers get an enhanced experience.

Also, Weapon Depot can be the game-changer in providing ERP-backed solutions for its consumers and sellers.

What Is ERP Integration? How Does it Work?

Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP is a powerful business management system that helps automate a business’s vital functions.

Multiple organizations use ERP as a data collector from different organizational departments like manufacturing, accounting, sales, marketing, and supply chain and combine data based on similarities for helping businesses make well-informed decisions.

In a survey, over 99% of the respondents consider that ERP’s prime function is to handle the accounting process. That’s why ERP is used synonymously with the business financial system, like invoicing, reporting, and accounting.

But a powerful cloud-based ERP software can offer functionalities with a wider horizon, like customer relationship management, business intelligence, material requirements planning, omnichannel commerce, and supply chain management.

ERP can handle multiple customer-facing activities like fulfillment, shipping, billing, and orders. It can deliver a quality customer experience by extracting the data from different business elements to help businesses scale their sales.

When it comes to online marketplaces, it can use the data from different distributors and wholesalers to tailor the data for a better customer experience.

But the integration of an ERP can be challenging for multiple online marketplaces.

ERP Integration

ERP integration enables businesses to connect ERP software with other applications and data sources. It delivers a unified view of the information in real-time available in the business ecosystem.

It helps increase the efficiency of the business workflow and helps the team make well-informed decisions for the users. Talking about the online marketplace helps ensure that the sellers and buyers can get the best experience choosing the online marketplace to complete the business transaction.

Dealers can extract vital information regarding their prospects and customers to increase their product range or filter their product range. At the same time, the customers can get a personalized shopping experience with no compromise on the quality.

Challenges Online Marketplace Faces Without ERP Integration

If an online marketplace is not equipped with a robust ERP system integration, it will likely face multiple hiccups.

Data Silos

It prevents companies from extracting the most of their different management systems. ERP systems installed years ago might be legacy, while the latest application might be placed in the cloud. Disparate data silos can lead to inefficiency, redundancy, and inaccurate data.

Inefficient Manual Processes

Without a dedicated ERP system, manual processes are required to transfer information from other systems and ERP. The process becomes slow and inefficient.

For example, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) handles the request once the order is placed. It needs to be manually updated to the ERP system, increasing the workforce’s burden and raising operational inefficiencies.

The shift towards the manual entering data in the ERP system with no integration prevents the employees from focusing on higher-value work. It decreases productivity and resists the online marketplace to deliver a quality service experience to its users.

No Real-Time Precise Data Access

Without ERP integration, the disconnected online marketplace ecosystem means that the data need to be entered manually, and there is no automatic real-time data update happening in the ERP.

The manual process causes delays in the information exchange, which increases inefficiencies in delivering a quality customer experience. Once the users place the order, the information is not passed on to the rest of the company systems except the CRM.

The customer cannot get the order’s real-time status, downgrading the customer experience. It can result in decreased sales for the sellers, and they’ll choose different online marketplaces to scale their business with better customer experience.

The manufacturing might build a different inventory that can cause delivery delays. Also, the accounting won’t pass on the invoice to the book revenue or customer until the information is manually added.

Bottleneck situation arises, and every business process waits for the information to be added manually.

Cannot Achieve Quality Customer Experience

Integration of ERP is compulsory if businesses want to achieve quality customer experience. An ERP system has product, financial, fulfillment, and different customer-related information that can help to deliver personalized shopping experiences for the customers.

If Amazon doesn’t have an integrated view of customers, it won’t be able to make in-the-moment product recommendations to the customers to increase the sales for the seller.

Also, they won’t be able to give real-time tracking details to the customers to increase their quality experience. Many companies have custom-built integration done in the past based on point-to-point integrations without reusable code.

These ERP legacy systems require replacement or changes in their integration to extend them to use special features for connecting to more systems in the business ecosystem.

Customers cannot deliver a quality experience until legacy custom-coded integrations are transformed and made more extensible.

Based on the requirement of an online marketplace, there are different types of ERP integrations that businesses can use.

Types of ERP Integration

ERP systems play a vital role in system integration as it holds the product, customer, and sales order data. A few ERP integrations can enhance the business flow and deliver a quality user experience.

Connecting Demand with Supply

Sales focuses on increasing the business revenue by upselling, satisfying, acquiring, or cross-selling customers. But the sales orders can be fulfilled if the business ecosystem can match the increase in sales.

The CRM has customer interaction and contact information, but it needs to connect with the ERP for order fulfillment, management, and shipping.

Businesses can use different types of CRMs like Salesforce Sales Cloud, Adobe, Microsoft Dynamics, SugarCRM, and SAP, among others, that can handle the demand and connect with the ERP system.

The CRM and ERP integration enable the order information to be processed in real-time, and specific automated actions can be taken to ensure on-time delivery of the product.

It can enable the sellers on the online marketplace to extract vital information to get in-depth insights about how their products are performing and the demand and supply equation with their product range.

The online marketplace can get a bird’s-eye view of the customers’ experience while purchasing a product on their marketplace and whether or not the request is fulfilled by the combined efforts of CRM and ERP.

Making Front-End Data Accessible

The pandemic accelerated the move of online commerce as customers shifted toward physical to contactless online shopping. Multiple online marketplaces came into the picture where multiple sellers can connect with a specific target audience to sell their products online.

ERP integration can assist in managing the surge in the order fulfillment request by delivering accurate and reliable front-end data to the sellers and the customers.

Connecting with multiple systems on the platform, the online marketplace can deliver real-time updates to the seller about their inventory, sales, conversion rate, customer inquiries, and other important metrics.

It can also provide customers with their delivery status, personalized shopping experience, and other important front-end data that can enhance the quality of their buying experience.

Ensuring Precise Financial Data

Many companies have different ERP systems integrated into their ecosystem, whether due to mergers, acquisitions, or different departmental preferences.

Multiple ERP systems must be interlinked to create a powerful integrated ERP ecosystem that delivers an accurate and consistent view of product data and customers.

The higher the accuracy of the data, the better the user experience of the marketplace. The online marketplace can increase the sales on their platform while delivering a quality buying experience to the customers.

Online marketplaces use different ERPs, from cloud-based to offline systems. Here are a few examples of systems that can be integrated by online marketplace players: Workday Financials, Epicor, Oracle Netsuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP S/4 HANA, etc.

Real-Time Tracking Support Using Customer Service System

Quality customer service reduces churn, increases customer satisfaction, and enables the support team to react to the customers quickly and intelligently.

With data-backed information, the support team of the online marketplace can deliver precise and quality customer support to different queries and problems of the customers.

The customer service software is used to handle omnichannel capabilities, proactive interaction, and self-service capabilities, and its integration with the ERP can create a powerful data-backed ecosystem for the customer support team.

Also, the field service software used to handle the returns and repairs, warranty and contract, and other scheduled service work can be integrated with the ERP system to deliver a tailored and holistic customer support experience.

The online marketplace can use multiple popular customer service platforms like Jira, Cherwell, BMC, ServiceMax, ServiceNow, Zendesk, Oracle Service, and Salesforce Service Cloud.

Benefits of ERP Integration

There are multiple benefits that ERP technology and solutions integration can bring to an online marketplace. Here are some specific gains.

Increased Efficiency

If the sales-related documents are unstructured in different repositories, it can delay the order processing. Automating the processes to extract the different documents from multiple systems and structure them together can minimize the bottleneck in order management and processing.

It can reduce delays in invoicing, delivery, and fulfillment to enable the customers to access order information in real-time.

ERP integration can also help the sellers on the online marketplace to get detailed access to the information to check what the customer demands in the segment.

It improves the connection of the sellers and buyers in the marketplace and enables the business ecosystem to boost its operations and strengthen its presence in the industry.

Personalized Buying Experience

ERP integration enables the company to get intelligent insights into customer demands and what they might want. Sharing the information with the sellers can help the dealer create new and intuitive offerings for the customers that can enhance the quality of the customer experience.

To create a dynamic, single customer profile, a robust ERP ecosystem must combine the data with additional offline, online, and multiple third-party sources.

Businesses can use the single customer view and apply AI to get the best recommendations and apply them to other digital commerce interactions.

Optimization

ERP integration with other systems embedded in the online marketplace can enable the business to make optimum use of the data and enhance the experience of the customers and the sellers.

A complete overview of the customers’ and sellers’ data can enable the online marketplace to predict demand and supply better, adjust quickly to the new trends, and accelerate the order process to communicate within the ecosystem effectively.

If we boil it down, ERP technology and solutions integration in the online marketplace ecosystem play a critical role in better connecting sellers and customers.

Businesses can integrate the distributor data available in the structured file for sellers on the online marketplace to update the product details in the ERP and other systems.

Businesses Integrate Distributor Data for Their Online Marketplaces

Online business marketplaces can enable the distributors to transmit information about their product catalog using product feeds that can update the ERP systems and be displayed to the customers.

The distributor data transmission can provide the sellers the freedom to update the information of their products in a better manner to entice the target audience to make the purchase.

A direct product feed can be integrated into the online marketplace ecosystem that supplies the vital information like:

• Product title
• Brief description
• Size and specification
• Price
• Image
• Product ID

Depending upon the different complexities of the product catalog that the distributor has, multiple other elements like language, currency mercies, product rating, seller details, and other metadata can also be integrated into the system.

Why Does Product Feed Integration Matter?

There are multiple benefits that integration of the product feed from the distributor can help the online marketplace business with. Here are a few of them.

No Manual Processing by Marketplace Operators

An online marketplace doesn’t need to handle the listing of the products for distributors as they have the freedom to update and add new products using the product feed files.

The automatic update in the ERP system can enable other systems to address the new product additions and make automated changes to handle the product sales and order processing.

Data can be collected for the updated product catalog that can be passed on to the sellers to optimize their listing on the marketplace for improved sales and business numbers.

With no manual processing, errors can be minimized, and a better customer experience can be delivered to help the distributors and marketplace grow and fulfill desired targets.

Product Details Submitted According to the Policies

Being an online marketplace, businesses have set policies and rules for the product catalog update. The product feed integration by the businesses can tailor the process according to the regulation set on the platform.

It can help businesses enter the details of the products to rank better than the competitors during the customer search to scale their business revenue.

The marketplaces and the sellers can extract the better and more precise the product feed, the better results.

Detailed Information for the Customers

Distributors understand their product range better than the online marketplace operators. It becomes easier to deliver detailed and precise information to the costumes about different products listed when the distributor provides the information.

It enables the customer to get a quality experience while making the buying decision and scale the revenue numbers of the marketplace and the sellers.

Distributors can sprinkle their expertise to explain nitty-gritty details in the product description to deliver complete product knowledge.

Concrete Data

The product data provided by the distributor can be updated in the marketplace systems and the ERP to create a robust ecosystem to optimize the listing and customer purchase experience.

The online marketplace can utilize the data to showcase tailored results to the customer queries to enhance the customer experience.

New data can be easily added to enable the sellers to optimize their product catalog and channel the trendy and in-demand products.

The different marketplace can offer different product data updates to the sellers based on the advancements of their business ecosystem.

Types of Product Feed Update

The popular technique used to generate quality product catalog feed are:

Manual Upload

As the name suggests, manual upload is where the distributors or the sellers are asked to update the product catalog manually to the online marketplace. Online marketplaces focused on targeting a single country using a single language rely on this technique.

Also, sellers with a limited product range and smaller business scale prefer to upload their product range manually to provide the marketplace quality content for increased conversion.

Also, this type of product uploads when there are infrequent or minimal product feed changes to avoid time consumption and errors.

Most online marketplaces are compatible with this format, and sellers are used to adding manual product feeds. Amazon allows small-scale business owners to add or update product catalog content manually.

But the drawback of the manual upload and download is that managing the large distributor catalog can become difficult when the sellers want to scale their product range on the online marketplace.

The chances of errors can arise, and the efficiency reduces once human effort is required to enter the product details manually. The programmatic feed generation aims to bypass these problems and deliver quality data integration results.

Programmatic Feed Generation

Sellers with experience selling products on different online marketplaces and a large product range to offer a marketplace requires a programmatic feed generation facility.

Program-based creation of the product feed based on different variables can enable the seller to update their products based on the business’s marketplace requirements. Once the product files are uploaded, they can be synced with the ERP system and other systems to manage the sales and performance of the product page.

The data can be extracted and made available to the sellers to make well-informed decisions to increase their product sales based on the customer behavior in the marketplace.

It’s up to the online marketplace business to choose the desired approach of integrating distributor data to attract more sellers and increase the quality of the customer experience.

ERP integration in the business ecosystem can streamline the sales of the products and help the sellers and the customers get the most out of the online marketplace.

Sell Online Faster with Data Feeds and Cloud-Based Technology

Online sales of products can be improved with the help of data feeds and a cloud-based ERP system that helps streamline the business flow and deliver a quality customer experience to the customers.

Using the data provided by the ERP system with integration with another system in the marketplace ecosystem:

• Customers can experience a personalized buying experience
• Sellers can optimize the product range for more product sales
• And marketplaces can create a better connection between the sellers and buyers

But with cloud-based ERP, online sales can amplify the data feed processing and improve the online marketplace.

Benefits of Cloud-Based ERP over On-Premise ERP

There are multiple benefits that cloud-based ERP has over the on-premise ERP that can strengthen the online digital transformation for the business and help them create a better market ecosystem.

Lower Cost

Businesses don’t need to pay a large initial investment at the start to integrate the ERP as it’s done in the case of an on-premise ERP system. Businesses can pay an annual, quarterly, or monthly subscription fee for the cloud ERP service.

It can control the expenses of the businesses and help to channel the funds into scaling the online marketplace for achieving the desired business goals.

Because the ERP system is not installed on the servers of the online marketplace, the load of the servers decreases, and businesses can choose to pay wherever they require the service.

The entire ERP processes of the online marketplace are handled on fast cloud servers, and the businesses can access the results quickly to increase the speed of the sales and product management process.

No Hassles with Implementation

Online marketplace businesses don’t require to invest in the additional equipment and infrastructure required for an on-premise ERP system’s proper integration and functioning.

The cloud ERP solutions deliver quick and fast ERP results and can easily be integrated with the business ecosystem within a few simple steps.

The cloud servers have the required infrastructure to run the powerful ERP system, and they can handle complex data processing to deliver tailored results for businesses with no additional load.

Minimal Staff Workload

With no additional infrastructure requirement, businesses don’t require additional workforce to manage and service the ERP system. The IT support team can handle fixed work hours and increase their productivity to help the sellers and buyers get the best experience using the online marketplace to complete the transactions.

It can minimize the additional expense of the workforce hiring process and help the business lock in more profits running a successful online marketplace.

More focus can be given to other high-value aspects rather than handling and managing the ERP infrastructure and equipment.

Real-Time Analytics

The data can be managed and updated on different systems in real-time with the help of a dedicated ERP system. It becomes easier to extract valuable data feeds from the data
available across the business ecosystem that can deliver better analytics results.

It can help remove the bottleneck from the workflow and deliver a quality experience to both the sellers and the buyers. Real-time data analytics can help sellers optimize their product feed, and customers get instant updates regarding their order status.

A better-personalized product range can be shown to individual customers that can scale the conversion rate of the marketplace. Different upsell and cross-sell techniques can be applied to improve business sales and deliver a quality customer experience.

Anytime, Anywhere Access

Businesses can access the cloud-based ERP system from anywhere, with simple access to the login credentials. It can deliver a bird’s view of the ERP solutions and the management process using the mobile device 24*7.

Instant access can help the team resolve dynamic issues in no time to ensure that the workflow remains streamlined.

Weapon Depot Marketplace utilizes these benefits of the cloud-based ERP to help the sellers, and the customers get a tailored and professional marketplace experience.

Weapon Depot Marketplace Integrates Several Cloud-Based Solutions for Its Consumers and Sellers

The advancements in data management and processing in the online marketplace industry have created a great impact on the way sellers and customers interact online.

Enhancing the buying and selling experience in the guns and ammunition industry, Weapon Depot Cloud has integrated best-in-class cloud-based solutions for manufacturing, accounting, customer order management, and inventory management.

These systems are integrated with powerful cloud-based ERP technology, enabling our marketplace to deliver high-quality sales results for gun dealers and wholesalers.

The robust integration of ERP with multiple other systems enables us to deliver detailed order insights to the customers and help the sellers optimize their catalog.

The cloud-based ERP helps to bypass the hiccups faced with on-premise integrations and enhances the team’s productivity. We are slowly adapting to the future-oriented business ecosystem in the guns and ammunition industry to create a better connection between the sellers and buyers.

Sellers can seamlessly add product catalog and get access to the data provided by the ERP system working in sync with our systems. Businesses can tailor the products that the consumers demand and skyrocket the sales to drive business profits.

Our modern approach is changing the way online marketplaces sell to consumers, distributors connect with their target audience, and how customers have their shopping experience.