Buyers want a simple shopping experience today. Distributors who give them what they want when they want it will stay ahead of the competition. But giving buyers what they want is impossible without eCommerce integration.

Imagine you’re shopping for a refrigerator. You know what model you want, the price range you need and when you need it delivered. After looking on Amazon and not finding it, you visit The Home Depot and Lowe’s. Both have the refrigerator model at the same price. You decide to purchase it from Lowe’s since you’re already there. When you confirm the order with the sales associate, you find out they don’t have the refrigerator in stock at that location.

Since Lowe’s has multiple branches, you ask the sales associate to order the refrigerator from another location and schedule installation and delivery. Unfortunately, they can’t do this because the store you’re at can’t access another branch’s inventory. You decide to go back to The Home Depot and purchase the refrigerator. Lowe’s lost the sale because they didn’t have cross-platform functionality that could share data about what stock was available, when and where.

This isn’t just a consumer issue; distributors face this problem too. Multiple sales channels, thousands of SKUs, multiple branches and more make connecting data across platforms even more complex for B2B.

eCommerce integration is paramount in improving the customer experience, driving profitability and efficiently getting customers what they need. It’s even more important with the current market reality of stockouts and labor shortages. Yet the average organization has hundreds of applications and only 28% are integrated.

What is eCommerce Integration?

Approximately 90% of organizations struggle with data silos. Instead of silos, distributors need to connect the various systems used to run their businesses to enable digital commerce. Integration tools sync data between different platforms to allow cross-platform functionality.

There are multiple forms of integration, including:

• ERP
• CRM
• PIM
• eCommerce (websites and marketplaces)

eCommerce integration improves and streamlines your business. It allows the synchronization of data between your back-end systems and your eCommerce allowing you to seamlessly manage your inventory, customer data, shipping and more in one central location.

Profitability Plummets When Distributor’s Systems Aren’t Integrated

Distributors have a complex digital ecosystem. Before implementing eCommerce integration, distributors often experience:

• Difficulty maintaining catalog and product data
• Slow processing of orders
• Cumbersome manual and repetitive data entry with many errors
• Complexities in handling customer information
• Poor sales funnel tracking, conversions and performance
• Employee disengagement due to mundane responsibilities

For example, a national leader of industrial products wanted to migrate their eCommerce from a custom-built platform to one easier to manage. This distributor had several challenges before integration, including:

• A large number of SKUs made searching inventory challenging for both B2B and B2C customers, directly impacting sales and conversion rates.
• Ability to sync customer orders offline into the customers’ website accounts.

Another large company that operates in B2B and B2C dealt with similar issues when they decided to re-platform their eCommerce. This business needed to:

• Seamlessly migrate to the new eCommerce platform and integrate with an ERP system.
• Cater equally to B2B and B2C consumers.
• Implement a store that aligns with multiple locations across the nation.
• Automate and optimize two robust systems.
• Reduce manual data entry that was time-consuming, tedious and repetitive.

eCommerce integration middleware seamlessly connects distributors’ digital commerce platforms such as Magento, Shopify, Big Commerce, SAP Commerce Cloud or marketplaces like Amazon or Walmart with other applications like CRM and ERP.

Benefits of Integration and Cross-Platform Functionality

eCommerce integration enables cross-platform functionality to give distributors many benefits with deep impacts, including:

• Improve the Consumer Experience: Having proper integration and cross-platform functionality allows product filters and recommendations to be applied based on previous purchases. A personalized shopping experience is also expected by 50% of B2B buyers. Customers enjoy a frictionless checkout process when payment options are integrated. Customer purchase and search histories are shared in all channels with eCommerce integration.
• Save Money and Increase Productivity: When you have an eCommerce platform that connects to your other business systems, such as CRM and ERP, it automatically captures all the data related to your business and sales process. Automated data entry eliminates duplicate data entry and mistakes.
• Real-time Bi-directional Data Sync: Accurate data and inventory levels are always available with eCommerce integration. Sales from each product are easily tracked, allowing for a more accurate understanding of how your products are selling relative to others. Bi-directional data sync influences these areas:
  • Inventory: To ensure your inventory data is always up to date, synchronization allows for two-way communication between different inventory management programs to provide real-time data. This allows you to keep track of all inventory levels across multiple locations, add and remove products as they arrive or leave the warehouse, and automatically update that data across various
  • Customers: All customer information can be managed through a single dashboard. To improve conversion and retention rates, you can track all customer interactions with the website (searches, page views, purchases, etc.).
  • Orders: Order information, including order status, shipping address and more, can be displayed so customers can see where their purchase is and other order details.
  • Products: Allows customers to see up-to-date information about the latest products on the website.
• Sales Funnel Optimization: Use an eCommerce integration solution to share customer information with your CRM system to simplify and accelerate marketing and sales activities. Sales funnel optimization provides you with a comprehensive analysis of your sales process, including identifying issues for customers during the purchasing process, analysis of possible improvements and recommendations on how you should implement those improvements.
• Talent Retention: Having an improved working experience allows for a higher retention rate because employees are happy with their work. Removing time-consuming and mundane activities provide more opportunity for employees to learn and grow in other areas.

Factors to Consider Before Choosing to Integrate

Before choosing to integrate or selecting an integration partner, it’s crucial to determine your business goals. While eCommerce integration results in many benefits for distributors, you must select a solution that’s a good fit for your business to realize the biggest return on your investment. Here are some factors to assess:

• Business goals: Every distributor has a unique business with specific objectives to achieve. How do you want an integration solution to help you achieve those goals?
• Legacy data integration: Your current system has valuable data. You must understand how that legacy data will connect to your new systems with an integration implementation.
• Scalability of the solution: Your eCommerce integration solution should be able to scale with your business.
• Time: Inquire how long it will take for the eCommerce integration to be finished. How many weeks until your systems are communicating with each other?
• Budget: What’s your budget for eCommerce integration? Do you need customization done and how much?
• Future business needs: Are you planning to update your ERP or other systems in the future? How will the integration solution support those plans?
• Choosing the right integration platform based on your needs: Every company has unique needs so be sure the platform’s capabilities, security and scalability deliver what you require.
• Integration partner and support: Who you partner with, what level of support they offer after implementation and how they charge are important considerations. For example, is the integration engagement a software-as-a-service (SaaS) subscription model or a one-time fee model? Additionally, you want to ensure your provider has integration expertise and the specific domain/niche expertise you require. For instance, a distributor should seek out a partner who understands how to integrate distribution-related ERPs with other platforms such as eCommerce, CRM, PIM and more.
• Testimonials and reviews: Before choosing your integration partner, check out the customer reviews and testimonials the company received. Hearing firsthand from others who were in your shoes can help you understand if this provider will be a good fit.
• Cultural fit: Another important aspect to consider before integration is the cultural fit between you and the prospective integration provider. Having a mismatch in company culture can lead to challenges throughout the integration process.

Profitability starts with an integrated commerce experience. Distributors who can improve the buyer’s experience with eCommerce integration will grow sales, retain clients, eliminate inefficient workflows and manual data entry, and boost profitability. Those who don’t will fall behind.

Karthik Chidambaram is the Founder & CEO of DCKAP. He bootstrapped the company from his small apartment in Chicago. DCKAP was started with two people, two computers and two desks and is now a global and distributed team. He reckons industry  setbacks and renders solid & practical solutions to organizations. Karthik holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago.