In the world of e-commerce today, speed and accuracy have become the key battlegrounds. Customers expect an Amazon-style experience: immediate order confirmation, quick delivery, and up-to-date inventory. For expanding e-commerce businesses, the largest hurdle that prevents growth may well be the Order Gap the gap between your customer’s shopping cart and your warehouse.
Today, many businesses still conduct their orders manually. Printing orders from a web-based portal, entering the order details into the accounting system, and sending the shipment data via email. Not only does this process take time, but it also sets the stage for inevitable human error.
Enter Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. By seamlessly connecting your e-commerce storefront with your powerful ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, you can completely automate your entire order-to-cash process. Here’s how top-tier e-commerce companies leverage Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to transform manual madness into automated efficiency.
1. Seamless Order Integration Across Channels
Regardless of whether you’re selling your products on Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, or even on third-party sellers such as Amazon or eBay. Keeping up with multiple sales channels by handling each channel separately can be extremely hectic. Business Central provides support through its pre-integrated connector as well as its integrating capabilities with all the above-named sales channels.
The moment a customer clicks on the “buy” button, the order does not sit and wait until an employee exports it into a CSV file. Instead, it flows directly into the Business Central system, eliminating the need for any manual data input at all.
2. Real-Time Stock Synchronization
The most frustrating thing for any customer is making an order and then receiving an email after a few days that the product he or she ordered is out of stock. This is due to inconsistencies between the inventory level on the online shop and that of the physical inventory in the warehouse.
Business Central solves this problem by serving as the “single source of truth” for inventory. When a customer makes an order, Business Central automatically reduces the inventory stock. This data is synced in real time to the webstore, making fewer stock levels available to other customers.
When the stock level rises in the warehouse, this information is immediately shared with the online shop through automation.
3. Automated Fulfilment and Shipping
After the order is placed in Business Central, the system will automate the physical process of fulfillment of the order. This means that you can create the list of items for picking by workers, or you can connect the Business Central with WMS to show where the item located within the warehouse.
However, even better is the shipping integration. The system works with UPS, FedEx, and DHL. After the order is packaged, the system will calculate the rates of the shipping, print the labels and pack slips with just one click.
The tracking number will be entered into the sales order automatically and will be forwarded to the customer via email.
4. Financial Automation and Reconciliation
The last missing link here is money. In the traditional setting, the accounting department would spend many hours reconciling payments received via payment gateways such as Stripe or PayPal against the invoices in their accounting software.
With Business Central, an automatic posting of the invoice occurs once the shipment of the order goes through. Thanks to the integration with the payment gateway, the transaction is automatically reconciled, thus providing business owners with an instant overview of their cashflow while saving significant time at the end of the month.
The Bottom Line
Automation is key to the success of any online retail operation nowadays. Using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central as an example of software capable of automating orders, we see that by doing so, companies will save themselves from costly mistakes, keep track of inventory more effectively, and ship orders faster.
Creating a bridge between e-commerce businesses storefront and office operations will allow organizations to concentrate on the right things.
