How Business Central eCommerce Integration Improves Inventory, Pricing, and Order Management

3 min read ● Silk Team

The more orders your online business receives, the more complicated it will be to manage your online business. Inventory discrepancies, outdated prices and poor order handling are all common issues experienced by many eCommerce businesses whose ERPs do not operate in conjunction with their eCommerce platforms.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central provides the opportunity to resolve some of the above challenges by integrating operational systems (i.e., ERPs) and providing real-time data synchronization capabilities to all eCommerce platforms. With this integration, product availability, updated prices, and customer orders are all processed and updated across platforms automatically.

To those eCommerce businesses looking to expand their online business, the Business Central integration will provide the necessary infrastructure to allow you to efficiently and reliably manage your eCommerce business.

Why Does Integration Matter When It Comes To Ecommerce Operations?

Most eCommerce businesses operate their eCommerce systems independently of their back-end operations.

e.g.:

• Orders are taken in through the eCommerce website
• Inventory is tracked through spreadsheets or warehouse systems
• Prices are manually updated across all platforms
• Accounting entries are kept in accounting systems

These separate workflows cause inefficiencies in the business.

The integration of Business Central with eCommerce systems closes this gap so that systems talk to each other automatically, and data is consistent throughout the company.

Improving Inventory Accuracy Through Real Time Synchronization

Inventory accuracy is perhaps one of the most important elements of successful eCommerce operations. Without an integrated solution, there is no way to know how much of a particular product is actually in stock.

Common inventory challenges are:

• Over selling products that have gone out of stock
• Stock quantity inconsistency among different sales channels
• Delayed inventory updates after an order has been placed
• Manual inventory reconciliations

Integration with Business Central removes all of these problems by synchronizing inventory data in real-time.

How Does It Work?

When an inventory change occurs in Business Central, the same inventory change is automatically propagated to the eCommerce platform. Examples of such inventory changes include:

• Decreases in inventory after a sale
• Increases in inventory after a shipment is received
• Warehouse changes to available inventory quantities

Advantages

• Provides customers with accurate product availability
• Reduces over-selling and stock-outs
• Enhances inventory planning and forecasting
• Centralizes inventory tracking and control across all channels

Ensures that customers are presented with reliable inventory information while shopping online.

Automating Price and Product Updates

Manually keeping up-to-date prices across all eCommerce websites is a very difficult task.

By integrating Business Central with eCommerce systems, businesses can keep all product and pricing information in one place — the ERP system.

What Can Be Synced

• Product name and description
• SKU and product variations
• Price and discount updates
• Promotional pricing
• Product categories

Once any of the above items are changed in Business Central, the same changes can be automatically populated into the eCommerce platform.

Why Is Automated Pricing Important?

There are several benefits to having automatic pricing:

• Eliminates the manual update of prices
• Prevents price discrepancies among different channels
• Allows for dynamic promotion and discounting
• Ensures that product information is accurate

For businesses that operate multiple eCommerce websites or marketplaces, having centralized pricing control greatly simplifies the operation of managing multiple eCommerce websites.

Streamlining Order Management

Order management is yet another area where integration greatly enhances efficiency.

Without integration, businesses often manually enter orders from their eCommerce platform into their ERP system. Manual entry is a tedious and error-prone process.

Automatic Order Processing

With the integration of Business Central into their eCommerce systems, customer orders are automatically entered from the eCommerce platform into the ERP system.

The system automatically:

• Creates sales orders
• Generates invoices
• Triggers fulfillment workflow
• Updates inventory levels
• Sync’s shipping status

This automation greatly speeds up the entire order life cycle.

Quicker Order Fulfillment

Having integrated systems also enables warehouse staff to quickly fulfill orders since order details are readily available in Business Central.

Benefits include:

• Speedier pick/pack process
• Better shipping accuracy
• Fewer order processing delays
• Shorter delivery times

This results in greater operational efficiencies and higher customer satisfaction rates.

Customer Experience Enhancement

Data consistency across systems directly affects the customer experience.

Integration ensures that customers receive:

• Accurate product availability information
• Correct pricing for the products they select
• Quickly fulfilled orders
• Up to date shipping status information

When systems are in sync, customers experience few if any problems while making purchases and have a smooth shopping experience.

Supporting Multi-Channel Ecommerce Growth

Many businesses sell their products through multiple channels, including:

• Direct online stores
• Marketplaces
• B2B ordering portal

Managing inventory, pricing and orders across multiple platforms can rapidly become complex.

Business Central integration allows businesses to manage multi-channel eCommerce operations from a single ERP system, thus maintaining consistent data across all sales channels.

Final Thoughts

Integrating Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with eCommerce platforms greatly improves the accuracy and efficiency of the operational processes that are critical to the success of the eCommerce business.

By synchronizing inventory data, automating price updates and streamlining order management, businesses can greatly reduce the number of operational errors, improve customer satisfaction, and grow their online sales operations more efficiently.

For growing eCommerce businesses, Business Central integration provides the necessary framework to ensure long term operational efficiency and sustainable eCommerce growth.