Integrating Microsoft Dynamics ERP with Amazon: Don’t discount the technical, tactical challenges

Manufacturers and retail distributors must at least ask themselves, "Should we sell on Amazon.com?"

Amazon is famous for making life easy for the buyer, with enormous variety and competitive pricing. It is less of a breeze for manufacturers, retailers and distributors, who duke it out - even with their own trading partners - to offer the best price; also to fulfill according to Amazon's rapid-fire shipping demands.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Dynamics AX and Dynamics 365 for Operations are up to the challenge, says Western Computer's Dynamics Practice Manager Greg Williams. Western Computer has integrated numerous customers to the Amazon.com platform. But how easy that integration is depends upon the vendor or seller relationship you choose; it can be a simple EDI integration like any other, or a more complex one using Amazon's API. And a company that is used to shipping pallet loads using Dynamics NAV can find itself hard-pressed to suddenly ship same-day one-off orders.

It's all possible, just not turnkey easy. Greg Williams walks us through the practicalities.

MSDynamicsWorld: Among your customers, what Dynamics solutions are they typically using?

Greg Williams: They're using the NAV platform or the AX or the Dynamics 365 platform.

Can you briefly summarize Western Computers' experience with putting clients on Amazon?

Greg Williams: We've worked with many traditional distribution and manufacturing customers as well as pure ecommerce retail customers. Several of them do thousands of Amazon shipments a day.

Many of our clients working with Amazon are ...