Success in a Marketplace: Role of ERP ecommerce integration

The emergence of ecommerce behemoths likes Amazon, eBay, Alibaba and Rakuten created a tectonic shift in the way ecommerce is conducted. They have been so large and influential that they each created a market for themselves, which is embodied in each building a marketplace, where other ecommerce players can sell under the marketplace banner.

Smaller ecommerce players cannot ignore the impact of these trends, and many have already used these marketplaces as effective launch pads for their own ecommerce store (estore) businesses. This is true for multiple reasons. However, as an estore grows, business challenges to selling on marketplaces also evolve. Handling these challenges faced by a growing estore owner is critical for sustainability. This article talks about some of the challenges faced by a growing estore owner and the role of ERP ecommerce integration (an integrated set of ERP ecommerce systems can be referred to as connected ecommerce ecosystem) in addressing these challenges. ERP ecommerce integration leverages the available API framework on both ERP and ecommerce sides to create a data exchange connection. The most common way of achieving this is in the form of an extension to Magento, the open-source ecommerce platform.

Let us look at some of the benefits of selling on a marketplace and their corresponding operational challenges. Amazon (one of the largest marketplaces in the world) talks about the benefits of selling on its store like the ability to reach millions, effective payments, professional service and the ability to sell globally. In addition to these common benefits, there are corresponding acute challenges from an operational standpoint. Below are four such challenge scenarios and their respective solutions from our experience.