ERP and ecommerce system integration is probably important question for established ecommerce operations as well as for those who are in startup mode. It is perfect situation if you find appropriate Corporate ERP software, where ecommerce is working out of the same tables as core ERP Sales Order Processing, Inventory Control with Price Lists.
However, this might be good hope for the future, real life shows the pattern, where ecommerce store deploys unique business logic and pricing schemas - and in order to implement these rules you often have to either do custom ecommerce web development or pick very generic and powerful ecommerce web stores (which may not be necessary integrated with major Small and midsize business Corporate ERP packages). In this small article we would like to draw the picture in the case of deploying and implementing SAP Business One or Microsoft Dynamics GP, formerly known as Great Plains Dynamics:
1. eCommerce extensions. If you do not have existing ecommerce website in production, then for both SB1 and GP, please look for ecommerce extensions. For Dynamics GP look at GP Business Portal Order Management module. For SBO review its ecommerce module. There are ecommerce add-ons on the ISV products market for both ERP, out of scope here. Regarding BP and SB1 ecommerce module, please see presentation and be sure that it fits your requirements at least 95%, as you may find the solution to be too difficult to customize. If you find your case resolved, we are happy for you, for the rest of us, let's go to the next paragraph
2. Real time versus Batch mode integration. Now, you are trying to find reasonably priced integration technology, allowing you to export ecommerce documents: invoices, sales orders, price lists into your new ERP and potentially integrate back to ecommerce document status from the ERP. You may decide to start in your pilot mode with Batch mode integration, where you initiate data synchronization by calling user friendly integration tool. In the case of SB1 you can deploy Data Transfer Workbench with Advanced ODBC Sources and Dynamics GP has Integration Manager module. Real time integration, as you could expect requires custom programming, in the case of SB1 it is SAP Business One SDK coding, and in GP it is eConnect. Both eConnect and SB1 SDK could be a way to go if you need very advanced custom ecommerce integration, especially when you are large company and can afford ecommerce to ERP integration budget
3. Document Status export back to ecommerce. Here in simple and inexpensive scenario you read Dynamics GP tables: SOP10100, SOP10200, or in SB1: OINV or INV1. In both cases, please review Dynamics GP or SAP Business One SDK help documentation, where you can review table structure. How you update statuses in eCommerce, please review your ecommerce application documentation, or talk to your in-house ecommerce programmers
4. Documents posting in accounting application. In SAP B1, when you add Invoice - it automatically posts itself all the way through General Ledger, so posting is available to SB1 SDK developer. In Dynamics GP, in contrast you have more flexibility in batch reviewing and approving, however this flexibility blocks you from posting GP SOP batches directly from eConnect methods, as Batch and Transaction Posting is in GP user competence and eConnect can only create so-called Work documents and place them into the Batch. To offer you work around for eConnect ecommerce programmer we created Alba Spectrum Posting Server, where you place batch into queue table and Autopost launches posting process automatically
5. Master Slave scenario. You should decide if your Corporate ERP (Dynamics GP or SAP Business One) should become Master in entering initial Inventory Items, Price Lists, Promotion Campaign, etc. and then uploading these objects to ecommerce or this role is for your ecommerce application - then SB1 is Slave and ecommerce is sort of Master. This decision should orient you in strategy and potentially avoid long decision making IT meetings. Normally, for the Master application you should have very high level of comfort in technical knowledge and be confident in its future, as Slave role is less critical and maybe in the future remapped to something else
6. How to get help? Please call us 1-866-528-0577, internationally: 1-630-961-5918, or email us: help@albaspectrum.com. We are also comfortable to help you if you are international client, we speak English, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Chinese. SB1 is localized for numerous countries and it supports Unicode (Chinese, Japanese, Korean hieroglyphs). SAP Business One or Dynamics GP licenses sale or reenrolling you into MS or SAP annual support program is possible if you are orphan client. We will help you if you need to implement and integrate Timesheets in Microsoft CRM and upload them to SB1 or GP as Invoices, feel free to call us for details
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