We operate in the modern world where customers impact the terms of the market and are the biggest influencing factor in shaping trends. Lately, with the advent of multiple channels of retail, the focus of customer experience has shifted to omnichannel commerce.
Whether they are indulging in online retail or purchasing on behalf of a B2B business, your customers expect a seamless experience and unified operations across all channels. As per reports, about 73% of retail customers would like to track their order at every point of its journey.
In fact, B2B customers are no different! Around 86% of them have admitted to preferring self-service tools instead of interacting with a sales rep and they expect the CX to be as frictionless as in a B2C environment. The need for omnichannel experience surpasses industries, sectors, and customer profiles alike.
Building an omnichannel eCommerce business, however, requires the support of a powerful ERP system that assures unification, transparency, and cohesiveness. And, this is the major reason that has led to an increased demand for Magento SAP integration.
By integrating SAP, the world’s market leader in cloud-based ERP, with Magento, you can align your resources on a central platform and establish a single source of truth for your eCommerce business. This sole decision of implementing Magento SAP integration will affect every aspect of your business and transform the way it operates.
In this blog, we explore the benefits of Magento SAP integration and how you can leverage the most out of this major step.
A brief overview of Magento SAP integration
Recognized as a market leader in digital commerce by Gartner, Magento powers over 250,000 eCommerce websites and handles a gross merchandise value (GMV) of approximately $155 billion annually. In 2018, Adobe acquired Magento and launched it as a part of Adobe Experience Cloud testifying for its best-in-class functionalities, future-ready tools, and an ability to cater to every type and size of business.
SAP, on the other hand, maintains a strong presence in the business world with 94% of the world’s largest 500 companies as its customers. In fact, it is said that 77% of the world’s transaction revenue goes through an SAP system at some point in its life cycle – that is how humongous its network is.
While Magento ensures that your online store has the right tools to scale your eCommerce business, integration with SAP can empower it with data-driven insights, process automation, and seamless communication. Yet, many eCommerce organizations seem to delay Magento SAP integration owing to either lack of time, expertise, or knowledge.
Contrary to popular belief, an online store of any size can leverage the benefits of Magento SAP integration. SAP offers a multitude of avenues to support all kinds of businesses, namely- SAP Business One for small businesses, SAP Business ByDesign for mid-sized companies, and SAP S4/HANA for highly-tailored large conglomerates.
Be it an eCommerce startup or an established marketplace, Magento SAP integration can introduce AI-based analytics, transform mission-critical processes, and improve operational efficiency in any organisation.
What are the benefits of Magento SAP integration?
Joining Magento’s forces with SAP is often considered as an operational decision that reduces the need for manual data entry, and thereby, the chances of human error and delay. What is overlooked, however, is its potential to reinvent customer experiences and business processes.
Today, both retail and business customers expect a certain degree of personalization and consistent brand experience on every channel of their choice. They usually turn to mobile devices for research and often end up making the final purchase at a physical store. On top of it, they expect a familiar experience and seamless flow of data everywhere – you should know about their inquiry and not the other way around.
Carrying out SAP and Magento integration makes this possible! From customer data to product information, you can integrate every detail related to your business on a single platform. And this is not all – there are many other benefits of Magento SAP integration that support an eCommerce business in fulfilling customer expectations and adapting to market trends. Let’s have a look at some of them –
# Real-time visibility of inventory levels to customers
Imagine an out-of-stock product listed on your homepage as available! Or worse, imagine keeping an out-of-stock label for a top-selling product while you still have it in your inventory. By integrating Magento with SAP, you could avoid both these situations with real-time exchange of information.
Generally, an ERP like SAP stores information related to inventory levels, product details, and prices. Meanwhile, eCommerce platforms like Magento depend upon it to learn about the availability of inventory. Hence, it is imperative that these systems communicate with each other in real-time which is difficult in the absence of integration.
As a result, you have to rely on batch uploads or manual data entry to assess inventory levels. This leads to an increased chance of manual, and often horrendous errors as mentioned above. By implementing SAP and Magento integration, you will no longer have to elongate the process and work with ambiguous data. Your customers will get a real-time visibility of inventory levels at every channel and location. Ultimately, you will be able to provide a unified customer experience at all levels!
# Better supply chain management
As soon as a customer places an order on your Magento store, it leads to several actions affecting the shipping, accounting, and supply chain of your business. During this entire process, your ERP, namely SAP, is responsible for ordering, reordering, and in some cases, setting manufacturing targets.
When Magento SAP is not integrated, managing the supply chain becomes more complex than it actually is as the data exchange gets delayed. Thus, it often ends up in order-inventory mismatch and overstocking to ensure a buffer to cover the communication lag.
By ensuring integration of these systems, you can reverse this situation. SAP and Magento integration can enable real-time peek into eCommerce transactions and vice versa leading to smooth supply chain management.
# No more “WISMO” calls
As discussed above, it is SAP that triggers the order fulfillment and shipping process once an order is received at a Magento store. But, if SAP and Magento integration does not exist, your customers will neither get a real-time picture of shipping details nor be able to track their order. As a result, you will find them contacting your customer service rep for order inquiries.
These calls, often known as “where is my order” or WISMO, are time-consuming, unproductive, and frustrating for every party involved as even the customer service team wouldn’t have real-time access to the shipping information. Implementing SAP and Magento integration can, however, solve this problem.
The Magento SAP integration gives customers instant real-time access to shipping and order fulfillment details. Thus, they don’t have to make multiple calls to your organizations. In fact, you can even incorporate features like push notifications and emails for every stage of order fulfillment.
Basically, everyone comes on the same page and WISMO calls become a thing of the past.
# Enable self-service and account management:
Today, a customer wants to be in control of their accounts and wants to manage their bills and orders on their own. Hence, they need to have access to their purchase history, invoices, and shortlisted items. While a Magento store enables account creation, it is SAP that takes care of all of the mentioned data.
A lack of Magento SAP integration prevents customers from having a look at any of this information while a connected organisation ensures that they have a complete view of their accounts. With a self-service account, B2C customers can manage their payments, order, and bills while B2B customers can assess reports and plan their purchases accordingly.
# Better compliance with international and local taxes
Duties, tariffs, and taxes are a part of every eCommerce business, especially if you’re dealing with international commerce. Luckily, a Magento store embodies multi-currency and multi-site features that can help you manage taxes for every location you operate in.
However, the information related to tax rates, more importantly in B2B businesses where differentiated tax slabs are applicable for different customers, is stored in an ERP like SAP. In the absence of SAP and Magento integration, compiling tax-related data may become complex and cumbersome.
Magento SAP integration, fortunately, can turn things around and ensure that all the tax-related laws are not only complied with but are efficiently leveraged for the benefit of the customers. As a result, your team doesn’t have to spend long hours on taxation and can instead focus on other critical aspects of the business.
In conclusion
If you’re still wondering whether you need a Magento SAP integration or not, let us give you a few questions to introspect –
- Is order volume constantly on the rise in your business?
- Does your team end up spending most of their time on updating products, SKUS, and cataloging?
- Have you lately noticed that your order fulfillment process, perhaps, needs a reinvention?
- Does your customer service team mostly field “WISMO” calls?
- Do you think your competitors are doing a better job at providing customer experience despite all your attempts?
If any of these questions make you think, you should consider integrating your Magento store with a powerful ERP like SAP. And if your business already works with SAP and you’re considering Magento for your online store, integration should top your priority list.
By combining the functionalities of both of them, you will be able to embrace process automation, get your products to market faster, eliminate data redundancy, and ultimately redefine the customer experience at every touchpoint of your customers’ journey.
