AUTOMATE YOUR E-RETAIL BUSINESS UNDER $250

Since COVID-19 has taken the world into the abyss, the e-retail business has become more and more popular. Many shops and small business owners have moved their products to online stores. Giants like Amazon and eBay have received more number seller listings during this year like never before.

All these online stores have somehow reduced the physical workforce but the various eCommerce applications have taken advantage of this situation to increase their Sales.

Shopify is one of them which has gained more popularity over this period and thus providing a cost-effective way to move small businesses online. With just $29 Per Month, you can move your business online and increase your reach to a global audience.

It’s not only the sales which are affected, but the financial world has also taken a hit as well. The daily inflow of money for these businesses is really important, which accounting applications like QuickBooks have managed it really well. Starting from just $12 per month, QuickBooks provides a pretty convenient way to send invoices out and receive the payments.

All these applications had made B2B and B2C cost-effective, but this phenomenon is getting bigger and bigger as more merchants are moving to online space thus making automation a necessity. Nowadays, automation is not just the buzz word, it’s imperative for these businesses.

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Accounting Automation

DBSync Cloud Workflow makes this automation even more simple, easy to implement, and deploy. With just under $200 p.m. you can automate your complete eCommerce business starting from “Order fulfillment” to receiving payments with Shopify and QuickBooks and tracking shipments with Shipstation. DBSync provides a trouble-free and seamless integration between Shopify and QuickBooks by pushing your order data to QuickBooks to create invoices in almost real-time, Thus, avoiding any human intervention. It saves business owners close to $30,000 USD per year on an average in terms of overhead cost and also saves a ton of time in automating mundane manual work.

As an automation partner, DBSync not only helps in accounting automation, it also allows you to automate your inventory stock update changes and keep your Shopify stock updated at all times. Whenever a product is sold, the inventory for the product gets reduced in Shopify. With DBSync integration, those incremental inventory stock on hand updates can flow into QuickBooks and notify the purchasing team and generate a purchase order for a given SKU if the stock needs a refresh.

On the other hand, when the stock comes and that PO is received, those changes are reflected back to Shopify and making a particular product SKU available for ordering. This data-flow alone makes it super easy operationally, without needing any manual intervention.

Automated Shipment Processing

At the same time, the DBSync allows you to process shipments with its almost real-time integration with Shipstation. It not only pushes orders to Shipstation, but you can also generate tracking numbers via this automation. Thus completely harnessing the power of iPaaS, by reducing human effort in Order fulfillment and Order-2-Cash cycle.

With day-to-day competition in this growing market, automation has become an integral part of all businesses. The optimization in identifying buying patterns to fulfilling customer needs and eventually getting the all-important payments into your bank account, automation is pretty much lifeblood of your business. DBSync CloudWorkflow for Shopify is pretty much at the heart of these automation orchestrating data-movement and process integration with various business applications like Shipstation, POS systems accounting and so on.

Conclusions:

In a nutshell, the right eCommerce solutions can boost your business and the bottom line, but a good automation solution can take your business to new heights giving you the much-needed edge. Given the unprecedented situation where work from home or working remote is the new norm, cloud solutions like DBSync can provide effectiveness and scalability to your businesses irrespective of your geography.

Choosing the Right Point of Sale (POS) System for your Retail Business

Point-of-Sale systems (POS) have become a “must-have” for any retail store trying to reach the next level in their Line-of-Business. More than twenty (20) years ago, cash registers were used to manage sales. Increasing customer choices and product varieties over the past several decades have demanded more sophisticated electronic options to allow stores to reconcile their stock and transactions automatically.

With the technology boom, Electronic Cash Registers (ECR) -- later termed Point-of-Sale systems -- have become this option, expanding beyond the transaction register to cloud-based POS applications that allow complete control over multiple global retail lines.  Product inventory and sales can be controlled and monitored from any location seamlessly and with full transparency. A simple POS terminal can increase sales exponentially for any retail business by processing customers fast and providing multiple payment options.

For every retailer, selecting the best POS system for their business is a top priority. A few features that every POS should have are:

●     Stock Visibility -- keeping track of product movement can help retailers avoid stock-outs or dead stocks and thus improve customer relationships. A right POS should also keep track of inventory at other branches and provide continuous insights on product sales.

●     Routing the Branch -- keeping customers happy with an eCommerce POS option to process a sale at a different branch (if the product is not available in one department) is an excellent customer satisfaction strategy.

●     Real-time reporting -- the option to generate real-time business reports, based on product sales and inventory data, is one of the key features that every multi-store retailer needs. These reports can also help businesses get rid of extraneous costs.

●     Multichannel Customer Experience -- retailers who manage online stores along with physical stores should have the option in their POS system to provide the same consistent product and pricing information to their customers, whether online or onsite.

●     Integration with 3rd Party Apps -- businesses using POS systems need to make their data available to their ERP and accounting applications. With open API’s, these POS systems can allow integration platforms like DBSync to share the data with various other apps securely, thus avoiding double data entry.

●     Loyalty Programs -- with the smartphone era, modern POS systems are implementing loyalty programs more than ever to keep customers engaged. Customers can download the app instead of swiping or punching cards, to keep track of their purchases and earn reward points. This helps retailers keep track of their customers’ purchases and allow them to serve them better.

●     Data security -- data must be kept secure at all ends. Customer buying patterns and personal info is much more of a concern nowadays. A proper compliance POS system allows retailers to protect customers’ privileges and gain their trust and loyalty.

Several additional factors to consider when selecting a POS are cost, ease of use, and longevity. For multi-channel retailers who sell online and in physical spaces, applications like Shopify POS and Vend meet the above criteria. These POS applications not only allow retailers to manage sales, they even help in doing multichannel eCommerce by connecting to various eCommerce channels like Amazon, Big Commerce, and Walmart, thus increasing their presence around the globe. Moreover, these applications allow integration with various 3rd party applications for shipping and accounting process with the help of open API's. DBSync, a pioneer in the field, allows for seamless integration, providing complete control over the business and optimizing sales. 

Retailers must adhere to specific standards when selecting POS systems, keeping in mind that the perfect marriage of POS with eCommerce is the key to running a successful retail business in the future.

Multichannel Ecommerce – Benefits, Challenges and Opportunities

Shopping online is one of the most popular activities on the Web. A person can shop anytime or anywhere–even in pajamas! Webpages are built to promote specific goods and services that can be purchased online and delivered to a personal/professional setting. Over the past ten (10) years, eCommerce has grown in leaps and bounds, particularly with the rise of companies that allow electronic transactions, such as eBay and Amazon. 

Nowadays, it is common for companies to have a significant online presence, mainly “brick and mortar” stores, where multichannel eCommerce gives customers the ability to: 

• Search through an extensive database of products and services and build their orders over several days
• Compare pricing for the same product over dozens of channels and choose the best one. 

An eCommerce multichannel is where different groups of people sell goods/services in different ways at different times. The goal is to satisfy as many people as possible while continually scaling to increasing traffic. There can be several challenges with this approach: 

To avoid such hurdles, businesses often choose a single platform to publish and manage their product and service lines, such as Shopify, ChannelAdvisor, and Seller Active. This platform provides a central place to trade products, reach out to more communities all over the world, and receive revenue in common currency. Often these platforms are used to sell and manage products/services, but additional applications can be added to process shipping and backorders. Apps like Shipstation and Ecomdash allow vendors to fulfill their orders by direct shipping and order processing options, or using shipping gateways like UPS and FedEx. 

Based on the product and service verticals, these sellers can be divided into two categories: 

B2C merchants have direct reach to customers and thus have to strictly maintain their product portfolio, as customer buying patterns are based on product reviews and past experiences with the seller. B2B merchants, on the other hand, have to provide merchants’ orders on time and thus have to maintain their delivery portfolio diligently. ECommerce platforms for both types of sellers are the same, but utilization is different. Most of the B2C and B2B merchants use an integrated web of applications to manage their day-to-day operations. A typical example would be:

The applications vary from merchant to merchant — B2C often go for the cheaper option while B2B go for ERP’s, which have all of the above capabilities. These applications provide an efficient way to complete operations on multichannel eCommerce platforms, as the integrated platform automates data sharing and reduces manual intervention to maintain product stock.

DBSync, a pioneer iPaas for a multichannel eCommerce, provides actionable information towards customer and product repletion statuses. Most IPaaS’ fail when it comes to a full cycle integration, and thus B2B merchants tend to go with fully optimized and integrated ERP. However, not all ERP’s support of all channels, so merchants end up with a simplified, integrated solution. 

DBSync is a leading player in this vertical, as its’ pre-built connectors for applications like ChannelAdvisor, Shopify and Shipstation, can be used to build connections to other similar domain apps using the Swagger framework. 

CSEs (Comparison Shopping Engines)

The battle for most retailers today is to create brand awareness for their product/service. Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs) like Google Shopping, Nextag and Connexity allow customers to compare product lines over multiple eCommerce channels. NOTE: A fee is required to have a product appear in top search results. 

Most retailers struggle to set their multichannel strategies and thus fail to reach their target audience. Some companies like ChannelAdvisor and GoDataFeed have options to simplify this process. They provide Feed Campaign Management and optimize product listing ads for digital marketers, providing them with a centralized platform to enhance their product content, overcome unprofitable products automatically and provide actionable insights to grow their product line bidding.

Conclusion:

The fast-growing eCommerce industry is trending towards growing the customer base rather than the number of channels. Hence, retailers/sellers have to focus their Multichannel Marketing Strategy to ensure repeat customers. 

The ability to “tag” products based on user preferences (via Web and mobile browsing) and make them available on social media has been a game-changer, as customers no longer have to leave social media channels to purchase a product/service. Retailers can also invest in CSEs to ensure their product/service reaches its targeted community. This can increase search listings and allow movement towards Omni channel marketing.

DBSync, as a unified integration platform, can play a crucial role in making B2B sellers’ businesses grow beyond their expectations by optimizing order processing and fulfillment and exposing them to the global eCommerce web.

How to assess if your E-Commerce business needs Ipaas

e-Commerce is something in vogue. You cannot imagine your life from shopping a paperclip to Mac Book Pro, without hitting that “buy now” button. And if you’re an owner you just keep your finger-crossed to see an over-filled cart every morning.

Whether you are a Startup or a seasoned one, you must be aware of the challenges to run a successful e-Commerce business.

A typical e-Commerce business usually includes handling these major activities right from vendor management, inventory management to customer management. There are more or less 10 main features to consider while maintaining an online retail business which generates revenue. Here are the features:

Key business features to manage in an e-Commerce business

• ·         Vendor Management
• ·         Order Management and Delivery
• ·         Warehousing
• ·         Customer Support or Customer Relationship Management
• ·         Inventory Management
• ·         Website Management
• ·         Legal Compliance
• ·         Employee Management
• ·         Accounts Management
• ·         Marketing and Sales Management

Now, to manage all these features, you must be using the best-in-class software available for each feature. This means handling multiple APIs, data management, reporting, maintenance and a lot of technical stuff which will make you paralyzed. Moreover, all these software are not really talking to each other — that is they are not fully integrated.

Now you are trapped.

Well, there’s a way out. What you need is an efficient and seamless integration platform — the tech world calls it Integration-Platform-as-a-service (iPaaS).

It’s the latest kid on the block of Cloud integration platform and growing popularity every day.

Let’s take a look what Gartner stated —

“The iPaaS segment is still a small part of the overall market, topping $1 billion in revenue for the first time in 2017 after growing over 60 percent in 2016 and 72 percent in 2017. This makes iPaaS one of the fastest-growing software segments.”

It will make all of your software solutions to be friends with each other and work together to create a harmony between all the business features I mentioned above.

And in the process this will make your business processes and workflow smoother.

You will thus be able to concentrate more on your core aspects of business saving your time and strengthen your skill set in which you’re passionate.

By now, you are very curious to know more about iPaaS.

Probably want to know how to assess the right vendor along as well. Whether there will be security issues to integrate.

Here is a smart checklist to ease your mind.

1. Assess Your Needs

Before you move to iPaaS integration, think hard and spend a great deal of time to understand your organization needs. In case, if you have really the urgency to have one as soon as possible, then you need to identify;

• ·         What are the challenges?
• ·         How this integration will solve those?
• ·         How much time it will take to complete the integration?
• ·         How much budget you will consider initially?

iPaaS is a highly customizable platform to suit different business needs.

2. Technical Expertise

Before you go on scouting around for vendor, make sure that your technical team has the expertise to understand and help you through the entire cycle of integration.

Also, your tech team will need to maintain and support the system once it is up and running.

They should be involved right from the start. After all, your tech team knows best about the installations and issues in your company.

3. Scalability

After you finish your assessment, you have a complete understanding of how you want to move forward.

You are about to start your vendor hunt. Take a pause and once again think about the scalability of the integration and how this will shape your business in the long run.

When you have a blueprint of your assessment, it will be easier for you to match the expectation with the platform features and finally take an informed decision. In fact, as IDC forecasted, the Retail industry will be spending at 22.8% CAGR for the next five year on Cloud services.

4. Vendor Research

Now comes the next step, where you start searching for your integration partner aka vendor who comes to your rescue and all the problems go away.

Well, the integration takes time and worth the waiting.

But if you choose the wrong vendor who does not understand your pain points and the type of business solution you require, it can ruin all the efforts. You can ask for the following points for starters.

• ·         Projects they handled in your industry — use cases which can be compared to assess your challenges.
• ·         Team size they have for such integration
• ·         Time frame to complete the integration
• ·         Their project management process
• ·         How they will communicate with you
• ·         After delivery support system
• ·         Payment options/ cycle

5. Budget Planning

Initially, you started your iPaaS integration journey with a budget on your mind. You are now at the consideration stage of your purchase cycle after you get some idea from the vendor search.

It’s time now to dive deeper into the information collected from the research and come out with a definite budget plan to accommodate the technical overhaul.

Your budget plan should consider all the stages and payment plan that will suit you most in the days ahead.

That’s it. You have reached the destination of your iPaaS research journey for your e-Commerce business. You have selected the vendor, your strategy to integrate everything is in place. You have moved your choice to the cart. Now is the time to click that “Buy Now” button. Or if you want to procrastinate a little bit, it’s up to you. Your competitors might not though.

Good luck with your integration!

Looking for a e-Commerce integration solution – Talk to us first.

Optimize your business by integrating Shopify and Quickbooks

There are a lot of questions about Shopify and QuickBooks integration.
What is it exactly? It is something that my business or organization needs to do? If so, how? What are the benefits? How do I get started?
Nowadays, there is a bit of a hype about integration. But be assured, it is a powerful, long-term approach that your business needs to leverage in order to prosper in the present competitive environment.
In this article, you will learn why and how to integrate two important apps: Shopify and QuickBooks. It won’t answer all your questions. But it will equip you with a solid foundation on the benefits and best ways to apply this approach.

Benefits

Benefit 1: synchronize your sales, product and customer data

QuickBooks and Shopify are two different apps, but they complement each other. For this, synchronization between both of them is key.
Imagine your online store, successfully selling your products, but totally disconnected from your accountancy. You will have to create the link via a human task, which is time-consuming, costly and prone to errors.
Now, you decide to integrate both of them. The human is replaced by automation. Now your invoices and payments keep pace with your orders. Your inventory management is updated in real time, based on your orders. Your product and customer data are organized in a complete manner, becoming useful information.

Benefit 2: keep your accounting always accurate and up to date

Good accountancy keeps friendships, says the old Spanish phrase. And, that is true: good friendly relationships ensure trust, avoid problems with authorities, help compliance, and more.
An accountancy that is coordinated with your online sales in an automated manner, gives you an accurate and up to date source of information, and reduces time and effort with reconciliations in QuickBooks.

Benefit 3: obtain a true view of your business

Accurate and updated information is foundational to good business decisions. How to plan sales or production if you cannot know how many product units you have in inventory? How to plan your taxes if your sales are not accurately and timely represented in your books?
An integrated source of data captures the wider canvas in which the totality of the reality of your business can be painted, giving you a true view of your business.
Even more, in this age of AI and powerful machine learning algorithms, a proper and complete source of data can become invaluable when considering using business intelligence tools.

How to integrate them

DBSync’s Shopify and QuickBooks Integration provides a simple and easy solution to synchronize order and fulfillment data from multiple channels with QuickBooks, optimizing your order-to-cash process.
Creating an integration process is easy with DBSync. Just follow these steps:

Step 1: Create a project

First of all, you need to create a new project that includes all the required process integration information. For this, click on the Create New Project button, and assign it a name.

Figure 1: Create new project screen

Step 2: Create a QuickBooks connector

Now, you need to create a connector to your online QuickBooks source. In order to do so, click on the Create New Connector button. You will see a screen asking for a name and a connector type. Input a relevant name of your choice, and select QuickBooks Online Rest Connector from the drop-down menu.

Figure 2: Create New Connector screen

The system will then ask for your QuickBooks credentials, and once accepted, the connection is established, and a confirmation screen appears.

Figure 3: Intuit connection page

Figure 4: Confirmation screen

Step 3: Create a Shopify connector

Similarly to the previous step, the creation of a Shopify connector only differs in the connector’s type choice: in this case, you need to select Shopify Connector from the drop-down menu. Then, you need to input your Shopify credentials.

 

Figure 5: Create New Connector screen

Figure 6: Shopify login screen

Step 4: Create a process

In order to create a new process, click on the Create New Process screen, give a name to your process and save it.

Figure 7: Create New Process screen

Step 5: Create a workflow

Processes are composed by a set of workflows. You can have several workflows in a process. In order to create a new workflow, click on the Create New Workflow button and assign a name to it.

Figure 8: Create New Workflow screen

Step 6: Create a trigger

Your next step is to define the data source from where the process will then read the data. This information is contained in a trigger; which, in order to create a query, requires a data source connector and a source table. This query can be manually modified by using the Advanced Query Builder.

Figure 9: Trigger’s parameters

Step 7: Create a rule

Now, you need to create one or more data destinations. This is done via the creation of rules. Each rule needs a data source connector, an operation (such as update or upsert), and a destination table.

Figure 10: Create a rule screen

Once you have defined your data destination, you need to create a map between the data source and data destination. This is easily done with DBSync. You simply need to map the fields between both data components.

Figure 11: Mapping of parameters

Step 8: Run the process

Now you have everything you need. You can run the process and obtain your results. While the process is running, the console will show you the results obtained step by step, until termination.

Figure 12: Console

Step 9: Check the logs

It is important that you check the logs. They are available through the main menu, and give you information on the number of records read and written, and in case of a failed run, information on errors encountered.

Figure 13: logs

Best integration practices

When integrating data, have a business goal in mind

Data integration is about transforming data. Now, this transformation must be based on a purpose, which in turn, it must be defined by a business goal.
So, when you begin thinking about integrating important apps such as QuickBooks and Shopify, start with this question in mind: what do I want to achieve with my business?
Business goals can be of many natures: speed up order-to-sales processing, reducing costs by replacing personnel with automation and therefore, decreasing the number of human errors, and many more. They are basically defined in the different benefits that you can obtain by integrating.

A data integration solution should have an architecture

Having an architecture simple means “think before you act”. Or, as carpenters say: measure twice before you cut.
Having an architecture is essential because it affects scalability, costs, the capacity to support real-time integration, and the interoperability with other tools.
Very important, your architecture must be based on your business goals. It must be an expression of them.

Data integration is a value-adding process

As you now know, integration is synonymous of data transformation with a purpose. In other words, it is adding value to your ecosystem, as the final result is a new “product” that is more valuable than the original “material” on which it is based.
And, the added value is the foundation of your profits!

Final words

In this article, you have learnt the value of integrating QuickBooks and Shopify. You have seen how to do it in practice by using DBSync. And finally, you have realized the importance of merging your business goals with your integration architecture.
Once you apply these principles, the added value will transform into profits up. Ready to start? Visit our page at http://www.mydbsync.com/