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transition from retail to ecommerce

How To Make the Transition from Retail to ECommerce

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With time and cultural shifts, consumer buying habits have changed significantly.

Already, brick and mortar retailers saw dips in sales as online shopping made a bigger debut. But after the Covid-19 pandemic, the retail industry has been changed forever.

As buyers’ needs change, your business needs to adjust to meet them. Otherwise, you will lose out on potential and returning customers.

Online shopping has risen exponentially over the past couple of years and we will continue to see it rise. With less overhead than retailing in the middle of economic uncertainty, e-commerce has become a better option for companies.

So, you know that you need to start making the transition from retail to e-commerce. But how do you start?

Let’s dive in to why you need to make the switch, how to transition, and the benefits of investing in apparel inventory software to help.

E-Commerce Is the Future of Shopping

In order to meet new customer needs, you need to be switching to e-commerce. Online shopping is a booming industry, and if you aren’t taking advantage of it, then your business might get lost to all the competition.

While your company might not be the next Amazon, your customers want an easy-to-use and reliable online platform to purchase from. This means:

  • Clean, straightforward, and fast website
  • Simple and easy checkout process
  • Deals on shipping
  • Reliable customer support
  • Easy returns

You need to ensure that your company provides this. Switching to e-commerce is the first step to retaining customers and enticing new ones.

A digital presence will also put you right in front of your target audience. You will catch more customers to bring in through digital marketing efforts, but if your audience is scrolling their phone, where will you send them?

Having an online space to lead them to will secure their purchase. This is why switching to e-commerce is so important.

And apparel inventory software can help you do this more accurately! With technology behind you, making the transition will be easy.

Let’s explore how an apparel inventory software can help you make the switch.

Get Them Buying with Fast Site Speed

Online consumers are all about getting things done quickly. They want to scroll quickly, consume media quickly, and they want to buy things quickly. This makes them easy to target, because online purchases have convenience behind them.

Make sure that you can keep up with your customers’ speeds and have an e-commerce platform that keeps things moving fast.

Technologically-Advanced Customer Support

You need better technology to keep up with e-commerce and using it for customer support will be vital for your company. Customers like to be taken care of and know that they can count on support for their needs.

Reliable Software to Help You Manage

As you start the shift from retail to e-commerce, you are going to need something to help you with the transition. There are so many new challenges you’ll face as you make the move, and new solutions to uncover.

Apparel inventory software can help you succeed!

Stay on top of your competitors and find success in your new e-commerce space when you have apparel inventory software. When you meet buyer needs by transitioning to e-commerce easily, you’ll retain more customers and bring more in!

 

Growing Significance of Ecommerce ERP Integration: Why ECommcerce makes sense for Wholesale

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According to a recent study by the Commerce Department, “web sales are rising rapidly every year. This is the fifth consecutive year in which the web sales increased by 15% or more”. Ecommerce has increased even faster during the Covid-19 pandemic. Changes that were probably going to take five to ten years, happened in just one or two years. For small and medium sized companies, it is hard to adapt to this very fast-changing world.

ECommerce is any channel that facilitates you to make online sales. Different channels include your own webstore run by Magento, Amazon, eBay or Shopify.

On the other hand ERP is a system that manages business data or back office operations for example NetSuite or Microsoft Dynamics AX or Microsoft Dynamics GP. ECommerce has become the number one platform that helps businesses increase their sales prospects.

If you are a wholesaler then you shouldn’t miss on eCommerce ERP integration, which is a must have if you want to streamline your sales and distribution.

Most wholesale companies rely on an accounting or ERP system combined or integrated with an inventory management solution to run their daily wholesale operation.

The need for eCommerce ERP integration is usually ignored because these type of integrations usually have a high cost and require careful planning to avoid business interruption caused by the change in existing computer systems. But the integration has a vital impact on your operations and customer experience.

Why it is Crucial for You Organization to Integrate eCommerce and ERP

  • It allow you to function more proficiently as a business. Your main processes – orders, inventory, customers, and shipping/tracking – are communicated effortlessly between your once independent systems. ECommerce and ERP integration has the capability to harmonize information between systems and enables them to co-operate with each other.
  • It trims down the hassles of manually entering data from one system to another. It saves time and lessens the errors, when entering order, inventory, item, and customer and shipping data.
  • ECommerce ERP integration lets you to easily account for new orders and process these orders without delay, regardless of where the sale is made.
  • Through this integration the tasks like products and pricing can be managed from one place which allows you to have precise and reliable information of the product.
  • With streamlined inventory synchronization you can track updates, and give exact inventory levels to customers, avoiding backorders, delays and reducing customer service load.
  • It automatically notifies the customers when orders have shipped and they can easily track the delivery of products.
  • When you run multiple business systems that are not integrated, many times the information does not match, resulting in mis-communication and repetitive bi-directional data entry. The integration of ECommerce and ERP eliminates these problems.

In today’s fast moving and competitive business world the integration of eCommerce and ERP is a requirement to wholesalers, just as it is to retailers. It improves the way in which your data is processed and it ultimately improves the company’s performance.

Are you seeking expert assistance for your fashion brand’s ERP requirements? Get in touch with InStyle today!