Many wine & spirits distributors are turning to ERP and B2B eCommerce to stay competitive today, and for good reason. That’s why 365WineTrade and Dynamicweb eCommerce partner to provide you with an integrated solution ready to take your business to the next level. Continuing our series of articles, we are sharing some important considerations and benefits around eCommerce integration to make informed decisions for your business.
The Power of Integrated eCommerce for Wine Distributors
Why is it beneficial to integrate your eCommerce platform with 365WineTrade instead of a disconnected, independent eCommerce platform? For starters, it saves you a lot of time, errors, and stress when you can share and leverage data between systems. Let’s dive deeper into some of the questions you might have about eCommerce integration.
Beware of “Embedded” eCommerce Integrations
First, the term integration can get confusing when it comes to enhancements for your ERP system. Some vendors “embed” their solution which means they will need to modify your ERP system to make everything work together. This is not ideal for a few reasons:
- If you need to upgrade or update your ERP system, this can break the code with your eCommerce system rendering it useless without additional customizations.
- When your ERP system is modified, it’s more difficult to change eCommerce solutions without having to (yet again) pay to reverse all those customizations.
The bottom line is embedded solutions that require customizations to your ERP database can be risky and get expensive.
Benefits of eCommerce and ERP integration through APIs
There are many reasons we choose to integrate with 365WineTrade through APIs vs. embedding code into the ERP system, including:
- Upgrades are easy and independent for both solutions
- Your eCommerce store remains self-sufficient in the event your ERP is down
- Easier integrations with 365WineTrade, Dynamics 365 Sales, or other third-party apps.
- Freedom to change eCommerce solutions down the road (though we don’t think you will after using Dynamicweb!)
- It’s simply a more modern and flexible approach to integration that is widely adopted today
Points of Integration
The real beauty of integrating Dynamicweb eCommerce with 365WineTrade is sharing data throughout your operations end-to-end, eliminating duplicate data entry, manual processes and improving accuracy. Some of the common points of integration are below and keep in mind, Dynamicweb is very flexible. Because we use the logic of 365WineTrade and APIs for integration, we can connect to essentially any data point in your ERP system.
- Accounts
- Items
- Order Fulfillment
- Tax Automations
- Distribution
- Shipping Laws
- Compliance Reporting
- Inventory Allocations
Built-In Product Information Management (PIM)
Wine & spirits distributors in particular can benefit from adding more details to products than what your ERP system allows. Dynamicweb includes the option of using PIM to enrich and extend your ERP product data with all kinds of information, even rich media like images, videos and documents. This enables you to create a more engaging experience for your customers and enhance your product catalogs, online store, and presence on third-party marketplaces. Some common information you might want to add to your products includes:
- Brand
- Type
- ABV%
- Vintage Code
- Bottle Size
- Body
- Food Pairing
- Complimentary products, pairings, or recommendations
- Images
- Videos
This enhanced product data can be directly shared to multiple channels and marketplaces such as Wine-Searcher, Drizly, SevenFifty, Channable, Amazon, and more than 2,500 other marketplaces.
Full Visibility with Connected Analytics
Analytics are critical to measure your performance and identify opportunities for growth, sales, new markets, and so much more. While Dynamicweb offers several insights on its own, when combined with your 365WineTrade data and PowerBI reports, the possibilities are virtually limitless. This advantage alone can be the competitive edge you need right now.
Would you like to learn more about 365WineTrade and Dynamicweb eCommerce?
There are far too many benefits of this powerful partnership to share in this article, but we invite you to get started with our on-demand webinar or contact the experts at 365WineTrade to discuss your needs and explore your options.
About the Author
