So, you’re the proud owner of a brand-new and highly successful e-commerce site? The happy manager of a dedicated space in a marketplace like Amazon or Etsy? Maybe you’ve even combined the two? Putting new items online, ensuring consistency across platforms, managing inventories and suppliers – all these tasks take up a lot of time, don’t they? There has to be a way to streamline everything. How can you increase efficiency and make it easier to manage your different sales channels?
A straightforward connection between Odoo and your e-commerce site or marketplace
While Odoo provides its own powerful and user-friendly e-commerce plugin, the company also caters to those who prefer to run their site with other technologies (Shopify, Magento, etc.). And if you rely solely on online marketplaces, you’re not left out either. Here’s the good news: you too can tap into the full power of Odoo. Thanks to plugins developed by Odoo’s active community, all you need to do is connect your e-commerce site and/or marketplace to Odoo. You can do this yourself or work with a specialised integrator.
Choosing an integrator is more common, as an integrator will be able to select the right connectors. They will also be able to make the necessary adjustments to synchronise Odoo ERP with your sales channels, take into account any differences between your platforms (for example, selling in bulk on your marketplace and individually on your Shopify website), import online customer data into your CRM, and much more… It may sound like a lot, but don’t worry. Engaging an integrator to connect Odoo to your e-commerce or marketplace sites does not necessarily mean setting aside a huge budget. In fact, it’s the opposite. Integrating with Odoo helps you start on the right footing and saves you a great deal of time and money in the long run.
Centralised management of your product catalogue, customers and orders
Centralisation and automation are two of the biggest advantages of connecting your site or marketplace to an ERP. This streamlined connection only requires you to maintain a single, up-to-date product catalogue. As soon as any information in your inventory changes, everything is automatically updated on your sites. This is a huge time-saver for data management tasks: no more having to double-check each platform to make sure the information has been updated correctly. As a best practice, it is better to make your ERP your "data master"" as opposed to your e-commerce site. If you use your e-commerce site as a data repository, it can quickly become overloaded because of the marketplace’s high-volume, growth-driven objectives. Unfortunately, your site was not built to handle such high volumes. On the other hand, your ERP will be able to manage the load. And yes, you guessed it: the orders and customer data in Odoo are also centralised thanks to the "Sales" and CRM modules. Once the sale has been made, customer information is transferred in one quick, streamlined step. Everything in an ERP is interconnected, as it should be.
An automated link between your production and inventory
The Odoo magic doesn’t stop here! Thanks to Odoo’s very extensive functional coverage, you have the power to link your e-commerce sites or marketplaces to your production tools. You can set up as many rules as you need. Odoo, for example, lets you create make-to-order manufacturing and minimum stock rules. When an order is placed on a sales channel, the information is transmitted to your production operations, which then kicks off the necessary raw material/manufacturing orders.
You can also centralise inventory management in Odoo, even if you have three e-commerce sites with different builds, currencies or languages. Take the example of Suomen Automaalit Oy in Finland: with the help of an integrator, they were able to set up a central product data management system that allows information to be pushed to each different platform automatically. If a product is out of stock or a discount is applied, the sites are updated in real time with each platform’s specifications taken into consideration.
The Odoo advantage for E-Commerce
With Odoo, you can be confident that your business will be well listed on the marketplace. Odoo offers unlimited customisation options so you can add as many product attributes as you want for each item. Size, weight, material, packaging, etc. – these are all specifications favoured by marketplaces, and Odoo lets you publish a comprehensive list of precise criteria online. Best of all, you won’t have to key in this information repeatedly for each sales platform. This feature saves time and helps improve your market visibility.
Captivea Odoo Gold partner
Captivea supports companies in Odoo Integration. Captivea is an Odoo Gold Partner and Odoo Certified.