How to Integrate Magento and Sage

(This post was last published on March 11, 2015. We’ve updated it for accuracy and completeness.)

Installing an ERP like Sage is a crucial step for growing online businesses. ERPs are necessary tools to help manage inventory, purchasing and financial reporting. Even though necessary, adding another system to your technology stack complicates your business processes.

Instead of just working out of your eCommerce system like Magento, you now must worry about sharing that same data from Magento to Sage and vice-versa. This often requires you to hand-key online orders, inventory counts and shipping/tracking data between the two. Even during normal selling times, manual data entry can take employees several hours daily, slow down processes, and be error-prone.

When considering implementing an ERP like Sage, it’s important to consider how it will integrate with Magento. Integration eliminates manual data entry to ensure operational efficiency and data integrity across your organization. This article will provide a quick comparison of Sage’s various products and the best way to integrate with Magento. (more…)

Shopify Competitors: A Comparison of Shopify Alternatives

(This post was originally published on February 24, 2015. We’ve updated it for accuracy and completeness.)

Since 2006, Shopify has evolved from a start up to one of the fastest growing eCommerce platforms with over 800,000 active stores. However, Shopify isn’t the only platform that’s turned heads over the past several years. It’s easier than ever for merchants to set up online storefronts and there’s a multitude of shopping cart software options to choose from – whether you can write code or not.

Choosing the right eCommerce platform for your online business can be a bit overwhelming. So, we’ve put together this guide for merchants considering Shopify for the first time or looking to move elsewhere. (more…)

Magento 2 New Features: B2B eCommerce & Multi-Location Inventory

(This is a guest post from our friends over at JetRails, a fully-managed white-glove eCommerce hosting service.)

As a robust, open source eCommerce platform, Magento has attracted manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, and other B2B businesses to its previous-generation software platform, Magento 1 (M1). In most cases, these businesses needed to add Magento extensions and engage in additional custom coding in order create the appropriate shopping experience for their B2B customers as well as to follow unique business rules and practices that were central to how they sell their goods.

Magento 1.x is now on a slow march toward an End of Life in June of 2020. That means that businesses still using M1 are planning to move off of this legacy platform before security patches stop arriving, and before the last minute rush to replatform.

As part of this process, merchants will be able to step back and evaluate which eCommerce platform will be able to best support their future needs. Some SaaS solutions like BigCommerce have evolved to include some B2B features. Depending on the features and functionalities that you need, Magento 2, with its open source architecture, may still be the way to go because of its flexibility and customization.  (more…)

How to Integrate Shopify and Microsoft Dynamics NAV

You work hard to grow your retail business. You increase your presence online, open new retail locations, and add wholesale customers. As you expand though, you continue to add layers of complexity to your operations. You rely on moving data between multiple systems such as your eCommerce platform, POS and ERP to continue to process orders and keep finances in check.

Without automation, passing data between your systems becomes a laborious and time-consuming process that ultimately puts customer service levels at risk.

When your company starts to feel these pressures internally, it’s time to consider integrating Shopify and Shopify Plus to Microsoft Dynamics NAV, which is now Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to transform your operations into the efficient and smoothing running business you know you can be.   (more…)

Ethical Issues in eCommerce: Are you violating any of them?

(This post was originally published in April 2015 and updated in November 2017. We’ve updated it for accuracy and completeness.)

We spend a lot of time talking about things that build our eCommerce business; things like marketing and SEO and data analysis. But, most people who expand their business to the web forget about some of the fundamental ethical issues at hand.

Josiah Stamp, an early 20th century economist, said, “It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.” That was a century ago, but in a modern world, which is more transparent than ever, business ethics remain extremely important.

If you run an eCommerce business, you need to understand the ethical implications of your business. Ethics are good for the soul. But, they’re also good for the bottom line.

This post dives into the ethical issues in eCommerce that you should be thinking about.

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