In the business world, having the capacity to achieve near real time integration with your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, is priceless. When we refer to ERP, we’re talking about business process management software that allows an organisation to manage their business using a system of integrated applications. This increases productivity as it automates numerous back office functions across technology, human resources and services.
To achieve as near to real time integration as possible with your ERP, Woven’s ecommerce platform consists of two components:
- Avenue for the front end, which is basically the website for the client’s ecommerce needs
- Pronto Xi for ERP purposes
Both components use different sets of data. While Pronto Xi maintains all of the business transactions and inventory requirements, Avenue houses the data for displaying on the front end user face (HTML, CSS and so on). The real magic lies in the separation of these two components but this is what allows Woven to maintain Avenue and Pronto individually. Bigger picture wise, this works best as it removes the problem of having any one single point of failure.
Avenue and Pronto Xi’s data sets do overlap in certain areas out of necessity. For instance, Avenue and Pronto Xi share the same Products, Stock Quantities, Debtors and Orders. Pronto Xi’s data is the client’s original data and while Avenue still requires Pronto’s data to function, in most cases, Avenue is unable to directly modify the data that comes through via Pronto.
So why is Woven’s ecommerce platform process the best possible solution in terms of achieving near real time integration with an ERP? Other solutions maintain their ecommerce and ERP sync using overnight jobs, which can cause issues as this process will not deliver real time data. It also comes with the significant disadvantage of a lack of data integrity.
A conflict can very easily arise if the ERP and ecommerce platform modify the same item before an overnight job runs. In addition to data conflicts, the use of overnight jobs also creates a bottleneck in the system if there are multiple ecommerce entities connected to the same ERP, which want to synchronize their data with the ERP software all at once.
Both Avenue and Pronto Xi are able to achieve close to real time synchronisation. Each component communicates with one another whenever a change is made at either end. They also communicate periodically to ensure necessary connectivity.
Whenever an order is placed in Avenue, the amount of stock the order uses will be deducted from the total amount available for sale in Pronto Xi. Since the stock quantities in Avenue are synchronized with those in Pronto Xi, Avenue will be sent back the updated quantity for the products it just ordered. If Pronto Xi sends a quantity of zero for a particular product, that product will be hidden, preventing other users from purchasing it. Best of all, this happens within minutes of the initial user submitting their order via Avenue.
The real takeaway here is that Avenue and Pronto Xi both constantly synchronise ecommerce data with ERP data. Most other solutions simply don’t work this way as they use an overnight job to synchronise everything. This is a huge negative for organisations as it means they do not have access to near real time data which can cause data conflicts and create a misalignment in data between the platforms.
If you’d like to chat about what’s possible with a new or existing ecommerce platform, contact the friendly team at Woven today. Our many years’ worth of experience means that we can help you take your ecommerce website to the next level, while always having your best interests in mind.
