Gain Customer Trust with eCommerce
and Microsoft Dynamics ERP Integration

eCommerce is all about trust and confidence; more often than not (unless customers are purchasing from an established brand) customers are extending a leap of faith in a brand when they purchase online. By making purchases from an unknown brand they risk getting scammed, purchasing a fake or damaged product, etc. Hence it is important for businesses to establish and reinforce trust with both prospective and existing customers.
Related: Shopping Cart Abandonment – Build Trust
Integrating your eCommerce and Microsoft Dynamics ERP systems (Dynamics GP, Dynamics NAV and Dynamics AX), among other benefits, also helps in building trust and confidence in the minds of your customers. In the rest of the blog below we will explore a few scenarios that have helped our clients gain trust of their customers, which in turn has resulted in increased sales and improved customer loyalty.

• Provide Consistent Product Information

Today, online shoppers tend to shop from multiple channels (web, mobile, online marketplaces, call center, email, catalog, etc.) making it crucial for businesses to maintain consistent information across all channels. Failing which businesses will not only find it hard to maintain these systems but also have an adverse impact on customer trust, experience and brand image. With Dynamics ERP and eCommerce integration both your ERP and eCommerce systems will have the same product information.  This integration can then be further extended to other channels like online marketplaces to further reinforce the brand experience.

• Avoid Overselling your Products

Imagine a situation where you end up selling a product you longer have in your inventory to a customer. In that case you will either have cancel the order or fulfill the order when the product is in stock. In both situations there will be a negative impact on customer experience and your brand image. And if this happens more than once then you are bound to lose him/her to competition. In the multi-channel environment this situation can occur more often because the inventory information is stored in the Dynamics ERP system which does not communicate with the sales channels. With eCommerce and Microsoft Dynamics ERP integration real time inventory checks can be performed before order placement and appropriate action can be taken (inform customer or take order) based on inventory availability.

• Do not Lose Customers over Manual Errors

With your eCommerce and Dynamics ERP systems disconnected you will have to manually transfer critical information from one system to another. These manual data transfers are prone to errors and can lead to unhappy customers (because of delay in order fulfillment, error in shipment, bad customer service, etc.); costing your business. With integrated systems you can quickly transfer information between systems and eliminate errors keeping your customers happy.

• Increase Transparency with Self Service Customer Portals

Seamless information flow from Dynamics ERP to web store front enables customers to view the available product inventory, check their order status and track shipment with the shipment tracking number. There are two advantages of this, and both contribute towards increasing the trust that customers associate with your brand.

• This converts your eCommerce store into a self-service customer portal which not only reduces the operational costs but also improves employee productivity; because your resources can now spend less time on low value activities like phone calls, data entry, etc. and more time on things critical to your business.
• Improves customer experience by increasing the transparency between the business and customer.

For other eCommerce and ERP integration benefits read our eBook Reasons for ERP and eCommerce Integration.
Have you been in a similar situation before? Tell us more about it or share your feedback by commenting below.