Driving Transparency with Dynamics Business Central and Magento Integration

Renowned American businessman Howard Schultz once stated that the currency of leadership is transparency. If you wish to be a leader in your industry, transparency is the key to your success – it will help you drive accountability internally and to build trust externally.

Irrespective of the size of your business, transparency is the need of the hour. With businesses moving online and customers in the driver seat, the demand for transparency is at its peak. In a survey conducted by Label Insight, 94% of the consumers surveyed say “they are likely to be more loyal to a brand that offers complete transparency.” Further, 73% of consumers “will pay more for products when the brand is transparent.”

However, for businesses operating multiple systems to manage and drive customer engagement, providing transparency can be a challenge. Data residing in numerous systems, each with its own identity, is a nightmare for businesses to manage. Read on to find out how you can address this challenge, while driving transparency, by integrating your two most critical systems – Magento eCommerce and Dynamics 365 Business Central ERP.

The Drive – Your Customers are more Active in The Online Market

Gone are the days when businesses are run by offline marketing and word-of-mouth alone. Customers today are online and love the convenience it offers. Even for purchases made offline, customers have already made up their minds online, even before walking into a store.

Companies know their online presence will either make them or break them in the long term. To drive customer experience, brands invest a lot of time, energy, and capital in various systems and processes. To provide seamless user experience, the integration of technology is necessary.

Call it curiosity or fear, consumers demand transparency now more than ever because they want to know everything about their order, and there are ways you can make them feel calm and secure.

In some cases, the drive comes from competition. Your customers are also shopping on Amazon and expect you to provide similar shopping experience. In the Label Insight survey, it was observed that consumers tend to gravitate toward brands that offer product transparency.

Let us look at how you can prepare your business to provide the same transparency and customer experience to your customers by integrating your Magento eCommerce store with the Dynamics Business Central ERP system.

It all starts with Product and Inventory Information:

One of the first things customers see and interact with is your product information. If you are selling across multiple channels, ensuring consistent product information across channels is a first step towards driving transparency and building trust with your customers.

Product information is not limited to product images and text descriptions. It also extends to product inventory. Imagine how your customers will feel if they find that their order is canceled because the stock is not available? Or if they find that they cannot place an order because of the lack of inventory at the checkout stage? Chances are, the customer may never come back or worse, share the experience with others.

With businesses maintaining product and inventory information in their ERP system, Dynamics 365 Business Central ERP integration with Magento eCommerce ensures that consistent and accurate information is shared with your Commerce customers.

Keep Customers Informed:

As discussed earlier, customers are eager to know what is happening with their order. Customers don’t mind waiting for months before they place an order, but once the order is placed, the anticipation of experiencing the product can be overwhelming. Hence, keeping your customers informed about their order and shipping status is a must for driving customer satisfaction.

There is an amazing synergy between eCommerce and ERP systems when it comes to orders. Magento eCommerce store acts as the interface for accepting orders and Dynamics 365 Business Central as the go-to system for order fulfillment.

The Integration, between Magento and Dynamics 365 Business Central, ensures:

• Automated order information sync from Magento to ERP, making way for faster order fulfillment, and
• Automated order status, shipment, and invoice updates from Dynamics 365 Business Central to eCommerce, making way for keeping customers informed

Let Customers be in Control:

You can quickly convert your eCommerce store to act as a customer portal. Giving your customers the flexibility to edit and manage information like shipping address, billing address, payment preferences, and more. In addition, they can also view their order history and past invoices directly, reducing the dependency on your customer service representatives. This not only improves operational efficiency but also drives customer experience and loyalty.

Magento eCommerce and Dynamics 365 Business Central integration makes this possible by centralizing all customer-related information and ensuring consistency across systems. This also sets the context to drive omni-channel experience for your customers by enabling them to switch between channels seamlessly.

In addition to bringing transparency, you can further leverage the integration to increase customers’ trust by:

• Eliminating Human Error:

In an article from invenioIT, “75% of data loss is due to human error.” However, by integrating Magento with Dynamics 365 Business Central, the chance of human error by manual data entry is eliminated. This generates transparency within the organization as these tedious data entry tasks are automated by Dynamics 365 Business Central Connect.

If you are unable to provide clear and concise information order’s status, you risk losing a lifelong customer. When you can guarantee that you have accurate data, you can easily maintain transparency within your business and with your customers, fostering trust.

• Keeping the Data Secure:

With transparency comes the responsibility of securing crucial information. Data is one of the most critical elements in business, and losing it can be devastating. However, by integrating Magento with Dynamics 365 Business Central, the data will be shared through an encrypted connection. This also eliminates the need for manual data entry and the risk of incorrect or duplicate data. With Dynamics 365 Business Central Connect, data accuracy will not be compromised, ensuring the security of any information.

Conclusion

From an amazing shopping experience to seamless order fulfillment, every element is crucial for a business to stand out against the competition. To make this happen, all your systems, from eCommerce to ERP, have to work in tandem with one another. This brings in the transparency you need to drive efficiency, accountability, and trust.

To experience the benefits of Magento powered by Dynamics 365 Business Central, i95Dev offers Dynamics 365 Business Central Connect. We understand the nuances of eCommerce and ERP technology. Contact us to take your online business to the next level.