In today's fast-paced e-commerce landscape, companies continuously try to find new ways to outpace the competition by adopting innovative techniques that promote growth. As such, they turn to technology to achieve the highest standard of innovation by adopting a multitude of systems, SaaS solutions, applications, and data sources. However, these operate independently, resulting in a fragmented approach that often achieves the opposite of what it set out to do, hindering growth and productivity. So, how can e-commerce businesses solve this common problem? Spoiler: with the Alumio iPaaS.
Let’s consider the following scenario:
You are a business owner looking to upgrade your company to increase revenue, so you decide to complement your physical store with a webshop to sell your products online. By doing so, you can expand your market reach and access new customer segments, improve operational efficiency and reduce manual efforts, enable scalability and adaptability to evolving business needs, and as a result, increase sales and revenue.
Setting up a webshop seems like a smart move for your company, so you look into the next steps:
What systems should you integrate to run an online business?
These will likely include but are not limited to an e-commerce platform like Adobe Commerce, BigCommerce, Shopify, or CommerceTools, a CRM system like Salesforce, an ERP system like SAP, Microsoft Dynamics 365, or Sage, a PIM system like Akeneo or Pimcore, and a marketplace software solution like ChannelEngine that will connect your e-commerce store to marketplaces like Amazon or Bol.com.
These are just a few examples of the basic systems you need to ensure the optimal functioning of an online business. Still, there are many more: According to Statista, “Since 2021, companies worldwide have been using an average amount of 110 SaaS (Software as a Service) applications.” However, without integration, these systems will operate independently and form silos, risking the loss of valuable data and forming what we refer to as an entangled IT ecosystem consisting of data silos and a jungle of crisscrossing data flows. This brings us to our next question:
How can you integrate different systems for e-commerce?
In short: with an iPaaS (integration Platform as a Service) that acts as a middleware, bridging the gap between systems and ensuring complete data synchronization. Once you have an iPaaS in place, the different systems will cease to be siloed elements and will become a unified group, also known as an integrated IT landscape.
However, with all the different iPaaS vendors on the market, finding one solution that perfectly caters to your needs can be difficult. One popular solution that is making waves in the e-commerce sector is the Alumio iPaaS.
What is an iPaaS?
An iPaaS (integration Platform as a Service) is a cloud-based middleware that enables companies to connect any two or more systems, SaaS solutions, cloud applications, or data sources from one central hub. As such, it provides a range of tools and services for connecting, mapping, and transforming data between various applications and systems.
The Alumio iPaaS
Designed to supersede the problems of complex integrations, the Alumio iPaaS emerged as a leading solution to help significantly lower the technical threshold for creating integrations. As a low-code integration platform, it enables businesses to integrate two or multiple software solutions from one user-friendly interface, without any custom coding, and across on-premise or cloud environments.
Want to learn more about how the Alumio iPaaS works? Click here to get a comprehensive overview of our solution!
Why should you choose Alumio if you have an e-commerce business?
Alumio is a great fit for e-commerce businesses of all sizes, as we have vast experience in the sector and a high success rate. Among other things, Alumio enables e-commerce businesses to:
Get faster time to market:
Thanks to Alumio’s connector packages, users have integration shortcuts to swiftly connect popular software or systems in a matter of weeks. The platform also offers tools to flexibly modify and adjust these ready-to-use integrations to suit specific business needs. Lastly, Alumio enables workflow automation, expediting data entry, and repetitive manual processes such as simultaneously sending real-time product stock updates from the ERP system to the e-commerce platform and PIM system.
Benefit from Composable Commerce:
By enabling Composable Commerce, Alumio empowers businesses to cherry-pick those systems and apps that suit their specific purposes, preventing vendor lock-in, creating more meaningful product experiences for their customers, and accelerating their time-to-market. This approach fosters unparalleled flexibility to customize e-commerce stacks, replacing old applications with new ones without losing data integrity and allowing freedom to experiment with integrating newer applications. Learn more about Composable Commerce here.
Reduce operational costs:
By making integrations simple for developers and non-coding professionals, Alumio helps significantly reduce operational costs in regard to hiring, outsourcing, and third-party dependency. Alumio also reduces troubleshooting costs with automated logging that help save significant time and labor costs and eliminates black box problems by making all integrations and data flows visible on one user-friendly interface.
Increase revenue:
Alumio empowers e-commerce businesses to create seamless omnichannel experiences for customers, maximizing customer engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty, resulting in increased revenue. Don’t just take our word for it; check out these case studies to discover how Alumio empowered these e-commerce businesses to expand and enhance their operations:
Activating omnichannel customer experiences with ShoeStories
Coherent product and brand display for Jollein
Future-proofing Obelink’s IT ecosystem
Conclusion
Running an e-commerce business does not come without its challenges, but adopting new systems in an attempt to enhance innovation and get a competitive edge should not be one of them. Still, this is a common problem: “Market study reveals 89% of companies struggle with data and system integration.”
With Alumio, e-commerce businesses can focus on their core activities and rest assured that their systems will be integrated accordingly, forming a synchronized IT landscape that is ready to accommodate rapid change and growth.
Are you ready to plan your e-commerce strategy and take your business to the next level? Click here to contact one of our specialists and prepare for growth!
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