Maintaining your web content and technology
Integrating your back-office systems
Linking your back-office and online systems together improves efficiency and could ultimately lead to greater customer satisfaction.
What are back-office systems?
Back-office systems run all your business administration processes. They are commonly an automated set of processes run by a piece of software on your computer. A back-office system, using an accounting package or database, will:
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record all sales transactions
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record all purchases
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update inventory records accordingly
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generate all appropriate paperwork - ie invoices and receipts
Many back-office systems can also carry shipping information and can produce reports that are invaluable in monitoring business performance and predicting future trends.
What is integration?
In practical terms integration means connecting your online e-commerce system with your back-office accounts and database systems, so that whenever a customer places an order online, your web store and back office deal with the sale as one. The online system accepts the order and then relays all this information back to the customer, while the back office records the transaction, adjusts inventory levels, generates an invoice and fulfils the order.
Benefits of integration
Benefits of integration include:
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greatly improved customer service
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faster response times
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enhanced capacity - greater automation allows you to deal with much larger volumes of business
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reduced costs in the medium and long term
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improved accuracy - with web store and back-office accessing the same data the chances of errors are greatly reduced
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better use of staff time
Integration solutions
The three main options for achieving integration are:
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purchasing off-the-shelf software that includes built-in back-office functionality
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employing a specialist software firm to create an interface between your systems
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using an application service provider
When looking for software solutions, make sure they support open standards such as XML (Extensible Mark-up Language).
Make sure your solution has the flexibility to deal with moving into new markets by having the ability to price in other currencies, for instance.
Subjects covered in this guide
- Introduction
- Implementing your website
- Integrating your back-office systems
- Reviewing your website for errors
- Updating your website content
- Website monitoring
- Website maintenance options
- Evaluating progress
