Blog: ERP

4 E-commerce Platforms to Integrate with Dynamics AX

October 26, 2017 - by Seema Nair

While the top e-commerce platforms differentiate themselves by having low cost offerings, an easy setup, capabilities of a high level of customization, and the inclusion of standard features; other aspects such as mobile friendliness, advanced search and filters, social media integration, good user experience, search engine optimization, modules for content marketing, and customer support, are also fundamental needs of modern day online stores. While these aspects are important, another key touch point for ERP users is the ease by which they can integrate e-commerce platforms with their AX environment. So which e-commerce platforms can be easily integrated with Dynamics AX ERP? Let’s look at the top four e-commerce platforms:

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Magento

Magento is an open source digital commerce platform ideal for medium to large sized businesses with an extensive array of features to help you build your online store. It is ready-to-use or you can customize it according to your business needs. Explore the Magento community to get the support you need, and find new plugins and extensions. Through integration with Dynamics AX, you can enjoy a complete shopping experience:

  • Automatically feed web orders into Dynamics AX and enjoy a smoother and faster order fulfilment
  • Accurately record all sales transactions and get a complete financial view of your business at any point in time.
  • Eliminate many of your manual tasks and streamline complex business processes by accurately syncing information.
  • Get improved access to order information in your Dynamics AX console as soon as an order is confirmed on your e-commerce site.
  • Sync all customer related information including contact details, billing and shipping addresses and have all new information automatically updated.
  • Simplify pricing, quotes, order fulfillment, customer returns, and back-order processing.
  • Easily track the status of customer order shipments, regardless of whether you are working in Dynamics AX or Magento.
  • Plan your supply chain effectively as you sales in your e-commerce is reflected in Dynamics AX in real-time.

Shopify

Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce solutions for online businesses. Catering to a broad range of industries from arts and photography to electronics and technology, it offers 12 free templates that come in two or three variations giving more opportunity to customize if you are creating multiple websites but are not willing to go premium. Shopify offers great integration opportunities with Microsoft Dynamics AX:

  • Sync all your orders, sales and stock levels, product descriptions, and supplier catalogue management to accelerate your order fulfilment process and increase customer satisfaction.
  • Have data transferred from your e-commerce site to Dynamics AX instantly and get improved insight into end-to-end business operation.
  • Export product information and pricing from Dynamics AX to Shopify in real-time and update inventory levels with every transaction.
  • Always ensure your business data and sales figures match your warehouse and finance systems.
  • Ensure you can log transactions even after hours and avoid building a backlog of orders over the weekend.
  • Eradicate repetitive employee data entry, remove the risk of costly errors and significantly decrease order fulfilment times.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free WordPress shopping cart plugin and can be used to any WordPress theme. It is easy to install immediately without any monthly fees and fully customizable with tons of extensions, themes, and plugins, each of which has different capabilities and options. WooCommerce is ideal if you already have an existing WordPress website or you are planning to have a website in WordPress and you want your e-commerce business up and running within a short period of time. Integration with Dynamics AX allows you to:

  • Enjoy real-time transfer of all of your key business data between WooCommerce and Dynamics AX
  • Monitor all aspects of your online business from within your AX ERP.
  • Sync orders, customers and billing data.
  • Have all new customer data and sales transactions imported directly into Dynamics AX.
  • Automatically sync order fulfilment and shipping info.
  • Unify stock levels, products and product categories.
  • Identify business critical information, and eliminate errors and conflicts in your inventory.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is ideal for big corporations because of its viable and powerful interface, allowing you to handle your online store efficiently and effectively. Integration between Dynamics AX and BigCommerce allows you to

  • Automatically insert BigCommerce orders into Dynamics AX.
  • Update your online site with offline sales.
  • Transfer inventory levels and/or product images and descriptions from Dynamics AX to your BigCommerce site.
  • Synchronize all customer information between BigCommerce and Dynamics AX.
  • Enjoy automatic rules based placement of an order with a preferred courier service(s) or internal distribution team.

Comparison Chart

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Improve Your Bottom Line

Which e-commerce platform is best for you can only be decided by industry you operate in, the requirements of your customers, and your business budget. Each platform offers a distinct set of advantages – for WordPress users, WooCommerce is the perfect choice as it is easy to install and use. Magento is a B2B leader in the Forrester Wave and is best suited for mid-sized organizations.

It is the most popular commerce platform in the market, with more than 250,000 merchants across the world. And Shopify and BigCommerce are ideal for companies who don’t need a complicated store with advanced features and customizations. Integrating your e-commerce site with Microsoft Dynamics AX eases your ERP experiences, enabling you to get the most value out of your Dynamics AX solution. Enjoy automated backup, and data synchronization, save valuable time and cost and eliminate the probability of inaccurate data and data entry errors – and improve your bottom line.

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