Inventory management is the key to success when your business manufactures, stores and dispatches physical products. There are powerful modern tools to help you record, track and control your stock. Those that continue to rely on multiple outdated systems, spreadsheets and manual tracking can’t keep pace with change. As supply chain challenges continue, companies need a future-focused mindset supported by the right tools and resources.
For growing businesses, inventory management becomes more complex with increasing customer expectations, extra stockkeeping units (SKUs), and multiple warehouses. Investing in the right enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution improves inventory management, streamlines operations, boosts efficiency and drives growth. A well-designed ERP inventory and order management solution provides:
- automation to reduce repetitive tasks and manual data entry
- real-time tracking to improve visibility of stock levels across multiple locations
- optimized supply chain workflows to manage stock levels
- data-driven insights to improve decision-making.
A recent report found 80% of organizations experienced between one and 10 supply chain disruptions in 2024. More organizations are adopting enterprise-wide performance tracking technology to improve visibility and management across their supply chains.
To remain competitive as these challenges continuously escalate there’s no time to delay. Seamless integration with your business to business (B2B) ecommerce platform provides end to end visibility of your operations, helping to boost performance. However, with so many options, what’s the best solution for your business?
Table of Contents
Cloudfy provides inventory, logistics, and shipment management tools to complement the power of your ERP. Cloudfy’s advanced B2B ecommerce features allow you to automate processes and improve resilience across your supply chain.
You can simplify your customers’ online journeys with color-coded displays to give a high-level view of your stock. Like traffic lights, red shows you’re out-of-stock while yellow encourages customers to order as stocks are low. Green shows customers there’s plenty of stock available to meet their needs.
If you wish, you can customize your stock views before and after your customers login. To optimize your inventory levels, you can set flexible thresholds for relevant stock items. Your stock-sensitive customers can register for back-in-stock notifications in their customer ordering app for easy reordering. You can also allow your priority customers to place backorders and pre-orders for specific products or product groups.
ERPs for inventory and order management
When you’re choosing an ERP inventory management solution you’ll want to know about integration capabilities, functionality and implementation requirements.
Integration
ERP functionality is important, but you’ll want to improve all your business processes. Your chosen system should complement your current and future requirements, including B2B ecommerce, warehousing, customer relationship management (CRM), sales and marketing.
Functionality
Many ERP systems have solutions for a wide range of business functions, allowing them to grow with your business. However, this also adds to their complexity and can make them difficult to understand and use. Before making your choice, you should review your current needs and strategy for growth.
Implementation
ERP implementation involves more than technical approval. As well as integration and testing you’ll also need to make sure the right people can use new processes in the right way. It’s critical to define realistic goals and outcomes.
Continuous development is also essential to keep pace with change, so you’ll also want regular updates and upgrades. Choosing a cloud-based solution keeps you ahead of the curve. You’ll also simplify your in-house IT requirements.
Here we look at two ERP inventory and order management market leaders: Cin7 and SAP ByDesign.
Cin7
As a cloud-based solution Cin7 provides near real time visibility of your inventory and ordering. You can streamline your order to cash cycle and improve efficiency with centralized product management, payment processing, and financial control. Seamless connections with electronic data interchange (EDI) and third-party logistics (3PL) providers keep everything running smoothly.
The Cin7 core product is ideal for smaller manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers. It acts as a hub to keep business tools connected while data synchronization improves accuracy. To deal with extra complexity as your business grows, Cin7 Omni provides options to simplify inventory management across your suppliers and fulfillment partners.
Cin7 pros and cons
Cin7 is popular because it simplifies inventory control between manufacturers, 3PLs and customers. Users find it easy to learn and integrate with other business systems. However, there have been reports of intermittent integration and data synchronization issues. It’s worth looking closely at support and service level agreements.
SAP ByDesign
SAP Business ByDesign meets the ERP needs of small to medium-sized companies. It supports business process automation to improve efficiency using the latest cloud-based ERP technology. It’s worth consideration if you have a multinational business, complex manufacturing processes or strict compliance requirements. It provides the scalable functionality and capability you’ll need if you’re expanding your operations.
ByDesign is ideal when you need process model efficiency in real time to manage complex projects. You can connect all your business functions to achieve best practices and benefit from in-depth analytics. You can also simplify customization and integration.
SAP ByDesign pros and cons. If you’re looking for a scalable solution to keep pace with your growing business, SAP ByDesign is a good choice. It has the powerful tools you’d expect from SAP for financial analysis. However, users can find it difficult to make the most of its functionality and take full advantage of its features.
SAP ByDesign pros and cons
If you’re looking for a scalable solution to keep pace with your growing business, SAP ByDesign is a good choice. It has the powerful tools you’d expect from SAP for financial analysis. However, users can find it difficult to make the most of its functionality and take full advantage of its features.
ERP inventory and order management comparisons
Simplification and growth
You can simplify your sales, order and inventory management workflows with Cin7 and B2B ecommerce integration. If you’re struggling with complex high-volume sales and manual stock tracking, it’s a good choice. You can capture and manage orders from multiple channels and Cin7 can adapt to meet your needs as your business grows.
Complexity and expansion
SAP ByDesign is a good solution for businesses with ambitious plans for growth. When needed, it will support the transition to a corporate business structure across multiple locations. The challenge is to optimize its advanced functionality without adding complexity to your business processes.
SAP ERP integration with Cloudfy
SAP ByDesign is a good solution for businesses with ambitious plans for growth. When needed, it will support the transition to a corporate business structure across multiple locations. The challenge is to optimize its advanced functionality without adding complexity to your business processes.
ERP inventory and order management integration with Cloudfy
Cin7 and Cloudfy integration allows you to connect multi-channel inventory management from online sales to fulfillment. Real-time visibility, automated workflows, and seamless integrations synchronize and simplify your operations. As your business grows you can stay in control of your product catalog, orders, and fulfillment across all your sales channels. You can integrate and manage all your key business tools in one place seamlessly.
As a Certified SAP Partner, Cloudfy provides a tried and tested ByDesign integration solution for B2B ecommerce. You’ll have a unified view of your operations with synchronized information about customers, orders, pricing, products, inventory and order status. Process automation across your organization improves data accuracy and increases efficiency. You can free up valuable time and resources to focus on business growth.
Find out how to simplify, save and scale your business with Cin7 or SAP ByDesign inventory and order management integration with Cloudfy. Contact us today.
Frequently asked questions: B2B ecommerce and inventory management integration
Manual stock records and inventory tracking processes are time-consuming and inefficient. You might even find your sales team spending time updating stock levels instead of supporting customers and growing your business. With supply chains under pressure, accurate stock information for your customers is more important than ever. With the latest ERP inventory and order management tools you can streamline and simplify your operations to support business growth.
Automated workflows reduce manual data entry and minimize errors so you can streamline and simplify order fulfillment. You can also improve stock visibility to reduce out-of-stock ordering, allowing your customers to buy with confidence. By delivering fast and easy online ordering you’ll improve your conversion rates and build customer loyalty and lifetime value.
Your customers value transparency and a smooth ordering process. They want to know they will find the products they need and can place their orders with confidence. Inventory management and B2B ecommerce integration provides automatic stock level updates in near real time. Accurate stock information means your customers can plan efficiently to meet their own business needs.
