Software as a Service (SaaS) is a successful business model that helps businesses manage their operations. Around 38% of companies rely heavily on SaaS for their business operations. But SaaS alone is not sufficient to meet business needs. SaaS providers used to direct their customers to third-party vendors to bridge the functionality gaps in the past. Today, however, most of them are looking forward to adding SaaS integration capabilities to their own system.
SaaS companies upgrading their software capabilities compete with you, and to surpass your competitors, you need to be better. SaaS integration gives you many features while reducing the need to send your clients to other development companies.
If your SaaS company serves the eCommerce industry, then integration with shopping platforms and marketplaces is a core part of its functionality. Let’s see how eCommerce integration influences any B2B SaaS company.
The Importance of eCommerce Integration for B2B SaaS Companies
B2B SaaS integration with shopping platforms is vital for SaaS software providers because it allows them to offer basic software functions to online store owners.
It also provides them with additional features to streamline their business processes.
Here are some of the main functions that some popular SaaS solutions offer by integrating with eCommerce platforms.
Shipping management software
Every online store owner relies on shipping software to select, pack and send orders to relevant customers. In addition to this, shipping software is also meant for order processing, updating order status, inventory control, and shipment tracking. This results in the software being fully automated and efficient for software providers.
However, some features of shipping software depend on the online store data of eCommerce platforms, which can be accessed only through shopping cart integration. It connects the shipping software with the eCommerce platforms and allows them to receive info from all desired platforms to provide the necessary features.
The shipping software also offers other features, such as the ability to print labels directly from the dashboard of an online store and send tracking numbers to customers to stay updated on the shipping status of their orders. By doing so, you may gain an advantage over other shipping software vendors who have not integrated their software with shopping platforms.
Inventory management system
An inventory management system is necessary for every business, whether it has a physical presence or only ships its products online. It enables sellers to track all orders, inventory levels, deliveries, and sales, making it much easier to manage inventory.
Besides, retailers use the data from the inventory management software to process and ship orders, update lists in the system, and manage inventory. It also prevents store owners from running out of stock or having too much stock on hand so that the business's reputation is not at risk.
All inventory management software operations are based on information found on eCommerce platforms. The software uses B2B SaaS integration with eCommerce platforms to access data. The integration not only simplifies certain aspects of the software's basic functionality but also enables it to perform a variety of functions, such as:
- Track and import orders from several platforms into your system
- Update all sales channels from one place
- Synchronize inventory across several platforms
- Get order updates and notify your customers as soon as possible
- Compile reports
Marketing automation software
Marketing automation software is a tool used by businesses to stay in communication with their customers over the duration of their buying cycle. Retailers are unable to communicate with all of their customers in person, so they rely on systems that automate and customize marketing messages and send them across the customer base.
A software that automatically sends emails to store customers regarding new items, discounts, and special prices is known as email marketing automation software. It also keeps customers up to date on order status, builds segmented lists, imports contacts from stores, and detects and tracks abandoned-cart owners for incomplete purchase actions. Next, the system sends special messages to these cart owners to complete their purchases.
Marketing automation software can perform these functions by gaining access to eCommerce platforms' order, product, and customer data. To accomplish this, eCommerce integration is an important step that enables the software to connect to shopping carts and perform necessary functions.
Repricing system
Repricing systems have made it easier for merchants to modify their product prices. They can quickly track changes in prices in their competitors’ stores and adjust the prices of products in their own retail outlets accordingly. A price change could affect a single item or a group of products.
The repricing system has many features, including updating prices, producing standard and custom reports, tracking products, and creating coupons. Access to store data enables this software to perform all these functions. In addition, through eCommerce integration, online stores can provide data on products, customers, orders, and categories to repricing systems.
In addition to the basic functions, integration also offers the following for a repricing system:
- Sync prices across all sales channels
- Get product lists along with prices, descriptions, images, and more.
- Access to order history
- Create coupons
- Import contacts from stores and create segmented lists
- Generate smart reports
Product information management (PIM) system
A product information management system is an important tool for eCommerce store owners. It manages all information that's associated with products, such as images, listings, descriptions, price, quantity, stock, and more. These systems enable merchants to display much of the product information on one screen, automating many of the tasks formerly performed by online store owners.
PIM systems can implement their basic functionalities using store info accessed from shopping platforms. These platforms contain all product-related data, which is necessary for a PIM system to provide its functions to sellers.
Furthermore, eCommerce platforms can be integrated with PIM systems to allow access to such data. It also comes with the following benefits:
- Import product lists along with prices, descriptions, images, attributes, variations, categories, etc.
- Send product information to marketplaces on eBay, Etsy, Amazon
- Add and update product information in online stores
- Retrieve and update client`s info
- Get store info such as name, language, timezone, currency, country, etc.
eCommerce Integration issues
B2B SaaS integration with shopping platforms are crucial for SaaS vendors, but it's not an easy task. It poses several challenges when done in-house. The following are some of them:
Integration can be a time-consuming task. Integrations generally take 4–12 weeks to develop and can take more time if you want to connect with more than one eCommerce platform. You’ll also have to gather a development team for in-house integration development. Hiring, employing, and training developers for the project will add to its preparation time.
Integrating SaaS with a shopping platform can be a complex process. Each eCommerce platform is unique in its architecture and API. Advanced developers will be needed to code the integration and set up an infrastructure to make the process easier. Furthermore, eCommerce platforms update their APIs often, so you must update your integration with each new version of the shopping cart. This increases the level of maintenance required for integration.
Integrations are incredibly costly. In addition to the setup costs (up to $4,000 per integration), ongoing maintenance and upgrade expenses related to hiring, training, employing, and paying advanced developers, setting up infrastructure, and overseeing upgrades and care throughout the lifecycle. If you want your software to connect to more than one eCommerce platform, forget about revenue because your customers have stores on many of them. You should find a more straightforward and cost-effective way to integrate your software with shopping carts. Is there a single approach to integration?
Unified eCommerce Integration Strategy
A unified approach is the only way to easily, quickly, and cost-effectively establish SaaS integration with eCommerce platforms. A unified integration strategy allows eCommerce software to be connected to all the shopping platforms and marketplaces in one go.
No additional time, money, or resources are consumed with each additional integration. A unified API is a collection of third-party APIs combined into a single data set and enables data transfer through methods specific to each data category.
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