The challenge

Aranda uses Sage 300cloud ERP to manage customer accounts, pricing, and inventory data. They needed a solution to seamlessly share this information with relevant customers through an online trade portal, allowing for easy order placement.

Additionally, Aranda required an efficient way to manage pricing and stock across multiple retail Shopify websites, using their ERP as the single source of truth.

The goals

• Sync product inventory and pricing
• Centralise product enrichment (PIM functionality)
• Sync wholesale customer data
• Provide sales reps with an ordering tool
• Streamline workflows
• Open up additional retail sales channels (omni-channel)

The solutions

We integrated with Sage 300cloud to sync Aranda’s important data onto a Stock2Shop console. From here we were able to distribute customer and product information to where it needed to go, and sync orders back to Sage.

Essentially, we put Sage in control of multiple ecommerce platforms for efficient omni-channel selling. Here’s how we did it:

Sync products:

• Aranda’s products synced from Sage 300cloud to Stock2Shop.
• We integrated all their product data, including multiple price lists and multi-warehouse inventory levels, and set up systems to send data to the various sales channels as needed.
• Aranda can now manage their inventory from Sage, while Stock2Shop automatically updates their ecommerce platforms in near real time.

Centralise product enrichment:

• Stock2Shop’s interface has PIM (product information management) functionality.
• With Aranda’s products now listed on Stock2Shop’s user-friendly console, they can add images, long descritions, tags, categorisation and other marketing enrichment not contained within their ERP.
• Centralising this enrichment using Stock2Shop PIM functionality means that Aranda doesn’t have to manage this information separately on each sales channel.

Sync customers:

• Stock2Shop synced Aranda’s wholesale customers onto the console, including customer-specific discounts, credit limits sales rep info and other important data.
• Customers were then issued logins so they could access products and pricing linked to their account, and place orders with ease.

Provide sales reps with an ordering tool:

• Aranda sales reps can log into the B2B Trade Store on behalf of a customer to see their pricing.
• The rep can raise an order directly into the client’s debtors account on Sage (using their mobile device or computer).
• Both the client and the rep are immediately sent an order confirmation.
• Sage checks that the client is in good standing and the order is valid. If not, a notification is sent to the Aranda admin team to contact the client and ask them to resolve the issue.
• If the client is in good standing, the order goes through immediately.
• No more delays. No more duplicate data capture. No more human error.

Streamline workflows:

Each online sales channel has a unique requirement, so we worked with Aranda to configure efficient workflows:

• Customer accounts and terms, price data and product codes are managed within Sage 300cloud.
• Once raw product data has synced onto their Stock2Shop console, Aranda adds images, descriptions and other marketing material.
• These enriched products are distributed to multiple sales channels, including:
  • a B2B ordering platform for trade customers and sales reps to use.
  • multiple retail Shopify websites.
• Stock2Shop set up default pricing and warehouse information for each sales channel, so that they’re always fully informed about what stock is available.
• Custom rules were put in place to designate which products are sent to which sales channel.
• Orders from these sales channels are automatically raised as sales orders in Sage.

Open up additional sales channels:

Presenting your products on multiple sales channels (also known as omni-channel selling) is an effective way to maximise sales. By using the ERP as the central source of truth for inventory, Stock2Shop enabled Aranda to manage this approach efficiently while reducing the risk of overselling.